Thomas Joseph + Miles Isaak = World Domination

On Saturday afternoon we brought Miles home from the hospital.

Wait, you want to leave Mt. Auburn Hospital? Are you crazy? I love this place!

The guys have a nice laugh about farts.

No one can fight the power of Miles’ kissable head. No one.

Did we mention that the food at Mt. Auburn was actually really good?

If we stuff this in here, will he be quiet?

On the road again …

Home is boring!

Phew, I caught it!

You know you want to. You’re weak! You can’t fight it! Come on, give me a kiss!

The rest of the pics can be seen here: http://www.snaptom.com/Baby/20111015-Miles-Miles-Miles

How good was our stay at Mt. Auburn? On the way home Danielle described it said she was mentally relaxed as I’d she was coming home from a mini vacation. This after pushing out the aforementioned baby Holstein…

It’s 12:15a and both Miles and Danielle are out cold.

Today was a great day.

Some exciting things from today:
0. Miles got another name: Isaak. Miles Isaak Monaghan.
1. Miles cried a lot.
2. Miles got his first real milk (go Mommy!).
3. Thomas spent the whole day with Grandma Janice! Go Grandma!
4. Thomas wrapped his brain around this whole “little brother” thing a bit more.
5. Maggy, Jacob, and Levi came for a visit (don’t tell Thomas that he missed this).
6. No one broke Miles’ skin for any testing. That alone made day two far better than day one!
7. Miles peed. He hadn’t done so by noon today. If little ones don’t pee in the first 24 hours, they apparently need to a lot more tests. Thankfully he filled a diaper with about 30 minutes to spare. Go Miles!
8. Danielle looked amazing! You’d never know she’d delivered a baby Holstein just yesterday! Go Danielle!
9. Grandma Jan changed her flight back to Cleveland from tomorrow night to Tuesday night. Big props to Southwest for making that process easy and cheap. Their no fee change thing isn’t a marketing gimmick and made a a lot of people I love very happy. Go Southwest!
10. I’m just about to start a new job at HubSpot. In fact, i was supposed to start on Monday! The very same Monday that will be Miles’ 5th day as an outside baby. My new boss was kind enough to push my start date off a week so Danielle, Miles, and Thomas can have me around for a bit longer before I get back into working a million hours a week. Go New Boss!

Tomorrow (today), we head home to try on this new size four family. I sure hope it fits because the return policy on baby Holsteins is terrible! Go Size Four Family!

Hi. My name is Miles. I was born at 2:27pm and I’m huge. My Mom did an amazing job getting me out!

Thomas is learning about countdowns for rocketships. He usually counts up. If he were here, he’d be counting.

Water is broken. Pushing is starting. Baby Frank Jr. should be here soon!

We’re all just hanging out. The contractions have gotten to the “take Danielle’s breath away” level and she just got an epidural. So the walking around part is over, but the rest seems to be moving right along. She’s presently resting up for the hard part, but the last check was a huge improvement over the prior checks so we’re happy. Just impatiently waiting to meet .

And incidentally, if you happen to be one of the folks who asked me about names, only to have me reply with your name … well, I did that to everyone and I hope you won’t be too offended when you learn of his true name. Hint: it’s not Frank Jr. as Thomas suggested (and who is Frank Sr. I’d like to know!) and it’s not Thomas, the other name Thomas suggested.

Last time Danielle got an epidural pretty early. So far she’s held off. The big benefit is that she’s getting to move around from the ball, to the rocking chair, and ultimately to wearing a hole in the floor of the unit. That alone has been a very nice change. Of course, there’s not much to see as there are only 6 beds in this unit.

And through all of this contractions are coming every 90 – 120 seconds and lasting a good minute each.

Big Ben … Parliament.

The contractions have started. They’re not long, and they’re kinda random, but they are happening. And he is going ballistic moving around in there. We’ve been calling him “Karate Chopper” or “KC” for short for a while now and he is in rare form tonight trying to pull an Alien on Danielle.

In other news, wow, what a different experience so far at Mt Auburn has been in comparison to Beth Israel. They are just so nice and chill here. It’s been excellent so far.

So yeah, this little dude is presently 10 days late. The midwives were planning on inducing on Saturday night – after Danielle’s Mom would have left to return to Cleveland. That also would have put us in the hospital on Monday, when I’m supposed to start my new gig. So, a few calls later and they told us to “come on down!”

So we called Uncle Michael, got Thomas bathed, and Danielle, her Mom Janice, and I hit the road.

And the entrance to Storrow Drive was closed. So we sat through 15 minutes of traffic to get to Memorial Drive and it was also closed. Win!

So well over an hour after we left our house on this 20 minute drive, we got here and got checked in.

Now it’s looking like she won’t need any inducement … Good times!

Danielle and I were at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and Thomas was still an inside baby.  A year ago right now, we didn’t know he was a he.  We didn’t know that the next 5.5 hours of Danielle’s life was going to be very, very unfun.  We didn’t know what not sleeping was or what a blessinga baby who sleeps is.  We didn’t know much.

Today his an outside baby who walks and kinda talks (he’s saying far more than I can understand).  Today he has this amazing personality, infectious laughter, and the most beautiful gap-toothed smile I could ever imagine.  Today he teaches us things everyday and we try hard to return the favor.

Today we know that nothing can be left anywhere in site that we don’t want Thomas to eat and then drop and then probably eat again.   Today we know that Cheerios and Goldfish are totally normal accesory for the young parent’s home (couch, floor).   Today we know that watching your son walking, then dropping to all fours, then eathing something off the floor is ok, be that item a Cheerio, a Goldfish, or a cat food kibble – all of which have been out of their delivery bag for an unknown quantity of time.   For the record, Thomas has consumed at least one of these off the floor during the past week.

When you’re about to be a parent, as we were on year ago today, you’re told things like “for the first time, you love more than yourself” and “you’ll finally understand all that your parents did/do for you” so often you’ll want to just tell the world “seriously, you can save your breath, we get it, we get it, we know, we know!”.

Well, I thought I knew.  And I think I did know intellectually.  But really, I was clueless.  I didn’t know how much it would suck to get up at 4am cause he’s screaming and you have condomates who didn’t sign up for this level of cacophony.  I didn’t knwo how looking at his tear soaked cheeks, feeling the rapid gasping  rise and fall of his little boney chest as it frustratingly tries to power those cries, and just holding him, just holding him would always cut through my selfish desire to be comfortably asleep.  I didn’t know that that was the love that people try to tell you about.  Loving this little beast, this blessing, the gift from God and realizing that you’re more wrapped up in him that you ever could even imagine being wrapped up in anything.  Last year we didn’t know that love.  Thanks to Thomas we now do.

Happy day before your birthday little buddy.  I love you more than you’ll ever understand.   Well, maybe not ever …