Welcome to DC, Baby Leon!

Leon's first blog post is, unsurprisingly, long overdue. He was born on the morning of April 23, weighing 7 lbs (3.2 kilos) [apparently they round 15.6 ounces up, which makes him seem a bit more robust!] and measuring 20 inches (51 cm):

This makes Leon about half a pound lighter than Dari at birth but the same length, which makes sense because Leon was born almost a week earlier than Dari. Leon also came out faster than Dari. Lucia started having contractions at about 4:30am, and was born just after 9am (4.5 hours later for the mathematically challenged). The total labor time with Dari was around 8 hours. In fact, we just BARELY made it to the hospital in time for Lucia to get an epidural after daddy was frantically driving around town to get Dari to daycare and return home to take mommy to the hospital. I literally broke the law about 5 different times, and it paid off - the doctor delayed Lucia's birth by a few minutes so they could JUST get the epidural in, and it took effect while the birth was in process. Having done multiple 5 second 0-60 accelerations, having driven 60mph on a 30mph road, and having done a u-turn through an off- and on-ramp to avoid waiting at a red light at 40 mph, I took great offense this morning when the following occured:

We passed a Dodge Charger in the daycare parking garage to which Dari pointed and exclaimed, "That's a RACE CAR!" I asked him, "Daddy has a race car too, right?" He answered, "Noooo you doon't! You-you-you don't have your orange car." Ummmmm, listen honey-child, the S5 is just as fast as the orange car and can run circles around a dodge charger. Kids - they never appreciate anything!

Anyway, back to the labor story. Lucia dealt with the labor extremely well and was joking throughout... the nurses were literally laughing out loud and commented that they couldn't believe she could maintain a sense of humor in that situation. Leon popped out and was instantly alert, opening his eyes to look around and eating his first meal almost immediately. He was very cooperative in the hospital, eating, sleeping, going to the bathroom, etc. (actually there is no etc., that's basically all babies do) on a very normal schedule. This was a welcome relief since Dari had bigger problems eating, going to the bathroom, gaining weight, and so forth. While babies normally lose weight in the hospital (he left at 6.5 pounds), Leon was already back to 7 lbs, 2 ounces by his first doctor's visit and received excellent marks from the doctor, who decided to simply combine the first and second week appointments. Leon also had no jaundice issues, whereas Dari certainly did. As you can see from the picture with Leon's first hospital visitor below, he is much less an "ethnic baby" (our term for Dari's dark appearance for a couple of months):

Upon leaving the hospital, Leon greeted daddy with a fantastic gift - a huge puddle of pee all over my new shirt (I believe it was right after the picture below was taken... big mistake removing the protective blanket). But that's one thing GREAT about infants - they can basically pee and poop all over you and it's kind of like spilling water and bananas on yourself. The same doesn't hold true for normal adults, animals, or hobos.

Anyhow, we eventually made it to the car with baby intact and Leon had his first ride:

Leon enjoys living at home and is a pretty agreeable baby. He is very patient when mommy needs to spend extra time doing something else like feeding Dari or putting him to bed. The one thing he isn't a big fan of is diaper changes. My recollection is that Dari dealt with diaper changes a little bit better (in fact, at this age, I hardly remember Dari even opening his eyes or acknowledging the world in any way, but maybe I'm just repressing the memories). The unfortunate thing is that Leon came down with a cold, which we think he contracted from Dari. It's kind of scary and sad when a five-day old baby starts gurgling and gagging when they try to breathe, and you have to suction snot out of them every few minutes. Lucia has been a real trooper about it and so has Leon, and we think he's on the mend. Let me stop rambling and post some nice pictures that she took with our "nice" camera:

We also have our first family picture, courtesy of Mike and Margie. Unfortunately they took it with our consumer camera, which has a very dirty lens thanks to Dari "playing" with it, and hence weirdly my left ear appears to be a ghost. I assure you, the ear is intact and not partially residing in the afterlife:

Dari has been a great big brother to Leon so far. He smiles at him, tells us that he wants to see him, says that he loves him, recognizes that mommy and daddy love him, and gives him kisses. Still, Dari has not quite transitioned to recognizing baby Leon when imagining our family. He often lists mommy, daddy, and Dari when viewing pictures of animals or characters in books, but doesn't yet add Leon in on a regular basis. Also, every now and then Dari still gets upset or a little 2-year-old-crazy and begins the terror. Every now and then he gets a little dangerous with Leon or tries to climb into Leon's (supposedly sterile) crib. You can see in the second picture below that he may be about to body slam baby Leon. It's always good to be cautious!

Finally, the obligatory Richard Scarry book photo to measure baby's size has already begun with baby Leon. This will be our primary metric for comparing the two kids in appearance, size, and demeanor. We think he looks pretty similar to Dari (with less crazy hair and minus the jaundice) so far! Now get out there and mow the lawn, slacker!