Britton's Gotcha Day!

Today, we are celebrating Britton's 1st Gotcha Day! It is our celebration of the day we brought him home from the hospital. After a looonnng 5 1/2 weeks, we brought our boy home. It was a much-anticipated event and we were just giddy about it.

If you're wondering what a Gotcha Day is, it is actually adoption lingo for the day a child becomes a part of his or her new family, especially in int'l adoptions. Since we will one day have an adopted child, we thought it would be great for both of our children to have Gotcha Days to celebrate. And we certainly went through a lot during the time Britton was in the hospital that today will always be a day worth celebrating!

So, back to that day a year ago ... we spent the night at the hospital the night before -- Valentines Day -- so that we could have a trial run of taking care of him and figuring out his apnea monitor. We, basically, got no sleep that night. With all the excitement of finally having our baby with us, round the clock feedings, uncomfortable beds, and ungluing ourselves from the ceiling every time the apnea monitor sounded its false alarms, it was a tough go at sleep. We didn't mind though ... we had our baby! We "woke up", drank a lot of strong coffee (thanks to the hospital Starbucks), signed paperwork, met with visitors who came to say their goodbyes (esp. the OB who delivered him), paid our bill at the cashier's office ($0!), got his discharge paperwork, and profusely thanked all the nurses and docs who took good care of him. We said our goodbyes and finally got to load that boy in his carseat, took a momentous trip out of the hospital, and drove him (oh so carefully) home. It was an amazing day!

A little walk down memory lane ...

My two tired boys that morning in the NICU family room. Danny said it got really warm laying like that. It wasn't until I picked Britton up did we realize he had peed all over Danny. It wouldn't be the last time.


We loaded him up in his carseat.


We arrived home, and Piper was the enthusiastic welcoming committee. Love this picture!


Finally home! Here's that obligatory front door pic. We were ecstatic. Britton was cranky.


We immediately changed his outfit (which he went through several that day, just because we could). And we held him and held him.


We watched him sleep.


We tried out every little thing we had been waiting to introduce him to -- his bouncer, his play mat...


Look how tiny he was?! This was taken a few days later when he went for his first pediatric appointment. He was wearing a tiny preemie outfit. I look at that thing now and cannot believe Britton was ever, ever so tiny.

Because my memory is already having a hard time remembering how little and precious our boy was back then, I am so glad we have tons of pictures and videos. Here is a "never-before-seen" quick clip of our tiny boy back then:


And here he is these days:

So handsome.


So happy.


So healthy.


So full of personality!

Thanks for sharing our joy this past year. It has been such a fun year of having our baby home and, most of all, seeing him thrive. We will celebrate this day for years to come, and we continue to praise God for letting us keep and hold and love our baby on this side of eternity. We are very blessed.