All About Luke

The rest of the stay in the hospital was relatively uneventful.  The kids came up the same day he was born (we cleared with the doctors that J & A had been on the antibiotics for strep long enough).  They were very enthusiastic about meeting and holding Luke.

Our first family photo.  The kids are wearing their big brother and big sister shirts.

Because we had someone to stay with the kids (thank you Marta!), Thomas was able to stay with me at the hospital.  Since this was my 3rd c-section, I had learned a few tricks of the trade and made myself get up and walk around really quickly. I think that helped speed my recovery and we were out of the hospital in 48 hours. The kids, especially Anna, were actually a bit disappointed when we came home early.  For whatever reason, they loved visiting the hospital.  On the second day, Thomas took them to get food from the snack bar (pizza and hamburgers) and Anna talked about it for the next week.

Luke is now almost 3 weeks old.  The kids still love holding him and giving him lots of attention. Unfortunately, Kara had a cold that has morphed into some sort of stomach bug and she is very upset that we won't let her touch the baby.  They all want to take pictures to school and they all say they are very happy to have a baby brother.  Kara has even asked if we could just have one more, so that she could get a baby sister.

It has been a bit difficult for the adults (well, at least for me, I assume for Thomas too) getting used to having a baby again, but Luke has a wonderful temperament and is generally easy going, so long as his belly is full. Having one baby at a time is definitely the way to go! We are a lot less dazed, which means we get to enjoy him a lot more (not that we didn't enjoy the others, but some of those days were about pure survival). Thomas took vacation this week and has handled taking care of the older kids and the household tasks. Basically, all I have had to do is feed Luke, which is kind of a full time job at this point.

Our awesome friends did a meal train for us and let me just say how much I have loved that!  It has been incredibly awesome to have delicious food delivered to our door every night.  We have even had a couple of 5/5ers (meaning everyone loved the dinner, an extremely rare occurrence in our house, at least when it is me making the meals)!  It will be interesting to see how things go as we settle more into our regular routine. Regardless, it has been wonderful to just sort of ease into things.

Luke is very strong, he could hold up his head the day he was born.

Now, more about Luke.

Things Luke likes:
-eating (he had gained over a pound by his two week checkup!)
-showers
-his brother and sisters
-being held
-being outside (as long as motion is kept constant)
-music
-being spoken to in a British accent (at least Thomas thinks he likes this and uses this as an excuse to talk in one. Constantly. Every day.)

Things Luke does not like:
-baths
-the hours between 6:30-10pm
-pacifiers
-being kept in bed after 5am
-tummy time