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Saturday, April 23, 2011

Caroline is Here!


Caroline Ray Tousey made her entrance last night, April 22 (Good Friday!) at 8:05 p.m. At birth, she was 7 lbs, 3 oz, and 20.3 inches long. She is beautiful and sweet and sleepy, and loves to snuggle as much as her brother Sam does. Mom's labor and delivery went much more smoothly this time with no complications, and both mom and baby are doing very well and getting some rest today. We can't tell you what a relief this is to us!

The whole family was together this morning, and there is nothing sweeter in the world to these two parents than seeing our two kids meeting each other for the first time.

At first, Sam didn't seem to know what to make of her. In recent weeks, he's known that he's going to have a baby sister, that her name is Caroline, that she was in Mamma's belly, and that when mom & dad went to the hospital, she would come out of Mamma's belly and come to live at our house (and that when all this happens, he and Annie get to go stay at the beach!). Despite this knowledge, though, I don't think he really knew what to picture, so it was very sweet just watching him trying to figure out who she was and where she came from!

Caroline gave Sam a present when he came to the hospital - a book about being a big brother, a Big Brothers Rule t-shirt, and Lightning McQueen PJs. Sam proudly put on his Big Brother t-shirt, and Caroline rocked her Little Sister onesie. Here they are posing in their gear (which, of course, you can't see in the pictures!).

After a few minutes, Sam seemed to fully adjust to the idea and couldn't get enough of looking at Caroline...
And giving her hugs and kisses!
We'll get to go home tomorrow, so we will be able to celebrate Easter as a family. We can't wait!

We feel so blessed and overwhelmed with love for these two little ones. Our family feels complete, and we are just so, so grateful. We wish all of you a very happy Easter and thank you all for all your prayers and thoughts and well-wishes. We love you all!

Clay, Tracy, Sam, Caroline, and Annie




Monday, April 18, 2011

Just Waiting...

Just five days to go until our due date, and still no signs that Caroline's ready to arrive. We had another great weekend, though! We're so glad that we got all our house projects done early in the year (during the cold months!), because it's given us lots of time to just have fun with Sam here at the end of the pregnancy while the weather is fantastic.

Here's a very sweet picture of Sam and Dadda enjoying some reading time...
And here's Miss Caroline at 39 weeks and 1 day. Quite a belly, eh?
I keep hearing that second babies usually come earlier than first babies, but Caroline only has 2 1/2 more days to make good on that promise! I'm getting SO anxious to meet her...I'm not doing a very good job of being a patient Mama this go-round :) No way of knowing whether she'll decide to arrive early, but we found out today that we're on the schedule to be induced next Monday if she hasn't arrived by then...so, one week from now we'll have a new snuggler no matter what!

We'll keep you all posted. Lots of love to all!

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Everything's About to Change!

We're now 10 days away from my due date, and while I'm getting VERY antsy to meet this little girl, we're also enjoying some sweet time with just Sam. He is too cute for words. My two favorite developments of the last week or so:

(1) He likes to "read" his favorite books by himself. This consists of flipping the pages and roughly repeating the story he's heard us read before. It's amazing how good his memory is - he remembers chunks of the stories almost word for word - but it's hilarious to hear him emphasizing all his favorite parts and mixing things up in cute little ways.

(2) He now likes to report to us when he's exerting his mental and physical energies. He'll be sitting there (working SO HARD) putting together some huge Lego contraption, or trying to carry 12 rocks at the same time, and he'll look up and say "Sam - work hard!" Where did he get that???

Here are some sweet recent pictures of him at his favorite "boat park." Pointing out the boats...

Caroline at 37 weeks (somehow I'm already a LOT bigger a week and a half later)
Here's sweet Sam playing in his kiddie pool. He likes to swim, but he likes getting splashed even more!
I love this Snuggleman!