On March 27th, when David was three days old, our friends Lily, Ken, and Justin stopped by to meet him. They live in San Jose, and were passing through on the way back there from San Diego; we were happy they had time to make the detour while they were in our end of the state. Our local friends Danni and Mark had also come by with their son Dylan on the evening David was born (one visited at a time while the other kept Dylan company in the hall, so as to take it easy on Cheryl), but that was while Mark was back at home and, unfortunately, he had the camera there.
Part of the reason for Lura's happy grin in the photo at top is that Cheryl had saved her half of the brownie from her lunch! The hospital fed her (Cheryl, that is) pretty well; no "rubber chicken" here.
The next day, when David was four days old (same as Lura had been), we took him and Cheryl home. As before, the nurses clipped off the security bands and then a volunteer pushed Cheryl to the hospital entrance in a wheelchair.
Here's David asleep in his car seat after being brought into our house for the first time. We had hoped to let Lura help carry him in, but she fell asleep on the drive from the hospital and we decided it would be better to carry her up to her room for a (late) nap than to awaken her. We actually had a bit of hassle and delay getting out of the hospital, with elevator problems, parking difficulties, and Lura's being out of sorts from the lack of a nap before we hit the road. Nonetheless, everybody made it home, and we were mighty happy to be there!
Late that evening Mark picked up Cheryl's dad at the airport. Here he is the next day, holding his new grandson!
After getting home on March 28th and into the 29th, Cheryl stayed upstairs caring for David. By the evening of the 29th, she was feeling recovered enough to come back downstairs with him (Lura helped her to negotiate the stairs), and Mom made us a big spaghetti dinner to enjoy together.
You can't see David in the previous photo; we spread a thickly padded Hawaiian quilt on the floor behind Cheryl, and laid him on it. Here Lura shares some of her toys with him. She's quite generous about sharing, with David or her friends; however, she wants to initiate the transfer, and strenuously resists other kids' efforts to grab toys or books even if she had already offered them to another kid. We'll see how that plays out when David gets mobile enough to poke around her playthings!
That evening we opened some gifts that David had received; in several cases, our friends sent along a gift for Lura with a gift for her baby brother. She was more than happy to help him open his presents, and here she is sharing one of her own gifts, a "let's make dinner" playset given to her by some of Mom's co-workers, with everybody including David (though Cheryl had to hold his slice of pizza for him).
Here's a close-up of David from earlier that afternoon, at an age of five days. Looking back on our first photos of Lura, we probably can see signs now of how he'll look in two and a half years; however, there's no way of knowing exactly which traits will remain constant. We are looking forward to enjoying watching him grow up, as we have been with Lura!
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to Photo Albumnew 30 March 2006