Home, Sweet Home

We got to all go home on Friday afternoon after almost a week in the hospital.  Before we left however, I had to run to get the car seat checked because our hospital does not allow any of their employees to come down to your car anymore to make sure that it is properly installed.  Maybe it's only in the movies or something, but we thought that when you get discharged they would also help you get your newborn into the car seat and wheel the new mom down to the car.  Instead the nurse came in and reviewed some paperwork, then said we were free to leave.  I asked about the car seat and she said that it looked like it was in the correct position and basically said 'good luck'.  We did fine putting him in, but it would have gone a lot faster had we had a little help.  Another little side note about our stay... we got the impression that the nurses would change most of the diapers and take him for a while at night so that we could get a little sleep, but neither really happened (not sure what we were thinking).  We changed almost all the diapers and they offered to take him for 2-3 hours on the last night.  I don't want to complain too much though because except for one awful nurse, everyone else was great to us but we were definitely ready to go home!

The biggest unknown once we got home was how Brady would react to the new addition.  He had been dropped off at our house that morning by our friends who were taking care of him so we knew that he would be as excited as a preteen at a Jonas concert when we got home.  I went into the house alone with the first hat put on Grant's head right after birth and let Brady sniff it.  He spent a solid minute going over every inch of the tiny hat, then he ran over to the back door and wanted to go out.  Once outside, Shannon brought Grant into the house and got him out of his car seat.  We then let Brady back inside and had him get a little whiff of Grant from a safe distance.  He'd passed all of our tests so far, so we decided to take it one last step further.  I got on the ground with Grant and Shannon had one hand on Brady and we let him sniff up close.  He started out by licking Grant's feet a little and then quickly moved up to his head, only briefly stopping to smell his diaper.  Whew!  Brady did great and since then has been absolutely fabulous with his little brother Grant.

This past weekend we spent time trying to catch up on sleep and figuring out our routine.  If it wasn't for the fireworks going off on Saturday night, which Grant slept right through, then we wouldn't have even known that it was the 4th of July.  For that matter, most of the time we don't even know what day it is.  Today, we had our first check up with the pediatrician.  So far we're very happy with the practice we picked.  He's doing great and must be feeding well because he's about back up to his birth weight.  Here are a couple more pics.