Grandbaby #8

We have a new little granddaughter, Abigail Elisabeth Knoll, born at 8:51 p.m. After 31 hours of labor) on December 9th, 2008. She weighed in at 7 pounds and measured 20 inches in length. She was taken to NICU because she had a pneumothorax, a small air leak in her lung. She couldn't get enough pressure to keep her lung open. It was a little unsettling to watch them bagging her with this tiny little oxygen mask and bag. But now the hole is healing and she is breathing on her own. Mom and Dad (Katie and Ben) have been able to hold her. We, however, have not yet been allowed to do more than stroke her little legs and arms. She is beautiful. She'll be in the hospital a few more days in her private room in NICU, then Katie can bring her home. This hospital is incredible. All NICU babies have private rooms, and Katie's room has a double bed for her and Ben and a jacuzzi!

I love the reasons for which they chose her name:
"We named her “Abigail” after Abigail Adams, wife of the second U.S. President. We hope that she’ll emulate Mrs. Adams’s strong faith, values, and work ethic, her intellectual aptitude, her dedication to her husband and family, and her unassailable sense of civic duty to her country.We gave her the middle name of “Elisabeth” in honor of Elizabeth Bennett in Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice. In doing so, we hope that she will emulate Elizabeth’s egalitarian character in always being genuine and sincere with others while maintaining a healthy repugnance of pecuniary elitism and social pretense."

We are staying in their home in Iowa City, Iowa. We made the 30 (turned out to be 32 hour) trip from Logan, Utah by train. I love traveling by train. We had a few delays. Another train broke down in "our" tunnel and we had to wait one hour for their repair. Later an ice storm took out the train track lights. The freight trains were behind schedule because of this event and we had to sit and wait while several of them went by before we could proceed with our trip.

Brittany, our sweet German Shorthair dog, is staying for the holidays with our son Ken in Tooele. Gabby, our cat, is still in our home, being cared for by Ilda and her children. They live in our basement apartment. We will be staying in Iowa until Christmas day. After getting our long-awaited phone calls from our two missionaries, Karolyn in Russia, and Kyle in Chile, we will board the train for home

Merry Christmas everyone!