Blessing Day

I have been meaning to post these pictures for a while now. We had Ellie's blessing on March 7. We waited so long because we had hoped to be traveling back to Utah this spring for Brady's dissertation defense and thought we would do the blessing there where friends and family could more easily come. But things have gotten a little delayed with the dissertation, so we don't know exactly when we will be traveling. We thought we better get it done before Ellie could walk up to the front of the chapel with Brady or talk through the blessing or anything. So we did it while Mindy was in town. We were glad to have someone there from our families with us. We are starting to build some good relationships in our ward here, and people were very kind and happy for us, but it was nice to have a little bit of home with us that day. So Mindy represented our families and took some nice pictures right before the meeting.

This first one is the only one that is really posed. The rest are trying to get Ellie to stay calm and look at the camera. Brady's mom gave us the dress before Ellie was born. I should have gotten more detailed pictures of it, it is so pretty. Ellie looked like a little Victorian baby in it.



Ellie had a cousin on each side of the family blessed that day as well. It was a lovely day.

Mindy came!

Last weekend my sister Mindy came all the way from Utah to visit us. We have been bragging about all the cool stuff we've done since we moved out here. Turns out, most of what we know to do around here is eat. We ate and we ate. So many fun restaurants, so little time. I think whatever baby weight I may have lost is back now, with interest. Totally worth it, though.

Mindy has a nice new camera, so she ended up documenting most of the weekend and didn't end up in many pictures. I had to get at least a few pictures with her and Ellie with my inferior camera and photography skills. The following is a looooong photo spread of our weekend. Mindy had around 80 pictures--I only put a fraction up here. For those of you who follow her blog as well, you'll probably get to see some of these twice. It was nice getting some really good pictures of Ellie for a change, though.

This is an outfit Mindy got for Ellie.

These are the shoes.

Reading stories.

Bath time.

A walk in the park by our house. See the shadow? Mindy was there.

Dead trees in the park.

Ellie fell asleep.

Then we came home and Mindy did a little photo shoot with Ellie. The sweater and hat were a gift from my aunt Kaye. She and my uncle are on a mission in Hungary. She knitted the set while they were on the road driving to speaking assignments and then sent it all the way around the world to Ellie. We love it. The sweater is still a bit big, but we had to get some pictures before the hat was too small.


One of the many eating stops over the weekend. We've found that some places around here are more dog-friendly than baby-friendly. One place they seemed pretty annoyed with us. Ellie seemed to feel the same about them, so we packed the food up and left.

This little cafe was fun, though. Ellie is trying a tiny taste of mashed up sweet potato fry.

We dropped Brady off to work on research and tried to find some touristy things to do. We toured a Southern plantation house.

Ellie was unimpressed, and we had to stop to feed her on the steps before we left.

Then we went to the Sunsphere. This was built when the world's fair was held here in 1982. Think of this as Tennessee's Eiffel Tower, so to speak. Not nearly as glamorous.

Ellie was a bit more excited about this.

But probably more excited to be home. My grandma always says that babies are home toys.

We did some other things, mostly food related. But this is a good smattering of our weekend. We were really glad to have family come visit. Mindy is a good food buddy. I don't think Ellie misses being dragged around all over the place, but I know she misses having her aunt around. Babies sure are a lot easier with three adults in the house and I think Ellie loved having a constant playmate. We wouldn't say no to another visit . . . or a visit from anyone else interested. Who's next?

4 Months

Ellie turned 4 months old last week.
I had a pretty hard time getting a good shot (hence the blurry hand). She was having a rough day that day, but Brady was able to coax a smile out of her. She has been having a lot of pretty rough days lately. Her reflux was getting really bad a couple weeks ago, to the point where she was just screaming at every feeding. I would have to wait until she wore herself out and fell asleep and then feed her in her sleep. We called the doctor's office and ended up getting a different prescription. They said she had developed esophagitis along with the reflux, which means that the acid that had come up had cause sores to develop along her esophagus, so it wasn't just hurting when stomach acid would rise up, but when milk would go down. Poor kid. They also told us to keep her upright for an hour after each feeding. Since she was usually asleep during the feedings, that meant she couldn't go in her chair or the swing as easily. So I decided to not get anything done besides feeding and holding this baby and we made it through the first few days, usually feeding for an hour and then sitting and holding her for an hour while she slept. But she was starting to improve. Then I started to get a cold. Then Brady had to go out of town. It was a rough few days. Thanks goodness for the Relief Society. There was someone over here every day for a couple hours to spell me off so I could get caught up on the bare essentials, like eating and making sure Ellie had clean clothes and bottles.

Needless to say, though, we were both so glad when Daddy came home.
We're starting to get back into some semblance of a routine, but it has been pretty rough going for a while. It's a good thing babies come so cute. Ellie is usually pretty happy, as long as I'm not trying to make her eat . . .

This is her just completely enamored with Brady when he got back from his conference. He went through withdrawals being gone just a few days.

This is me trying to keep her upright. She isn't old enough for this yet, but seems interested. Mostly she just picks her feet up and sort of spins. I tried her in it when she was 2 months old and her head barely cleared the top.

Other highlights of this month: Ellie started solids. The doctor told us to start her early to help with the reflux (sorry, we're a little obsessed with eating and reflux right now). I hadn't planned on taking any pictures or video because I figured if we made a big deal about first time eating food with Ellie, we'd have to do it with any other kid we have. But then we couldn't resist. Here is the result.


We're both getting better at solids now. Ellie prefers the blander things like bananas and rice cereal to apple sauce and pears. Brady is concerned about refining her palate.


Other activities this month include bubbles (well, at least we caught a smile on camera--and quite a cheesy one at that).

And kicking. She loves this. I think she is going to be an Irish river dancer. It has made diaper changing lots of fun (she usually kicks even harder on the changing table). Bath time too. We need to start wearing rain coats to bathe this kid.



Sorry the videos are a little long. I didn't have time to really edit them down. Also, the good pictures (the last two) were from Mindy's camera. She came to visit. I will have to blog about that and Ellie's blessing really soon. Lots to catch up on. Sorry for those readers who might be getting a little Ellied-out. Since we are so far away from family, this is how everyone gets to know her. I think it makes me just a little less homesick knowing that everyone gets to see her still, even if it is only on a blog.