4 days old

today hiba is 4 days old. i think that she is the best baby in the entire world. i guess most new moms probably think that, but i'm pretty sure that i'm right about her.

the last few days have been wonderful. i stayed overnight in the hospital for two nights, which was a good slow start, but i am so glad to be home now. i've been getting plenty of sleep between kathy's help (jason's mom) and hiba's wonderfulness. hiba is so adorable and just sleeps and eats and makes really cute faces. she is not a fan of getting changed, but even then she is easily calmed down and goes back to being pretty chilled out.

hiba's name is an arabic name that means "gift from God". there is a girl who lives at the house of hope who she is named after. i have told big hiba that our baby would have the same name as her and she's very excited. we are going tomorrow to see the kids and people at the house of hope, so i am sure big hiba will be very excited to meet little hiba. michelle is my best friend's middle name. we decided a while ago that we would give our first daughters each other's middle names. she had a girl in november who has my middle name. so that's where her name comes from.

we (me, kathy, and hiba) ventured out of the house yesterday afternoon to visit jason while he was working at the climbing tower. hiba was not so impressed with her first outing - she slept through the entire thing. we got a few dirty looks and "haram"s (which literally means "forbidden", but is used in everyday speech to refer to anything that is bad or people disagree with) because she is so little and out of the house. i'm pretty sure that people here don't take their babies out of the house before they are about a month old, but they definitely wait more than three days. so we were definitely going against cultural norms. luckily, we all survived.

so, life is going and we are loving it. it's still very surreal that we have a child, but it's wonderful.

And so it goes

I am sitting on my sofa as I type this blog. My parents in the next room resting from last night (none of us slept much) and my beautiful daughter in my arms. She is sleeping, which is apparently in her top five favorite activities along with eating, burping, spitting up, and waste elimination. I assume that none of you are all that interested in my words, and you would rather see pictures, so here are a few.

I forgot Hiba's 6th favorite pastime, sticking her tongue out at everything she sees.

Momma, right after we got home with Hiba for the first time.

All three of us together. Hiba's not really down with the whole picture thing yet.

This was in the hospital. She is trying to nurse my finger.

So, we are now parents. I am trying to start Hiba off on the right foot by watching some Spurs highlights and listening to good music (Bob Dylan is playing right now). So far she is not impressed, but I guess we'll have plenty of time to get her pointed in the right direction.