Here are the lyrics of the song, which always makes me cry:

With The Stillness Of The Night
there Comes A Time To Understand
to Reach Out And Touch Tomorrow
take The Future In Our Hand.

We Can See A New Horizon
built On All That We Have Done
and Our Dreams Begin
another Thousand Circles ’round The Sun.

We Go On
to The Joy And Through The Tears
we Go On
to Discover New Frontiers
moving On
with The Current Of The Years.

We Go On
moving Forward, Now As One
moving On
with A Spirit Born To Run
ever On
with Each Rising Sun.

To A New Day
we Go On

we Go On.

Indeed we do, baby Audrey! I am so happy to have you in my life. Here’s to discovering new frontiers together!

Sometimes they’re wondering about the logistics of shopping, cleaning, etc. without an extra pair of helping hands.  Our neighbors Heidi and Nick told me just yesterday that sometimes it’s all they can do to keep up with Dylan (who is just 5 weeks older than you) for just one evening when one of them is sick or out of town. While I admit that it’s been a challenge to come up with a routine and stay organized (just ask Grandma and Grandpa about all of the different things I’ve tried!), you’re a very forgiving baby and I just keep trying new ways of getting things done.  The Moby wrap and a lightweight stroller have been helpful for shopping, and I tackle things in the house one step at a time… and often just leave them dirty!

Sometimes the people who ask are wondering about how I manage financially.  Staying home with their children isn’t something many of our married friends can do, let alone the single ones.  But I promised myself that if I was lucky enough to have you, I would find a way to stay home with you.  I had a long time to work on my career, and right now you’re the most important thing in the world to me and I’ll do anything to stay home.  That has meant everything from giving up my job as a lecturer at the University of Florida (even before I was pregnant with you!), to finding creative ways to save money… like making your baby food and hanging the laundry to dry.  Fortunately, two of the values I hope to instill in you are an environmental awareness and an anti-consumption streak, so being thrifty works well on all fronts!

But do you know what the hardest thing about raising you as a single woman is?  Not having someone here to share you with.  When you got your thumb into your mouth for the first time (after trying for a month!) I whooped with joy and called Grandma and Grandpa to celebrate.  When you tried your first solids, we had Grandma and Grandpa on Skype cheering you on.  In fact, I’ve been on the phone or Skype with them almost daily since you were born, and they’ve spent many weeks here already enjoying the little daily moments with you.  But eventually they go home, and then it’s just the two of us again, and I don’t have someone here to share your every triumph with in person.  Of course our friends get excited and lots of people have given us tons of encouragement on the phone, online and in person.  In the end, though, I am your greatest cheerleader and always will be.  I just wish I had someone to rehash the day with after you go to sleep at night.  Maybe that’s ultimately why I wanted to write this blog, to have a way to communicate all of the thoughts I have during the day, but can’t always share.

And so the hardest thing about raising you as a single woman is the knowledge that, until you’re older and can remember events in our life together for yourself, I am the only person in the world who will ever know what you were like on a daily basis during these first months and years of your life.  It’s an awesome responsibility and one I take very seriously.  I promise to try and remember as much as I can, and to write as much as possible down, so that I can share the story of your early life with you when you’re older.  In the meantime, this blog and all of the other records I’m keeping, will have to be my companion.

That might sound funny or strange, but you have to understand that a newborn is hard to think of as a person, at least for me.  I loved you deeply from the moment I first touched you in the operating room, but that’s different from what I mean.  I am talking more about your personality, your inner life, even your soul.  You have been taking small steps towards this day since you were born, and then something just clicked during our time together tonight, and I realized that I was getting my first glimpse of who you are as a person, with a sense of humor and a deep need and love for me.  But first let me tell you a bit about some of the moments leading up to tonight.

I think the first time I really noticed you as a person with an emotional life of your own was when you were about six weeks old.  You were crying because you were still hungry after I had breastfed you, and I started to cry out of frustration that my breast milk wasn’t enough for you. You immediately stopped wailing and looked at me in surprise.  You studied my face for so long that you forgot your own unhappiness.  You didn’t start to cry again and instead just went back to trying to feed.  It was an amazingly powerful moment and I remember being completely awed by the fact that you had displayed empathy.

