The Results Are In

Eloise is a healthy little baby! She is 8 weeks old today and had her 2 month doctor appointment. She got glowing reviews from the Doc and I couldn't feel happier. For whatever reason, lately I seem to be reading about or hearing about heartbreaking situations with little babies. Maybe because I'm more attuned to baby health now but I feel really thankful that we have not had to deal with anything serious. Eloise has done some major growing since her 2 week appointment.

Weight: 10lbs 5oz - 50th percentile
Height: 24 inches - 97th percentile
Head: 40th percentile

At 2 weeks she was 7lbs 8oz and 21.5 inches
So her weight increased by 35% and her height by 12% (I think I did my math right, it's been awhile since I've had to use my brain in that way.)

Being weighed - wish I had brought the camera to her first appointment but it was challenge enough just getting there at 2 weeks!


Eloise received some immunizations at the appointment as well. Not surprisingly, she was not happy about the shots. I thought that I would have my own tears but instead I stifled a laugh because I was surprised by the intensity of her cry! I had never heard her sound like that before. I didn't want the nurse to think I laughed at my baby's pain but it was so dramatic!!! I take heart knowing she hasn't had to use her EXTREME cry with us. Mom and dad aren't as painful as shots...until she's a teenager.

The doctor also referred us to another doctor who will most likely end up monitoring the birthmark on Eloise's forehead. Fortunately, he didn't have any health concerns about it. I don't like using the term birthmark since in my mind that is more of a permanent mark but I guess it falls in that category. What she has is technically called a hemangioma (he-man-gee-oh-ma) and is a collection of blood vessels. It occurs randomly and usually grows until about 6-8 months and then slowly begins to fade away until it's completely gone. It is part of her adorable face to me but I'm sure people wonder what exactly it is or if something happened! I'm glad to have a specialist to go to who will hopefully continue to confirm that all is normal.

Eloise had a busy first christmas. We spent christmas eve at my parents house, christmas day at our house with tom's mom's side of the family and christmas day night at tom's dad's house. Ellie of course received some gifts but my personal favorites were the Eloise At The Plaza children's book along with an Eloise doll and baby mary jane shoes to match! I also appreciated the canvas toy basket from pottery barn kids that was "for eloise" (thanks mom).



Parker kept pulling this stuffed moose off of the shelf and I'd find it in the middle of the floor. I think it reminds him of a squirrel toy he once destroyed.


We (i.e. Tom) finally put up the rest of the Eloise letters. I still want to get some more wall decor, maybe another shelf too but I like seeing her name on the wall.


I had a slight respite on christmas eve when Eloise had an all time sleep record and I was able to sleep from midnight to 6am. I'm convinced now it was a growth spurt since she has not repeated this stellar sleep performance since (or maybe it was the small glass of swedish glug that I drank?). Overall her sleeping is getting a little better and her feeding is spacing out a bit more during the day. She is still not taking a bottle so we may have a bottle face off this weekend. Hopefully the bottle wins but I don't plan on being there to witness it! What to do with "me" time, hmmmm, the possibilities are endless.

Christmukkah (sp?) at my parents house. We celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas!


My fingers are crossed that we don't experience any side effects from the shots today. So far Eloise slept a ton and then woke up really upset. I think she is a sensitive one. Also, this morning she woke up with a little cold that she must have gotten from me. She didn't seem too bothered by the coughs and stuffy nose (pre-doctor appointment) but now I'm hoping we don't experience a tri-fecta of pain tonight with the cold, actual pain from the shots, and left over sensitivity from a rough day!

Lots of goals for this week. One being to start reading my book club book. It's 500 pages and book club is in 2 weeks-yikes. Pre-baby I'd look forward to spending a few solid hours reading but now there is so much to do when I have free time. I do think it's important that I try to stimulate my brain with something non-baby related though!

Some more Eloise pics:

Trying to capture a smile with the flash off, hence the blur.


Wearing her cute Gap ensemble from Sara. I swear it didn't fit a week ago!


Quality time with Maija and sporting a sweater knit by her great-grandma rosalyn that I also wore as a baby, kind of unbelievable.


