Happy New Year!

I'm baaaaccck!

Phew, it's been a busy and long month-and-then-some. A lot to update, but try to get to it over the next couple of days (esp. Christmas of course!). I'm glad to say that I'm feeling great. I had surgery on November 15th, have been fortunate enough to heal pretty quickly and double-bonus-fortunate to escape this whole thing without having to radiation or chemo or anything that would get in the way of me just continuing to heal. As you can imagine, this is a great relief in so many ways.

Not picking up Noa for a month was plenty challenging - but probably more challenging for me than it was for Noa. She took it all pretty well. The first week the place was like a parade of all her favorite BFF's - plus a visit from Grammy - so she loved that. And the following week was Thanksgiving - with my whole family in town. The center of attention is just the place Noa likes to be. It really wasn't until the weekend after Thanksgiving that Noa had her first only-Mommy-will-do breakdown and by that point I could hold her hand, and that seemed to help (I had to be careful of even getting close to her at first because one of her favorite games is to slap people and make them say "ouch").

Thanks to everyone who helped out - I'm still overwhelmed when I think about all the love and support that kept us moving forward those first few weeks.

For those of you who don't know, part of the surgery was a breast reduction - something that my doctor had recommended over a year ago as something that might help me deal with my chronic shoulder pain. I'm very pleased to report that already that has made a huge difference and for the first time in a year I feel like I have to potential to feel physically better... which becomes increasely important as Noa continues to grow, and Ben and I continue to get older and more tired. We are hoping that 2011 will bring walking for Noa. We're going to do all we can to really try to get there before one of us snaps in half!

More to come soon!