Making the Most of this Moment

Eleanor is currently asleep in her bouncy seat. I'm not sure how long the moment will last, but I thought I'd actually try to write a bit about our lives right now.

Ellie is 7 weeks old today and growing like crazy. All week I've stared at her and felt like she looks so big, so grown up! She's definitely not a newborn anymore. I find it funny that I'm mourning that fact, as I tend to look forward to her growing up and getting to watch her learn so many new things, but there is something precious about tiny babies. El has grown out of her newborn and XS cloth diaper covers, so we had to put in a quick order over the weekend for some new ones. We also moved her in to the few bigger sized ones we already had on hand - they are pretty huge on her, but they don't leave the nasty red marks that the too small ones did. I was worried we'd have to head out and buy her a bunch of new clothes right now, too, seeing as she's growing so quickly, but the one great thing about the weather being in the high 90s is that she just wears a diaper most of the time. :)

Ellie has also started sleeping a bit longer during the night. She tends to go 4-5 hours now during one stretch. The rest of the night she's still eating every 2-3 hours, but it is nice to have a bit more sleep in one chunk. She is definitely a night owl, like her daddy, though, and her schedule is still pretty hard for her mom. She loves to sleep hard during the morning and early afternoon hours, putting her most awake and alert time somewhere between 8:30 pm and midnight. Of course, Dad loves this, since he's home for it, but Dad has been working really hard the last couple of weeks at work, so I don't get to just let him enjoy El while I sleep.

Eleanor and I go for lots of walks with her Bob. We've gotten to meet several friends for walks lately, too. The rest of life still feels pretty scattered and unorganized - I still just go with Ellie's flow most of the time - but we're having a good time. She loves sucking on her fists these days and talks and talks to me throughout the day. We're having a great time with her as she becomes more aware of the environment around her. She loves her pink butterfly that sings and is starting to become interested in toys that rattle.

I'd love to tell you all that we had travel plans or moving plans or something... but we're still waiting, praying and looking. Hopefully we'll have more news on that front here pretty soon.

So, here are a few pictures from Ellie's 6th week here on Earth:

Bright Eyes

Gazing at Dad.

Curious girl.

Sleeping in the sling. Doesn't she look so much older now!?!

Bridge Moving

We returned home from our hike around 9:00 pm and were reminded of a momentous event happening right in our neighborhood. So, since Ellie was sleeping comfortably in her car seat, and neither Seth or I were particularly tired, we set out for another hike of sorts - this time with Ellie in her stroller.

I-80 runs about 4 blocks north of our house. At the moment, the state is renovating all of I-80s bridges in order to widen the highway to 4 lanes in both directions. This evening, construction crews happened to be moving the first of 4 sections of bridge into place. The bridge pieces were built on a "farm" a few blocks off site (and visible from our beloved park) in order to keep the interstate open as long as possible during construction. Something I heard, I think on the news, said this process - if successful - would shorten the closed highway time from upwards of a year to just over a week. The bridge that was being fixed this evening was only about 6 blocks west of us.

This is a new engineering process and happens to be the first experiment of its kind. So, National Geographic was out taping it along with several news channels. The first bridge piece was scheduled to be moved via Self Propelled Modular Transport sometime during this evening.

So, we set out from our house, through the park, and over to our local ShopKo parking lot. From there we were able to watch this huge piece of bridge move its way into place. It was amazing! I'm super glad we happened to be so lazy this particular Saturday morning and somewhat ridiculous in our decision to take a long walk at 10:30 at night!

Here's a short video Seth took of the movement: (sorry, it won't load at the moment)

And here are some fun facts about the bridge project:

• Combined, the seven bridge structures are 829 feet long and weigh more than 13.5 million pounds.
• If put end-to-end, the bridges would be nearly twice the height of Utah’s tallest building (the Well Fargo Center at 423 feet).
• The combined bridges weigh as much as 562 school buses or 270 backhoes.
• The bridge pieces move at approximately 3 miles per hour!
  

Ellie's First Hike

Seth and I have a hard time getting up on Saturdays. It's our one and only day to laze around and sleep as long as Ellie will allow... so we tend to start asking ourselves what we should do with the day around 2:00 pm. Today we decided a late afternoon/evening hike in Millcreek Canyon with a picnic sounded good. We packed Ellie up in her front carrier and off we went.

The "easiest" hike in Millcreek is the Pipeline Trail. It has an elevation climb of (only) 800 feet and is about 2 miles from the trailhead to the main lookout over SLC. We started out around 4:30 pm and walked up and up and up. Our progress was considerably slower than either of us is used to because Ellie's legs were dangling in front of Seth's and the climb was steep enough he was conscious of not wanting to squish her. :) El did great, though, hanging out with daddy.

The view from the top of the mountain was beautiful. I'm always impressed with the Salt Lake valley when I see it from above. It is technically high desert, but the valley floor is so green! The city has done a great job of keeping trees on most streets and creating many, many parks.

On the way down, we encountered a little more excitement... a rattlesnake. Luckily, he was just a baby - but I was still scared! Luckily, too, the sun was just going down behind the mountains, otherwise we might have been stuck for quite a while! Seth handed Ellie off to me (and I transfered her to the sling since it's more comfortable for me) and went off to find a stick. Unfortunately, though, we were on a part of the trail that was completely void of trees. Scrub bushes and dead grass don't really produce sturdy, long sticks. It took a little while, but eventually the snake slithered away into the brush. We took advantage of its movement and worked our way quickly to the lower part of the trail.

Once we made it back to the shaded, woody part of the trail, I spent some time watching Ellie's reaction to our trip. She happily hung out in the sling, looking around with big eyes. Apparently, she loves green leaves. Yay!

