Grandparents: Round One

Taryn's parents, Jeff and Judy, arrived on Tuesday night. Judy has been cooking delicious meals every night. She also managed to reorganize all of our kitchen cabinets!
Today we went for a walk around Green Lake. It was great to be out in the sunshine.

Meal Tree

Our friend Terry was kind enough to set up a meal tree for us for the first week home. We had some great food and enjoyed seeing our friends. Some nights Elana was sleeping or not feeding and people were able to stay and eat with us. Other nights, food was just dropped off. Thank you so much to everyone who participated! The freezer is full - we will be eating well for a while.

Elana's Room

Daddy's Girl

Looks like a smile to me :)

One Week Old

Today is the first day that we haven't had to go anywhere. I walked to the grocery store to buy some salad greens (Taryn and I were both craving fresh vegetables). Other than that, we've been hanging out at home. I have been trying to take care of some paperwork: adding Elana to my health insurance, figuring out changes to our flex spending accounts, etc. We got a little more sleep last night - I think I logged almost 7 hours!

It has been a trying couple of days. Breastfeeding has been a challenge for Taryn and Elana. Elana lost a little too much weight before we left the hospital and we have been going to the doctor every day to have her weighed. She was down to 6 pounds on Sunday; thankfully, she has gained 4 ounces back since then.

We are still in a daze and can't really believe that we are parents. We're trying to make sure that we are getting enough sleep, but it's tough. I'm feeling a little more rested today. Elana has no trouble sleeping. In fact, we have had to wake her up every three hours to feed her.

Thank you for all of the emails and positive vibes. Elana is excited to meet all of you.

4 days old

We were discharged from the hospital last night around 6:30 pm. Elana seems to like her home so far. Our cats are a little suspicious, but haven't paid much attention to their new sister.

Here are some pictures from the last moments at the hospital and the first wakeup at home.

Elana turns 48 hours old!

We're nearing the end of the 48-hour mark. We have the go-ahead to stay in the hospital until tomorrow morning. The 24-hour breastfeeding support has been very helpful.

Video action

Well, there's nothing too exciting to show you today - just a lot of sleeping and pooping. Here are a couple of clips so you can see what we see. Taryn and Elana are still doing great. It has been amazing so far (and we're just getting started).

Day 2

Well, Elana and I slept most of the night. Taryn didn't get quite as much sleep due to all of the action in the childbirth center (3 babies were born last night). She's a light sleeper. Elana was still asleep this morning at 6 - I changed her diaper to wake her up.

Taryn got out of bed for the first time this morning - she's doing great. She's going to be able to eat some solid foods today!

More soon...

Here we go!

We're off to the hospital in about an hour. The house is clean, the nursery is set up, there's food in the freezer.

We will probably be in the hospital until Sunday. I will send out an email tonight and post pictures as soon as I have news. Thank you all for the words of encouragement that we have received the past few days.

3 hours to go!