Cora Towa

Our littlest girl is 11 days old. Lou is adjusting well, although Opa/Oba/Ova (Marcia) left yesterday and before she arrived, Belle (my mom) was here for 11 days, so we'll see how things shake out without all the extra attention.

Louisa has a special voice and facial expression for her conversations with Cora that I hope to capture in a video sometime soon. It's sort of a puppy-eyed/I-have-pitty-on-you sort of thing as she greets Cora, saying "Baby" or "Towa."

Nate and I both separately observed our lack of connection with Cora in her early days. We were so used to having a child that would laugh or smile, say "a da" or "no", bring books or make pretend snacks/meals for us. Then along comes this beautiful child. We name her, but the connection to her name is still loose in our minds. And as we introduce her to our friends and family, we feel that we hardly even know her ourselves. It was and still is an interesting process of bonding and at first I think we both felt guilty. But discovering that we both felt this way helped us realize that it must be very normal. And of course, the bonding has continued and we (already) love her more than we can comprehend...even at 1 o'clock in the morning.

Four : One

The Bosscher family has a new girl-to-guy ratio (yes, this count includes our female dog) and Nate might need some extra support for a while. No, actually, I think it's a good home/work balance since a large majority of his co-workers are men.

Cora was born yesterday, April 11, at 10:01 am! She and I are doing very well. Nate is changing poopy diaper #6 right now and then Cora is ready for her next meal, so this post will be short, but wanted to just share the news and some pictures in case you aren't a Facebook fan.

Thanks for your thoughts, prayers and love! I'm so relieved she finally came to meet us.

When Are You Due?

It really is sweet and I actually don't mind answering this question these days, but sometimes I feel like saying, "Saturday. When are you due?" Those who dare to guess insist that I'm having a boy, but during most of my pregnancy, my gut feeling has been another girl. Of course, we'll be thrilled with either.

I realized sometime this week that I have developed much more precise expectations about this baby's arrival than I had with Louisa. With Lou, everyone said things like, "first babies are ALWAYS late," so I mentally delayed her birthday until May 5 or so. Knowing that only 14% of labors begin with the "release of membranes," as hypnobirthing puts it, I assumed mine wouldn't break. But now, I definitely have expectations that this baby will be born around Sunday morning (1 day late) and that it will all kick off early tomorrow morning with a mini-flood. Logically, this is all very silly, because I know every pregnancy is different, so I think I'm working through this on our blog to help shake my expectations. This will help me to just enjoy these days with very little on the calendar and my mom visiting from Wisconsin/D.C.

Yesterday we went for a walk in the morning to my favorite cloth diapering store before joining Nate at work for lunch. The ladies then came home to nap/rest before an outing to Trader Joe's. In the evening, Lou hung out with Belle - a.k.a, A-Da - while Nate and I walked downtown Campbell for dinner and gelato. It was wonderful to be out together and we even nailed down our baby names....well sort of. We actually introduced another variation of our favorite girl name but we did finally settle on a middle name to complement Peter as a first name. And all along, very sporadic contractions that would rate somewhere between a Braxton Hicks and a real, uncomfortable one.

Today we have no solid plans, but could end up checking out a bike trailer at REI (before our member coupon expires on Sunday!), buying more burp rag supplies (flannel and terry-cloth), and picking some herbs or flowers for two empty pots on our back porch. I'm thinking spicy eggplant parmesan for dinner tonight!