Double the Fun

A few more phun photos until I catch up on rest and schedules and start writing again.
Now that I've joined the man-purse world, Sawyer feels he must imitate. It is difficult to leave the house without him packing a couple essentials into some sort of bag and trying to carry it along. This time, his essentials were a bottle of water and a sippy cup of juice in a plastic bag. Does this mean I need to get my 2-yr-old son a purse too?
Hello world!! Tomorrow we apply for a passport for our little one. Yesterday we went to have some passport photos made. For a passport photo her head must be straight and alined with both eyes open. She decided not to cooperate. Many photos were taken and three spliced together to get two open eyes and a straight head. It's interesting. I sure hope they take it. And then my daughter will look like a baby alien in her passport until she's 5.
Yeah, that thing is spinning. Yeah, he's not holding on. Yeah, he's actively eating his picnic lunch. His mom and aunt cringed. I love it.
These two are inseparable now. It's really fun when child #1 wakes up at 6:30am and throws a fit until he can see and hug child #2 who would happily sleep until 8am.
Really though, as much fun as parenting one of these little ones is, two are even better.

Does it get any better than this?

Responses and We're Home!

Today we finally escaped from the hospital. In typical French fashion, the whole ordeal was a little overblown and took way too much time. Thursday night the pediatrician, midwife, OBGYN, and everyone else associated with our child's birth cleared us to go home. Mama and baby were both healthy, so on you go! Except that by the time we were cleared, the administrative staff had already left for the day. So we'd have to stay the night. And besides, she'd never been measured (height and head circumference), so that would have to be done in the morning after her bath.

Morning came. We were first in line for a bath. I hit up the admin offices when they opened. "Oh you don't have any paperwork to do, and no bill," I was told, "we'll be mailing it to you when it's ready, then you can come in to pay." 9:30 am, we're ready to go. But the pediatric doctor has yet to give us the Carnet de Santé, without which nothing medical can happen for the rest of Elsie's life. Thus we sat and waited. Till about noon. Argh.

But we're home now! Hooray! The first hour home - reunited as a family - truly was priceless. Here's a few images of siblings at play:

I also want to share some of the things that made me smile from the past week. You all sent some great emails and notes of encouragement, and some like these below (inputs outside of the blog comments):

Nick- My favorite part of the story is that it happened in France. You have no doubt caused many people in France to believe that in America husbands delivering babies for their wives is about as common as buying a loaf of bread. "Universal health care? No, thanks. I can handle this."

Sean- You’re like Chuck Norris meets Dr Green... Nice work on the delivery, can you write up a Wikipedia page on emergency home delivery?

Ryan- I know that [your insurance company] is trying to save money anywhere it can, but I applaud you for taking it to an entirely new level. You probably saved them 5000-10000 dollars by doing it yourself. Great job!

Kevin- I'm a little disappointed that you were not also out of gas in your car....would've been a nice dramatic touch.

David- ...we were only imaging your face, thoughts, and desire/need to wipe your hands during this ordeal.

via twitter:
@pc1oad1letter “The front seat looks like someone had been murdered in it.” @goodbyeharan is my hero. #childbirthinacar

Then came my friend Paul, who was already having a fabulous day. It began when he took his truck to the dealer because of the sudden appearance of a rust spot on the frame. His truck he'd had for 10 years was suddenly being bought back by the dealer for $500 less than he'd paid (10 years ago). His sister beautifully and appropriately described his not-so-abnormal start to the day like this:
Pretty much most situations: "Paul, it looks like we have an obscene amount of compensation to give you today."
Paul: "Really? Are you sure? All I did was wake up this morning."
Them: "Looks like we owe you some chocolate dipped rainbows, unicorns, a new car and this pile of cash that we've been tripping over all day."
That evening he took a phone call from my sister with a quick run-down of our story, and he was left near-speechless. When speech returned, he declared May 6, 2011 to be the greatest day of his life.

A few days later

The outpouring of love and encouragement from everyone has been incredible. Our story is ours not because we made it that way, but because God designed it, carried it out, and then we retold it. It's an honor and a privilege to tell this, yet another story of His provision and love. There's more than a few other stories throughout history in which God provides and God shows his powerful and perfect love. Often in a far crazier way. Start in Genesis, go through Revelation. And then pull out thousands of books, letters, interviews, blogs, and family-held generational stories and His love proves itself over and over. We are equally privileged to share those additional stories as well, anytime someone wants to listen!

Because some of the responses have been fun (I would want it no other way), I'll try and share a few of them on here in a day or two. If a part of our story mad you laugh, say so, I'd love to have more.
Some photos after a few days in the hospital.
JJ and Elsie are still full-time residents at the clinic (odd, since we didn’t even deliver there). Some elevated infection indicators have caused Elsie to take on a few rounds of antibiotics. Until they are down she and Mama will stay while the boys (and my sister) go back and forth. For some reason all of these ‘medical’ people think that my method and chosen location of baby delivery wasn’t ‘sterile’. Not too sure what that’s all about. I wiped my hands on my jeans before and after I caught her.
We’ve enjoyed some great family time at the hospital. Sawyer loves his new sister. And some new toys and treats from home (thanks family/friends via Courtney) don’t hurt either. This moment was really special to one of these two, can you guess which one?Elsie is beginning to come alive and proving to us that she is her own person. Absolutely nothing like her brother, Elsie enjoys to sit quietly in our arms and look around. Contentment is constantly all over her face. We love it. We hope it stays.In other ‘craziest event of our life’ follow-up, my car came back from the crime scene clean-up guy. Our passenger seat no longer looks like someone was shot and bled out. But it does look like someone spilled an entire Big Gulps of coke on it. Dark red coke. We apparently only contracted him for the fabric of the seats though, because there’s still blood streaks on the plastic and metal portions of the door and running boards.