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Hannah got some presents from her Aunt Suzy and Grandma Reed yesterday. She is modeling them for you in the photo below. You can get a full shot of the entire quilt here on my sister’s blog. The hat mom knitted is great! And it fits her perfectly.

Minutes ago Deb had an important revelation about her daughter (while eating the birthday cake we made to celebrate Hannah’s birth for breakfast)… I’ll quote her.

“So she went from being a parasite inside me to being a leech on me?”

Everyone spent this past Sunday doing some of their favorite things. Colin, Grandma and I went to the New York Aquarium at Coney Island for some shark action! Hannah spent the better part of the day sleeping. Now, a dollar and a lollipop to anyone who can get Hannah to spend the better part of the night sleeping!

One of the coolest things about the birth of Hannah was introducing her to her proud big brother. The morning after Hannah was born at 6:22pm on January 23rd, I went home to pick up Colin and his grandmother to come and visit Debra and the new baby in the hospital where the initial introductions were made…

Colin was (and is) so good with her. Very gentle. But, as you can see below, his trip to the hospital was—for him—much more about eating mom’s leftover breakfast foods (yay! toast!) (and the food was surprisingly good in the private room we were able to finagle) and playing with mom’s hospital-grade Craftmatic adjustable bed than it was about meeting his brand new sister.

Colin did like to spend little bits of time here and there contemplating his sister, so we put a chair next to her crib so he could spend time looking at his own pace. He also got brave and touched her on the first day, in fact on mom’s blog (err, ahem, “Scrapbook”) she briefly tells about my favorite story about the introduction—how Colin said “tickle, tickle, tickle” when touching her tiny little baby feet. Wish we had a picture (or better yet video!) of that.

Not even 48 hours after Debra gave birth to Hannah Lenore, the two of them were cleared to come home.

Colin was excited to have his mother home, but I think his greeting his new sister with a shark in his hand was his way of letting Hannah know who was boss. Hannah was happy to be home to sleep not in a plastic tub, but in her own (well, borrowed—thanks Wendy & Joe!) co-sleeper. Grandma was a hero since she had gifts for everyone when mommy and Hannah got home from the hospital. Hannah spends a lot of time “on” her mother, whether nursing (which is going pretty well, thankfully) or sleeping (or spitting up).

You tell me…

No, not that Seven and Seven, I’m talking about the birth of our second child—Hannah* Lenore** Ellsworth***. Deb and I couldn’t be more blessed to have welcomed her on January 23, 2008 after only 28 hours of labor and not even 30 minutes of pushing. I’m allowed to say “only” even though I also said 28 hours because careful readers will remember past stats.

(a) (b)

(a) This is Hannah just minutes after being born with the pediatrician checking her out making sure all the fingers and toes are there and any unnecessary “goop” in the lungs is NOT. Much to my chagrin this is the second time the pediatrician working on our child in the delivery room has been (Deb’s words) “hot”… Not sure how I feel about that. Next we have the official “weights and measures” photo (b). Not dissimilar to this, I guess… In any event, the thing to note is the 7 pounds, 7 ounces showing in red LED on the side of the scale… Hannah may have been nearly 4 weeks early, but she sure did come fully baked! Despite being nearly 20% lighter than Colin, Hannah was exactly the same length: 21 inches. (I’m told it is too early to tell if she is WNBA material yet.)

(c) (d)

Not long after Hannah was born and cleaned, she and mommy (c) were able to spend some time together alone (except for the guy who kept snapping photos risking permanent blindness for his new daughter). One of my favorite photos is grandma contemplating her grand-daughter (d), I remember a similar photo with she and Colin.

I’m going to let Debra post or comment more about the birth story. I always feel weird telling it (for two reasons: I was the less “involved” participant and—perhaps more to the point—she always has to re-tell it without all the hyperbole and exaggeration anyway) and she’ll have a couple more favorite pictures to share.

* Hannah because we liked that name. No (!) it does not have to do with our liking Miley Cyrus—in fact, I don’t think either one of us has ever watched that show.
** Lenore is a family name, Debra’s paternal grandmother was named Lenore. I think since we called Colin “Dinski” for no particular reason, we may call Hannah “Leni” with some reason. And then if we have a third child, perhaps we’ll just call them by their given name. Especially since we’re the ones “giving”… Hmm.
*** Ellsworth since we don’t see much reason for thinking out of the box on this one.

Right before I left Colin in the capable hands of his nanny and our friends Sandra and Charles on Tuesday, January 22nd, this was the message Colin recorded for his mother to keep her motivated during the next—as it turned out—28 hours.

Colin was, of course, making mommy feel good while she went into labor to deliver Hannah Lenore. I’m sorting the pictures and will post a couple of sets tomorrow. Need to sleep now. But I love this video!