(By the way, after the last post about not giving up, I had to go back to supplementing you with formula in order to keep your growth up.  I don’t think of this as giving up so much as being realistic, and I haven’t regretted it for a second, although I’ll always wonder if it could have been different if we’d had a better start in the hospital and first few weeks home.)

I also remember how Grandma made you laugh so hard your belly shook back in December, about a month ago.  She was only making a silly noise and face to go with it, but you thought it was hilarious, and Grandma and I were both amazed at the sheer joy you showed.  That was the first time I realized you had a sense of humor.

And of course you’ve been gazing at me from the beginning, starting in September with a game I called Googly Eyes, where we’d just lay on the bed and look at each other.  You were incredibly focused during those sessions, and I came away from them certain that you understood our bond as mother and daughter.  In the past few weeks you’ve started using your hands to explore my face, hands and any other part of me you can reach, often just playing with the hem of my pajamas or stroking my chin while you’re feeding.  It’s like you can’t get enough of me by just looking and you’re trying to memorize the feel of me.

Somehow all of these things came together tonight when I was changing you for bed.  You looked deep into my eyes and held my gaze for what seemed an eternity.  You then blew a raspberry and waited for me to do the same, giving me a belly laugh when I answered.  The game went on for about ten minutes, with some time in between of you holding my face.  It may not sound like much as you read this, but it was the first time I really saw all of the parts of your personality working together and it just hit me– you are my daughter, Audrey.  It’s such a strong feeling that I want to go in and wake you up and just hug you for the rest of the night.

I’ve often cried when I was feeding you late at night and Bach’s “Jesu Bleibet meine Freude” (Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring) plays on the CD Grandpa gave us.  There’s something about the music that makes me think about your future and all of the things that I hope for you in it.  And tonight, for the first time, I got a glimpse of the person you are becoming, and it is beautiful.  You are a happy, curious, loving baby that I am sure will become a wonderful little girl and, eventually, a lovely woman.  I can hardly wait to see what you make of this life that I have given you, and I am so happy to be your mother, Audrey.

You were born at 11:51 a.m. on Friday, August 27, 2010… and I’m writing this on Tuesday, December 7.  Good that you weren’t as tardy in arriving as I am with updating this blog!  Honestly, this is the first chance I’ve had to even *think* about blogging since your arrival.  Who knew newborns could be so much work?!  (To all of my friends who had kids before me and suffered through my ranting about how being organized is the key to surviving anything… I’M SORRY.  You must have all been snickering under your breath when I said I was going to have a baby… )

I’ll catch you up on the last three months bit by bit in the coming weeks, but suffice it to say that they were mostly filled with figuring out how to feed, change, burp, bathe, carry, and entertain you.  I’ll post some videos and photos of the funnier moments (breast feeding on the Florida Turnpike anyone?). For now I just want to share two important victories with you, victories that gave us our new family motto: “We don’t give up!”

The first had to do with your heart.  You were born with a heart defect (a “small to moderate” hole between your two ventricles) that was a lot more serious than just a little valve murmur.  I remember sitting in the hospital bed the day after you were born, after I got the news, and holding you, this little creature, in my arms and just crying and crying at the thought that you might not make it.  Ok, partially I was hyped up on hormones– nobody was telling me you were in imminent danger.  But I was absolutely astonished at the power of my feelings of protectiveness and fear for this tiny baby who had just make her arrival in the world.  I was sure that if anything happened to you I would just die myself, and you were only 24 hours old!  Just thinking about it now makes my chest tight and my eyes well up.  When they discharged us from the hospital (two days after my C-section!) they told me to watch you for signs of not thriving (not gaining weight well, lethargic, etc.) and for signs of heart failure (blue lips, not breathing), since both were possible with your kind of defect.  Oh my GOD!!!

I didn’t tell very many people about all of this at the time, mainly because I wanted to focus on the positive and there was nothing I could do about the defect except wait.  And if having cancer taught me one thing, it’s not to panic until there’s something to panic about!  So you and I got on with the business of learning about each other, and I tried not to panic as your first pediatric cardiology follow-up appointment neared.  And you know what?  By that time, just five weeks after your birth, they found that the hole was almost closed.  Mind you, when they originally diagnosed you they were talking about following you into your teen years, were saying that the defect might (or might not) cause you trouble, that you might (or might not) require heart surgery someday.  And here we were not even two months later and the doctor said it was so small now that he felt comfortable releasing us to your pediatrician for further monitoring since it would certainly disappear completely soon.  Our first major victory!

