Fostering: the baby has landed!

We have a baby. She's a month old. She arrived at 8 p.m. on Thursday, four hours after we found out we were getting her, and will be here until at least Thursday, when there's some sort of court date, and at which point we'll probably find out if she's leaving soon or will be here a while.

She is two weeks younger than we initially said we'd take, but I'll work from home and stuff for the next two weeks, until she's old enough to go to daycare. Because we weren't expecting to take a baby so young, most of the clothes we have are too big for her. And because she's extra small - she weighs 7 pounds, 10 ounces - even the limited amount of zero-to-three-month stuff we happened to have is huge on her. Thankfully, we are friends with an extended family with lots of small kids, so I activated the phone tree and will have warm newborn-sized clothes pouring in soon. In the meantime, we have enough for a few days, and also it's a great excuse to snuggle her a lot.

Things I have learned in thirty-eight hours of parenthood:

• Babies this young have no pattern. The first night, I was up with her for an hour and a half and Andy was up with her for an hour. Last night, she was up for half an hour around 2 a.m., then she slept until 7:30.
• Having a baby in your house means there will always be a million baby-related things laying around everywhere.
• You will always need to be doing a load of laundry.
• Baby formula is pretty disgusting and turns white things tan and also costs two million dollars.
• It is possible to love a baby with your whole heart immediately.

So, posting will probably be sort of light for the next little bit (till Thursday, at least). When she's sleeping, it seems more important to do laundry and take a shower and hang out with the dogs (who are confused by this new toy, to say the least) and stare mindlessly at the wall because I'm so tired. Thanks for understanding!