Two Months Old

Hannah is now officially two months old. On Wednesday she went to get her two month pictures at JC Pennys and today she had her two month check-up and vaccinations. She weighed in at 12 lbs 13 oz and was 23 1/4 inches long! She's now in the 88th percentile for height and the 95th percentile for weight and the 90th percentile for head circumference. The doctor says she's doing great and there's no need to be concerned about the height/weight discrepancy. He said the formula she is on is most likely making her gain more weight b/c the rice starch adds calories. Apparently she should level back out once she starts table food.

I thought that it would be no big deal seeing Hannah get her shots after having to watch her get a lumbar puncture, but my heart still bled as she screamed bloody murder each time they poked her and there was nothing I could do about it. It turns out that Hannah is one of those babies that is negatively affected by her shots. The entire rest of the day she was fussy, lethargic, had no appetite, and ran a temperature of 100.5 degrees Farenheit. It was so sad for me to see my little girl not acting like herself. :( Eventually she started to perk up a bit right before bedtime so hopefully she'll be back to her normal bubbly self tomorrow.

Tomorrow she gets to go to her first ever Mendenhall Bean Supper. That should be fun and exciting. She'll get to see her Great Grandma Clodfelter again and hopefully her Grandpa Clodfelter will be there too. On Sunday she will get to meet her Grandpa Barney and Mindy for the first time. Everyone keep their fingers crossed that she makes a good first impression!

As soon as I get her JC Penny's pictures back I'll post the official 2 month pictures. In the mean time, enjoy all the unofficial pictures of my big girl! The last picture of her in her swing is her looking pitiful after her shots. :( Even when she's sick she's cute!

Labor Day Weekend

Hannah had quite the busy Labor Day weekend. She had a visit from her Uncle Kevin and Emily, she went on a six mile walk with Mom and Dad in her stroller, got to have a picnic at the park, and ate outside on the deck with Mom and Dad in the nice weather. Hannah also has a busy week coming up. Tomorrow she turns 2 months old and gets her picture taken at JC Pennys and gets to hang out with her buddy Evelyn. Thursday she gets to go on a walk with Kristie and Friday she has her big 2 month check-up with her doctor and gets her first round of shots!

Her newest trick has been growing like crazy. I finally got all of her new clothes washed and put away and some of them she has almost outgrown already! She's now officially out of 0-3 month clothing and is almost out of 3-6 month sleepers! 3-6 month clothes without feet are ok. She's outgrown her 0-3 month socks and her 3-6 month socks and is now wearing 6-12 month socks! This girl has some BIG feet! She's been wearing lots of pants the past week since it's been nice and cool here and she looks oh so cute in her outfits. She's also had several occasions to wear her Old Navy hooded jacket that Aunt Heather gave her and she looks mighty cute in that too! I'm not sure how much longer that jacket is going to last her so I bought her a 6-9 month jacket at Walmart the other day so that I have something on hand when she finally does grow out of it. I am anxious to find out how much she weighs now and how long she is at her doctor's appointment.

Today I tried propping her up with her boppy pillow and she was able to sit up assisted by that for about 20 seconds. Her head is plenty steady now and she's raising her head and chest off of the floor during tummy time. She really enjoys being outdoors and will even sit in her bouncer on the deck while Kyle and I relax. Yesterday we finally got her a swing and so far she loves it. She is mesmerized by the floating fish that hang above it. This weekend she also moved up to taking 5 oz of formula at a time and has been downing the bottles like a pro. This switch necessitated us buying new bottles because our old bottles only held 4 oz.

Showers Galore!

