Our baby girl is out of the womb and has made her presence known in the world! 

Kora Rose (whom we mostly call “Kora” or sometimes “Rosie,” due to her rosy cheeks and lips…or “Popcorn” due to her startling reflexes…or “Almond” due to her almond eyes….you get the picture…) was born on July 15, 2015 at 3:19 p.m. She was 21 inches long and 7 pounds 12 oz.  When the doctor put her on top of me she was covered in all kinds of disgusting muck and I laughed and cried and thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Her daddy, who never cries, was also choked up as he cut the umbilical cord.

It’s amazing how instantly, how fiercely you can love a tiny new person who belongs to you. She has changed everything and yet loving her and having her feels completely normal and right, like it was completely natural for her to fit into our home. My mind can’t wrap around it still-she was inside me and now she’s out here and we can see the person that she is and always was. We wonder “Who will she be, one day?”

Right now she is a very brand-new human, so we are just at the beginning of learning about her.

Here are some things we know so far:

She looks a little bit different every day, like pieces of different family members or-sometimes-just like her completely unique person. Most days, she seems to have my eyes and Dane’s mouth and lots of crazy dark brown hair.  She seemed to know right away who her mommy and daddy were, and it’s sweet to hold her and see how easily she trusts that she will be loved and comforted. When she’s hungry, her little lizard tongue sticks straight out and she makes adorable, inquisitive faces. If she’s hungry for more than about 30 seconds she “man-screams”. When she’s been fully fed, she gets deliciously floppy and snuggly. She has delicate features that make her look kind of like a fairy baby, but she also makes some expressions that are less-than-flattering and crack us up….my favorite is probably “suspicious baby,” as pictured below:

She loves music and loves to “dance,” being held and swayed as one of us waltzes her around the room.  It calms her down and she seems to have a fascination with the rhythms.  I wonder if she’ll be a dancer or a musician. She seems to like oldies, like her parents do, and calms right down to the tunes of Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra.

She also loves Latin rhythms and all my Zumba songs. Imagine that. 😉

As far as I’m concerned, I had a pretty darn easy labor and delivery followed by not-so-easy-injuries-from-stuff-that-happens-during-delivery.  It was really good to have Mama G (Dane’s mom)  here to help us out for the first week and a half we were at home. She’s seriously amazing. Then my BNFFL (best nerd friend for life and Kora’s “fairy godmother”) came to visit us for a couple of days. So with all that I’m only on Day 2 of alone-with-baby-during-the-day. I’m feeling pretty good physically at this point and am happy to be blogging right now with this precious girl in my lap.  Pretty soon I’ll have to figure out how to balance this with real life, but right now I’m just learning about being a Human Feeder, wearing real-people clothes again and keeping my house relatively (relatively speaking)….tidy. Tidy-ish.

All of this to say that, “Hey, she’s here! Here’s what’s up.”

Basically, we are in love with this tiny girl.