To all those who read this and e-mail me, my sincerest apologies. I will catch up here on my correspondence and see how all of YOU are doing, I promise. In the meantime, though, I keep getting a little worse.

I'm getting more tests done for the blue-lips thing, as it continues from time to time and still exhausts me. The next test is on Monday and sounds totally unpleasant; I'll let you know just how bad once I go through with it. None of this seems to connect to the Bell's palsy, which gets better and worse throughout the course of any given day. It doesn't bother me until I try to walk by someone and just smile at them - which I can't do. Or try to laugh and feel only half my face reacting. Like I told Jason, you take things for granted sometimes. Like having a blink reflex in both eyes, or being able to drink pop out of a can without dribbling half of it down your shirt. Both of these conditions bother me, as I get exhausted and cannot even close both of my eyes to rest.

My mom has come in for a visit. She has cleaned every surface of this house twice, and the nursery has transformed under her care from a hodgepodge of baby goods to an actual room. I am very appreciative. But now that she is leaving tomorrow, I am pulled under her energy, and Jason's second wind, to go set up where all the wall hangings shall go in Veronica's room. I am too tired to even describe, my only joys right now being my baby's rumbling in my belly and the occasional tingles I'm starting to feel under my right cheek and the right side of my lips. And honestly, I can't tell you which one makes me happier right now.