New babies!

Yea! Our friends Jenny and Chris and Mark and Jill had new babies in the last two weeks. The gender of both babies was kept a surprise and they both ended up with baby boys. (Of our Order Fusion friends who have babies born within the last 18 months, only Sandy and Shannon have a girl, the others all have boys. We expect little Audrey will be in charge when we have get-togethers.)

Jenny and Chris had Oliver on July 11th. Once they knew they were going to to be late (due date was 7/4) I think they were hoping Vladamir (Oliver's per-birth code name) would arrive on 7/7/07 (they were married on 2/2/02). But 7/11/07 is a pretty good birth date, too. Maybe they can try for a little sibling to arrive on 8/8/08 or 9/9/09..

Oliver was born a healthy 7 lbs 9.5 oz and 21" long. We got to see little Ollie on Sunday, but didn't take our own pictures, so I am reprinting (without permission - hope you guys don't mind!) this one from Chris's e-mail. Mom and dad are doing great and seem to be adjusting well to their new life. Jen's mom is still in town helping out, so I'm sure that makes a big difference, too. She seemed to have a magic touch with baby Oliver.

Mark and Jill had baby Grant (code-named Peanut) two days after Oliver was born on Friday the 13th. He was a whopping 9 lbs 10 oz and 23" long. We got to see and hold Grant on Sunday, too. He slept during our entire visit, although they tell us that that isn't all he does.

Despite their lack of sleep, they also seem to be handling parenthood well. We didn't take any photos at their place, either, so I "borrowed" this photo from Mark's online photo album.

Although Aaron is only 3 months old, it seemed like it had been ages since I had held a newborn. I thought I would feel experienced at it, but when I held little Grant, he seemed so tiny and fragile, I realized that I had very quickly acclimated to Aaron's growing size. It almost seemed hard to believe that Aaron was ever that tiny (and since Grant had a pound on Aaron at birth, I know Aaron was even smaller at one point).

We are so excited about these new additions to the Order Fusion family! We are going to have some fun gatherings ahead of us.

All these new babies inspired me to put Aaron's birth pictures online. I didn't want to put them all on his blog and I didn't have a Picasa account at the time to post them to. The pictures from the c-section were taken by my anesthesiologist. If you are really squeamish, you might want to skip these, but I don't think they are too bad. The set also includes a few photos from the recovery room. If you are interested, here they are.