...and a Happy New Year!

We've had a small spat of illness or under-the-weather-ness to be more exact in the House of Peterson of late, the sniffles but not full on colds hit.  We seem to be on the mend.  If one of us has not been totally well, then the other parent held Henrik that day.
Henrik is up to 2lbs. 9oz.  He hit 2-11 yesterday, but lost some water weight.  Henrik had another blood transfusion yesterday since he was looking pal and needed some help keeping the oxygen in his blood.  Henrik looks a lot fuller.  He has more meat on his bones and doesn't look like a frogman to the extent that he used to a couple weeks ago.
One interesting thing they told me today is that when they take him off of cpap, then they will try to have him breath without assistance!  Usually this method does not work, and he will have to go back to the breathing assistance, but at that point it will be a nasal canula rather than cpap.  As I've said before, they are much more aggressive with breathing than they were four years ago.
Between Christmas and illness, we went out in China Town with friends, our first time in this large and diverse part of town, where we had Korean food and Italian dessert.  We also attended the Texas Bowl, so I can now take attending a college bowl game off my list.  It's funny because Minnesota and Syracuse did as bowl activities stuff we'd routinely do, like visit the Houston Zoo or go to George Ranch Historical Park, just south of Sugar Land in rural Fort Bend County.
We attended a New Year's Eve party last night and Anders stayed awake until midnight on the East Coast!  It doesn't really matter if you make it to 12 in the central time zone as Conan O'Brien doesn't do his Central Time Zone New Year's show as far as I know.  I did see a lame syndicated Central Time New Year's show out of Dallas a couple years ago, but that was forgettable.
It defied expectations and reached room temperature today, but another "cold snap" is coming later in the week.
It has been relaxing not to travel, but I did get a bit sad listening to the "News from Lake Wobegon" when Garrison Keiller said something to the effect that the smell of Christmas is potato sausage. I never liked the stuff, but it just smelled like Christmas when the "potatis kurv" was cooking at my grandma's house in Marquette, KS.