The second major victory just happened today, and it was a big enough one that it made me want to stay up late to write this post: today was your first day without formula.  After fourteen grueling weeks of battling a low milk supply, you got nothing but 100% pure breast milk from yours truly today and you are now sleeping peacefully at 11 p.m. You cannot BELIEVE what a huge deal this is for me!

I had prepared for your birth by attending childbirth and breastfeeding classes.  I hired a doula.  I practiced birthing positions on a birth ball.  I checked daily to see if drops of colostrum were present, just waiting to feed you when you finally arrived.  I wanted to have the full birth and motherhood experience and I prepared as much as possible to make it happen.

But things started to go wrong very quickly around 41 weeks.  Despite weekly pelvic exams, my OB missed that you were frank breech.  When she did an ultrasound at 41 weeks to check amniotic fluid levels, the ultrasound tech and I were shocked to find your head up by my diaphragm!  You had very little fluid and were estimated to be around 11 pounds, so I had to have a C-section the very next day.  No labor, no doula, no birth ball… and no nursing in the OR.  I have an adorable (and heartbreaking) video of you just minutes after birth, snuggled up against my cheek trying to nurse on my jawbone… just before you were wheeled away to the nursery and given a bottle!   Things went from bad to worse when the lactation consultant and I somehow missed each other and she left for the night– and the hospital didn’t have anyone on staff for the rest of the weekend.  The nurses tried to help, but they weren’t trained to help with breastfeeding and I got conflicting (and downright wrong) advice all weekend.  You dropped a ton of weight and I could tell that I wasn’t producing anything– no colostrum, nada– and I panicked and started giving you formula at the nurses’ suggestion.

I eventually hired a lactation consultant and we confirmed that my milk had not come in, so she devised a system for us to feed you with a little tube lined up with my nipple through which you would get formula, but nurse normally to make sure you didn’t forget how.  It was impossibly hard to do and incredibly frustrating, sometimes requiring me to latch you on as many as 20 times before we got it right.  I was in pain, you were crying with hunger,  and your formula intake was climbing, finally hitting 24 ounces a day just a few weeks after you were born.  I was despondent, sure that yet another dream of motherhood, breastfeeding, had vanished.

But somehow I never gave up hope completely, and I started reading online, talking to lactation consultants at the other hospital in town, and figuring out a way to build my milk supply slowly.  And I’m happy to report that after 47 days (yes, almost 7 weeks!) of slowly reducing your formula and letting my breasts make up the difference, today you only got breast milk directly from me.  No formula, no pumped milk.  In order to stay the course, I gave all of our formula and bottles to our neighbor Ryleigh for safe keeping last night– a good decision it turned out, since I was totally jonesing to give you a little formula to get you to stop crying and go to sleep several times since then.  We had a tough night last night and some tough times today, but I know we’re going to make it.

I’ve been saying for several weeks now that our new family motto is “We don’t give up!” but I really feel deep down tonight, maybe for the first time, that it really suits us.  I didn’t give up on having you, and now sometimes I cry when I look at you and think, if I had ever wavered in my commitment to have a baby, you wouldn’t be here now.  You are the perfect baby for me and I look forward to our life together.  We have it all to look forward to and, no matter what happens, just remember that we don’t give up.  Ever.

Love,
Mommy

For me it wasn’t so much that I couldn’t imagine how I would afford a child, it was more that I couldn’t imagine how I could continue to afford my pre-pregnancy lifestyle.  Travel, restaurants, entertainment, gadgets… altogether I was spending a lot of my income and saving only about 15% of my six-figure salary annually.  And I’d only been earning that much for a few years, so I was really just getting started with emergency and retirement savings.  The good news was that I didn’t have any debt except my mortgage and student loans.

And then, in the middle of the worst economy in recent memory, I decided halfway through last year that it was time to leave my job and strike out on my own.  By the time I actually left my job last December and got my last paycheck, I was pregnant with twins, out $40,000 for infertility treatments, and unable to get much done on my new business because I was sick as a dog from morning sickness.  I started to panic– how was I going to afford everything?!?