Hannah has had so many showers the presents have poured in! She's absolutely spoiled rotten! I don't think I'll have to buy her any clothes until she's a year old! On Saturday Myrna came to visit Hannah and she went with us to Hannah's church baby shower. It took place in a little deli and it was lots of fun. Hannah wasn't the only baby so I didn't feel as bad when she got fussy :) On Sunday we went to Mamaw and Papaw's for another shower. There were so many people there the house was bursting and both the deck and front porch were packed too! It's a good thing the weather was nice enough to be outside. Hannah was in top form and acting very cute for everyone. I do think she got a bit over stimulated though because she started to get fussy after being passed around and handled by so many different people. She has another shower today at school so all the teachers can ooh and ahhh over her :) Everyone wants a piece of our Hannah. To top everything off, packages keep arriving the mail with more clothes for her from Kyle's family. I think they might finally be done though because I can't think of a single other person who could possibly want to send her a gift! The mailman has become quite friendly with us and loves to talk to Hannah each time he delivers a package :) He's gotten friendly with the dogs too since they bark like crazy and barrel to the door every time he rings the doorbell!

Hannah's latest accomplishments are adding even more sounds to her vocabulary and turning into a chatty Cathy. All you have to do is look her in the eye and she starts gabbing away. All she really wants is an excuse to talk. A few days ago I wandered into the nursery to find Kyle singing to her and Hannah was singing right along! They were so cute :) She has a front carrier now and she likes it quite a bit. She's been helping me dust and run the sweeper that way. If I run the sweeper while she is napping in her crib she wakes up and screams, but if she rides in the carrier while I sweep she sleeps through the whole thing! Bizzare! Her head is getting really steady now and last night she was laying reclined on my knees and actually tried to sit up to get a toy. She managed to lift her head and shoulders off of my knees all by herself. She seemed quite frustrated that she couldn't get all the way up. She really wanted that monkey rattle. All of a sudden she has become much more interested in toys and she definitely has her favorites. Right now her most favorite seems to be a monkey rattle she got from her Aunt Tina on Sunday. There are 3 colored monkeys hanging from a banana. For some reason she loves that toy and even has a favorite monkey out of the 3! The green monkey right now is the tops. Who'd have known! She's also settled into a nap routine which is nice. Each day at around 10:00 and 2:00 she starts to fuss and if I rock her right then she falls asleep within 5 minutes. That has made getting things done a bit easier. It's nice that she's such a schedule oriented baby. I LOVE schedules :) Well, I think that's all I have to report at the moment. Oh, one more thing. I'm going to try to post Hannah's one month picture we had professionally taken at Target. It's not the best photo ever and the experience was harrowing (let's just say we won't be going back there), but we got the photos anyway. Enjoy!

Interesting Tidbits

Kyle has been on me to post some of the funny stories that have come about since Hannah was born and until now I have been reluctant to report them. However, Kyle has taken to telling them to people verbally in my presence which is also embarassing so I figured I had better just get them out there and be done with it. This way I can also add the one funny story I have about him as well!

First off are the monkey incidents. As many of you may know I sleep with a stuffed orangatang each night. I use it as a pillow of sorts to prop up under my shoulder and side. It also bears mentioning that the monkey is roughly the same size and shape as Hannah, only much hairyier! Anyway, on more than one occasion during our extremely sleep deprived period I mistook the monkey for Hannah and tried to feed it and change it's diaper while I was half asleep and was totally confused when I started to notice that something was wrong. For example the time I tried to feed it I carried the monkey from our bedroom into the nursery, fixed the bottle, and then tried to give the bottle to the monkey and just couldn't understand why Hannah wasn't drinking. It took me a bit to figure out that I didn't have Hannah. I then switched to the real baby and continued the feeding! On the diapering incident the monkey never did make it out of our bedroom, but I was totally confused as to why Hannah felt so hairy. I was thinking that I must be touching her head and tried to move farther down the body and hit Kyle's skin. I then tried to lift up the legs which happened to be his stomach! Eventually I figured that mistake out too and finally made my way into the nursery to change and feed Hannah.

