Love

Well, our first few days at home with Nora have gone a lot better than I expected! We've enjoyed our visitors, even though we only have a picture of one of them...here's Joel Keever, baby holder extraordinare:

Once we brought Nora home, we had Mom Beutel bring Max over for the rest of the day even though he stayed overnight at their house one more night. Once again, Max was pretty enchanted with his little sister. :)

It's pretty exciting for me and Greg to see Max loving on her...I guess he sees us doing it quite a bit, though! Nora's been a great newborn so far (yes, I realize that she's a full 3 days old now...not a long enough time to really see what kind of baby she'll be), and last night was pretty good for me. She woke up every couple hours to eat, but was never fussy and went back to sleep very easily except for one time. What a little doll!

Kisses for the baby

Sacked out

Nora meets Winnie-the-Pooh

One of the sweetest things I saw yesterday: Nora was in the bouncy seat, just hanging out. Max came over to see her and had something in his hand. Next thing I knew, he was carefully placing his monkeys next to Nora's hand. What a great little sharer! :D You can't quite see her face because of the seat, but it was pretty precious.

This morning was a lazy one...Greg brought Max to our bed to drink his bottle since I was feeding Nora...just look at those two cute little munchkins! :)

After their respective breakfasts were done, there was some great sibling bonding happening here...

Nora looks less than pleased, but Max seems to be enjoying it!

After her feeding this morning, Nora was wide awake for (what seemed like) quite a while. Max was just running around and playing.

One reason she was so awake: We have a small picture frame that plays the last 30 seconds or so of the Sonny and Cher song "I Got You Babe." For some reason, Max decided last night that it was his new favorite toy. He kept pushing the button to hear the song, and it completely distracted Nora. She was awake and I was trying to feed her, but she wouldn't eat for anything! She just sat in my lap with her eyes WIDE open...Max found the frame again this morning, so here's what her reaction was:

Last but not least, I think this takes the cake for the sweetest video ever posted on our blog...

I love our kids. :)

I know Steph posted this on her blog, but here's a quick rundown of the labor for anyone who cares and doesn't know yet. :)

-Contractions started around 8:00 Tuesday evening, but I was fully expecting them to stop since it felt similar to what I had the previous Thursday. That night we had gone to the park with Brett and Bryce. The boys played on the playground while I just wandered and watched. Right before we left, Greg, Max, and I walked one lap around the lagoon. I mentioned that the contractions were fairly regular (3-4 min. apart), but didn't feel very serious. We went to Culver's for some ice cream and then went home.

-The contractions continued at home, staying pretty consistent, but still weren't intensifying much. We put Max down for the night and asked Mom Beutel to be on call in case we went into the hospital. Greg and I went for a walk after Max was asleep. Around 11:00 I could tell the contractions were getting stronger, and we started trying to decide when to go in to the hospital. We finally decided to go around midnight.

-Once at the hospital, the nurses were going to put me into an antepartum room instead of a labor/delivery room. As we were talking, I had a contraction and one of the nurses looked at me and said, "Are you having one right now? Let's go to a labor room..." I guess I wasn't talking through it very good. :)

-Greg and I were able to walk the halls for quite a while, which was great for me. I was definitely at the point where I had to stop walking when a contraction would hit. Our midwife got to the hospital and at about 3:40 broke my water. Things REALLY picked up then! I wasn't quite prepared for that first contraction after she broke the water. Whoa. It was pretty big. Anyway, things went much quicker then, and according to the nurse, I pushed Nora out in "about a minute." Chris, our midwife, told me she made a 'one-handed catch' because she didn't even have time to get her second glove on. :) Regardless, Nora was born at 4:19 and I was very relieved!

Thanks, everyone, for all of your thoughts and prayers! I needed each and every one of them. :)