A New Baby Girl! The Angel is Born!

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Around 7:45 this evening, Ken called me to say that his oldest daughter, Jamie, had given birth to a 6 lb., 9 oz. girl, Presley Bella, around 7:30. Presley is her first child and although I don’t have a post-birth photo yet, you can see what she looked like in utero in two earlier blog postings, Our Little Bean and Our Little Angel—No Longer a Bean. Her labor did not last very long, about four hours, and both are doing well this evening. I will post a photo of our family’s newest addition as soon as possible. Congratulations to Ken and Randi on becoming grandparents, and to Andy and Jamie on becoming parents! Let’s hope Presley continues to be a little angel all of her life.

My Mom had a few rather bad days where she slept for all but an hour or two each day and felt ill when she was awake. Yesterday, Marianne, her hospice volunteer and new friend, agreed to come over and spend the afternoon so that Saul and I could have a date. She was here from 1 to 5 p.m. and told us that Mom was awake and conversing with her the whole time. When we returned, Mom seemed happy and was comfortable. Yesterday morning, she told her hospice nurse, Kathy, that she had no regrets about her life. Kathy said that someone making a statement like that on hospice is extremely rare. I pointed out that Kathy would really be in a position to know such things, and she nodded vigorously that she does know and that, usually, she hears a list of regrets. The best she hears mostly is that “it was my life, and I lived it the way I wanted to live it.” This information is sobering and really should get lots of people thinking about their priorities. Mom had a good day today and was delighted to hear of the birth of her newest great-granddaughter before she fell asleep this evening. Presley is her fifth great-granddaughter and there are no great-grandsons yet. May all of us with children be so lucky as to live in good health to see our great-grandchildren!

On our date yesterday, Saul and I went to The Drafting Room, a nearby restaurant that features microbrewery beer and very good food. We purchased $40 worth of coupons on Restaurant.com a few days ago for $6.00, half price off the usual fee, with a special we saw on Travelzoo.com. It was a very good deal! After a satisfying late lunch, we dropped Saul off to have his hair cut, and I went next door to browse for a few food items at Genuardi’s. I was out of cake flour and I had defrosted a quart of egg whites left over from baking challah. Then we went to Lowe’s to return a doorknob that wasn’t working properly. Such are our dates these days! I wanted to try two new recipes for angel food cake that I had seen recently that required cake flour.

I spent some relaxing hours cooking beautiful food this afternoon. I made membrillo from the quinces. I used the peels and drained liquid to make a syrup to cook the fresh rhubarb and apple slices. Look for the recipe in the future on my other blog. I haven’t figured out what to call it yet, but it is definitely delicious. Perhaps I will name it Apple Slices Presley Bella. I also made a chocolate swirl angel food cake that is definitely worth making again. If Presley is going to be an angel, it might be more appropriate to name the cake after her. Ordinarily, I am not too fond of angel food cake, but this one is delectable even without icing. At one point this afternoon, while the cake was in the oven and the apples, rhubarb and quinces were cooking, I was trying to figure out if there was anything I could add to make the house more fragrant. If there is a heaven, I’ll bet it smells like this. You can keep your Chanel No. 5. The other cake is a maple angel food cake. I hope I have the energy to bake it this evening.