Mary Elizabeth's Due Date

Yesterday (11/13) was Mary Elizabeth's due date (at best we can tell) She is now 6 lbs exactly and 18 3/4" long. Yesterday had also been one month since we brought her home. I love her so much. SO MUCH. I love the way she gets big eyes when the room is dark, the way she smells, the way her hair curls up like she has a new perm after a bath, the way she "roots" around on my chest when she is hungry and ends up leaving wet marks all over my shirt, the way she opens her eyes in little slits to see who is there before she actually opens them all the way up, the way she screams bloody murder when she is getting a bath but can turn off the waterworks immediately when she hits the warm, fuzzy towel. I love to see my husband holding her. I love seeing my other daughter holding her. I love to see Isaac and Luke kiss the top of her head. I love to see her sucking her thumb (which is quite hysterical), how she has just noticed that she has fingers on her hands and she keeps smacking herself in the face as she tries to bring them towards her, how she loves to snuggle on my chest. I am a blessed woman indeed.

Saturday...Coming Home

We spent Friday night working around the house as we knew that Jonathan, Anna and I would be heading back to Jackson on Saturday morning. Since we still didn't have test results, we assumed it would be Monday before we would be coming home so we wanted to get the house picked up. I got the BEST night's sleep....seriously, I slept so freaking good. Little did I know it would be my last great nights sleep for a while (but I wouldn't change that for anything!)

Saturday morning we got up, met Grandmother (J's mom) to hand off the boys and headed towards Jackson. We were hoping to be there in time for the lunch time feeding. About an hour outside Jackson my cell phone rang and I about died when it was Ashley calling from the NICU. Evidently the doctor had called to the lab directly and found out that all of Mary Elizabeth's tests were normal and we could go home THAT DAY! We were shocked!! We immediately called both sets of parents, my sister and Angie....we just couldn't believe that we were actually coming home THAT DAY! We got to the hospital, did our discharge training, signed the adoption papers from Bethany in Memphis and we were ready to go home. This is our nurse Ashley who was WONDERFUL and so helpful in this process:


I just love this picture of Mary Elizabeth really checking her car seat out:

It was finally time to come home! She did great on her long ride home!

We're Home!!

Praise the Lord...isn't he GREAT!!! We got home late Saturday night with our new daughter, Mary Elizabeth Freeman. I am going to be doing a ton of posts tonight so stay tuned! Sorry it has taken so long to do this, but getting adjusted to a preemie in the house has become a full time job. She is so sweet and I love seeing people's reaction to her....she is such a blessing and I can't begin to tell you how happy I am...such joy...true joy!

It is GREAT having a newborn without having all the side effects of childbirth. I love that I don't have to fool with breastfeeding, etc. and yet trust me, we are still very sleep deprived already.

So, I'm sure you want pics so I will end the post so I can start editing the 200 pics on the digital camera and tell you everything that has happened since Thursday!