Happy Winter!

From Wintertime!

Winter has arrived in Ann Arbor! The TV weatherpeople are all in a tizzy (Alert, alert! Snow in Michigan in December!!!) with the arrival of about a foot of snow over last night and into today. Maia got her first taste of a for-real snowstorm and didn't really know what to make of it. Our road was unplowed into the afternoon, so we took her out in the old-school Hecker girls' sled--note our names written on the back--for a few minutes before the wind started to get too blustery. We figured it wasn't a big deal to go outside for a little while because she already has a cold! (See the next paragraph.)

Also coinciding with the arrival of the cold weather is a pretty icky cold for Maia. It's nothing dramatic or surprising: just a very runny nose and a scratchy throat. Maia slept for about 10 straight hours last night (a stretch we haven't seen in months) and then napped a lot today, but it was a challenge indeed to get her on her way to dreamland this evening. I'll probably take her to the pediatrician tomorrow just to be sure that her raspy little voice isn't a sign of trouble in her lungs. I'm sure that she's just fine. With the help of some saline drops and a nasal aspirator, we've been able to nurse all day, which certainly helps make her feel better (physically and emotionally, I think.) Complicating matters a bit, however, is the fact that Brian's also sick with said cold. Blah. You can bet I'm hoping that my iron-clad immune system carries me through this minefield!

Even through all this, I marvel at how fortunate we are to have an almost-one year old who's only had two colds and zero ear infections. Yay us!!!!

What else? Well, we put up our little Christmas tree in the family room. We went with a fake one this year, because I certainly have no interest in trailing Maia all day to make sure that she's not eating pine needles off the floor. It's getting to the point that she can play quite happily on her own on the floor with her books and toys while I get our lunch together or get my coat on, but that flexibility would end if a real tree entered into the picture. We got a small one--it's about four feet tall, and we've put it up on a table to keep it away from prying baby hands.

That's about all for now. Also included in the recent photo album is a picture of Maia opening her first ever wrapped Christmas present! Thanks so much to Harper and her family for the Eric Carle book! :)