Ellie is such a wonderful addition to our family and we are so thrilled to have her! The first six weeks went by in a sleepless haze, as all parents will probably remember of those newborn days. She is often awake and very alert, looking around with such curiosity, but she will usually give us a good 3-4 hour stretch of sleep in the first part of the night so that’s great. The rest of the time there is not much rhyme or reason to whether she will be sleeping or not. I remind myself regularly that this is temporary, but I’m too tired to remember, so if you talk to me, feel free to tell me that I will sleep again someday.
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Caught her sleeping. |
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She loves a bath as long as she’s not hungry. |
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Big, blue eyes! |
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Ellie’s first trip to Daddy’s office and she slept through the meeting. |
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Our kids. Plural. Just hanging out. |
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All dressed up and looking so adorable! |
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Spending time outside with Mom. We both love the trees. |
Our girl is a great eater, which comes as no surprise to anyone who has seen James eat. Like brother, like sister. She wasn’t giving me much of a reprieve from breastfeeding, wanting to nurse almost constantly, so we have introduced supplemental formula. While I definitely have some mom guilt about it, it’s been the right thing for us and I’m focusing on the fact that she is still nursing and getting breastmilk even if it’s not exclusively.
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James loves to help feed her (although you wouldn’t know it from this face), |
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Celebrating being one month old. Completely milk drunk. Ha! |
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He loves to hold her and asks to do it all the time. |
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He’s getting to be quite the fantastic helper and the best big brother, just as we suspected. |
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Ellie takes great naps resting against Mom and this pack leaves me two hands free to get things done.
Win win! |
As I’ve previously shared on this blog, my dear friend
Stacy Paul is an amazing photographer and when she came over to meet Ellie, she took some beautiful pictures of her for us. Check out the full set of pictures
here and enjoy a couple of them below.
I also wanted to try my hand at taking some staged newborn pictures of my gorgeous girl and including James in them as well. Our wonderful friend, Kim, gifted us a fantastic shirt for James proclaiming him “Ellie’s Big Brother” and a corresponding onesie for Ellie marking her as “James’ Little Sister” which I couldn’t wait to take pictures of them wearing. We were also lucky enough to get a visit from Kerri (that I’ll share in more detail in a future post) and she has quite the knack for staging the pictures, so we make a pretty great photography team.
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Our rainbow baby wrapped up in this beautiful rainbow blanket that was handmade by our friend, Kristi. Love it so much! |
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Matching Shenk feet. |
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These two. I melt. |
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He’s reading Harry Potter to her. I hope he always reads to her. Always. |
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Our autumn arrival in a pumpkin hat snuggled into a soft blanket handmade by Stacy. |
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Looking so cute on a beautiful quilt handmade by the lovely and sweet Melanie
(who has 4 kids and her own business and still found time to make this gift– so blown away!) |
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This sweet little outfit was once mine! |
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It’s never too soon to start reading! |
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This picture doesn’t have Ellie in it, but holy cow is this kid something!
My first love. |
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Hanging out with her new moose friend, Timpy (named after our favorite Utah mountain, Mt. Timpanogos),
a gift from the C girls, who also all have moose friends. She’s part of the clan now. |