Ok, enough about me. Now for the funny things that have to do with Kyle. My favorite happened one night while Hannah was back in the hospital. I was staying up to take the midnight feeding and Kyle was going on to bed. I had the TV on quietly, but it was too much for Kyle. He couldn't sleep so he turned on the mobile music on Hannah's crib to put him to sleep! The other funny bit has to do with music as well. I often times hear Kyle randomly singing kids songs as he goes about his day. Yesterday it was "Found a peanut," today it was "Clemintine." I have also heard him singing "On Top of Spaghetti," "Here we go Looby Loo," and "Alouette" (Spelling?)

Enough stories, here are Hannah's latest accomplishments. She has almost found her thumb (instead of her whole hand) to suck on. Her head continues to grow more steady and she is beginning to lift it up from her belly without much trouble. When being held upright she can hold it completely steady and look all around from side to side with no trouble. She continues to like her play gym and can actually use the baby activated features on her bouncer now. Her new favorite game is to watch as mommy makes her monkey (Hannah's monkey not to be confused with the previous monkey!) dance and sing around her head. She tracks the monkey 360 degrees as it goes around her and smiles and coos at it. She's talking much more and smiling and laughing a lot more as well. Her reprotoire of sounds is also growing which is exciting for us. We like to hear the new sounds she comes up with! We got a front carrier for her the other day and she is really enjoying riding around in it as I do chores around the house. As soon as she can hold her head completely steady in all positions I can face her out and I think she will like that even more since she loves to sit on my lap facing out and watch what is going on. I think that's pretty much it as far as her newest tricks. She has a big weekend coming up. Her Great Aunt Myrna is coming to visit her, she has two showers to show off at, and she gets to take her first trip to Babies 'R Us! That's a lot to cram into one weekend. We'll be sure to post the details on the blog once we recover! Well, I had one more picture to post, but blogger is being stupid and it won't let me post it. Sorry :( I'll try it later.

The Budding Socialitte

Hannah has had a steady stream of visitors and other social engagements the past few weeks. Baba (Great Grandma Spontak) and Bruno came to visit her and took her out for a walk and to dinner at a restaurant. She went to Mamaw and Papaw Like's house and got to visit with her Great Aunt Margaret and Great Uncle Russel and her Great Aunt Linda and Great Uncle Wayne. Great Aunt Jo Ellen and Terri came to visit her as did her Uncle Kevin and Emily and Aunt Tina and her cousins Ally, John, and Jessica. Hannah also went to visit her new friend Evelyn who was just born last week and is a week old today! When Kyle and I held Evelyn we couldn't believe how light she was! She weighed only 6 lbs 4 oz and it felt like we were just holding a blanket compared to Hannah! Jason and Sarah, Evelynn's parents, were quite jealous about Hannah's sleeping preferences!

Hannah is much more aware of things now than she was a few weeks ago. She has begun reaching for things she wants and can even grab ahold of them sometimes. She's found her hands and can consistently stick them (and anything she happens to be holding) right into her mouth. She's started to bat at things that are held above her and likes to lay in her play gym and hit the balls and fish that hang above her head. She's also starting to recognize Kyle and I and smiles often when we play with her. I even got a giggle out of her the other day. She's decided she most definitely does NOT like tummy time on the floor. Apparently it's just too much work! She doesn't mind tummy time on our chests or holding her head up if we put her over our shoulder, but being flat on the floor is a huge complaint of hers. She's decided that she likes being outside and loves the feel of the breeze going over her face. She has a new gadget on her crib that lights up and plays music kind of like her bouncer and she really likes that. She will watch it as she is putting herself to sleep. We've started putting her to bed at her bedtime even if she's still awake and she's been putting herself to sleep which we think is fantastic! Last night Kyle and I actually had an hour to ourselves with neither of us watching Hannah before we went to bed. It was great. We got a lot of stuff done!

One Month Old

WOW! It's hard to believe that Hannah is already one month old. I can't believe I've been a mommy now for a month! At some point in the post I'm going to try to post the professional pictures we had taken of her when she was 5 days old then I'll also try to post the most recent pictures I have of her too.

