Well Ladies and Gents,
It's happened once again. On April 15th beeeeeeeeeeeauuuutiful Miriam entered our lives and 3 became 4 officially. She was born 7 lbs 3 oz and 19.5 in long, she is definitely the little lady of the family.
Miram and I meeting each other in the "outside world"
Daddy seems to like her too. In fact, up until this moment Ben was unsure of whether or not he wanted to have more kids seeing as John is entering the "two" phase a little early. But after she was born, he says, "Oh, well I guess we can have more." Cute, right? Miriam is already learning how girls get their way ;)
John and Miriam saying hello. What this really is, is an attempt to get a pic of John kissing Miriam, but the cameras all snapped too slowly or too quickly. I know it happened though and it was precious. From day one, John has been a great older brother. It was good to be back with my first baby boy, I missed him that whole day.
Part of Miriam's first bath. This was especially cool for me because I totally missed John's. I don't know why they didn't have me go and watch at that time. We didn't get any pics either so I made Ben take a bunch of Miriam. Both of my babies love getting a bath.
Wearing clothes for the first time. What a cute girl.
Pretty much everyone lost the bet on how much she was going to weigh since John was our 10 pounder. Right away Miriam showed me that each child is different from the other and thankfully she was born a natural breastfeeder. I was so grateful because I know how hard it can be (from my own experience and that of others) to get started and she has just never been a problem. Interestingly, my first night after she was born was the worst I'd ever experienced, which is remarkable since as I stated before, I gave birth to a Big boy. Naturally. As I look back on it I realize that it was probably from the anesthesia. When I was prepping for the epidural the anesthesiologist had to numb me three times because I could still feel the epidural needle. Since the pain seemed to be coming from that area I think it was the repeated poking that wore me out.
Because the practice of my OB office moved we ended up delivering Miriam in a different hospital than St Marks where we had John. As soon as I learned that I was all over the internet looking up reviews on JVMC and to my sadness many of them were not good. Luckily I noticed that the hospital had done some remodeling after the reviews were posted and I was also able to find some friends who had gone to that hospital's maternity ward in the past two years. Thank goodness they all had rave reviews and calmed my fears. As for my own experience? LOVED it! The nurses were wonderful, the rooms were big, I got a lot of time with Miriam, and the food wasn't too bad either. Overall I felt like they really wanted to do their best to take care of our family. What more can you ask for, right?
John is a great BIG brother and loves his sister to smothering. He always wants to hold, kiss, hug, lie next to, play with, feed, and inevitably love to pieces our little princess. John is also discovering a new love for forgotten toys that his sister now enjoys. The baby swings have resurfaced and he seems to think they are still his. I guess it can be confusing for the little tyke having until recently been an only child. I definitely have to watch him more now since he doesn't seem to care if his sister is already using it or not, he just plops right in. Poor Miriam:(
Getting used to having two kids has been fun, and all I can say is that I can't afford to be too unorganized with my time anymore.
Here's our house. It's a red brick rambler with approx 2700 square feet. We have a garage in back and a good sized yard too. (Why yes that is our cat in the window) We love our new home and as you can see it needs some love in the front yard to look more inviting. I'll post pics of the rest of the yard so that you can see the fun work ahead of us in the back yard. 
