For those of you who aren’t regular visitors to this site, feel free to read what I wrote on the day Emma was born, and my much longer post that I wrote the following evening.

I have finally gotten around to putting the pictures of Emma up on this site.  The pictures are divided into two sets: pictures from our arrival at the hospital up until the day Emma was born, and pictures from her first week.  The first set covers most of the pictures that were on the Flickr page, as well as a few new ones.  The other set covers pictures since the day she was born.  There are a few pictures in here that were on Flickr before, but most of them are brand new to most of you.  You’ll see in the pictures that her eye has improved quite a bit, which really shows in the latest pictures.  (Like this one, taken yesterday.)

Stephanie was released from the hospital last Tuesday, and her mother stayed with us all week to help out.  Because she was here to help out, I went back to work on Wednesday, and I’m using vacation days most of this week.  I’m telling you this to set up a little anecdote.

On Wednesday (which was also the third anniversary of our wedding, by the way) Stephanie and her mom took Emma to the doctor’s office for her first checkup.  After hearing from the doctor that all is well, she decided to surprise me at my office with a “picnic” lunch.  When she got there she asked the security guard to call me and tell me I had a package at the front desk.  Well he called and told me, and I started to head down there.  Then I started thinking—why in the world would he call me?  Normally they just send an e-mail when a package arrives.  So in the minute it takes me to walk to the front desk, the main thought that went through my head was this: “Is this what they do when they fire someone??”  Like I would get down there to find security guards who would escort me out of the building, then they’d send someone else up to get my stuff.  My other thought was that the police were taking me into custody for some kind of violent crime for which I was being falsely accused (something kind of like this story).  Fortunately, when I got there and asked for my package, he said “it’s right there” and then Stephanie came out from around the corner.  Well, I was happy to know that I wasn’t being fired or arrested, so we went and had our picnic in the break room near my desk (a picture of said picnic is up on the second photo set).

I guess that’s all the news I’ve got to share today.  Emma gets to meet her Aunt Mandy later this week, and I’m sure she is excited.