Stepha-Roo and Gwendolyn Too!: Stephanie meets Clementine

Fair warning: While this blog is usually all Stephanie all the time, I will take a few minutes to talk all about me AND introduce a new, and likely recurring, character...
New baby had been measuring very small towards the end of the pregnancy, and, while it may seem slightly counter-intuitive, this, among a couple of other reasons, landed me a date with an induction early this week. While I was concerned about the interventions that sometimes come with inductions, I was happy that I could easily plan for Stephanie's care and that I would be in the hospital for delivery, because I honestly wasn't sure we would make it when I was in labor the first time, and they say the second one is faster than the first. The plan for Steph was that Kevin would hang with her at the library and parks near the hospital until delivery seemed imminent, at which point Mary would meet them at the hospital and Kevin could join me. In the meantime, I had our doula with me, and I felt like that properly supplied my need for a support system during labor. Well, as should have been expected, things progressed rapidly and the doula took the initiative to change our plans, and had Mary go immediately to the library and trade cars with Kevin to send him directly to the hospital. Rightly so, as baby was born within 5 minutes of his arrival. While I refuse to acknowledge the term "easy" to describe my labors with both kids, as there is nothing easy about going from zero to baby in less than two hours (my doctor, on the other hand, described it as frightening, which I think is a good description). I looked a little worse for the wear in photos immediately after, but appear nicely recovered in photos several hours later.
Mary gave us a few hours to recover and then brought Stephanie to the hospital to meet our newest character in the family, Gwendolyn, weighing in only one ounce more than Stephanie (and I pulled some pics from the archive for comparison purposes). My research about introducing a new baby said that I should not be holding new baby upon seeing my older child, because she would mostly only want to see me and might rush to hug me. This was not at all true for us. She wasn't all that excited to see me... after all, we had been apart for less time than a normal daycare day, and she had an awesome morning with Kevin and awesome afternoon with Mary. Nor was she terribly interested in the baby. She did look at her, ask to see her hands and feet, and then requested that Mary play Curious George on her phone. When she came back to visit that night, she was actually very excited to see her sister. She wanted to hold her, and at one point demanded to Kevin, "Move Clementine closer so that I can see her". We assured her that "Clementine" could be her special sister name, but we were fairly committed to some version of Gwen. By far, my favorite moment was when Stephanie asked to take a picture of her family, and got several good shots of Kevin, Gwen, me and "Gwen's big brother" Buzzy Bee.
We are all home now, and I enjoyed my quiet recovery in the hospital getting to know Gwen, and Kevin enjoyed his stint as a stay at home Dad. Stephanie is doing great with her sister. She wants to show her things and let her join in the games. Gwen is at least as interested and good at games as Buzzy Bee!