The story of the "Stump" and a preview of things to come....

Tonight, after celebrating the birth of three of our friends first child, Cory and I were reminiscing and going through the first pictures of Charlotte. We came across these two pictures and thought we should post the story behind them. We call the first picture the "Stump" and it is the first neurotic episode we had in raising Charlotte. To make a long story short, on the first day we were home from the hospital Charlotte screamed non-stop for about seven hours and we were not sure why. During this time, Cory noticed a foul odor emanating from Charlotte and discovered that it was the remnants of her umbilical cord. We spent the night calling friends, family and the doctor trying to figure out if this was normal. Little did we know that Charlotte was not getting enough to eat (not a problem these days) and when the visiting nurse came the next day we found out that she had lost a pound from her birth weight. Thankfully the visiting nurse reassured us that the odor from the stump was normal. In a funny twist at some point when we were changing Charlotte later that day the stump fell off and to this day we don't know where it is. Luckily though, after this the stench was gone and we were so happy.

The second photo is a favorite of ours and is a picture of the three of us just before we left the hospital. As you can see from Charlotte's expression in the photo, this picture foreshadowed what we were getting into for the next few months. My best friend Sarah (or Dr. Cameron as we called her at the beginning since Cory always joked that she acted like she knew everything) later said that she knew from this picture that Charlotte was going to be a high-maintenance baby. Although as I have noted we had a challenging first few months we would do it all over again now that we have this amazing little person who is so curious and has such a fun personality already.