Hannah had her follow up doctor's visit from the hospital on Friday and it went well. She weighed 10 lbs 8 oz. That's my big girl! :) We got the ok to start letting her sleep mostly through the night. Now she takes about 4 oz every 3 hours during the day and then has her last bottle at 9:00pm. She then goes to bed shortly thereafter and sleeps until 5:00 am when we wake her up to feed her. Then she goes back to bed and sleeps until 8:00 or 9:00am! We've heard that this is not too common for one month old babies, but we always have believed that Hannah was an over achiever! :)

I've now been on a few outings alone with Hannah and she seems to be doing well. She definitely does like her car seat with the Gracopedia memory foam! Yeah Adrianne and our connections at Graco! Yesterday Uncle Kevin and Emily came to visit her and we went out to eat with Hannah for the first time. She sat in her car seat and slept the whole time. She's such a good baby! On Saturday it was finally cool enough for Hannah and I to go out for a substantial walk during the day. We've got tot start training for the mini if we are going to be ready! We walked 1.9 miles. That's not really that much, but it was starting to get hot again and I'm pretty out of shape. Plus, pushing that car seat, stroller, and diaper bag really adds some weight to the whole exercise which is good! When I actually go to walk the mini without the stroller I'll feel light as a feather!

Right now Hannah's newest tricks (besides sleeping through the night which we love!) are tracking an object consistently from left to right and back again several times, lifting her head and holding it steady for close to a minute when placed over your shoulder, and deciding that she just might like her bathtub. She's also started to let us sit her on our lap and do things while she is awake! Yesterday when Kevin came to visit either Kyle or I had her pretty much the entire time we were playing our game (close to two hours) sitting on our lap facing out looking at the world. She's also decided she thinks ceiling fans are totally cool. Now I didn't think she was supposed to be able to see that far, but apparently she can see something because she definitely fixates on ceiling fans wherever we happen to be. It's not just our fan. She liked the one at our friends' house too.

Well, that's really all I have to report on Hannah right now. I never did get around to posting the new pictures of her. I'll try to post those as just a picture post here later in the day if Hannah ever lets me get back to the computer. Right now she's just waking up and ready to eat.

Just us girls

Well, today was my first day home alone with Hannah and things have gone remarkably well, much better than I expected actually. Hannah helped me/allowed me to fold and put away 3 loads of laundry, empty the dishwasher, eat lunch, and do some bills! Not a lot for an entire day, but it was more than I expected to get done. Hopefully later tonight I can manage to do some more decluttering and maybe even vacuum. After 1 week of a brand new baby home and 2 week s of using the house as a dumping ground while Hannah was in the hospital the house is a garbage dump. This wouldn't be much of a problem except our first post placement home visit from the agency is tomorrow night! They say the house doesn't have to be clean, but I wonder if they would have a problem with 3 weeks worth of pet hair coating every available surface in the house except Hannah's room!

Well, it's Wednesday now and we survived our first post placement visit. Mom came up yesterday and played with Hannah while I finished cleaning up the house. Things don't look too bad now and mom finally got to see Hannah awake! Today Hannah and I will make our first outing alone together. I'm already a nervous wreck about having her alone in the back seat. So far every time we've gone anywhere Kyle has drove and I've sat in the back seat with Hannah.

Home Sweet Home

Hannah is home now and of course so are we. We are so thankful to be back and able to get our lives back in order. I finally get to use my comfy chair again for feedings! :) Thanks for all the prayers, cards, and emails of encouragement. We really appreciate it! Keep your eyes posted for more baby Hannah updates as Mommy and Daddy get back into the swing of things.