But things have a way of working themselves out when there’s no other choice.  I slashed my spending dramatically, going back to doing all of my cooking and eating at home, getting rid of my gym membership and iPhone (in favor of a pre-paid emergencies-only cell phone), and putting the call out to friends for gently used baby items.  I put my house on the market (it hasn’t sold yet), postponed buying a new car, and simply stopped visiting Amazon.com completely.  I got a huge tax refund since most of my infertility expenses were tax-deductible and used it to pay my living expenses for 6 months.  By June, I had booked enough freelance work to make ends meet every month and had inherited enough baby stuff to keep my own spending for Audrey under $300.  Wow!  As her arrival nears (I was due yesterday!), I am happily working from home part-time with a balanced monthly budget and a fledgling business that should start bringing in the money for long-term goals soon.  And the panicked feeling is completely gone.

So here are the top 5 lessons I learned about affording a baby as a Single Mother by Choice:

1. You can’t live your pre-baby life, but then nobody can. Lots of single female friends have asked me how in the world I plan to continue my previous lifestyle with a child.  The answer is: I don’t.  But I don’t know any couples who manage to do this, either.  It’s a matter of money, yes, but it’s also a matter of priorities.  The newest iPhone or a Disney vacation with Audrey?  Um, no contest.
2. You have at least a year to figure it out. When I was considering becoming a Single Mother by Choice I felt like I had to figure out the money situation before I could even start trying to conceive.  The reality is that conception can take a long time, but even if it happens on your first try (lucky you!) pregnancy is still 40 weeks.  And let’s face it, babies don’t really need much more than a basic wardrobe from friends or consignment, a safe place to sleep, diapers (the new cloth ones are amazing!), a breast and love.  It doesn’t have to cost a fortune, and chances are good that any woman over 35 is going to inherit a ton of stuff from friends who have just decided they’re finished with making babies.
3. Not everybody enjoys my level of flexibility, but changes are always possible. I was lucky in that my last job teaching journalism at a university gave me an opportunity to teach online.  That combined with the popularity of my subject (web skills) made it possible for me to work from home on my own business.  So I won’t have daycare expenses, worries about maternity leave, or any of the other problems working mothers usually face.  Not everyone is in this position, but changes are always possible.  You could spend the year before the baby’s birth working out a telecommuting agreement with your current employer, or spending some time upgrading your skills so that you can change employers altogether.  You could move out of an expensive city to the suburbs (see lesson #1… it’s all about priorities!) or even to a small town with a lower cost of living.  And you could decide to work from home, accepting that a cut in pay might be a small price for spending more time with your child.  Change and sacrifice don’t feel as dramatic or difficult when they’re in service of children… I promise.
4. That’s what life insurance is for! As a Single Mother by Choice and cancer survivor with parents in their seventies and no brothers or sisters, I am probably in the worst possible scenario when it comes to providing for my child if I should die.  Who would take care of her?  How could I ensure she gets a good education?  Of course, these worries are common in every family, and the financial system has come up with a way to address them: life insurance.  After decades of living alone, with no dependents and only cats to worry about, I’d pretty much forgotten life insurance even existed.  But it does, and it’s affordable, and it’s the solution to most of my problem.  Now I just have to pick her godparents…
5. Go green and save the planet and your wallet. I went to Berkeley for grad school and got bitten by the green bug pretty hard while there, so I was really interested in reducing Audrey’s impact from the start.  I decided to start by drawing up a baby budget and then attacking it item by item to look for ways to green our lives.  My first baby budget included all of the typical items: crib, diapers, clothes, travel system, etc.  It came in around $3,000 for standard items (Gerber onesies, an Evenflo car seat, Target crib, Sam’s Club diapers).  Wait, $3,000?!?!?!  And that was all BEFORE she was born.  Then I found some interesting websites about raising green kids and the fun began.  Turns out going green can also be great for your wallet– as long as you don’t get caught up in ordering the high-end organic items from specialty websites!  The first thing I found was a series of blog posts called “Baby Essentials That Aren’t” (link is to the first part on cribs) and that gave me some great ideas for things I would simply NOT buy at all.  Like instead of a travel system with infant car seat, I got a convertible car seat (as a gift from my parents, clearance color to keep costs low) and will use a Moby wrap (got as a baby shower gift) to carry her until she’s big enough for a lightweight umbrella stroller.  Instead of disposable diapers for 3 years, we’ll use Fuzzi Bunz cloth diapers (got about half of my supply used from a friend and bought the other half) and resell them for almost half their purchase price when we’re done.  I also plan to introduce the potty early with the goal of getting out of diapers as soon as possible.  And of course I’ll be continuing to make all of my own food, so I’ll make hers as well once we’re finished with breastfeeding.  There are literally hundreds of good ideas online for greening baby’s life… and putting a lot more cash back into your wallet at the same time!

