We're a family of four now!

Our beautiful daughter Lydia was born on August 10, and she has made our family a little bit more perfect! We are so lucky that everything went smoothly, and I am so happy to not be pregnant anymore! After my nesting phase from about 30-34 weeks, which involved filling the freezer with dough for 12 dozen cookies, baking 3 chickens and making casseroles from them, and mixing pancake mix in bulk, the last few weeks of pregnancy consisted of me shamelessly whining and refusing to get off the couch. It is nice to be back to my normal self again and have some energy back! So far our adjustment to being a family of 4 has been going well. It is definitely more complicated to get out of the house, and it takes a lot longer to get ready in the morning, but luckily we have some time to ease into things before I go back to work. Yesterday we all went grocery shopping, and today we went to the zoo and Penn Station. We enjoyed these activities, and found that the major difference was that we were forced to cooperate more than we ever have before--not that we were not cooperative before, but having 2 kids seems to require us to function like a well-oiled machine, something that we need practice with, but aren't doing too badly at so far. There have been many times in the last few days that we have asked each other, "which kid do you want this time, the one that is crying and hungry, or the one with the stinky diaper?" We are proud of ourselves for having accomplished these family outings without any major catastrophes so far! This has been a busy and eventful summer--not only did we increase the number of people in our family, but also we finished our first year of living here. At this time last year, I was drowning in a sea of change and hoping we had made the right decision for our family. A year later, we have realized that the change has been mostly good, and that this place is everything we hoped for, and then some. Let's hope this next year is just as good!