Grand Central Station

The last few days have been quite busy. Yesterday Hannah had 7 visitors! At one point there were 11 people in her hospital room counting us, Hannah and 2 nurses. We had quite the party going on! Tiffany and Mike came to visit Hannah and brought Tiffany's twins. Jennifer and Jorge also came to visit and brought us dinner. We had a bit of a picnic! It was actually fun. Didn't think I'd ever say that about the hospital! Speaking of food, we have been well fed the past week. In fact we have more food than I think we will ever be able to finish before it goes bad. So, we have begun sharing it with families of other patients and the nurses. Everyone has been so kind to us and taken great care of us. Our friends and church family are awesome! We feel so blessed.

Yesterday Hannah got a big girl bed. The day nurse decided she was too big for the bassinet she was in and didn't like the other nurse's job of jimmy rigging the mobile onto it so she brought Hannah in a baby cage! It's quite intimidating, but the mobile does fit on there better and Hannah certainly does have more room. She is getting bigger though. The nurse was right about that. She now weighs over a pound more than she did when she was born. Last night she weighed in at 9 lbs 15.2 oz. I'm sure tonight when they weigh her she'll be 10 lbs! That's my big girl! :)

Today I actually had a good experience with a nursing student. I must admit I was getting a bit fed up with the whole system, but today Hannah's student was great. This is the first time she has had a more traditional aged student. This girl was 24 and a mother of an 8 year old. Let me tell you, she knew her stuff. She asked if she could do Hannah's feedings while she was there and give her a bath. I was a bit reluctant, but I tried not to make her pay for the mistakes of others so I said ok. I figured if I didn't like how she handled Hannah when she fed her breakfast then I could say no to future feedings and the bath. I was pleasantly surprised. She was definitely better at bathing a baby than I am so I took some mental notes. The whole time I was thinking, "This is how it's supposed to be. If this is your chosen career, you need to have some skills by the time you are a semester away from graduating." I am no longer fearful of the downfall of pediatric nursing once this current class of students hits the job market!

The doctor wrote Hannah's discharge instructions this morning. She has to finish up her round of antibiotics, but as soon as her last dose is finished Friday evening we are free to go! The paperwork is already done. YEAH! Thank heavens for Dr. Hendrick. We just love him. He definitely knows how much we want to be back home with Hannah and how much we want to get into a routine again.

Tied Down

Today officially marks the half way point Hannah's stay at the hospital. It's seems like we've been there FOREVER already. I can't believe we have 7 more days to go! Just as a point of interest, if anyone is trying to contact us at the hospital by phone or to come visit, Hannah is listed under her own name not ours. So, to find us you have to either ask for Hannah Catherson (her legal name until the adoption is finalized in 60 days) or just go on up or get connected to the pediatric wing. From there you can just ask for baby Hannah and they hook you up with us right away. Everyone in peds knows who we are since we've been there so long. If you ask for either Kyle or I or Hannah Spontak they will tell you that they have no record of us being there.

Hannah got her picc line in yesterday so now she is permanently attached to an IV pole 24/7 instead of just one hour out of every eight. Before they managed to get the pick line in they had to start a 5th IV site! UGH! The poor thing is turning into a human pin cushion! While the pick line will probably prevent them from having to stick her anymore, it's a pain for us b/c now we have to drag an IV pole around everywhere when we hold her, feed, her, and change her. We had just been given the ok to walk the halls with her and now we are back to being tied to the room. We can technically still go out in the hall, but it's not that feasible because it's hard to hold Hannah, keep the IV line out of the wheels of the pole, and pull the pole along, while also trying to manage a paci if needed!

