Last night Nana and Poppy brought Emily and Abby up to meet their new sister. Abby was very interested in taking care of the baby, but Emily could really care less. She was more interested in jumping on the bed.

You can tell Isabelle has her days and nights mixed up. She’s doing a lot of sleeping during the day and then she’s up looking around at night. Last night I did a lot of walking around to comfort her while Jennifer tried to get some sleep. We had a horrible night last night, but not because of Isabelle. The walls in the hospital were very thin and between the new parents next door with the baby that cried every fifteen minutes and the guy on the other side of us that was snoring, we got no sleep. Isabelle was great. Our neighbors were horrible.

We kept insisting to the nurses and doctors that we were leaving today. With Emily we were in the hospital for four days and with Isabelle, it was only one day. Almost exactly 24 hours since she was born and we were headed home.

Meanwhile at home Nana and Poppy have been taking care of Abby and Emily. They went to the store and bought a Slip and Slide. They had fun getting all wet in the back yard. They’ve been doing a lot of swinging on the new play gym as well. Today we decided to switch bicycles between the girls. Emily’s legs have been too small to reach the tricycle’s pedals, so Abby took Emily’s big tricycle and Emily started using Abby’s bike. Emily took to the bike like a fish to water. She was pedaling down the street like a pro. The only problem was that she didn’t like wearing her bicycle helmet.

Five days and counting. Jennifer is going to be induced on Monday, if she doesn’t go into labor before then. I can’t believe it’s already here. My parents are flying in Sunday to help us out with Abby and Emily while we are at the hospital. This week has gone by fast and Monday will be here before I know it.

It’s been a pretty busy week. On Thursday, Jennifer took the girls to the beach in order to get their picture taken by a photographer friend of ours. She gave us the pictures digitally, so Jennifer will be putting them up on dotPhoto or one of the other picture sites so that anyone who wants one can order a copy.

On Friday, the play gym that we ordered arrived and they started to install it. They ran into a snag while installing it: our back yard isn’t level and they had to use brink pavers to set part of this up. We weren’t comfortable with that, so we are gong to get that part of the yard leveled and they are going to come back and set the play gym back into the leveled area. So, even though it’s put together in today’s picture, there’s more work to be done.

The last two days Abby has been going to gymnastics in order to get her out of the house. She’s been really liking it and she’s been telling me a lot about her exploits on the “high bar”. She told me today that a clown came and painted their faces.

We’ve had great success on the Emily potty training front. She’s been dry for two days now. She gets up in the morning and goes right to the potty and tinkles. She now will tell us that she needs to “go poop on the potty” and runs off into the bathroom. I’m pretty impressed that she’s caught on so fast. Hopefully we won’t have a relapses once the new baby arrives.