The Harris Family

It’s hard to believe that Elsa’s a month old now. Time really flies, especially time in which you’re getting so little sleep and so much of what you’re doing every day is brand new.

Traditionally, when babies leave the hospital, parents put them in some sort of darling “going home outfit.” We planned to do the same, a little pink-and-brown knit number that Lynne bought a few months ago.

Well, now imagine we’re in the hospital getting ready to leave. We’ve never put baby clothes on before, we’ve got this screaming infant we don’t know how to calm, and this knit outfit that fits snugly over her head and has a million snaps and intricate buttons. Suffice to say, we gave up in about 5 seconds and put on the biggest, simplest thing we could find.

A month later, we’re a bit better at putting on the baby clothes, and since Clay and Victoria were coming over to visit, we thought we’d celebrate her one-month birthday by putting on her going-home outfit, one month late.

We took some pictures of her, of course…

Going Home Outfit

Elsa’s great-aunt Jannie sent us a beautiful, personalized cross stich blanket for Elsa with her name and vital statistics on it. We couldn’t resist putting her on top of it and taking a picture for posterity.

Last week, it was nice enough one day that we deicded to take Elsa on her first walk to the park.

We went to Crossroads Park near our house and spent an hour or so walking along the paved trail.

It was sunny but fairly chilly, so we put a furry attachment over the stroller to keep Elsa warm. Only a little hole for her head was all that was left exposed to the elements.

Elsa slept though most of the walk, but I’m sure somewhere down deep she appreciated the fresh air. We certainly did!

Elsa’s First Trip to the Park

For Christmas, my mom had our family’s old 8mm home movies converted to a DVD.

There are 9 movies in all, starting with Christmas 1978 and ending with Christmas 1985. Because the movies have no sound, it’s sometimes a trifle difficult to tell what’s going on, so these will probably be interesting only to people who are actually in them.

My dad only appears in one of them because he’s the one who was (manually) cranking the camera.

I thought it would be fun to post the movies to the web so that everyone could watch them easily.

Read the rest of this entry »

When Jensen’s parents were in town a few weeks ago, we took Elsa on her first trip to a restaurant.

We visited 0/8 Seafood Grill at late lunchtime, when there were relatively few people around to disturb. As it turned out, Elsa was nonplussed by the entire event and, as long as she got fed when she wanted, she was very agreeable.

Here are a few pictures from the trip:

Elsa’s First Restaurant

A couple of weeks ago we broke down and bought a swing for Elsa.

Before she was born, we didn’t intend to get one. But after about ten days, we realized we needed every ally we could muster in the ongoing campaign to stave off crying.

It’s not the fanciest swing on the market, but it can move side-to-side or front-to-back, and it has a bunch of scary features we don’t use, like fake cricket sounds and a rotating disco ball of stuffed animals.

Sometimes Elsa loves it and occasionally she hates it, but overall it has been successful at keeping her happy for a few minutes a day.

Here’s some video I shot this afternoon of Elsa contentedly hanging out in her swing:

Over the last two weeks, both sets of grandparents were in town to meet Elsa for the first time.

First Jensen’s parents came from Ohio, and then Lynne’s parents, sister, and grandma came from New Jersey. All of the family overlapped for one night, which we celebrated by taking everyone to Purple in Woodinville.

Here are some pictures of grandparents (and a great-grandmother!) with Elsa:

Meeting the Grandparents

Elsa’s third week of life has been a busy one!

She met both sets of grandparents for the first time, and also one of her great grandparents, Edith.

She also went on her first non-medical-related outing, dining out at restaurants twice with the grandparents.

I’ll post some pictures from those events soon, but in the meantime here are some recent photos of Elsa just lounging around:

Elsa – Week 3

Last week, Elsa got her first bath.

She was a good sport and, while I think it would be a stretch to say that she enjoyed it, Elsa tolerated the experience with a kind of surprised curiosity.

Lynne did most of the hard work, while I took a few pictures for posterity. You can definitely glimpse Elsa’s shock as we disrobe her in a few of the early photos.

Once we finished, Elsa had that delicious “new baby” smell and, while she was cold, she also seemed pleased with the results.

Elsa’s First Bath

Of course, it only took her about 20 minutes to get totally dirty again, but I guess that’s life with a newborn!

Since Elsa was born on December 25, we didn’t have a chance to properly celebrate Christmas.

So, on New Year’s Eve, we decided to have a combined Christmas and New Year’s party. We opened presents, ate fondue, and watched the fireworks.

Here are some pictures we took of Elsa in the holiday dress we bought her months ago (mistakenly assuming that she’d be several weeks old by the time Christmas rolled around):

Christmas 2008

I also shot some video of Elsa in her full Christmas spirit; here’s a short montage of some of the highlights:

Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’s from all three of us!