And if you have tips or ideas I didn’t think of, please post them to the comments of this post.

Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten so many phone calls in the past few months from women I went to high school or college with, all asking about my experience because they’re considering doing the same.  You see, I was born in 1970, so we’re all turning 40 this year.  It seems to mark a turning point for women, when “do I want kids?” becomes “I better get on it NOW if I want kids.” Turns out we all have the same list of worries and concerns about going it alone.

Or maybe it’s because I went to see Jennifer Lopez in The Back-up Plan earlier this summer.  My neighbor’s daughter turned 13 and I treated her to lunch and a movie.  She was trying to decide between The Back-up Plan (PG-13, with it’s obvious appeal for a newly-minted 13-year-old) and Marmaduke (somewhat less enticing at PG) and chose to go with The Back-up Plan.  Sitting in the theater with her that afternoon, I watched Jennifer Lopez be inseminated with donor sperm, meet the man of her dreams outside the doctor’s office, and then spend the rest of the movie trying to get over her emotional baggage from a father who walked out on her mother.  Most of it seemed pretty contrived, but there was just enough truth in some of the script to remind me that choice mothers all struggle with the same questions.

Or maybe it’s just because I’m about to have Audrey, so all those theoretical concerns from two years ago are now very real and in need of a solution.  Now.  Or at least soon.

Regardless of what triggered it, I’ve been forced to revisit some of my concerns and fears about having a child on my own, using donor sperm.  I thought I’d share these concerns, and my solutions to them, over the next few posts in the hopes that it will help women who are thinking about or already trying to conceive on their own.

Here’s are the three best ones:

Nesting: Feeling the need to prepare for the arrival of the baby by cleaning, organizing, etc. Often happens toward the end of pregnancy.

Ok, so now that I found this definition I feel a little bit better about what I’ve been doing the past few days.  I started week 35 yesterday and decided that I needed to prepare food for the remaining weeks and for at least a month after Audrey is born.  This probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me well– feeling prepared and cooking go hand-in-hand for me.  (Just ask my friend Toree who was the beneficiary of enough home-cooked meals to feed an army last year.)  Sometimes I think I should have been a caterer. But I digress…

I already knew about nesting and got to see it firsthand with my neighbor Heidi, who is two weeks ahead of me in her pregnancy.  She cleaned out their entire garage and had a garage sale in her second trimester.  Then she set up her baby’s closet and did a thorough cleaning of her house more than a month ago.  Me?  Well, I decided the house was clean enough (!) and that I would focus my efforts on food preparation.  Rereading that last sentence I realize now what an understatement it is.

I started by deciding how many weeks I would cook for in preparation.  Since I’ve been lazy about cooking the past month or so I’ve found myself eating ingredients instead of meals: corn on the cob, a slice of bread with butter, milk, some cherries.  Not terrible on the nutrition front, but not very satisfying either.  So I decided first that I would cook enough lunches and dinners to last through my due date, August 20th.  That’s about 5 weeks away, so:

5 x 7 lunches + 5 x 7 dinners = 70 lunches and dinners

But then I also wanted to cook for about a month after Audrey is born.  My folks will be here for a few weeks and my mom has promised to cook, but I want to make sure I have enough to get us through (yes, you can already see where this is going).  I figured I might as well cook for 6 weeks and then rounded it off to 7 so that I would have a round 3 months (5 weeks before my due date plus 7 weeks after).

7 x 7 lunches + 7 x 7 dinners = 98 lunches and dinners

Grand total: 168 lunches and dinners.  I really should have stopped right then and there to reconsider, but…

The next step was to make sure I had enough room in my freezer for all of that.  I do.  I measured.  Enough said.

How do you plan for 168 meals?  Well, if you figure your average recipe makes 6 to 8 servings, I’d need about 24 entrees to get to 168 servings.  I figured I’d go a little heavier on meat than I normally do to make sure I was getting enough protein, something I think has been a little lacking since those first weeks when I craved beef before morning sickness struck.  So I decided on doing 8 beef entrees, 8 chicken entrees, and 8 vegetarian entrees.  I’ll still broil my fish fresh and use canned salmon as needed for salmon cakes and salmon chowder (two of my favorite recipes).

