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.

Olympic Fever

It's an interesting phenomenon to me that every four years sports suddenly become very interesting to me. Normally, if I were flipping channels and came across, say, women's biathlon, I probably wouldn't linger more than a few seconds. Just long enough to get the gist; ski, ski, ski, stop, whip out a rifle, shoot at some small targets really far away, get penalized for each one you miss, then ski, ski ski some more. According to one of the commentators, men's biathlon in the Netherlands is the equivalent to the Super Bowl here. The weirdos.

Somehow, though, if it's for the Olympics, I find it all mesmerizing. I think it's the drama of it all. Every single one seems to either be the first to do something, be making some kind of record, or have some sort of huge travesty they've overcome. It's the only kind of reality TV I indulge in, and this year we are hooked.

I also find the commentators rather amusing. After awhile it seems like they run out of things to say about the event and even the athletes, but they seem conscious of the whole world tuning in and somehow have to fill the dead air. Poor guys. How much is there really to say about the ski jump? My favorite so far was during one of the qualifying ski jump events. During a lull one of the commentators spoke up, "You know, it's actually a pretty easy sport . . ." I'm sure that was pretty comforting to the guys who didn't qualify.

Brady has been teaching Ellie all kinds of important life lessons while we watch. Like how disappointed silver-medalists' parents really are in them, or that we don't cheer for Russian skater Evgeni Plushenko because "he wants to kill Harrison Ford in the movies."

He's also begun her training. We tried a little with ice skating her on the living room floor, and she shows some promise with trying to ski jump off my lap. Below is their prep for the luge. We've since added the boppy pillow as sled. On a good day of training, they get those floors pretty clean.

Three Months

Ellie hit the three month mark last Wed. I have to admit, it wasn't quite the magical day everyone assured us it would be; I was imagining that the stars would all align just right, the windchill factor would be just so, and our little Ellie would just fall into a nice little contented routine. Still lots of fussiness, though; still lots of bouncing on the exercise ball; still lots of difficult feedings. Most of it is thanks to the reflux, I think, which the doctor said she would likely outgrow by 6-9 months. In the meantime, she is actually getting herself onto a pretty good routine for eating, the medicine is helping some, and she is taking longer, if unpredictable naps. Considering how uncomfortable she is, I think she is doing really well most of the time, actually.

I was so close to catching a real smile on camera this time.

Just missed it.

This month she has been out and about more too, not just sleeping through whatever errands we run, but wanting to be up and look around at everyone and everything. Yesterday at the grocery store Brady was carrying her, strapped in the jeep carrier (like a baby bjorn). Everyone kept commenting about our little boy. I guess they ignored the purple, flowery sweater I put on her. I know everyone has stories like this, and most of the time it doesn't bother me. Today, though, I decided there would be no mistaking. Nice frilly dress for church. Tights. Shiny black shoes. The works. Shortly after the meeting started a little girl on the bench behind us pointed to Ellie and asked her mom, "Is that a girl?" I sighed and hung my head in defeat.

We thought maybe it was her baldness that was throwing everyone. So we are experimenting with some different hairstyles for her:



It is a little awkward to carry her like this all the time, though. I think I may have to cave and get her some of those huge headbands with giant bows on them. I'll teach those 5-year-old girls in our ward not to confuse the gender of my baby!

The Gift of Tongues

So church was canceled today due to the inclement weather. We got some snow this weekend, and as this city is not set up to handle the snow, the whole town pretty much shuts down. Thursday night the snow hadn't even started yet--we didn't even get any small flurries until late Friday afternoon--but they announced that all the schools in this and surrounding counties were closed for the next day. The mere mention of snow gets people skittish.

Anyway, it seemed like a good day to hang out in pajamas and cuddle up and stay warm (it has been cold, I'll give them that). I thought I would do a better post today, more about Ellie, less about all her accumulated stuff. (sigh.) She gets more and more smiley when we play with her. I was trying so hard to get a picture of her smiling. Instead, I kept getting pictures that look like this:

It's Ellie's new favorite game. For the last couple of weeks, this has been a big part of play time. She has always liked to play with her tongue. Now she does it socially. She usually initiates, sticking her tongue out at you. If you respond in kind, the game is on, back and forth sometimes for several minutes. Last weekend I asked Brady if he ever though this is how he would pass a Saturday night, sticking out his tongue at a baby over and over. She smiles really big when we copy her, though, and it's pretty hard to resist. I was glad she didn't try to play during church last week.


It's even hard to resist at 6:00 a.m., changing her diaper (for some reason the changing table is one of the best places to play). I'm secretly hoping she'll just go back to sleep, and she's just awake enough to give me one of these:

Shy, subtle, trying to pull me in. It's like refusing a little puppy. I think we need to get her set up with a mirror.

Also, not as relevant to the post, but here's another picture I took the other day. I realized that since I am usually the one with the camera, we don't have many pictures of me with Ellie. This was my attempt at a self-portrait of the two of us. Her expression in this one cracks me up.

Just Sitting Around

So the bad news is Ellie has reflux. Poor kid. Each feeding time is a bit of an adventure, to say the least. We've figured out a few tricks to help her, one of which is to keep her upright for a while after she eats. Most of the time she falls asleep while she eats, which means sitting and holding her vertical while she digests a bit (I know, apparently I am fostering all kinds of sleep disorders by letting her fall asleep with feeding and then sometimes holding her while she sleeps and she will grow up to be an emotional wreck and probably a drug dealer--according to all the expert books--but she is keeping her food down better and she can sleep without feeding or having me hold her and does so for about 7 hours a night, so take that experts). Anyway, we thought it would be helpful to keep her upright more while she is awake too, and since I can't sit and hold her all day we thought we'd look for one of those infant chairs since she seems to like sitting up.

We were going to get one of these:

But then we saw THIS:


The Deluxe Ultra Super Sonic Saucer Sitter XL 3000. Okay, that's not what it's really called, but it looks like it should have a name like that. It's actually the same price as the "bumbo" chairs with trays, and this one comes with all the toys, etc. All kinds of fun.

Ellie seems to like it, though she's still working up the neck strength to stay in it for a really long time. So I guess it's a good solution. The toys aren't annoying, no loud music or flashing lights. Seems win-win. But somehow I still can't help feeling like I've been succored every time we buy some kind of baby gear. Unless it's books or clothes, maybe some small, simple toys, I feel like we're just accumulating more stuff. We've done a good job of getting great deals. Consignment sales, craigslist, etc. Just about everything Ellie owns is second-hand (although we didn't hold back when it came to the car seat). This seat is also new, but after I called the consignment stores around here and looked for deals online, this ended up only being a few dollars more than we would have gotten used. We haven't bought anything that hasn't been really useful so far. But still, I can't help feeling like we're getting a little bogged down. How did the pioneers do it before exersaucers and Baby Einstein? (we haven't bought those yet . . .)

P.S. Don't know why this picture is sideways. it worked on my computer.