Welcome

Quinn Emerson MacGillivray

Born July 10, 2011

12:09pm

6 pounds 14 ounces

19 1/2 inches

Remember the paper chain from last post? It haunts me.

How do you explain to your boys when you call them from the hospital that even though there are still 17 links left, their baby sister is coming that day. It was very confusing for them. And a huge surprise for us. Here's how it all went down...

The Saturday before Quinn arrived could not have been any more perfect. Well, except that we greeted the day with 113 degrees of blazing heat. I have decided that being that pregnant in Arizona in July is super un-cool. I won't really try to do that ever again. Regardless, we packed the boys up and headed to see Cars 2. We had some fun in the Disney Store afterwards where we felt the need to spoil our boys; something we never do just for the heck of it. Then we headed around town to do some back to school shopping. Our great friends who were out of town offered us their pool (thank goodness), so we spent the rest of the day swimming and relaxing. Austin made a wonderful barbeque dinner and the boys were so wiped out they were asleep in a flash. Austin and I stayed up late preparing for our Sunday responsibilities and I remember thinking how glad I was that we had such a wonderful day as a family a four. Because soon, all that was going to change. Little did I know it would be that night; 17 days earlier than expected.

You know how they say that change in crazy weather and the barometric pressure sends preggos like me into labor? Well, it's totally true. I fell asleep that night to a classic Arizona July monsoon.

I woke up at 12:45 am to my water breaking. Yup, I'm three for three in that department. I don't mind...as long as I'm at home when it happens. For the record, I'm three for three there too.

We weren't packed. I had no bag ready. Other than that, I was 100% ready. I was excited and nervous and so anxious to see my little lady. I kissed me two little children for the last time before welcoming another, and we headed to the hospital.

For the most part, the hospital was pretty uneventful. Austin was pretty ticked that our room wasn't equipped with ESPN and he was missing the Women's World Cup Soccer game. You'll never know how boring it is to watch 120 minutes of soccer on live stream Internet with sentence updates popping up every 10 minutes. Thankfully we (as in the USA soccer team) got the win just before the baby was born and Austin playfully suggested Wambach for a middle name. I didn't think it was funny.

The delivery went flawlessly and in less than 10 minutes after kicking out all our visitors I was holding the newest member of our family. Nothing explains the moment where you hold your baby for the first time. She was perfect. She is perfect. She is beautiful. And yes, she is all ours. Can you believe that dark hair?! Not the blonde piggy tails I was imagining, but by far the cutest thing I've ever seen. We're obsessed with her. All of us.

I'm so beyond grateful for our family of five.