I start out these blog posts thinking that I have no time so I'll just put something in quick and then many hours later I've managed to write more than planned and upload photos! I hope all of my fans (mom, aunt sheila, grandma, grandma, robyn, sara...) enjoy :)

Jess

The Road Less Traveled

Traveling with an infant is challenging. Not just the travel part but getting everything prepared for the traveling too. I see why it is easier to just stay home! Somehow we managed to pull it together for Eloise's first road trip. Tom's family has a christmas gathering every year at the Wisconsin Dells. Normally about a 3.5 hour drive from our house...it was more like 5 hours this year. However Tom and I gave his younger sister Lani a ride so we had plenty to talk about! The weekend wore me out. Not having the luxuries of home like a rocking chair and a nursery to go to in the middle of the night was not easy. Overall we had a good time and Eloise was able to meet a bunch of relatives. I managed to take some photos but they don't quite capture the saturday night celebration. Family skits, holiday songs, little kids opening presents, drunken relatives, it was quite the night.

Why the additional 1.5 hours of road tripping you ask? Well, we had to stop to feed Eloise and for things like this, Eloise getting her diaper changed in the front seat by Tom & Aunt Lani. Of course she blew out of her diaper and had to have her entire outfit changed. This happened on the way there and on the way back. Tom and Lani had it taken care of and I was glad to be in the back seat at this point :) Oh and we were at a random gas station so changing her in the car seemed like the best option.


Below photo is a bit graphic with a real poopy diaper shown... I'm sure she'll love this photo when she's older.



Eloise "talking" with her great aunt Marsha.


Waving for the camera.


Dad and Eloise. She looks so tiny here but is not feeling that way anymore!


Mom and Eloise. I love the backside of the outifit "my first christmas"


Family photo with all eyes open!



Eloise has been continuing to babble. Yesterday Tom woke me up to listen to her on the monitor. It was the first time she woke up just talking to herself and not crying. It was so cute I didn't mind that it was 5:30am and I should have been sleeping for as many minutes as possible... She is also working on her neck strength and really trying to hold her head up. It's fun to watch her become interested in her playmat thingy (I can't remember what this is actually called). Another milestone, I decided today that we are officially done with newborn sized diapers (wipe away the tears) and moving to the 8-12 pound size.

Having fun...



Thinking "mom, enough with the photos!"


Lots of fun when dad plays too.


Working on holding up her head in her bumbo seat or as Tom calls it, her bumble bee chair.



And last but not least, I finally figured out how to get a video on here. This file was too large so after finding some program online I somehow managed to convert it to a smaller file but the quality is not great and the video seems a little distorted...but after all that work I'm posting it anyway! For the future, I will keep my videos shorter so I can upload the original files!

Presenting: Conversations with Eloise - 7 weeks
(this is for the seriously committed, it's almost 5 minutes long)

New Best Friends

Eloise is 6 weeks old already! She had a growth spurt a few days before her 6 week mark. That equaled a loooooong night for baby and mom. But now we had a new record for time from one feeding to the next, 5 hours and 20 minutes! Which means that I slept for a little over 4 hours in a row. Hopefully this is a trend. I never thought I would say this, but what a difference 4 solid hours of sleep makes.

Eloise was able to meet her new BFF Ella this week! They met a few times while in utero but this was their first face to face. I LOVE Ella's cheeks. I wanted to squeeze them! Eloise is kind of jealous of Ella's beautiful thick hair. I told her to be patient, she would have hair soon, or in a few years at least... Ellie and Ella have matching outfits that me and Nickie (Ella's mama) bought but they are still too big. We'll save them for a photo shoot at a later date. Ella was born about 2.5 weeks after Eloise. So she is just about 4 weeks here and Ellie is 6 weeks. Ella was 8lbs 8oz when born so I think she might still weigh a little more than Eloise.

They tried to hold hands but their coordination was off.


Ella is SOOO big.


Now Eloise is SOOO big!


Their arms kept hitting each other but we think they probably thought it was their own hands since they have so little control of their limbs!


Close up of the beautiful babies.



Eloise likes her bath time. The trauma comes when bath time is over and she has to transition from tub to towel. Today was pretty successful with the help of my mom. I was able to warm up her towel in front of a heater before taking her out of the tub. She is getting the princess treatment!

Scrubbing her balding head :)


Wash cloths for warmth.






Brushing her non-existent hair.


All clean!


Heading for our first road trip this weekend to the Wisconsin Dells for the Thompson family christmas. A lot of stress for me but hopefully some fun too!! Eloise is excited to meet everyone.

