Meeting Miss L

And home at last! L is going to have to get used to lots of love because every time I turn around somebody is asking to hold her, or as G says, "I hold it!"

J and M love to sing to her and are pretty confident they can calm her down whenever she needs it and basically solve any problem. Handy in a tight spot, these girls.

Dude is fascinated by her but only ever wants to hold her for about 3 seconds. Then you better make sure you have a good grip because he just drops his arms and moves on. Classic. He's most interested in her belly button. About 100 times a day he asks, "can I see that brown thing again?" When he sees it, he always asks what it is, and then announces, "it hurts her so much." We assure him it doesn't and that it's going to fall off soon, to which he responds, "then THAT will hurt her so much." Doesn't matter how many times we refute this. He just keeps saying it. He does love her too even though a few days after getting home he referred to her as "that baby" and said he wanted her and me to go back to the hospital. I asked if he wouldn't miss me, and he shrugged his shoulders and said, "we could Skype."

And could G look any prouder of herself. She has the opposite problem from dude. She never wants to let go, and when you try to get Baby L back, she squeezes and tries to twist away. Not exactly ideal but at least she's doing it out of love at this point!

Nana and Bopa had been holding down the front at home and while they had got to briefly meet Baby L at the hospital, I think they were even more excited to see us back home to "try" to start getting things back to normal. Whatever normal is going to look like from here on out!

She's here!!!

Announcing the arrival of the beautiful addition to our wonderful family!!

 It's a girl!!! 

7 lbs 5 oz, 21 inches of perfect.

The morning started with them not being able to give me my IV. They tried 4 different times, thinking they had it a couple of times and releasing the IV fluid into the ever-puffier back of my hand instead. Man, was my hand lumpy and messy (and seriously bruised and swollen for more than a week afterwards)! But 3 nurses later, they finally got it in the side of my arm, painfully going through a nerve to get there. Not the best start! Made my superstitious side a bit nervous too since the last time they'd had that much trouble was when M was born, and things didn't really go too smoothly after that start.

But we got in there and before we knew it, our baby was crying! They brought her over for us to admire instantly and said, "here he is!" Coop responded, "a he? It's a boy?" The nurse said, "oh, I didn't look actually. Nope. It's a girl!" Unfortunately, her blood sugar levels were way low which meant her temperature was dropping so they had to whisk her away to get her stable.

 As they sewed me up, I started to have problems with my legs from the epidural and got miserably nauseated, so they gave me an anti-nausea medicine, which I promptly had an allergic reaction to! Poor Cooper. The things I put him through. For the next hour plus, I thrashed and flailed around like one possessed without any ability to control my own head or arms. It was awful. And pretty freaky for Cooper to watch. But they had wonderfully competent doctors closely monitoring me and my blood pressure the whole time to make sure it didn't get worse, reassuring him that I would be okay. And eventually things calmed down and we were able to hold and fall in love with our baby girl. She is so worth the long struggle to get her here!

She's such a darling little peanut! So grateful she's here!

Almost looks like a smile already. She certainly has been wide-eyed from the beginning. Actually the very first thing they said about her was, wow! She has some serious lungs! And she does. It's not just a tiny newborn squeak, but a full-blown eagle screech. Followed by a snort. Rather ladylike. She's going to make sure she's heard over the noise at home! 

And speaking of home, we decided to leave just two days later to get home and introduce our little lovely to the rest of the gang. Because the flu is so bad here in ND, the hospital was on lockdown and nobody under 13 was allowed to visit. The girls were devastated. We skyped frequently so they could see her (hearing G say her name was about the cutest thing ever, and the second the video was up dude would be demanding to see her. Looks like they might like her!), but it's not the same. So as soon as we were given the okay, we checked out, bundled up, and drove on home!

It's go time!

Nana's here to watch the other kids and have fun along the way:

And I'm certainly ready to go have a baby!

After a fun stay in Bismarck with the kids and my parents, and a very short night of sleep, we're off to the hospital at 4:30 am! Here we go! Checking in. Time to meet baby!!!!

Painting time!

 So I had these big letters that I wanted the girls to paint so we could decorate them for their new gallery wall, but of course the littles couldn't be left out of the fun! And by the way, don't tell dude I called him "a little." He no longer allows that. Highly offensive. He is "a bigger now." 

 They didn't care that they didn't have their own letters. The fun is in the painting of course. And I just thought they were too cute doing it. I might love watching them be creative. Even if it is messy and creates extra work. Totally worth it!

And speaking of creativity, I had a hilarious parent-teacher conference with M's teacher this week. Apparently she's doing very well, and the only time she gets math problems wrong is when she spends the entire time drawing an elaborate picture of the story problem and forgets she was supposed to solve an equation. She turns it in with a beautiful picture and no answer. Hilarious. And totally classic M to get so distracted. Luckily her teacher is awesome and thinks it's as funny as I did and always hands it back to her with a kind reminder that she forgot to write down the answer. She also has been getting distracted in their new skill of analyzing surveys and graphs. Instead of just answering simple questions like which kind of fruit do the most kids like best, she writes stories questioning the psychology behind the survey's answers or the likelihood of that many kids preferring apples over oranges. I know I should encourage her to stay on topic but instead I feel like applauding her for digging deeper and thinking outside the box!