Yesterday was another interesting day as far as nursing students were concerned. Hannah had a student that was absolutely obessive. She was in our room every 5 minutes correcting me and telling me how to do this and do that and checking her vitals every half hour instead of every 3 hours! At one point I was sitting on the bed with Hannah sitting on my belly with her back and head supported by my bent knees and the student freaked out, ran in the room and pulled both the bed rails up on the bed b/c I might fall asleep with Hannah and drop her! That woman wore me out! I had all sorts of plans of things Hannah and I were going to do, but we spent the day fighting off the crazy student! Thankfully today there were NO students on the floor. In fact, our normal nurses were all three gone today. We recognized the new nurses, but they had never been assigned to Hannah before. It cracks me up how all the nurses just fawn over her all the time. She really does have them all under her spell. It's nice to know that it's not just us being biased when we get to thinking that we have the best baby ever. We have several educated nurses who think the very same thing! :)

Today has been a sleepy day. All three of us have dozed most of the day away. Finally we had a day with no procedures and no test results that we were waiting to come back. It was nice to be able to relax a bit. Sue, a woman from our church, brought us a wonderful meal of stuffed shells. It was a welcome change from take out and hospital cafeteria food. The people at Calvary sure do take care of you. We are very blessed to be a part of such a great church!

I have some more pictures of Hannah that we've taken since she's been born. Most of them don't have anything to do with her hospital stay, but she's just so darn cute that I have to post them! Thanks for all your prayers, calls, and visits. We appareiate everything everyone is doing to make us more comfortable.

Out of Isolation!

We got the results of the culture on Hannah's spot on her arm and it is NOT a herpes leision. They think it was probably just an irritation from her IV. That is really good news. That,combined with the negative result from the spinal tap means that she is now out of isolation! YEAH! Now we can walk the halls with her when she gets fussy instead of making ourselves dizzy pacing around her room. She still can't go off the wing, but out in the hall is better than nothing. Visitors also no longer have to gown up to come into the room. Now they only have to gown up if they are going to hold her. This is also good news. The only not so good news we have is that Hannah's poor little veins are not tolerating the IVs very well. She's on her fourth site since 3:00 am Saturday morning. She's had one in both hands, her right foot, and now her head! The one in her head is already causing problems and it's only been in since 2:00am this morning. So, either tonight or tomorrow morning they are going to run a central picc line in her because they are running out of sites to stick. The only other issue she seems to be having is that the medicine upsets her tummy a bit we think. It's very strong stuff and she's been having more problems than normal with spit up and general fussiness.

Yesterday Kyle and were looking at Hannah and we thought, "Wow, she looks longer. I wonder if she has grown?" So we asked the nurses to borrow a tape measure and we did our best to scientifically measure our squirming, wiggling, ball of fire of a daughter! According to our calculations, she has grown a half inch and is now 22 inches long! They weigh her every day and the nurses report that she is gaining over an ounce a day which is really good. Today she weighed in at 9 lbs 8 oz! She's taking 3 oz of formula at each feeding which they say is really good and we've even been given the ok to let her sleep 5 hours at a time at night without waking her up for a feeding! A bottle every 5 hours at night sure is a lot better than every 3 hours!

So, Hannah is really doing pretty well. Kyle and I on the otherhand are exhausted. Spending all day in one room really wears us out and the general atomosphere on the wing is understandably depressing since it's filled with sick or hurt kids. I don't know how the nursing staff manages. Already I'm emotionally drained from being around it so much. No matter how comfortable they try to make the wing or how happy they try to be sick kids are sick kids and that's no fun. We are each taking turns going home for a few hours each day to take care of the pets, get a shower, and just generally be away from the hospital. I'd say the biggest inconvenience is eating. I'm already sick of take out and it's really not feasible to buy groceries and make food. The cafeteria is expensive and not all that great. So, meals are really a pain in the butt. It's too bad we HAVE to eat something otherwise I think I just wouldn't even bother!

