Voila An American Dream...

Our First Family Photo

Wow. We did it. We actually did it. We have a baby girl. She's still in the hospital; we can take her home in the morning. Lucy went home this morning; she's doing well. Thank you everyone who was thinking of her. What a wonderful, special person. We are forever grateful.

I wanted to take a time out and roll back the clock to Sunday and catch you up on events. You know the saying, "Getting there is half the fun"? Um, not this time. This was without a doubt (excluding the time we moved from LA to Arizona) the longest drive to LA we've ever had. We've driven back and forth dozens of times, but this one, even minus the stress, was awful. First, 15 minutes after leaving the house, the freeway is closed for construction. Get off, take some side streets, get back on. Not too bad. Now past Phoenix and out into the desert, the following conversation takes place:

B: Well we'll have a lot of nice pictures anyway, and we can start using the new video camera.

G: Yeah that will be good. Which bag did you put the cameras in anyway?

B: Just the regular camera bag.

G: No I mean, which bag did you put that in?

B: No bag. I took it off the couch with the other suitcases and put it in the closet so The Boys wouldn't mess with it. Why?

G: You put it in the closet? Not in a suitcase? You idiot that means we left it home! We have no cameras to take any pictures of the baby AT ALL!

B: Pull over I think I'm going to be sick...

Nice huh? There was already a shot record mix up with The Boys at the Pet Hotel that put us back 15 minutes and had me calling the house in panic that we can't board them if we have the wrong records. Turns out the genius checking us in can't read, and everything was actually fine. Now this. I seriously wanted to vomit. Gregg, to his credit, managed to keep somewhat cool and not kill me. We decided we were already almost an hour from home, turning around was out of the question. I was not going to miss the pictures, so we decided to make a stop at Target along the way and I'd buy the first camera they had. I actually found a nice little Kodak for only $89 on sale so we got it. Of course no one that worked there could find a key to the cabinet, blah blah, subtract another 45 minutes. Now we hit Palm Springs, and a truck towing a camper has a wreck and closes three of four lanes and has us sitting there for over an hour moving no place. I was starting to think we'd never get there. A trip that should have taken just over 5 hours managed to stretch to almost 8. We wanted to scream. We already missed the birth, now this.

When we got to the hospital we went straight to Lucy's room. Because she really does mean so much to us, we wanted to meet her and talk with her before we even saw the baby. She asked the nurse to bring her in right away, and we met our baby girl. I played this over in my mind thousands of times, and it still wasn't what I thought. I was much calmer and collected then I thought I'd be. I think the stress of the day was responsible for that. It wasn't that awkward, as long as one of us was talking to Lucy. In times when we both were focused on the baby, I could see her sort of staring to space. Was she upset or just giving us room? I'm still not sure.

Lucy was discharged this morning. She seemed in a good mood and we watched some wacky comedy from the 30's while we waited for the social worker who was almost an hour late. She signed papers giving us the ability to leave the hospital with the baby and make medical decisions in a very no nonsense matter. Still, I think she's trying to be brave. We are going to call her tomorrow after we pick up Sabrina just to talk and make sure she's OK.

Tonight we went back and gave Sabrina a bottle, and got our family photo taken by the ladies in the nursery. We're sort of the stars of the show over there. I guess we're not the usual couple who--excuse me, I mean family who comes in every day. The ladies there are great. The exception was the woman working in the Birth Center, where you register the baby's name. Lucy left instructions that we were coming in to do that. As a matter of fact, she's been labeled "Baby Girl Smith", Lucy's (not real) last name. The woman there was not a happy person, and didn't seem pleased to see the two of us walk in. She handed the form to Gregg and said "Fill her name in here". He told me to do it because my handwriting is better (prettier?). OK I thought, good set up for a joke. "Yeah let me fill it out, if you do her name will just be Smudge". Man did I get a look of evil from that woman. Geez take a joke. Who cares, tomorrow we get our girl and I guess I change the description at the top of this blog!