I now understand what before I could not.

We knew that we were excited.  We knew that we loved Raspberry.  We knew that we were ready.

We did not know that he would look so beautiful to us, or smell so sweet, or steel us away for all we were worth.  Our weekend in the hospital was magical.  No honeymoon could have been any sweeter.  After Calvin was born at 10:11pm on Friday we stayed in the Labor and Delivery Room for a couple of hours so they could monitor both Cortney and baby.  Calvin, who scored a 9 on the APGAR, was in Cortney's arms within 35 minutes of birth and was nursing shortly thereafter (scoring a 10/10 on the nursing scale), so he seemed content, and we were content just to stare at him.  The world was lost to us and we kept wondering "can this be real?"  We walked (well, Cortney was wheeled) to our hospital room around 1am and that is pretty much where we stayed, rather contentedly, mind you, for the next 37+ hours.  Calvin was a quiet newborn, alternating between states of alert quietness and deep sleep.  He only left our sides once - for a bath and state mandated testing.  When, on Saturday night, the nurses asked us what our "plan" was, we looked at them a little dumbfounded.  Did we want them to take our baby to the nursery for the night?  We never even considered it.  We were visited by a handful of wonderful people - Calvin's grandparents, our friend and Pastor, Andrew, and his wife Erinn, and our church choir director, Susan.  We ate hospital food, sort of, and had some food  brought in (like pizza, Saturday night).  Mostly we just cherished those moments - the two of us drinking in the triumph and beauty of our perfect new son, and baby Calvin taking in this large new world around him.  It may have been a hospital stay, but when we left for home at 2:30 on Sunday we felt as though we were saying goodbye to a vacation made in heaven.