Today a nursing student had Hannah as her patient and it was her job to give Hannah a bath (I usually do that myself, but they talked me into letting the student do it for the experience) and take her vital signs every 3 hours. Well, the student was not a typical student age. She was a mother of 3 and a grandmother of 1 so I figured she would be really good at the bath at least. Boy was I wrong! I can't tell you how hard it was for me to not to run over and push her away from Hannah! Now I don't claim to be a baby expert and I'm definitely not the best at bathing, but I do ok and Hannah doesn't put up much of a fuss at all. BUT, when this student bathed her she screamed bloody murder the whole time. The lady was jerking her around, forcing her to straighten her limbs, letting her head flop around, not rinsing well, getting water and soap into Hannah's eyes, not drying her betweeen each body part, and not covering her up when she moved elsewhere so she would stay warm. It broke my heart to see my little one in such needless distress. Afterwords I told the student supervisor that I would rather she not bathe Hannah again tomorrow or if she did if that I would like the supervisor to actually supervise her while she did it. I'm was not about to let Hannah go through that again. She's had enough trauma that last few days. Bath time doesn't need to be another one!

Thank you so much for all of your prayers and well wishes. Kyle and I really appreciate it and I'm sure Hannah will too when she's old enough to know better.

6 days old

Hello there! Please forgive any type-o's in this post as I am typing one handed since Hannah is in my arms. Things are going wonderfully, but who would expect anything less since she is the perfect baby! She did give Daddy a bit of a sleepless night last night though. She ate well and went right back to sleep after both of my night feedings, but decided she wasn't hungry and didn't feel like sleeping for both of Kyle's! :) We've managed to get a pretty good schedule set up of feedings at 9:00 am, noon, 3:00 pm, 6:00 pm, 9:00pm, midnight, 3:00 am, and 6:00 am. It works well b/c we alternate feedings and whoever does the feeding has Hannah duty until the next feeding if she gets fussy. I feel a little guilty that I had such an easy night and Kyle had such a rough one!

Hannah continues to amaze us. She can hold her head up fairly well for several seconds and can already roll onto her side and stay there. This seems to be her preferred position as it's how we find her everytime we go to pick her up after laying down. The doctors were pretty emphatic about putting her to sleep on her back every time and we do lay her down that way, it's just that she has other ideas about how she wants to sleep! She likes laying on her back when she is awake however. She kicks and flails her arms around like crazy trying out all her new moves. She's quite the gymnast already!

Today she gets to have her picture taken at JC Pennys. Hopefully we will get something good that we can send out in our birth announcements so everyone keep your fingers crossed. Well, Kyle needs the computer so I should wrap this up. I'll try to post one more picture on here before I get off since more pictures have been frequently requested already!

It's a Girl!

Much has happened since July 5th when I last posted, but really the only important thing to mention is that we are now the proud parents of a healthy little girl! :)

Hannah Rose Spontak was born on July 6, 2006 at 5:14 am. She weighed 8 lbs 14 oz and is 21 1/2 inches long! She's so big she can't wear newborn diapers and doesn't fit into many of the newborn clothes we bought for her! We are all home and settling in nicely. Ok, now that we've got the important stuff out of the way I can give you the details.

On Wednesday, the day before Hannah's scheduled arrival, I spoke with Tiffany about the game plan for the next morning. We ironed out all the kinks and both felt quite comfortable with what we had decided. Then, at around 11:00 pm on that same night we got a phone call from Mike saying that Tiffany's contractions had started speeding up and she was in the hospital already and just might have the baby that night! So, we changed out of our pj's, loaded a few last minute items into the car and headed off to the hospital. Right about the time we were pulling into the hospital parking garage we got a call from Tiffany saying that Mike had it all wrong. She was in the hospital, but they had given her medicine to stop her contractions and were still planning on having the cesarean Thursday at 8:00 am just like we had discussed earlier that day. Since we were already there, we went up to the room and visited with her for awhile. We left around 3:00 am for the hotel and planned to be back at the hospital at 8:00 the next morning.

