Who Looks Like Who

Ok. Since the most asked question I've received (besides: how are you feeling? are you getting any sleep? the answers are "good" and "NO" respectively) is "Does she look like Ellie?" I really should be napping, but I decided to do some photographic investigation instead. Dan and I both thought that Ellie & Julia looked a lot alike at birth. But I just finished the side-by-side shots and... well, the proof is in the pictures. Enjoy!

One Week (and counting)

No one bothered to tell me I mascara below my eyes...

Ellie is a good little mama... she puts her baby's crib next to Julia.

Little miss Julia has been in our lives for an entire week (and one day) now, and my goodness how time has flown. I now have very little time for blog posting, but I wanted to share a few more random pictures with you guys.

All in all the first week has been great! Ellie has absolutely loved having her "baby sister" around (as she still calls her) and enjoys holding her several times a day. Her new fascination is the sanitizer ("santizer") that she gets to put on before holding Juila. And Julia has been a delight to parent, it's really nice to have one who isn't sassy yet, hah. She's eating well and sleeping hard, finally showing signs of switching from her night owl self to being awake during the day. Dan and I are exhausted, but we're slowly adjusting to the interruption in sleep and constant exhaustion. At least this time we know this stage does not last too long!

That's it for now, thanks to all of you who have called and emailed. One of these days I'll have time to call and write back! :)

Here she is!!!

We got home from the hospital yesterday afternoon with our newest addition to the family little miss... Julia Claire.

She arrived Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 6:49pm. Weighing in at 9lb 3oz and 21 inches long. Ellie is delighted at her new sister and has been holding her non stop.

I assure you there will be another post, but I'm just about to go take a nap!
Thank you all for your prayers, congratulations, and best wishes!

New Strolee

Since we are having another girl, there wasn't much new baby stuff we needed. So... for baby gift (and for my birthday) we got a double jogger!! I'm SO excited! Now, for Ellie, we used a single Baby Jogger that seriously rocked the house, but their doubles were a bit on the pricey side. After extensive research, Dan decided that my choice of the Tyke Tech gave us best bang for your buck. There were a few days where we were trying to decide what color to get, I liked orange and Dan liked the blue. We decided to let Ellie pick and much to our surprise, she actually stood there and deliberated... then picking the blue. It came in a few days ago and though the box was pretty badly beat up (and the stroller obviously returned, which we've been working with customer service about...) the stroller is awesome! I think Ellie was more excited than me! She's been in and out of it every day and yesterday wanted to sleep in it, so I snapped a picture. So far we love it!

By the way, "strolee" is what Ellie calls the stroller...

Popsicle!

Popsicle face (too cold, I guess)

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that Ellie just had her first popsicle last week. Yes, I said last week. For whatever reason, last summer we didn't really break out the popsicles. Possibly because she was just starting to feed herself well and popsicles didn't occur to me. But I found my molds about a week ago and made some orange juice popsicles. Yum! Ellie ate about half of it before she deemed it a little too cold, but she loved it!

Latest Shoe Fettish

I went to one of those big consignment sales yesterday (I think the Fall one's are all starting to ramp up now, yay!). One of the things that I look for at these sales are shoes for Ellie. Her feet grow so darn fast and I've found some fantastic deals. I found these never been worn crocs for $4. These are the kind that are lined with the fleece. Well, she discovered them in my pile of stuff and just had to wear them... now! Since it's obviously not fleece-lined shoe weather, we took out the inserts and now the shoes are massive. But she insists on wearing them so I strapped on some rubber bands to keep them on her feet. She's not too happy with the strap arrangement, but it's the only way they'll stay on her feet and will have to do for now (until I can make some temporary straps or find some at our crocs store). This girl loves shoes!

Little Ms Fix It

Notice how pretty my flower bed is back there??? AND my LSU flag! :)

She found a rock...

So, since it's August, Dan is now on a new rotation (which is Peds Cardiology) and it's been quite nice so far. Yesterday (Friday) he was completely off because they don't have any clinic. This turned out to be a godsend for me because apparently I have a cold - which I thought was allergies. I'm not sure if I could have done a very good job of taking care of Ellie yesterday with a head cold and my inability to move quickly enough to keep up with my 2 year old. Anyway... This morning Dan decided to fix the gutter that fell off the house a bit ago, and when Ellie heard him hammering on the house she just had to go get her tools and help him out. She kept saying "I fix it" and would hammer or twist her screwdriver into the side of the house. Meanwhile, I sat on my booty and took pictures.

Fresh out of my sweat shop:

Behold, the latest of my evening efforts for the past three days! A new diaper bag. Wondering why in the heck I made this one? Truck it on over to my blog-o-creations and find out why!

www.plumdandy.com

My B-day!

The making of the cake (Ellie was grinning with her eyes closed).

Ellie is so ready to sample my cake that she can hardly stand still for a picture (she had been sampling frosting, which is evident by the chocolate around her mouth!).

Still ready to dive into the cake...

Reading the paper together.

Saturday was my 29th birthday and I celebrated it with my two favorite people: Ellie & Dan. I was instructed to stay in the bed until Dan could go get Ellie and when the two of them burst in the bedroom, they had on party hats and were blowing horns. Ellie couldn't have been more excited! It was too cute. We went to eat breakfast at Panera Bread and came back home to enjoy a relaxing morning. Dan and Ellie toiled away at my birthday cake while I started some sewing upstairs. Just as Dan was finishing up icing the cake, it was lunch time. Ellie had been circling the kitchen saying "cupcake, cupcake, birthday cake, birthday cake" and was all too eager for dessert. So, we hurried up and did the candle and song thing so she could have a piece.

For most of the day we just relaxed and enjoyed Dan's first day off in over a week. My back was especially enjoying his day off... I also got some sewing done and thoroughly enjoyed my afternoon doing whatever I wanted.

Late afternoon, Erik (Dan's brother) showed up so Dan and I could go out to eat dinner. Ellie couldn't have been more excited to see Erik and didn't care a bit that we left. For dinner, Dan took me to Sal's, a local chop house. Our dinner was fabulous (surprisingly the shrimp in my fettuccinni were excellent). We stopped by the bookstore - because I just love a good bookstore - and then came home. So, now I'm officially 29! Next year I get to say "when I was in my 20's" which is weird.

38 Weeks

38 Weeks prego with Ellie

38 Weeks prego NOW... same shirt, it's one of the only ones I can wear. Nice.

So if you haven't guessed, I'm 38 weeks now and just waiting. Waiting and waiting and waiting. I had a doctor appointment today and he didn't give me an indication one way or the other if I was going to have this baby soon. However, he did give me another ultrasound just to make sure it's still a girl... and it is! I haven't had but one ultrasound this entire pregnancy and it was at 20 weeks, so I asked him if there was any way to tell this late in the pregnancy, so he checked. I'm relieved because I have nothing for a boy and all kinds of stuff for a girl. If it had been a boy I would have had to do some more preparation!

You are My Sunshine

Ellie has started singing with me when I put her to bed at night. She's actually a shy singer and it's taken her a while to start singing during the day at random intervals. It's pretty difficult to catch, but I just happened to have my camera handy when she started singing in the car a few days ago. Thank goodness you can actually see & hear what's going on... I was driving and just holding the camera back in her direction, not paying much attention to whether or not I was actually recording anything. But it came out after all and its funny. If you pay close attention you can see that she's singing You are My Sunshine. She hits key words at the end of the line anyway. Enjoy!