45/52: Meet Edith!

I think I can go ahead and firmly declare that the kids are all enchanted with their new baby sister!

She's only been home a few days, but the constant requests to hold her next/again/NOW haven't quite gotten old yet - I think the newness will fade pretty soon and we'll be back to a reasonable amount of "helpfulness" with the baby, but it's a totally different ballgame this time around with 2 legitimately competent helpers, 2 somewhat competent helpers, and 1 toddler who... well, he got himself a new pair of socks from his drawer instead of crying for me to do it, so I'll call that helpful, too!

Cecilia is, as expected, the baby whisperer. If Edith so much as whimpers while Cecilia's holding her, she'll scoop her up and sing, in her "prettiest" (read: lots of scooping) singing voice, "Rockabye Baby" and then Peter tries to sing along, too. It's amazing. 

She woke up late on Thursday and immediately wanted to hold Edith - this meant I got to go eat breakfast with two hands, so I happily let her! 4 hours later she realized that she had forgotten to eat breakfast because she was so busy holding the baby! #momlife

Mary Claire was so anti-baby when Peter was born that I wasn't quite sure what to expect this time, but oh my goodness she loves this baby! She couldn't stop giggling at the hospital when she met Edith, "Ohhhh!!! Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!!! E-e-e-e-e-edith!!! She's soooooo cute!!!" She's also constantly getting herself all set up to hold Edith, usually *right* when I've started nursing her, which can be quite a long ordeal and Mary Claire will happily sit there for 30 minutes waiting her turn! She gets tired of it fairly quickly, but goodness she loves her!

Edith seems to be right in her element at home, much calmer than she was in the hospital! My mom reminded me that all the mayhem is exactly what she was used to hearing in the womb, so she's comfortable now that she's around familiar sounds! 

Peter adores her and gives her LOTS of "kisses" but still wants a fair amount of attention himself, so he's been carrying around stacks of books and asking everyone to read to him all day long. There are quite a few books that will be getting hidden for a while so that we don't have to read them one more time over and over.

Elizabeth is happy in her regular sanguine way, although not nearly as obsessed and adoring as her other siblings. She loves Edith, but she's got more interesting things going on. More importantly than Edith, she loves Edith's blankets. Especially Edith's rainbow blanket that my sister made her. I'm kind of surprised she hasn't stolen it for her own, actually...

John Paul is such a sweet little baby-lover - I've said it before, but babies bring out the absolute best in him, and it's a struggle to get him to stop kissing her so much! He's super-excited that he can hold her and pick her up without having an adult hovering over him, and I'm pretty excited about that too, because having him and Cecilia around makes things much easier! There's always someone to hold the baby!

Mary Claire told me the other day that when she grows up she's going to have lots of kids and then she's going to have lots of babies for her kids to play with! I'm pretty sure they all see this baby as their very own early Christmas present, and I love that excitement from them :)