Thankful

Since we walked into the hospital September 1 to be induced, we could not have more people to be thankful for. Because Miss Matilda was quite comfortable in her little mama pool and showed zero signs of exiting, a la our other children, we headed in for a jump start. (Apparently my body just has to be nudged into labor, 'cause one half of a pill the size of a , and we were in business.)

However, unlike the births of our bigger girls Lewis, we have bigger girls. Who go to school. In Virginia. Whose grandparents live not in Virginia. And things require a bit more finagling and generosity on the part of many, many people. September 1, which was the only available day on the hospital schedule for an induction inside of 10 days overdue (Labor Day ironically was not helping my situation), also happened to be O's first day of school. So mama was home to take the RequiredChildhoodPhoto and we all hopped in the swagger wagon to go to school. From the time O headed into her classroom, to when Kurt and I came home from the hospital, the girls had had

• a Naomi play date with a sweet school family
• from school pick up, dinner, a family-of-six-plus-our-girls outing to the School Blessing, sleepover, breakfast and ride to school by a dear church/school family
• a Naomi ride from O's school back to our 'hood by our faithful school carpool mama
• an all day play date with our lovely neighbors-down-the-street family
  
• another all day play date with another always generous neighborhood/church family
• a night in their own beds with yet another kindhearted neighborhood mama sleeping over
• and a Saturday morning breakfast and play day with the same mama's family, who also made a huge banner and walked them back to the house to welcome us home.

Never, ever have a more keenly felt the adage "It takes a village..." We are beyond fortunate to have such a wealth of community here in DC. We're talking three different sets of community - neighborhood, school and church - that all held hands together and cared for our children over the course of four days! Absolutely un-repayable and completely amazing. I don't know how to thank them. God had it all orchestrated in ways we couldn't plan or imagine. Like two mamas chatting over playground school pick up and making overnight childcare plans for us. Like my parents' pre-purchased plane tickets putting them here the night we got home. Like my child getting to bake cookies with friends. Like my children getting to have a sleepover on the first night of school. Seriously, I could go on and on.

So for now, I'll leave it at that. I could launch into the over half dozen meals that have been brought to our door or the stretch of hours our newest member is sleeping at a time, but as I recount the events that surrounded and enabled our hospital stay...they stand alone.

Least littlest Lewis
Growing out bangs, missing teeth, glasses, short little white against tan skin, I'm-a-school-girl socks...she's big.

1st grade = 1 flower
(I know, so did Kindergarten, but what are you going to do?)

After drop off at O's school. Yep, that's pregnant.

Big sister to be! She totally knew it was going to be a girl. Or maybe she was all about matching her brand new school shoes. Whichever.

24 hours later

plus make up (me, the baby is naturally rosy pink)

and home (two days old).

For our peeps not on Facebook, here's a link that reportedly works to see what I've uploaded photo album there!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=502815&id=577555093&l=0562335e14