Welcome Baby Girl!

We let them have 4 days to themselves before we descended on Sweetcakes and Sweetcupcake to welcome the little girl into the world. Yesterday we headed over to pay our welcome and congratulations. Our arms were full with meals for the new family, but Sweetcakes had her arms full of something else. Don't let the above picture fool you, I literally jumped to my feet to capture an image of mother and child since Sweetcupcake spent the entire visit curled up in Thatboy's arms.



Sweetcakes arms were full of something equally as cute, but far less squirmy - baby laundry.

Sweetcakes is the first of my friends to have a baby girl. Mertile has a baby girl, but she had the baby back before we reconnected, so by the time I met little Number 2 she was already 8 months old! Sweetcupcake is my first real BABY girl. Thatboy was impressed by how tiny her little 5 day old body was. "That's nothing" Sweetcakes informed us - "last week at this time she was IN MY BODY."

As much as Thatboy and I aren't ready to have any babies of our own yet, I really LOVE visiting my new mother friends - the earlier the better. It's so crystal clear how much becoming a parent changes a person - and not just the fatigue. Sweetcakes and her husband actually got 8 hours of sleep the night before we showed up. There's just a sense of serenity and calm that surrounds new parents. More of a glow than any pregnant woman has. And it's so fun to watch Mr. Sweetcakes playing with his baby daughter and telling us the games they already share. We discussed how lucky Sweetcakes is to have him - he is just so helpful! She told me sometimes she'll go downstairs to wash a bottle and find all the bottles are already washed!

It's always hard for me to leave a friend's house - I love my friends, but we knew we didn't want to intrude too much on their downtime. Sweetcupcake spends most of the day sleeping, which allows Sweetcakes to get a lot done during the day. In fact - Sweetcakes and her husband laughed that Sweetcupcake awoke while we were there. "My parents have been here a number of times and they've NEVER seen her with her eyes open!"

And the mound of food we brought over for the Sweet family - I got bored and started playing with the different features of my camera/camera phone. So these will be very "artsy" pics - but otherwise it's just the same plate of similar type foods which gets old fast.

White Chicken Chili

Veggie Enchiladas

Tropical Enchiladas

Shepherd's Pie

I LOVE this setting on my camera - "fun colors". I use it to take pictures of Thatmom too. She looks good in blue. This is actually a veggie casserole, and the flying saucers are tomatoes.

Black Bean Enchilada Casserole