New Stuff

Eloise met a new friend last week. My friend Nicole came to visit with her little guy Brayden. Brayden was due almost 2 weeks after Eloise but ended up being born about two weeks before her! He was very sleepy and Eloise was very talkative. They seemed so typical "boy" and "girl" it was hilarious.
Photos of Ellie and Brayden (Nicole estimated Brayden is around 11lbs and I think Eloise is somewhere between 8-9lbs)





I think that Eloise is building up to smiling! This past week when she is very awake and focusing on me, I've made some faces and sounds toward her and she's formed very quick smiles. I tried to capture some in a photo but as soon as I pulled out the camera she stared into the flash light and lost focus. It seems like the mood has to be just right for her to try out her smile. My parents came over last week so I could run some errands and of course my dad brought the camera. (Eloise will probably recognize grandpa's face as a camera). He was able to get some better shots though. Hopefully soon she will be smiling away and we can take lots of photos. It's really encouraging to see a little smile from her!

I should also mention that Eloise is balding! She has lost most of the hair on the top of her head. I'm not too worried (yet) since apparently my hair did the exact same thing! It's kind of funny though. Like my friend Rachel said, the babies you see on TV are not balding and never have any baby acne!

Smiling:



I tried to be sneaky with the camera here. Not too successful with the smile but she looks super bald here!


Other expressions include "talking"


"concentrating"


"#2ing"


It's nice to finally have some snow on the ground. With the really cold temps we finally hooked up the fire place in our family room. I LOVE it! Five years in our old house and we didn't have a fire once. It's just so easy with a gas fire place. Parker has found a new favorite spot too.


Holding his rubber chicken.


PS - I know the title of this posting is lame but I am out of ideas right now!

One Month & Many Thanks

Things have been tiring lately to say the least! It's a little challenging keeping up with blog posts but I am doing my best (I can barely respond to emails!) Eloise reached 4 weeks on wednesday. She seems to be growing before our eyes, it's unbelievable. Below are some photos to mark the day (thanks again robyn for the month stickers!!) I also added her 0 month photos (5 days old) to show how much she's grown in such a short time.


(I did have to prop her head up with a towel, she hasn't advanced quite THAT much)
And ZERO months to compare:





More 1 month photos just for fun - I went just a little overboard taking photos.







This one just makes me laugh:


Sooo big! Eloise's newborn size jacket is getting a little too small already. One of her favorite activities is looking at herself in this mirror (and maybe she's looking at the black and white contrasting squares too...)


We've been very busy with visitors but I had to post this photo of my old old friend Bridget and her adorable little guy Stewart. She was in town from boston and I was lucky enough to see her for a quick visit. We became friends in 2nd grade and now have our own babies! Little Stewie was all over the place! 1 month versus 20 months is a WORLD of difference!! He has the cutest dimples!


I convinced Tom that we needed to get a baby swing. Eloise seems to enjoy it a lot. I've been warned about the swing becoming a "crutch" but it seems that if Eloise is not happy, even the swing won't help! Lately she has been quite content to sit there while she's alert and "talk" to herself and to me.



A quick note on thanksgiving. It is kind of a fuzzy memory due to lack of sleep...but it was wonderful to have my family in town. My aunt sheila, uncle larry, cousin jordan and his fiance ali traveled to MN for turkey day. It was so nice to have them here and I am very excited for jordan and ali's wedding in boston next fall! It goes with out saying but I'll say it anyway, we have so much to be thankful for this year, most of all a healthy baby.

Sheila and Larry meeting Eloise. I was only slightly concerned that Sheila was going to steal her :)


The main event arrives to Thanksgiving! So tiny but causes so much commotion.


Have you ever seen a weirder table configuration? My parents have been "thinking about" moving/remodeling/downsizing/moving/remodeling/downsizing for YEARS. My mom recently realized she likes to have everyone over (and a place for everyone to sit). I'm posting this photo as encouragement to just remodel already!! Though weird, the seating arrangement did work out.


These photos seem confusing but it was actually a very cool moment. My grandparents (Ellie's Great Grandparents) meeting Eloise via skype on thanksgiving. Oh, I love technology... Side note, notice the massive amount of napkins from starbucks on the desk? My dad is an extremely loyal consumer.



Tom's dad joined us for Thanksgiving and we got this great photo of Eloise and her two grandpa's!


A family photo! Just realizing we didn't take one of the three of us so this will have to do.


I'll end with this great shot. My handsome husband (although isn't it a tad bit unfair that he looks so well rested, does not have baby weight to lose, and could freely enjoy alcohol?!? - love you bud :)