Homecoming (We Are In Our Numbers!)

Yesterday Hale passed his car seat test. Which is a way to back into a bit longer story. But the carseat test? That's where they stick him on the monitor and stuff him in his carseat for 90 minutes. If he doesn't throw any alarms, he wins the ticket to ride.


It's all come a bit more quickly than we expected--him pretty much all of a sudden eating all eight of his eight daily meals by mouth ("He nippled eight out of eight!" they told us. Still not used to that verb).

Which, I just did a bit of quick math, is a heck of a lot of milk. Okay, real quick: Hale weighs just about seven pounds--6lbs, 15oz.--and he eats 60 grams (2 oz.) of milk per sitting, eight times a day. I weigh about 30 times what he weighs. If I ate like he did, I'd drink a half gallon of milk every three hours, round the clock. Four gallons a day.

So huge news, what had been looking like


SPRUNG!


I fitted the car seat...


(and then made sure the optional Mom-Along® was properly deployed in the rear passenger seat.)


Hale was all eyes, all the way home. No crying, just a lot of wide eyes. We told him about the city as we drove down Denny way.


Looking at the lights.


We got home and Kristin brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate his homecoming. Love this place we live!


And another family portrait. Hale at home.

It was a great night. He was up for a fair amount of it, and we're tired. But it wasn't nutso. It was perfectly wonderful.

We did a lot of very late-night making of mental notes:

'Note to self: Get a system for keeping cloths and wipes here where we change him.'
'Note to self: Figure out how to nap.'
'Note to self: I know this is pretty hard right now, but I know this is nothing, and that it could get a whole lot harder. Wonder what that's like.'
'Note to self: Holy crap... we got a kid. right here in our house. ours.'

It was sweet.

Today, the weather in Seattle continued in its glorious vein, and we couldn't stay inside. We went on safari around our building and borrowed several different baby carrier devices, and settled on one we felt comfortable sticking Hale in. Then we took a walk.

As a family.

I fed Hale a bottle in the greenbelt park on the ridge behind our house. He chowed the whole thing and never spit a drop on the jostly ride home. Amazing things, these babies. Like a tiny person.

Now, Amy's having a nap, and I'm about to go join her. Rich.