Hello Dolly holiday

Despite driving for two hours every day from Thursday through today, our Thanksgiving holiday was truly wonderful. We spent Thanksgiving and Friday with my Dad and my late aunt's family, and it was great to see everyone. It was a wonderful, laid-back, mellow day, and not as sad as I'd expected. We did not do the standard Thanksgiving meal (it was too hard for my cousins to try to do the traditional stuff, having lost their mom last month), but instead my cousin grilled steaks, chicken, and corn on the cob, and there were baked potatoes, a terrific garlic potato soup that my brother's roommate contributed, salad, rolls, and more desserts than you can shake a stick at, including the amazing Hello Dollys that I discovered were the simplest crowd-pleasing dessert imaginable. I started making them when I was eight months pregnant, and have brought them to every potluck I've been to since. The only people who don't like them are those who have aversions to pecans or coconut, otherwise, people can't seem to get enough of them. (They're also sometimes called Magic Cookie Bars, and some people call them Nanaimo Bars, although the cookbook with the Hello Dolly recipe has a different recipe for Nanaimo Bars. That is probably more information than you wanted about Hello Dollys.)

Yesterday and today we spent at my mom's house. My mom invited TM's parents and grandparents, as well as my brother (who again brought his roommate -- Hi, Peter! Thanks for the terrific bruschetta!) to spend the afternoon with us on Saturday, and again, a lovely time was had by all. Kid A is TM's grandparents' fifth great-grandchild. They really enjoyed being able to spend time with her. As TM's grandpa pointed out, they had only met her once, and that was when she was about a week old, so they had a great time with her emerging sociability.

It's much later at night than I would like, and there's so much I want to write. Kid A is doing amazing. She's exhibiting some head-cold symptoms, and the last half hour of our drive home was excruciating, but once she was out of her car seat, she was mostly back to her usual (of late) happy, talkative self. She's been hungry lately, taking in more formula than I've ever seen her do. And the big news is, we weaned her this weekend. She nursed to sleep the last three days (for naps) and nights, but today she did not nurse at all. I feel a little nostalgic already for our nursing days, but I am really glad to be done with pumping. The last 2 weeks I'd been pumping less than 4 ounces each day, and it was starting to feel like more effort than it was worth. I'd really been keeping it up for the antibodies more than for nutrition (and had been protecting my supply so that I could nurse at night). But we started introducing a midnight bottle last week, and it worked out beautifully -- she falls asleep almost instantly upon finishing the bottle, and sleeps longer, so I'm up fewer times during the night -- so even the night nursing no longer seemed necessary or even beneficial. The upshot is, only 5% of me misses nursing. The other 95% is glad that formula isn't as difficult as I would have thought, and in public or among mixed company (such as male family members -- I'm way more modest with my family than I am with my friends!), it's quite nice to be able to feed Kid A without having to sequester myself, or drag out the hooter hider.

Ok, I'd love to keep going, but I really must get to bed, or else I'll end up with a head cold! Happy Thanksgiving!