Bill & Gretchen returned home from Madison yesterday with their new baby, Juliana Leigh. They were a little ragged from the stress of the adventure and spending almost a week in a hotel room, but the payoff was difficult to calculate: the little girl sleeping on Gretchen's shoulder. Mission accomplished: Julie is home.
Gretchen dropped her in my lap and I held her for a little while, Gretchen having made sure that her diaper was correctly applied and (as best she could tell) tight. Julie looked around for awhile and squirmed a little, but mostly she wanted to fall asleep. Like her sister Katie before her, she is a very placid and un-fussy baby. I heard her cry some when Gretchen changed her diaper a little later, but apart from that she took it easy on Gretchen's shoulder. She lay quietly in her magic stroller (magic in the way it folds down to nothing and slides behind the seats in their van) while we had supper at Sweet Baby Ray's, even with all the fuss that the waitresses were making over her. Being six days old, she still has the ruddiness of complexion that one expects of newborns, and the pale blue eyes that most infants have before their pigment develops. Bill has blue eyes. Gretchen's, like mine, are very brown. Julie's could still go either way.
Nothing more to offer this morning than that. I'm working on Degunking Essentials as I have for the last few days, and will rejoin Carol later today. Tomorrow we launch south to Champaign to witness our younger nephew Matt graduate from the U of I, and with no crisp idea of my free time or connectivity, it's hard to know when I'll post again, but don't despair if you don't see anything before Monday.
