deep winter, and life at a stand still

I took this picture out the back steps this morning while I waited for the dog.

It's that bitter cold where you step one foot outside to get the mail and it all freezes up in your nose like ZIP.

Pretty, yes. Winter is so beautiful.  Uninhabitable, but beautiful.

This child is our Boss Baby.  She's making do with her aunts and her grandma and smidgens of her parents when they're home.  Her little tiny baby sister has been so sick and had open heart surgery on Tuesday.  It's all a making-do kind of situation because that's all we've got, and we'll sort it all out later.

Updates from today:

Overwhelmed.  Tired. Grateful.  Relieved.

Take your pick, varies moment to moment.

The stomach flu has also made an obnoxious path through the house.   A child took me by the hand upstairs today and showed me a puddle of puke in her big bed and said, "I choked this up out of my MOUTH."

Oh, sweet Lord.

I tugged the sheets loose and threw them in the wash.

What kind of nonsense is this anyway??

No more.

Onward, and sweet little peanut, we are all so closely tuned in to your recovery.

Love forever, Grandma and Grandpa and Everybody

(Boots purchased yesterday at a Target diversion.  So cute.)