visiting baby Nicole.....

 ...bright and early Saturday morning, Emily and I started our road trip south to the fine state of Delaware.  We went straight to the children's hospital, and had lunch with Abigail and Derek.  They caught us up on the delicate state of baby's health, and I can say this:  they are at peace.  This whole experience is unknown territory, the doctors don't know how things will go because it's so rare that babies survive the birth with this diagnosis.  We are all thankful to live in this day and age, and they are especially thankful for the time spent with their precious little girl.

We joined Derek's parents and his little sister, and made dinner plans.  A nice restaurant, a good meal together, very cozy, and we all agreed it's nice to get to know each other better.  

We made plans to have brekky with Abigail and Derek on Sunday morning, then went off to our hotel, Emily and I.  It didn't look promising, and we should have taken pictures.  The one light illuminating the parking lot was askew on the post and blinking off and on erratically. 

We checked in, and the foyer was dusty and dated.  Out the door, up the stairs to our second floor room.  (I asked the nice man if there were any first floor rooms, he said, "No, this is last room in hotel."  Okay.  We opened the door, nothing scurried.  But.  There was an adjoining door, to connect the room to the one next to it.  The lock was broken, and the door was nothing more than a thin closet-like door.  Emily opened it, and there was a similar door behind it.  We looked at each other:  if they opened their door, they would be in our room.  She fidgeted with the lock a little to see if it would work, but it just spun around all brokenly.  Suddenly, CRASH!  It sounded like someone kicked the other door, so loudly we froze.  Then WHAT THE F are you doing!????, someone shouted.    (only they didn't say just the "f".).   We just stood there looking at each other, I whispered LET'S LEAVE.  She agreed.  They thought we were trying to get into their room, and I told Emily that I wouldn't sleep a wink if I knew they could just open that door.   (They seemed extremely defensive, and I wondered if we made any noise or dropped something, they would yell and open the door...it just wasn't worth it...the lack of peace of mind.) (I told Em that if they opened the door at any point, I would simply die of a heart attack...)

We went back to the car in the dimly lit parking lot, and an old car with one headlight came speeding around the corner, screeched to a stop, and handed a bag of fast food to a guy who came out of no where, then drove away.  Was it really fast food?  Em decided we should go to a different parking lot to figure out what to do.

(it didn't help that there was a mom in the waiting room of the hospital, accompanied by three cops, because her son had been shot....(poor mama, seriously!). The hospital is in a nice area, but the surrounding city can be rough)

There were no hotels in the area with open rooms.  So I said:  let's go home.  It's five plus hours, so off we went.  It was well after nine, but we decided to just head north, and if we got really tired, we could stop somewhere.  Around eleven, we stopped at a gas station and got crappy coffee from an air pump jug, but it wasn't too bad, and it kept us awake.  We got to Emily's house around 2:30, and ahh, I took a quick shower and slept in the guest bed in her library. :)

It was a busy afternoon here with Margaret here with Wulf, Tennyson, and Blythe, then Oscar came with Kaia, and Mariel came too.  Not too busy, just right.  Sonja came after work, and we solved the world's problems around the table.  Paul made some chili, I grilled hot dogs and burgers, and we had a nice little feast.  Cam baked some of those Halloween cookies with the shapes in them, the house smelled good and the kids liked them.  

This fine morning, I face-timed with baby Nicole:), with her mama actually.  I took a screen shot: 

She's not a morning person, Abigail said.  She is definitely more active in the evenings.  Ab was talking to her, and she was making faces and trying to open her eyes:). I think she knows how much she is loved.  

You all have a really nice day....:)