Lydia's First Day and its Anticipation

Before we knew we would be moving houses, my dad planned to come out to Maryland for 2 weeks on baby watch for Lydia's birth so that he could meet the new baby and for Karina to have a built-in babysitter.  Then we found the 'right' house we had been looking for and didn't want to miss out on it because of inconvenient timing, which meant we would be closing on the new house the day before my due date.  My dad helped us pack our entire house into boxes and move all our stuff from our previous townhouse to the single-family one.  It was a crazy amount of work for everyone.  Buying one house and selling another at the same time is difficult enough; it doesn't help being 9 months pregnant.  

Morfar and Karina having fun after Nate and my dad trimmed a bunch of trees in preparation for the installation of Snoopy's fence:

We were beginning to worry that Lydia wouldn't be born while my dad was here, which would have been a huge bummer for everyone since that was the actual purpose of my dad's visit.  Fortunately, the night after we moved into the new house (and still had a million boxes to unpack), I started having some contractions.  The next morning on Thursday, Nate and I were ready to head to the hospital because the contractions were 5 minutes apart, and that was when I was supposed to go in because of my prior C-section.  Everyone was a little disappointed when the contractions started spreading out and most of Thursday was spent with my dad and Nate staring at me and their watches while recording times.  We finally went to the hospital that evening, with all of us completely exhausted from the move.  Lydia arrived on Friday morning at 4:57 am, after an incredibly long labor.  We were shocked to find that I had been carrying an 8 lb 11 oz chunker!  We were both anticipating a little baby like Karina, who was born at 6 lbs 5 oz.  I gained less weight with Lydia than with Karina, so I have no idea how Lydia got so big.  It is nice having a little chubster who doesn't feel overly fragile:-)

Lydia had trouble nursing the first time because she had so much goo in her throat and nose that the nurse couldn't seem to get completely rid of.  But by the end of the day, she was a pro.  We are grateful that Lydia was born healthy and strong.  Her Apgar scores were 8/9.  I wish I had written down what Karina's were, but I think they were the same.

With Daddy before being properly cleaned:

Getting her first bath from a nurse:

Karina was super excited to meet her new baby sister and we have been so impressed with how gentle and sweet she is with the new addition.  She loves touching Lydia's soft hair and in her cute voice saying, "Hi, Baby Sister."  Here she is meeting Lydia for the first time (she wouldn't let Morfar do her hair that day):

We have a ton more pictures to post, but it's hard to find a free moment with a toddler, newborn, unpacking, all the stuff going on until we close on our old house, and all the other stuff involved with the moves. We close on our townhouse tomorrow, so hopefully having that chapter finally shut will give more time to create some posts.

Lydia is definitely a sweetheart and we are so happy to have her in our family!