Avril Arrives!

On Tuesday, February 24, 2009 Avril Carmel Yarger entered the world at 5:36pm. The 8 pound 3 ounce baby is a brunette and has dark, dark, big eyes. The eyes are now blue, but she remains a brunette. The three of us stayed in the hospital until late afternoon Thursday. She is now eight days old and a handful for us, but we are loving every minute (except maybe the late night and early morning ones). So far she has been a good baby and now is only waking up two or three times a night. She is always hungry and loves her mom's chest. Though this baby is a major blessing, we think we are going to be waiting awhile until the next one for sure.

Despite the evidence to the contrary, she has ten toes. I made sure I counted after seeing these footprints. You'll notice the doctor is Dr. Firth. He did an amazing job delivering Avril after only conducting two prenatal visits towards the end of the pregnancy becuase we came back from California really close to the due date. The delivery was anything but routine, but he insured we came home with a healthy baby.


Here is Alicia, Jared and I in the delivery room around three or four hours of labor. Alicia was super excited to not be pregnant anymore.


Avril's great grandparents stopped by to see the mom-to-be just before she gave birth.

I know this cry very well by now...

This is Avril just after the Apgar test and before she left the delivery room. I know babies can't see very well at all when they are born, but she is totally scoping me out to see if I'll be a good dad.

Another 5 minute old picture of the baby...

And this is the first time Avril got to look at her mommy and the first time mommy got to see baby Avril. However, mommy was pretty drugged at this point so we are hoping Avril didn't get a bad first impression.

Here is Avril's proud grandmother. She now has two grandchildren and couldn't be happier with them.

The smiling Uncle Chubbs, daddy, and Grandpa Bryan pose for the camera in the recovery room.

Avril started to tell grandma to take the picture of her good side, but fell asleep in mid-sentence and decided to wave.

We're a family now!

She was the most stylish eskimo in the whole hospital. This is Avril in her carrier all ready to go home. It was snowing outside so we bundled her up in style.

This sign was displayed on a bridge by our house. It was put together by our good friends the Murdocks.

Amy (whose two-year-old son, Taggart, is now dating our daughter) is shown teaching Alicia how to use the breast pump. However, we later found out that Avril eats so much that the breast pump isn't that necessary most of the time. Taggart is going to have to make a lot of money to support Avril's eating habits. We are really pulling for his train engineering career to work out.

Avril just got to meet her grandma Carme. She was overwhelmed with tears of joy.

Here she is again pretty in pink.

This is definitely one of my favorites. She is pretty good-looking if I do say so myself.

Still cute even though she wasn't the happiest girl at this point.

And she is checking out her fingers and making sure she has ten and that they all have good nails.

Amelia Bedelia is Avril's favorite book. She has heard it two and a half times so far. The reason for the half is she decided she wanted to eat instead of read.

Alicia put this together with some shots she took on her phone. Mommy is quite the creative cat!

Avril was overcome with enthusiasm when we were watching American Idol :-)

P.S. Jesse (me) was the winner of the baby guessing contest. I guessed that Avril would arrive on the 24th of February. Alicia has to pay up now! Thank you all for participating. I think Erka was the next closest with Feb. 23rd as her guess. Congrats to me!