She's HERE!!!!

First, my apologies to anyone with a bellsouth.net account.  For some reason, my email won't talk to them at all.  The emails aren't coming back to me, though.  So check your junk or spam folders, maybe?

Sparkie is here!!!!  My water broke at 4:30pm on Friday, and she was born just before 9am Saurday.  I'll put a labor story on the family website when I can get to it.  That address is the plus our last name with an "s" dot com.  But I'm not sure how long it will take me to get to that.  There were some minor complications, but the end result is just precious!  She's eating well and sleeping well.  Poodle and Toot are wonderful with her.  And I'm healing right on schedule.  Praise God for His mercies and His love and compassion for us!!!

Here are some pictures to share...





Taken just after birth and her initial cleanup and evaluation.

The ubiquitous shot from the warmer in the delivery room.  You can't see eye color from here, but her eyes are the steely blue color that so many babies are born with.  We're not sure if she'll end up with Jmk's beautiful blue eyes like the other two or not.

About to go home from the hospital.  Poodle picked out the dress, hat, and booties (which you can't see in the picture).  We were prepared for a larger baby, as you can see!  ha!

Just got home from the hospital.  This is the little hat that I knitted for her.

I'm attempting to give some perspective on how tiny she is.  She was 7lbs 5oz.  Seriously.  Both of the other two were over 8 lbs.  Shoot.  Tooter was 1oz short of 9lbs.  We barely know what to do with such a relatively small package.  She's absolutely tiny to us!

Oh, and this is her Uncle David who got a phone call on Friday afternoon and dropped everything to drive home to see her.
:-)

We have lots of grandparent pictures, many courtesy of Uncle Robert that are on Jmk's computer now.  I'll get those up eventually.  (Time is a bit restricted right now).

Poodle is loving her little sister!  She wants to hold her constantly, and has already proven to be a big help.  She has even burped her one time.  :-)

For some reason, I don't have a good picture of Toot with Sparkie yet.  There's one on Facebook that my brother took, though.  I'll have to remember to go link to it.

This, however, is pretty indicative of our new favorite babysitter right now.  www.pbskids.org.  Both the older kids are loving it!

And one last picture from today....  you have to see that dark hair.  It's killing us.  We understand that both of her grandfathers have dark hair.  She has an uncle with dark hair.  But we're used to putting out blondies around here!  Of course, there's nothing saying that she'll keep this hair.  She's just as likely to lose it and get blond hair as she is to keep these sable locks.  But, we'll see.  It's just so strange to us!



If we have not replied to an email or a phone call, just know that we're getting around to it.  We're just acclimating to the new environment and attempting to make a smooth transition.  Jmk is taking off work as much as he can this week, and we are simply taking things easy.  I've got some healing to do, and of course, we have to adjust to the interrupted sleeping schedule.

Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for your prayers.  We genuinely believe this little girl was prayed here, because of the challenges we encountered since the beginning of 2008.  God has been so good to us, and we are living proof of His grace (getting what we don't deserve) and mercy (not getting what we do deserve)!!!