Brand New Nephew

These have been very intense days. On Thursday we drove to Maryland for 3 hours, on Friday night we came back home, then yesterday we drove again 2h30 each way to go to a wedding in Central Pennsylvania - it was lots of fun, though.

As for the cutest nephew on earth, I missed his birth for only 20 minutes! We encountered quite a bit of traffic on our way to D.C. and the trip took 30 minutes more than it usually does. When we got to my brother-in-law's house, he had just called my mother-in-law to say that the doctor had just arrived and my SIL was going to begin pushing. My MIL, my nephew and I got in the car immediately (hubby stayed behind with the boys, who would not be allowed in the hospital) and my MIL, who was present at my older nephew's birth (he's only 21 months old now) said - oh, we'll get there on time, but I thought that we wouldn't, since I pushed for 1h15m for my first, but only 3 pushes for the second - exactly what happened with my SIL. There was a lot of traffic on the way to the hospital as well, and when we called them to say we were stuck in traffic we could hear the baby crying in the background - he had just been born!!

He hadn't been swaddled yet when we got there, and we filmed and took pictures. It was exhilarating! We got to stay there only for an hour because my MIL had to go to the airport to fly back home (in the end, she got there only 1h10min before the flight, which she missed, and - poor thing - she had to spend the night in the airport to go to check-in at 4 am, since the lines are so incredbly long at Dulles). My BIL put his son to bed and left for the hospital, and we were very anxious hoping he wouldn't cry during the night - he did, though, and my husband had to sleep with him in my BIL's bed. The next morning my SIL's parents arrived and she got to come home from the hospital that evening.

We decided to come back home because we didn't want them to have a crowded house and also to overstay our welcome. In these 10 years here we have absorbed a few good traits from the Americans (we have Americanized in certain issues, if you will) and this is one of them -- learning to give family and friends more privacy and space, something Brazilians are generally not too good at. We were there to help while we were needed -- on Friday, for example, it was key that my nephew had his cousins to play with so he was content while his dad went out grocery shopping and his mom was still in the hospital -- but then we knew it wouldn't be useful at all to spend the day there on Saturday and we came back home.

All right, last but not least, some pictures for you! Oh, and I almost forgot, he was a big baby - 8lbs 12.3 oz or 3,990kg! (I don't know his length) Much much heavier than his 5lbs 13oz. oldest cousin, and the 6.4lbs of his brother and younger cousin. He also had a head full of black hair - I adore babies with hair (mine were bald for most of their first year). I can't wait to go there to see and hold him again.