After the hike, we decided to check out one of the picnic sites also up in the canyon. They are popular places, however, so we ended up eating our picnic on the bank of a creek. Eleanor loved the rushing water.

Unfortunately, we forgot the camera for this adventure, but we remembered it for the second half of the day...

Not Completely Adept

Hey all -

I posted more pictures of Ellie this morning. Unfortunately, I started the posts on the 16th, but didn't finish them until today and I don't know how to change the dates of the posts. So, it looks like nothing has been added - because the smile pictures still come up first -but there are 2 new posts after the smile pictures.

We Got the Smile!

Pics for the Grands

And here are more pictures ranging from weeks 4 through 5 1/2. We know how much our families want pictures, pictures and more pictures. Enjoy.

Bathing Beauty

So, we thought we'd share the "joy" of bath time with all of you. The pictures are obviously not in order, but enjoy.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game!

This weekend was a blast. As and early Father's Day celebration, we headed out to watch a Salt Lake Bee's game (the minor league baseball team here in town). It happened to be a double header with fireworks afterward. The weather was hot, but amazing and sunny and our seats were in the shade. We were able to sit closer to home plate than I've ever been before, thanks to a last minute cancellation on someone else's part. Ellie had a great time, looking around at all the new people and things and was quite happy and content for several hours. We actually stayed for both games!We got to the game early, since I only remember a few times in my life when I've actually seen the first pitch of a baseball game. :) Plus, our sleep was limited the night before and I wasn't sure how far I'd make it into the night. The first game started just after 5 pm. So, here we are in the stands virtually alone...Bumble, the Bee's mascot.
This is the cutie-head who was sitting just in front of us. It was fun that there were so many families and so many children at the game. At first I felt weird that we were taking our baby to a baseball game, but there really were a ton of babies there... maybe not quite as young as ours, but oh well. :)Our cutie-head. Seth was playing around some more with the color-swap feature on our camera. Oh, and thanks again auntie Emily for the wonderful quilt! It was the perfect thing to take with us to the game and cuddle up with as the sun went down.Ellie slept through a whole bunch of the games, of course. But, we were once again amazed at the quality of infant sleep. There were several crowd roaring moments that she just peacefully slept right through.When our baby was awake, she had a great time looking around. I've decided she is an extrovert, like her daddy. In general, Ellie is a happier girl when we have the chance to go out during the day. I think she gets bored of just home and mom. :)

Friends

We had a house full of visitors last week and weekend. Aliesje came into SLC on Wednesday in order to meet with her new employers at Judge Memorial Catholic High School. She's going to be their new science teacher! Then, on Thursday, Amanda and Kayli headed in to SLC from Sheridan, WY. They came purely for the purpose of seeing us and hanging out in a big city. Both sets of visitors were fun and we all had fun together. :)

Amanda has the same camera as us, so one evening she showed Seth some of its features - like this color highlighting. Seth has had fun messing around with it a bit since then.

And of course, Seth and Kayli had a great time playing together. We had a rousing round of stunt frisbee going in the backyard one evening and several quick trips to the nearby playground.


Other highlights of the weekend were a trip to IKEA with all the girls - Aliesje, Amanda, Kayli, Bethany and Eleanor - and a trip to the mall and the Cheesecake Factory. It was a fabulous time, and since then we've been laying low, attempting to sleep a lot and get back into a "normal" routine.

She's Getting Fat!

Here are some new pictures for y'all:

This is just to prove we do sometimes dress her like a girl. :)

Two sweeties sleepin'.

Oops. I guess you have to turn your head sideways for this one. But, here's our Sleeping Beauty.

And this one shows just how much she loves tummy time. :) But, she has definitely mastered the art of turning her head from side to side. Way to go strong neck muscles!

Big girl! This was the longest stuffed animal I could find in her room. Placing her next to it, though, makes her look so big! I love the pics my cousin and her friends have taken of their kids with one stuffed animal several times as they grow - to show their progress. The other pics I've seen, though, show the baby at approximately the same size as the animal in the first pic. I guess maybe I should have taken the first pic 3 weeks ago, but I'm not sure the result would have been all that different. :)

All dressed up for church. Thanks for the dress Grandma Tippin!

Here we almost got the smile... She's been working on her smile muscles since she was about 4 days old. These days she smiles a lot, but we still haven't captured them on camera.

Just kidding (about the getting fat part)! But, we did go to the doctor on Friday and Ellie weighed in at 9 lbs! So, her weight gain this week was a wonderful 6 oz and we're not nearly so worried anymore. She's also getting the hang of nursing quite a bit better, so my world is not quite so consumed with sitting in a rocking chair, hoping she'll decide it's time to wake up and eat.

We took Eleanor to church for the first time yesterday and she was definitely a hit. She did great! (Slept the whole time, despite the fact that the service went right through the middle of one of her normal feeding times). Everyone was very excited to meet her and those who had seen her before commented on how much bigger she looked. That was good for me to hear because I've been feeling like she's changed a lot over the last 3 1/2 weeks, but I wondered if that was just a mommy's perspective (I do spend a lot of time staring at her). This week she's started looking much more intently at things and people, making many more facial expressions and beginning to make cute cooing noises. It is fun to see a little more of her personality emerge.

So, I keep thinking I'll finally post on our labor/birth experience for all those who expressed interest in such details... but it was quite an ordeal and I haven't yet had the time to sit down and process through it all. Hopefully all that stuff will come here soon - maybe even before we hit the 1 month mark. :)



P.S. Seth is currently looking hard for a job starting in August. Please pray for this process and our discernment as we make tough decisions regarding what area of the US in which we'll live for the next questionable amount of time.