Life is speeding by!

Mariana is already three weeks old!  I am trying my best to treasure this newborn time as this very well might be the last time that we have a newborn at our house.  Cue tears and sighs of relief:  bittersweet.

 She is so loved by her siblings.  Sarah has exhibited zero signs of sibling rivalry.  Rather, it's almost as if when Mariana arrived, Sarah thought, "Well, it's about time that I had someone to look after!"  Sarah is definitely my little helper.  She runs for diapers, wipes, cream and anything else I might request.  One of her favourite things is to introduce her baby sister to people:  "Her's Mariana and her's a girl."

 The boys first question upon arrival from school is if they can hold Mariana.  Ben usually waits until everyone has had their turn before he asks for his.  It's amazing how much little boys love to stare at little babies.

 I love this photo because so many of our babies have looked like this in their infancy.  She particularly favours Ben in this photo.  Lucky girl.

 She wears this semi-worried look a lot.  For a little girl with completely translucent eyebrows, she still has extremely expressive brows.  At the moment her skin looks quite olive-y and her hair is dark.  However, it is far too early to proclaim that I finally have a girl with my colouring.  Her eyes, very unlike mine, are going to be blue.

 How can a baby not smile when in the care of Hannah, the baby whisperer.  Other than nursing, Mariana is most calmed by walking with her oldest sister or by being held tightly by her father.  She is tongue-tied and has one bottle a day in order to help her gain weight.  Dave likes to give this bottle as he tells me that changing poopy diapers (which he does) doesn't quite bond him with his babies in the same way as bottle feeding them.  Hannah watched Dave feed Mariana the other evening and whispered to me, "I didn't know that dad liked babies."  She has an appointment tomorrow to get her tongue tie fixed.  Of course, in typical small-town fashion, the doctor is my brother-in-law's first cousin.

 I love this shot.  Her eyes look slightly too big for her head and she has a very adult look to her; all of which remind me of Hannah as a baby.  I told Hannah that I think she looks like her and Hannah responded with a big smile, "Oh, good."  Mariana's lips are identical to Jacob's, Isaac's and Sarah's, all of whom have Dave's lips.  Hopefully they have inherited the Afelskie perma-smile.

 Too much love!

 It is Joe's birthday on Saturday - eight years old!  He absolutely adores babies, especially burping them as evidenced by his in-motion hand.  Jacob watched me bath Mariana last night and, in his sentimental way, said, "I do hope that I am bathing a baby in my mid-twenties."  I don't make these things up.

 This photo just ups the cuteness factor.

And to prove that she takes after her father:  asleep when not running or working.

A few of my favourites

 There will be more photos, but, for some reason, they aren't appearing in my photo library just yet.  Sorry if the fluids gross you out, but this is Mariana only minutes after birth resting on my deflated (but still very cushy) tummy.  I've never had a baby so covered in vernix.

 She's holding up four fingers because she was born on November fourth.  Smart baby.

 Her arrival was fast and a little scary.  My waters broke just before midnight and they were green.  The last thing my midwife said to me at our pre-birth appointment was, "If the waters are green, get to the hospital ASAP."  Green means that the baby has begun to pass meconium in the womb.  In other words, she has pooed.  The danger is that the baby might aspirate the meconium leading to what are sometimes grave complications.  Suffice to say that our trip to the hospital was nerve-wracking as I waited to hear her heart rate on the monitor.  Alas, all was well.

 Jacob was the first sibling to meet her.  He had spent the day in Ottawa with his Aunt Julie as a subject in her PhD research.  She dropped him off at the hospital on her way back home.  Lucky boy.

 Even blurry, I love this photo.  It perfectly captures Jacob's gentle and kind nature.

And who can resist tiny baby hands?

She did arrive!

I promise photos ASAP, but I can't let them keep me from posting her arrival.  Mariana Elizabeth arrived in the wee hours of November fourth at 4:01am.  She weighed in at 7 lb 14 oz and measured 19 inches.  This makes her our third largest baby and second shortest.  She looks like everyone and entirely herself.  She is extremely peaceful and very well-loved.  Thank you, Jesus.

40 weeks, come and gone

But first, here are Isaac and Sarah playing with the beans.  They love this activity.  Me, not so much; there is a lot of sweeping required after this sort of play.

 Yesterday after Sunday mass, we decided that we had better take one last photo to immortalize this baby in utero.  My natural smile always entails a squinty right eye (as does Jacob's).  Dave tells me, "Open that right eye.  Think about it!"

 Which results in this sort of smile.  The one my father calls, "Nena's fake smile."  It also looks like a smile of hesitant resignation, oh well.  I do feel a little stupid posing for photos.

 However, my older sister asked me the other day to post some photos of myself so that she could see how long my hair is.  Oops, seeing as my hair is pulled back in an elastic and clip, there is no chance to gauge the length of it.  Rebecca, when down, my hair is about an inch below my shoulder.

 That, however, is about to change in under an hour's time as I have a haircut this morning.  I will keep you all posted, on the baby, not the haircut.