My Jenn-eration

In one of the most famous moments of my favorite movie, It’s A Wonderful Life, George Bailey’s brother, Harry Bailey the war hero, bursts into his house, surprising his brother in his moment of need. George is stunned as Bert the cop proclaims, “Fool flew all the way up here in a blizzard!” I am thinking about this silly little exchange as I look at the two feet of snow on the ground and check my phone, obsessively watching the weather channel. We have hardly dug out of the last storm and more snow is rapidly approaching. Caught in the crosshairs of this winter nightmare is my oldest sister, who is trying to fly across the country with her entire family to meet my new baby. Damn fool is trying to fly all the way up here in a blizzard. Her plane has mechanical trouble and is delayed and for several hours they are stuck on the tarmac. They arrive, jet lagged, in the middle of the night at JFK. Early the next day they wake up, hastily pack up again and drive 2 hours north to find

Hope is 4 weeks old today. 4 weeks. That seems so hard to believe. In my mind we’ve only just come home from the hospital but really we’re already one month in. Because I am too tired and fried to write more thoughtfully, here are some brief snippets about what I’ve learned so far: Eating chocolate will not make the baby stop crying. So I really need to stop eating chocolate every time she cries. That sleep deprivation and waking up every 2 hours does not get any easier the third time around. That the community of family and friends that we are fortunate to be surrounded by are filled with far more love, kindness and generosity than we will ever be able to repay. That all of my babies are born inexplicably nocturnal. That mother in laws can be awesome. Even when the kids are crabby because she’s helping and she’s not their mommy and even when I’m crabby because she’s helping and she’s not my mommy, she just shows up. And folds our laundry. And cooks us dinner. Eve

We brought Hope home with us on Saturday. In many ways the day was far from perfect. The kids, who have been remarkably healthy all winter, managed to catch super germs during the exact window of time I was scheduled to give birth. They were a bit tired and cranky and coughing and sniffling. They wanted to hold their new sister and I wanted to be all casual new mom super chic chill about the whole thing, but then I would look at their hacking sickly faces and scream “NO!” and they would run fleeing to the other side of the room. Their longing to want to be close to their new sister was touching, if not impractical. I, naturally, have caught their super germ. So in addition to sporting the fun post c section glow of having been cut in half, put back together, and still looking approximately 7 months pregnant, I also have a nasty cold. I am tripping on all sorts of weird post-surgery meds and cold medicine and just general newborn lack of sleep which, when you combine the three make