Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Best wishes for good things to come! We had a fun night last night. We went to Leblon, which is a Brazilian steakhouse with Ryan and Robyn. Then we went to a party at Starr and Jon's. Their son, Keenan, is Isabella's "boyfriend". He is 7 weeks older than she is and he is super cute! We left their house at 8:30 in order to make it back home for Isabella's bedtime. I didn't even try to stay up - I went to bed at 10:30! I don't remember the last time I didn't stay up for New Year's! Ha ha!

The night before, Lindsay came to town! We were roommates freshman and senior years at Davidson and now she lives in Nashville. It was so much fun to catch up and for her to meet Isabella! We ate Indian food (me for the first time) and it was delicious! That same night, Nick slept only 20 minutes. And not because Linz and I were up all night talking. And not because Isabella was up all night. No, he was hanging out with 13 and 14 year olds all night long! They had a lock in at the center and 10 boys came for a night of fun. "Lights out" was officially 3:00 am, but unfortunately for Nick and Brandon, the kids didn't go to bed until about an hour before their 8:00 pick up time. They obviously had a good time and probably slept all day.

Hoping that I don't jinx myself as I write this, I continue to be amazed at how well Isabella sleeps! Her average is now up to about 9-10 hours per night. She goes to sleep really well, at around 9:30 or 10:00 and sleeps until 7:30 or 8! I will have to start waking her up before that to feed her before work, but hopefully she'll go back to sleep so that Nick won't have to wake up super-early. She has been congested the past few nights, and has woken us up several times with her loud congested breathing. But it doesn't seem to bother her! The other night, we picked her up out of her crib to suction out her nose and put saline drops in. We did this twice, and she didn't wake up either time!! I hope that she continues to be a good sleeper! We still use the swaddle sack. It is pretty amazing that when she gets a hand (or both) out of the sack, she starts stirring all around and sometimes wakes herself up. But as soon as that arm goes down, she falls back asleep almost instantaneously! I swear, she could be a poster child for that product! We now have two of them. One in plain cotton, for warmer nights or when she is wearing fleecy pajamas, and one in fleece, for cooler nights or when she is wearing regular pajamas. We were joking today that she's going to be 5 years old and we will have to adapt a sleeping bag to make it into a swaddle sack!

I forgot to mention this in my earlier posts, but congratulations to Mary and Jason Partin on the arrival of Baby Blythe, their third beautiful girl, on December 21. And also congrats to my cousin Anna, who gave birth to their first child Sammy on December 15. He is just adorable! New babies all around, and I have 3 close friends who are due in March, April, and June! Isabella will have lots of new friends to grow up with!