I also figured I should choose a variety of flavors and textures, so I looked for tomato-based dishes, cream-based dishes and some soups and chilis.  Finally I wanted to keep prep and cooking time down to a minimum (can you believe I was still thinking like that?!) so I looked for an even mix of recipes for the oven, stovetop and crockpot.  At the end I threw in five recipes for various breads as breakfast and accompaniments… because at that point, why not?  Right???

So here’s the final recipe list (everything will be doubled):

• Snappy Reuben Rolls
• Big Batch Chili
• Meatball Stroganoff
• Simply Wonderful Beef Stew
• Chicken with Tomatoes and Thyme
• Leslie’s Favorite Chicken and Wild Rice Casserold
• Caribbean Black Bean Soup
• Quick Turkey Chili
• Pesto (already make 8 ice cube trays full earlier this summer and used it up!)
• Sun-dried Tomato Pesto
• Black Bean and Chocolate Chili
• Eggplant Lasagna
• Pumpkin Date Loaf
• Evelyn’s Cornbread
• Ham and Cheese Scones
• Walnut and Rosemary Loaves
• Caraway Soda Bread

You’d think this list alone would have stopped me in my tracks, but noooooo!  Instead, I made a shopping list.  It includes things like:

• 24 eggs
• 12 c olive oil
• 6 lb ground chuck
• 11 cans diced tomatoes
• 8 cans black beans
• and about 100 other items!

Did I stop there?  Too late.  I was on a roll.  The more I planned the more doable it seemed.

So I hit the road Thursday and yesterday and went to all of my usual grocery stores: Sam’s Club for bulk items like olive oil and Parmesan cheese, Walmart for packaged and dry goods, Ward’s for produce and bulk spices, and Publix for whatever I couldn’t find at the others.  To conserve my flagging energy I used the electric shopping carts at every store.  I was a woman on a mission.

The result?  I spent $400.01 and now have a stuffed fridge and overflowing island… oh, and now it’s time to cook!  I’ll let you know Monday how it went.  In the meantime, please, please, PLEASE tell me if you did anything half as crazy as this when you or someone you know was nesting.  I need the reassurance to know I’m not going crazy!

UPDATE 8/18/2010:  Just wanted to let everyone know that cooking all that food took 3 WEEKS!  I thought I’d be done in a weekend, but that would have required the combined efforts of all of the Iron Chefs and at least two more ovens.  The good news is that my freezer is full– well, minus the stuff I’ve already eaten– and I haven’t had to do any major grocery shopping or cooking in weeks.  Whew!  It’s going to be a long time before I do anything THAT crazy again!

I have to admit that I didn’t feel much like celebrating.  I mean, it’s incredibly hot and humid outside, I feel a bit like a hippo on dry land, I can’t drink a toast, I can’t salsa dance, and I’m usually ready for bed by 7 p.m.

But you know what’s funny?  I didn’t even care.  Audrey is the best birthday present EVER, even if I do have to wait another six weeks to “open” her.  I felt a bit like I did on my fifteenth birthday, when I went down to the DMV and got my first driver’s license (gotta love Louisiana laws!).  Freedom!

Mom and Dad were here from Virginia and we spent my birthday getting the house ready for Audrey’s arrival.  Dad finished installing the closet shelves while Mom and I washed, sorted and folded about 15 loads of baby laundry.  Ok, to be honest my Mom did most of the work since my ankles were approaching elephant proportions, but I supervised…

Her wardrobe is about 95% hand-me-downs and I am SO grateful to my friends for them.  Shout out to Molly Zenker, Jill Bettinger, and Donna Myers– ya’ll rock!  Since I’m starting my own business this year money is tight, and the things they sent are going to get us through in style.  I received some adorable outfits at my baby shower and from other friends, too, so Audrey will have some new pieces as well.  Just wait until you see the black NYC onesie from Gina Pellegrini… classic!

I’ll post a photo of her closet tomorrow, but for now it’s time for bed… yes, at 9 p.m.

UPDATE

Here are two photos from the trip, one of her closet and one of my dad trying to stay warm in my 72 degree house– I like it COLD these days!