Thanksgiving Reflections

I hope all of you, loyal readers, had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday (and if you are not from the US, that you had a good week)!

We have a lot to be thankful for this year.  Despite the setback this past August, Judith's been doing really well with her health, and that's a huge blessing.  She still has a few developmental things that need to catch up a bit, but overall she's staying on track for where she should be.  You should hear some of the words she's starting to use, and the sentences she forms!  She's starting to get creative and really use her imagination, and some of the things she comes up with are absolutely hilarious.

Of course there's always the lingering thoughts over what happened 3 years ago, and those will likely always be there.  This year is the first year where it feels like it was such a long time ago, and I think I'm really starting to move past the preemie aspect of her life faster than I thought I would.

Last week I wasn't really looking forward to her birthday, but this week I'm feeling much better about it, and am starting to get excited.  Judith has been asking, "Can I go to my birthday?" for days, ever since we told her that her birthday is coming up.  Her excitement has helped me get excited, so much so that I actually wrapped her birthday presents Thursday night after we got home from our big Thanksgiving feast.  I've always been a procrastinator, but this year I'm on a roll considering I had her birthday and Christmas shopping completed at the end of October, and now have her birthday presents wrapped.

Both John and I are also in more of a Christmas-y mood this year, and it hit earlier than it has in the past few years.  Judith's way more aware of what's going on, and we're now able to do more things that we weren't able to do in the past because of cold/flu season and the precautions we needed to take.  Things like taking her to see Santa, going to Christmas Candy Lane at Hersheypark, and having her help/participate more with our Advent traditions we do at home.  She's loving the Christmas music, seeing things decorated, and has been asking about presents for almost a week.  I do admit that I've held out on playing my Advent and Christmas playlist during the day until yesterday (Friday), because I try to stick to my "not until after Thanksgiving" mantra, but it was extra hard this year with Thanksgiving being so late.  Now if we could get a small covering of snow, that would really make things festive!