Eloise Jayden: 2 Months Old

Yes, this is a photo explosion.
And No, I don't regret how many photos I'm putting up of Eloise right now.
She's at such a fun age. She smiled this entire photo shoot, and had such a good time while I snapped photo after photo of the Lil' Wheeze.
She's cooing all the time now, and makes pretty awesome faces -- when she's stretching, when she first wakes up, when she's milk-drunk, when she sees one of us smiling at her, when you take her onesie on or off, when she sneezes...we think she's pretty much the most adorable baby ever.
Dylan is smitten. I'm in love.
...I think we'll keep her.

She's filling out! And we had to take a picture with her teddy bear (like last month)

Sneeze!

Okay, I love her curly-q belly button

Her a little startled...whole-body startled.

She has been obsessed with that tongue since Day 1. And look! Eyelashes and eyebrows! She's so beautiful.

Looking right at me...she might think my face is the camera by now

This one and the next 5 were taken one right after the other. It's pretty funny to watch her face change. She was watching Dylan make faces at her behind me.

This one makes me laugh...a lot. Such a typical Eloise face. Those BIG eyes

And another awesome face she makes. This is her yawn/stretch/startle face

Proving she's finally getting her hair back. It's just growing in blonde. And super fuzzy. I love touching it....and she does, too. 20+ times a day we'll catch her rubbing her fuzzy head. She loves her hair (and that tongue again)

With a blanket I made for her before she was born.

Blessing Dress

Eloise was blessed at church on my birthday (Sunday, December 4th, 2011). It was the best birthday present I could ask for, and made it that much more memorable. The words of the blessing were beautiful, and the Spirit there was even more beautiful. We were lucky to have my parents and Dylan's dad in town for the weekend, which was so awesome. They were there for the blessing, and it just worked out to have them there for my birthday, too. I haven't had a birthday with my parents in quite a few years.
This dress is really special in our family. My great-grandmother, Mary Waite, made it for my mom when she was a baby, and then my sisters and I were all blessed in it, as well. It's seen better days, but it was still beautiful for Eloise to wear. It has gorgeous pink and blue flower embroidered on to it, and tatting (I think that's what it is) around the hems. It has these little booties that go with it, too, but they just would not stay on Eloise's feet, which made for some humorous moments and cold feet. I took these after church.

This makes me laugh, a lot. Super-Eloise!

smile!

I love her profile.

I made this quilt using my great-grandmother's windmill quilt pattern, so I thought it was fitting to take a picture with the dress she made and the pattern she made.

Her little fists. She loves to hold her thumb inside her fist, and rarely lets it go.

This picture exaggerates her foot size...and I love it.

Eloise Jayden: 1 Month Old

So here it is, her 2-month birthday, and I'm posting her 1-month photos. Oh well. I did take more photos of her today, but they're not uploaded or edited yet, so that will have to wait.
At this point, Eloise still pretty much refused to lay flat on her back, but almost immediately rolled to one side or the other. The teddy bear in the picture is one we made for her when we found out we were having a girl (and bought BYU t-shirt for it, of course).

NOT happy to be having her picture taken this day...at all.

Mama time, hoping to make her happy...

...it worked temporarily.

Pretending to be asleep. That lasted for about 30 seconds :)

LOVE that little tongue. She happens to love it, too, and has been pretty expressive with it since the moment she was born.

 

Eloise's Adventures: Month 1

To celebrate Eloise's 2-month birthday (today! can you believe it??), we are doing a blog post overload. I actually meant to put these pictures up a couple weeks ago....but life got in the way. We were at my parents' house in California for almost two weeks for Christmas, and are just now getting back in to the swing of life back here in the Carolinas.
Anyway, this post is all about pictures we took of Eloise in her first month of life.

Just a couple days old, and all dressed up to leave the house...for a walk down the street.

Looking at this picture now makes me shocked at how SMALL she was when she came home from the hospital. She would look like a GIANT in her car seat next to this picture. Especially those little arms and legs. Wow.

Uh...ignore the postpartem body. This photo had to be taken, to capture the event.

Hahaha...that face.

Picture time with Grandma Ann (Dylan's mom) while she was visiting us out here a week and a half after Eloise was born.

Until very recently, every picture I have taken with Eloise has been with her SCREAMING. I swear, she doesn't hate me that much. I'm just the last one to get a picture with her, and by the time she is DONE with photos.

And then our family photos we took (with the help of a tripod and self-timer) over Thanksgiving Break.

(see what I mean?)

The one photo we got of her on Thanksgiving. She was almost a month old here. We were lucky to spend Thanksgiving with one of Dylan's professors and his family (who are also members of our Church) right here in Greenville.

5 Things They Don't Tell You About Motherhood...

I wanted to do this kind of a list about pregnancy, but of course by now I've almost forgotten what being pregnant was like and can't remember the things I wanted to remember, so I could tell other people and remember them for next time. Oops.
So I'll do it about the early days of motherhood, instead - about nursing and taking care of a newborn and trying to remember who you once were. If you don't like talk about nursing, don't read on, k? K.
1.  Breakfast? Lunch? Who has time to eat those? If I'm home alone during the day, it's a miracle if I get a glass of milk in me before 2 o'clock.
2. You'll never smell the same again. I know, gross, but I feel like I will never not smell like rancid milk again. Even right after a shower, I still reek of it. Sorry for anyone getting too close to me. It's a new perfume, called 'new mom.'
3. Someone else's boogers all of a sudden become free territory to pick. And it's not even gross to me. It was instinct to pick her goobery nose. Good thing I don't have the same instinct with Dylan...ha.
4. All this talk about different cries meaning different things, and you'll quickly learn to differentiate between an 'I'm hungry' cry and an 'I'm tired' cry and the 'I am sitting in my own poop' cry is nonsense. Yes, Eloise has several different cries, but every single one seems to mean 'Give me the boob juice RIGHT NOW, Mom!' All other needs come secondary, apparently, and don't need different cries.
5. Nursed babies' poops are EXPLOSIVE! Or maybe that's just our little one's own joke on us, but she never poops while asleep (which is actually nice, since we always know when she has a poopy diaper), and then poops LOUDLY and VIOLENTLY while we're holding our hand on her bum.

But I could also add to that list how amazing it is when they smile their first real smile at you (happened yesterday!), or how their little coos are the best sound in the world, or how great it is to see your husband holding your little girl while he reads to her and kisses her little head. There are so many surprises, and we're just loving her more and more every day.