Coming Home Pictures

I'm playing "catch up" with blog posts...so we'll go back a few weeks to when we brought Salem home from the hospital. It was a hurried morning since Chuck had a job interview that afternoon and we needed to get on the road to home as quickly as possible. Thankfully our pediatrician visited early in the morning to discharge Salem and my OB/GYN doc wasn't far behind. My mom and dad came to help us get everything loaded into the car and to take pictures for us. I was pretty sore still and wasn't much help, so it was great to have them there.

One of our first (THE first??) family pictures where I'm not in a hospital bed! This is right before we got ready to leave the hospital. Chuck and I picked out Salem's coming home outfit at Target many months ago. It was the only piece of clothing we bought for her - everything else was given to her either as hand-me-downs (thanks LaToya!) or gifts. Although it was still a little big since she was so little, we thought it was perfect for her. It's a teal green dress with purple butterflies. So cute!

This is me trying to get Salem hooked into her carseat for the first time. It looks relatively uneventful, however this picture was taken after about 5 minutes of adjusting the straps so that she wouldn't fall out of the carseat. She was just so tiny (6lbs 6oz by the time we left the hospital), that even the tightest setting was still big.

Here she is all strapped in and ready to go. The puppy dog was a gift from my dad from the hospital gift shop. He got me a little puppy dog with a red collar from the hospital gift shop when I was born too! It's so soft and cuddly. Salem even told me it was her favorite stuffed animal! :)

Our arrival home safe and sound. Salem slept through most of the drive home so it was thankfully uneventful.

My mom and Chuck's mom were both great before and after Salem was born. I could not have managed without them those first two weeks. I was on an emotional rollercoaster (bye bye "happy hormones" from pregnancy!) and was still sore to boot, so I really needed the help. Chuck was awesome with changing diapers and soothing her and I was trying to breastfeed as best as possible despite some extreme soreness issues (a whole nother post!) that we're still working through.

A couple of days after we came home, our puppies got to meet Salem. My aunt had kept them while we were at the hospital and for the first few days we were home so we could get adjusted to being home without the added stress of two dogs to take care of. They really weren't interested in her at all, and just mainly were glad to be home in familiar surroundings. I don't think they were happy to be home after awhile though, because they realized they were getting a lot more attention at my aunt's house than they did at home for some reason. Like I mentioned in my last post, they really are adjusting well and Ellie has just now realized that she's another person (or does she think she's a puppy??) and is showing some interest in her. I love to see that Ellie sits by Salem's swing and watches over her and Eli barks when someone else holds her just to let us know that something different is happening.

This is a picture of Salem with her friend Addison, our friends Jordan and Jenny's daughter. Jenny and I were pregnant at the same time with due dates only three weeks apart. Addison came two weeks early though, so the girls are about a month apart in age. Hard to believe that Addison was the same weight as Salem when she was born! Addison came to visit on the day that we brought the puppies home to meet Salem. It was a fun reunion!