Catching Up

Alright, this post will be mostly pictures just to catch up from the last month that I've vanished from blogging land! In my defense though, I was away, I had a baby, and now have been adjusting to life with 2 girlies. But other than that I've just been lazy.

Ok, where to start.... We helped bring in the fall season by heading to Cider Hill Farms in Amesbury for some pumpkin pictures, apple picking, goat feeding, and donut eating with Sadie's cousins Cali & Patrick and of course Auntie Heather i.e. "Heath."

A mere two days after our lovely day at Cider Hill, I woke up on that Wednesday morning feeling some contractions. Nothing too regular, and nothing very painful, just noticeable. I tried to keep track of them throughout the day without much luck, because, as I found, it is very difficult to time contractions while chasing an almost-2-year-old around the park. In any case, Sean and I settled into bed around 10pm, only I was soon to be awoken by my water breaking around 11:45pm. I quickly got up, realized my contractions were a) close together, and b) extremely painful, so I texted Melissa and updated her on my current condition, made sure my bag was packed, and woke Sean up by midnight. Sean called his mom to come over, jumped in the shower, and we were off to the hospital, checked in and settled into a room by 12:30am on Thursday Oct 8th. You couldn't have paid me one million dollars to guess that I'd have a baby in less than an hour, but sure enough, at 1:21am, Ruby Page Reardon arrived with a full head of black hair. The midwife who delivered her, Sarah, was on her first on-call shift at the hospital, and Ruby was her first delivery ever at Anna Jaques. All went smoothly, and Ruby weighed in at a whopping 7 lbs 5.8oz (whopping compared to her sister who was a mere 5lb 14oz), 19 inches long.
She cried for a good long time and tuckered herself out! Unfortunately my mom missed the delivery, by only minutes, as we had no idea everything was going to happen so quickly. I think my mom arrived about 4 minutes after Ruby was born, but thankfully she had her camera with her so she was able to capture some of our first moments together as a family.

Sadie came to visit for the first time later that afternoon, and absolutely LOVED her new baby. We foresee (and hope for) lots of sisterly love between these two girls in the future!

Sadie was beyond thrilled that baby Ruby had even picked out a new Grover, just for her, and has since become nearly attached at the hip to her new blue friend.

Our first family picture as a family of 4 (or 5 if you count Grover.....)

Here we are getting ready to go home. Needless to say it was a totally different experience staying in the hospital with one baby but knowing you have another baby at home who needs you too. We were verrrrry excited to leave our tiny little room and get home!

Once home, we all settled in quite nicely. Sadie was excited her baby was home (even more excited than her mama being home). She was great with the baby, and didn't seem to mind when Ruby cried or when I needed to feed her. And at this point, it feels like Ruby has been here forever. We can't even remember how calm life was with only one baby to care for and entertain!

Sadie's first time holding Ruby. We figured Ruby's crib was a pretty safe locale for this endeavor, and when Ruby got fussy and I picked her up, Sadie cried, "Sadie HAVE HER!!!" Precious.

I just can't get enough sleeping baby pictures. They are so peaceful and snuggly and cuddly on cozy warm; I forgot how much I absolutely love the newborn stage!

So that's it for now.... and this time I PROMISE to do my best to keep up with blogging..... For now, I'm off to catch some zzzz's while I can, and keep my cell phone close by for my friend Melissa's text that she is in labor....