~ 1 Month ~

*** I've been working on this post for over a week! Finally, composed over the course of several days, here it is!!! ***

Today Elizabeth is 1 month old! It has been a very eventful month!! This past week was no diffrent. It held many fun times and a few firsts. Here are the highlights!!

October 6 - Elizabeth's first smile!! She flashed her first real, wide awake, conscious smile at Rachael! The next day she gave her Daddy another beautiful smile. Since then, she's been smiling more and more every day!! I haven't captured the smile on camera yet. Maybe soon I can get her to smile for the camera!

October 7 - Mommy and Elizabeth got out for Girl's Night! We've been out a few other times, but not just for a fun outing. Elizabeth was a very good girl and slept peacefully in the Moby the whole time. I LOVE the Moby!! We limit a lot of contact for first 6 weeks or so to try to reduce the exposure to germs and such. The Moby is a great way to do this!!

Here's a picture of us as we were leaving for our outing. I'm wearing the Moby so that I won't have to try to figure it out once I got to where I was going. Poor baby's headband is almost in her eyes.


October 8 - Very, very busy day!! Yearbook pictures, field trips, errands, and so much more!! Elizabeth lost her umbilical cord! Look at this beautiful little belly button! Kind of bittersweet!


I think I've mentioned before, she loves to look in the mirror!!


October 9 - Mary Ruth's 5th Birthday!!! I'll have to do a separate post all about this big day (hopefully)!




One of Mary Ruth's birthday requests was for us to visit some of the grandparents. We went to my Mom's (aka Grandmother). My Mom was here the day Elizabeth was born, but we haven't got to see her since. My Dad, Cindy, and Savannah, my Brother and Priscilla, and several of "the Aunts" met Elizabeth for the first time.

Daddy and Cindy with Baby E


Wendell and Priscilla with Baby E



I can't believe I didn't get a picture of Mom and Elizabeth. Shame on me! Guess us she and I were too busy keeping up with everyone and everything.

October 10 - Now that the umbilical cord is gone, Elizabeth was able to have her first bath in a real tub. She's a girl, so of course she enjoyed it!!

October 12 - Elizabeth turned 4 weeks!! Mary Ruth and Elizabeth had well checks. Mary Ruth did well with her 5 year check except for her eye screening. Looks like we will be have a full exam with an eye doctor in the near future. The other big news for Mary Ruth is she is very close to meeting the recommendations for a booster car seat. She can't wait!!

Elizabeth also checked out well. She's up to 8 lbs 9 ozs and is 23 inches long. This has her in about the 25 percentile for weight and about the 90-95 percentile for length (at least I think that's right, can't find my paper with that info). This is pretty standard for our kiddos.

There's plenty more to catch up on but I'm all out of time! Until next time, here's a few other pictures.

BTW, I've SO loved this sweet pink and brown outfit, but it no longer fits. It was a newborn in size. Elizabeth is pretty much only wearing size 0-3 month clothes now. She's in a size 1 diaper. Her sleeping and eating are pretty much the same.








I LOVE this picture!!! Grace never, never, no not ever tires of Baby E!!




LOVE all these sleeping baby pictures!! LOVE my family to pieces!!! Praise the Lord, Great Things HE has done!!!

Still Counting, Prayer, and Pictures

If money were no object, I would so totally have professional maternity pictures made. Since money is an object, I'm so glad that I have other options! These are my maternity pictures. Taken today at home in my back yard by amazing amateur photographers. Yes, "photographer-s" as in plural. That's because, Luke took some of these pictures, and then Grace wanted to take some more. Like I said, amazing photographers!! My mother bought Luke, Grace, and Mary Ruth nice real digital cameras for Christmas 2008. I'm so glad that she trusted me when I said they were ready and could accept the responsibility. Giving a kid a delicate adult item like that was a risk, but I felt like we could teach them to use them carefully. It has been one of their favorite gifts ever. They've gotten so much use out of them, and as you can tell they've gotten pretty good at using them. We considered the nearly break proof kid cameras, but I thought they were overpriced and the quality of the pictures was just so very bad. So I suggested getting real cameras at a great price off Ebay. She actually got them for less money than the kids cameras. Like I said earlier it was a risk, but if somehow one got broke tomorrow I would feel like we got our money out of them. (Thanks, Mom! You're the best!!!) OK, sorry for that serious derailment! I love these pictures!! I can't decide which is my favorite!!!





OH, BABY!!! This one makes me remember my prayer about Elizabeth not being too big! My belly looks HUGE!!! Maybe it's the angle?!?!!!


My 2 favorite guys on Earth! Aren't they so handsome!!


A boy and his dog


Now it was Grace's turn. So pretty! We didn't get any pictures with Mary Ruth and Bella Peace. She should have, but they were really enjoying the swing set.


We all enjoyed an awesome morning of worship together as a family at church. It will be my last Sunday for a few weeks. We keep new babies at home for the first several weeks of life for my recovery, to bond, to adjust to nursing, and to avoid germs. I will miss being in church with the family, but I'm looking forward to my time with Elizabeth. Fortunately we can take in sermons on TV. Our church is on TV. The sermon is always one week behind, but that's OK.

Today's sermon was based on Revelation 2 and was about returning to our first love. A very brief summary is, "remember how it was when you first came to know Christ, remember your joy, your zeal, your passion, repent of those things that have come in and distracted you, and return to the Lord." As always it was a very good sermon! I hope to get in a habit of recapping each sermon here on my blog as a way to remind myself and help seal it in my head. You know the idea of hear it, read it, write it, see it, and repeat it. One other thing that I loved about today's sermon tied into a song that we heard by the choir called, "Not Guilty". It had a line that said something like, "I know you. I love you. I died for you." Verse 2 of text today starts with, "I know thy works, and thy labor (there we go again!)..." I love being reminded of the fact that "He knows" and He loves me so much anyway!!! Awesome!

OK, so my countdown prayer today is not very spiritual. It's just a desire of my heart. Please join me in praying that God would allow me to go into labor on my own before I am admitted Wednesday night. I'm not scared or worry and have no reason for this request other than it's just a preference. I want to go in on my own. I'll be perfectly content if that's not what God has planned, but it sure would be "peachy" if we let me have my way on this!!! As always, thanks for praying! I can't wait to introduce Elizabeth on here!!!