Thursday we arrived at the hospital at 8:05 am to find Tiffany just coming out of anethesia. Apparently an over eager intern had jumped the gun and thought that Tiffany's water was about to break so they rushed her into the OR around 5 am and Miss Hannah was delivered at 5:14 am. Tiffany had still not got to meet Hannah when we arrived as she was just coming out of her anethesia. At around 9:00 am they rolled Hannah in and we got a brief glimpse of her as we were shuffled out of the room. The following 6 hours took quite a toll on us as we waited and waited to be allowed to visit with Hannah and Tiffany. A steady stream of Tiffany's family members (she's from a large Clodfelter-esk type of family!) paraded in and out of the room all day and each time the door opened we would crane our necks to catch a peek at our little one. Finally at 3:00 pm Tiffany's mother came out sniffling and thanked us profusely for being so patient and for giving Tiffany and the family the time they needed to spend with Hannah alone. She said she knew how hard it must be for us waiting, but that they were exceptionally thankful. She brought us back into the room and we finally got to see our little one for the first time. She was absolutely perfect! She had a cute pudgy face and a full head of long, dark brown hair. We visited with Tiffany, Hannah, Mike, and Tiffany's family and friends for the rest of the day and shared in taking care of Hannah with Tiffany in between the times when the doctors and nurses came to take her away for tests. We finally headed back to our hotel around 1:00 am since we were not allowed to stay at the hospital.

On Friday we arrived at the hospital around 9:00 am. We gave Tiffany time to get her doctors' visits in, sleep in, and get a much needed shower and some breakfast. We spent all day with Hannah and again shared in taking care of her with Tiffany. Tiffany told us that she wanted us to be able to invite our family to come and visit at the hospital, so Heather and Tina came to visit as well as Mom and Tom. Everyone held Hannah except for Auntie Heather, but we'll break her in soon enough! Friday night was Mike's last time to spend with Hannah and he asked to be able to spend the majority of the night with her, so we headed for the hotel at about 10:30 pm to give he and Tiffany their final night together with Hannah.

Saturday morning we arrived at the hospital at around 8:00 am. Hannah had her pictures taken professionally by a friend of Tiffany's family who offered to give us free 8 x 10's of our favorite and also gave us permission to copy and print as many as we wanted for friends and family. She waived all copyrights to the pictures. We can't wait to see them! At around 11:00 Kyle and I went to lunch to give Tiffany time to spend with Hannah again. At 12:00 our adoption counselor met with us and we signed our portion of the paperwork. Then she went to see Tiffany for her to sign the papers. We had no idea how long to expect it to take for her to sign and were still a bit nervous thinking, "What if she changes her mind?" While we waited, we met with the pediatrician and the nurses to get final instructions for taking Hannah home. Then we just hung out and waited anxiously for our counselor to return to tell us that she had signed and to tell us when we could go back to the room. At about 1:30, our counselor appeared to say that Tiffany had signed all of her papers and that she still wanted a few minutes alone with Hannah to say goodbye before she was discharged. A nurse would come and tell us when we could return to the room. At around 2:15, Tiffany sent for us and we were able to see her one last time before we all left the hospital. Both Tiffany and I (and Tiffany's mom) cried when we said good-bye, but in the end Tiffany was smiling when the nurse wheeled her out because she was confident that she had made the right decision. After Tiffany was discharged the nurse came back to discharge Hannah. She did a car seat check and then we were free to go. It was hard to believe that they were actually going to let us drive away with her! Everything felt like a dream. I rode in the back seat with Hannah and Kyle drove about 5 miles under the speed limit the entire way home!

Now after spending our first 24 hours alone with Hannah it still feels as if we are living in a dream world. It will take some time to get used to this parenting thing, but we are definitely enjoying ourselves and our precious new addition.

PS, for those who are curious about the significance of Hannah's name, read 1 Samuel ch 1-2 about Hannah's infertility and her willingness to place her first born son Samuel in an open adoption with the priest Eli.

More updates will be forth coming as we settle into a routine and have some more time to breath! Thank you all for your prayers and support. We truly appreciate everything!