It's A Person!

Very early on the morning of Saturday, April 13th, Mike and I got ourselves a new niece!  Presenting:
Ila!

I don't generally care much for baby pictures, but I know other people do, so there you go.  Enjoy.

On the preceding Friday night, Mike and I met up with friends Stephan and Arrelaine at 303 Distillery in Boulder to drink some flavored whiskey and vodka.  Jeff also came up from Golden to join us, but at about 10:00 he got a phone call and immediately had to leave.  A half hour after that, Mike got a phone call informing him that we might need to come down to the Lutheran hospital in Wheat Ridge and pick up Liv so that she could spend the night at our house.  So at 11:30pm we found ourselves running around lost in a dark hospital since we (of course) parked at the exact wrong end of the building.  But eventually we collected Liv, transferred her car seat to the Camry, picked up some mac n cheese and ice cream sandwiches on the way home, and got her all snugged up on the couch with every blanket and pillow we had.  Mike put on a Disney movie, Ellie curled up at Liv's feet, and we all fell asleep.

Suddenly, at 2:30am I was woken up first by the dogs barking at something nothing, then by Liv's heartbreaking crying and calling for Mommy.  The poor thing was just standing there in her nightgown snuffling away, and didn't want to be comforted, so I just did all that I could think to do, which was get a kids' book from the den and start reading to her.  She eventually stopped wailing and sat down on the windowsill to listen to the story; then she sat down on the floor; then she slowly melted down the rest of the way onto the floor and went back to sleep.  I didn't want to wake her up, so I just put a blanket over her and turned off the lamp.
At 4:30am the dogs started barking at something nothing again, so Mike picked up Liv and put her in the middle of our bed, and we closed the dogs in the bedroom with us so they would quit freaking out, and we all went back to sleep until 7:00am.  I checked my phone when I woke up and saw that Ila had been born at 5:45 that morning, and then Jeff sent a message saying that we could bring Liv back home around 9.  Until then, Mike watched TV with Liv on the couch, and we coaxed her to eat a little bit of fruit and a bite of ice cream sandwich (best aunt and uncle ever!).  Mike took Liv home at the appointed time, but I couldn't go because I had a softball game in Boulder.  And thus ended the night of crazy.
The best part of this whole debacle was that Mike and I were basically the fourth-string backup crisis team, after Lynnette (camping), Meg (in Vail), Tom and Peggy (in Ireland), and probably some other random person on the street who knows more about taking care of kids than we do.  I think we did okay though: Liv was returned with all of her limbs and (we hope) teeth, and if any permanent emotional damage was done it can probably be repaired with more ice cream sandwiches.