Reese and Julie: Going Home and Settling In

We were released from the hospital the evening of Friday, July 2 to face our first (nearly) sleepless night at home. My mom and Dave came to town on Saturday afternoon in order to meet Julie and to offer some help. They cooked great food, helped with laundry, and ran Reese ragged. Therese has been adjusting to her little sister very well - she is very concerned when Julie cries, is constantly putting more blankets on her "to keep her warm" (despite the 90 degree weather), and gives her plenty of hugs and kisses. She is very sweet, but maybe a little too smart. When we brought Julie home, we explained to Reese that the rocking chair in the family room is "the chair for rocking babies" because she kept trying to kick me out of it while I was feeding Julie. Of course, the next time Reese wanted to sit in the rocking chair, she grabbed her baby doll and told me that I had to get out of the chair because she needed to rock her baby :-). She has also started "feeding" her baby the same way I do... Of course sometimes it is from her belly button. She likes to explain to us, "She's not eating ME, she's eating MY FOOD."

Julie is still very sweet. She recently discovered that she can cry at times when I'm not changing her clothes or her diaper, but we in turn discovered how to make her take a pacifier. She still doesn't like to sleep for very long and thinks midnight is a wonderful time to play, but she's so cute that it's hard to be upset by that. Like all babies, she has an iron strong grasp. She's super wiggly and fast. Yesterday, when Todd bent over to give her a little kiss on the cheek, she stole his glasses. She wriggled and waved them around before Todd could get her to relinquish her new treasure. On THREE different occasions now, we've heard Julie scream her lungs out only to find her fist clenched around and pulling on her hair. We had to pry her individual fingers open to get her to stop hurting herself. Todd tried to explain to her that she's not displaying the kind of intelligence expected in this family :-). Poor little girl!

Here are some pictures of us settling in to being a family of four: