Nous sommes arrives deux; nous partons trois...

Well, I must admit that I wouldn't mind being in Paris if/when I next deliver a child... The American Hospital was wonderful. Although I will probably do many things differently the next time concerning feeding schedules and such (live and learn with a newborn, right?!?!), the hospital facilities and staff were all very kind, helpful, and patient with my poor French (only the doctors and a few of the nurses spoke English). For the record, it is MUCH harder to think/speak in French at 3 am when you are a sleep-deprived new mom!!!

Anyway, the first few days were awesome: lots of staring at a precious, sleeping little boy. He had his first bath, and he did NOT like being cold:

But once dressed, he was much happier (and he likes my kisses, or so I tell myself :-):
He experienced his first swaddle (something I highly recommend - he doesn't like it while I'm swaddling him, but once he calms down it keeps him from waking himself up with his flailing):

He even had some awake time that second day. Although he may not be doing calculus yet (sorry, Gabby and Megan), he does seem to be pretty alert for being less than 48 hours old:
The next day he slept almost the whole time. I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture, but he was a little jaundiced, something that makes newborns even more sleepy than usual, so we got lots of cute sleepy pictures. I'll spare you the 45 others that look almost exactly the same. :-) Thanks, Tiff, for the fabulous blanket!
This was supposed to be our last day in the hospital, but his jaundice was still borderline and he had dropped too much weight to leave, so they kept us an extra day. Babies are only supposed to lose up to 10% of their body weight after birth, and Oliver had lost 11%. Thankfully, that's obviously not too far beyond normal, but it is still a scary thing to think that your child might be starving. His sleepiness due to jaundice probably had something to do with it because he didn't want to wake up to eat. Anyway, he looks very peaceful in this picture, but he actually was having a rough day. I think he finally was feeling hungry... I tried not to be a paranoid new mom, but it's so easy!
Finally, on Saturday, they released us to go home. We had arrived at the hospital Monday morning... Long stay. I'm thankful, though, for the help. To get to eat three full meals (and really good ones at that!), have a nice long shower, and sleep for several hour stretches at a time every day for the first 5 after a child is born... I would call that a success. But we were ready to go home, and I was (obviously!) ready for them to tell us that he was ok, so our release was welcome. He was SO cute in his carseat!!
He slept the whole way in the taxi, and I tried to commemorate his passing of the Eiffel Tower (which was showing out the window when I took this picture), but I couldn't back up enough in the back seat to include it in the shot... You'll just have to take my word for it.
Arriving home for the first time:
And waking up from his taxi-induced nap:
Life began changing drastically that evening, as we tried to figure out how to take care of this little one at home... But I'll fill you in on that more later. For now, know that I'm proud of myself for getting this posted, despite the fact that I intended to post this a full week ago... Oh, how your timelines change when an infant is around! ;-)