The holiday season started off well, with a big, West Virginia Thanksgiving. It was Mom’s first chance to meet Josephine, her third grandbaby. So, with Kevin, Melissa, and Benjamin here, too, she had a week of relatively uninterrupted access to all three.

Abe loved having Benjamin around, too. He spends a lot of time walking around the house spelling out “A-B-E” and “B-E-N.”

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it was more business as usual around here.

The Christmas end of the season didn’t start nearly as auspiciously, though. Shortly after arriving in NYC to visit Uncle Chris, Abe came down with pneumonia. With his antibiotics onboard, he started feeling better, but it didn’t last long. Eight days later, on Christmas Eve, we took him to the ER in pain, itchy, and barely able to walk, classic symptoms of an allergy to his antibiotics. We had to cut our visit to Salem short, so Abe could recover a bit before moving on. Thanks Kevin, Melissa, and Benjamin. As family vacations go, I guess they can only get better.

Abe was still able to enjoy Christmas morning, of course. Several more weeks of antihistamines and steroids have also helped matters.

Now, with the holidays past, and things a lot calmer, we have a little more time to spend together.