baby thankfulness

this week i am thankful for:

1. my beautiful, healthy kiddo. i can't say how happy she is because those rare baby smiles, i guess they're just gas for the next couple weeks. other than that... we're so in love with her. her skin is so soft, i just want to touch her and kiss her everywhere. i could rub her little belly forever. and that skin is so loose, kind of like old man skin, that she has like 12 chins and i love them all. she makes the funniest faces and the silliest sounds, little sighs in her sleep and baby farts and burps and grunts and these chirpy little squeaks. it's like we birthed a menagerie instead of a human child. she doesn't know what to do with herself when she gets the hiccups. she had them last night when she spit up for the first time. i put her on my shoulder and rubbed her back, and she turned her head and stared at me wide-eyed with her mouth hanging open, and i just about died of happiness.

2. my husband, who continues to prove that he is the world's greatest man alive. we all know that i could not have made it through labor without him. i also could not have made it through this past week without him either. he is the one who has been folding me into his arms at 3a when i break down crying because i can't get the baby to sleep. he is the one who cuddles the baby for 2 hours after i feed her so i can rest. he is the one who pushed me in the wheelchair to hannah's 2-day doctor appointment, because my belly hurt so bad that i could not walk from here to kingdom come to find where in the world pediatrics might be hiding. he is my rock, my shelter, my safe place, and i love him so much.

3. mil, who came and took care of both of us this week. my mother very suddenly and abruptly left to go home the night before i got out of the hospital. we had been counting on her help, and then suddenly she is telling me this. i sat in my hospital bed and sobbed and felt so helpless. brian said, my mother will help us. and she did. even though she doesn't cook and isn't very domestic, she did laundry for us, made lunches and dinners for us, left us a huge bowl of fruit salad when she went home (which has since been devoured). she was a third pair of hands at all of hannah's myriad (okay, only three, but it felt like a billion) appointments because she was losing too much weight, and we needed those extra hands. it's not that i doubted her desire or ability to help. i'm not sure what it was with me. but she sure stepped up and for that i am grateful.