The Harris Family

The first couple weeks of Sonja’s life have been fun, busy, and interesting as we’ve gotten to know her better.

She is gaining weight steadily and slowly getting used to life on the outside. Although her eyes are in that dark “no color yet” mode, both Lynne and I think she’ll have brown eyes. You can almost see a hint of brown when you look at them in bright light. (Wheras Elsa’s always looked to be blue from the very beginning.)

Sonja loves to be held and is least squirmy when being carried around by one of us, although she also enjoys lying on her back on the floor for a few minutes (something Elsa never cared much for.)

Here is a week-old set of pictures from a trip to Crossroads Park. There are some new pictures of Sonja, and a bunch of Elsa running around and riding on her scooter.

Sonja’s First Outing

Our daughter, Sonja Rose Harris, was born last Friday, May 13 at 11:20am at Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland. She was born at 8 lbs., 0 oz. and was 21.25″ long.

In contrast to the complications and worry of the pregnancy, the birth was natural, quick, and straightforward. In fact, things progressed so quickly at the end that the doctor didn’t make it to the hospital on time, and the on-call doctor barely got gloves on in time to catch Sonja!

Shortly after birth, we spent four hours in the NICU with Sonja while she recovered from low blood sugar and temperature. After a few quick feedings, Sonja was toasty warm and stable, and we were ready to come back to our room. They kept us for observation that night, but by late Saturday afternoon, we were at home.

Elsa and Lynne’s family came to visit us Friday night. Sonja had prepared a “big sister gift” for Elsa—a long, twirly, flowing pink dress of the type Elsa adores. We let her open it at the hospital, and it as a big hit.

So far Elsa has adjusted to the change really well. She is fond of kissing her baby sister, and is very interested in her “tiny little fingers,” “tiny little ears,” “tiny little eyes,” etc.

Sonja has been pretty mellow over the first few days. She has handled everything with aplomb so far—adjusting well to being in the car seat, being weighed, sleeping, feeding, and being carried in various positions. Even in these first few hours together, we can tell she has a different personality than Elsa.

Here are a few pictures from our first days with Sonja. Thank you to everyone for the kind wishes and congratulations. We are so happy to have her as part of our family!

Sonja’s Birth

Last Sunday, we took a trip over to her Grandma and Grandad’s house for Easter festivities.

Elsa quickly found some caramel-chocolate eggs and starting carrying them around, strings of gooey caramel attached to her chin.

The day before, Elsa colored some eggs, and so this was an opportunity for her to find them again. Once she found them all, she wanted to hide them, so we waited in the living room while she found good hiding places for every egg. Finding them again was quite easy, because as soon as they were all hidden, she ran over to show us where they all were!

Here are a few pictures from the day:

Easter 2011

Last year, we failed to recognize that most Easter egg hunts happen on the day before Easter, not Easter itself. Because of that, we drove Elsa to a non-existent Easter egg hunt, totally vacant and with no eggs to be found.

So, this year, we left nothing to chance, and took Elsa to Samena’s Easter egg hunt, which was an entire week before Easter!

Here are some pictures we took during the hunt. Elsa kept wanting to grab an egg with a slug on it; we kept having to appeal to her OCD “it’s dirty” sensibility to convince her to leave it behind.

Easter Egg Hunt

With a new baby mere weeks (at most!) from being born, we decided to take a short vacation last weekend–probably our last one for quite some time!

We went to Cle Elum and hiked, swam, and ate our way through three fun days.

Here are a few pictures we snapped along the way:

Cle Elum Weekend

It is amazing to think that in a few short weeks we’ll have two daughters instead of just one!

December 25th was an action-packed day, as it was not only Christmas, but also Elsa’s second birthday.

In the morning, we celebrated Christmas, opening presents together under the tree. Then, around 1 o’clock, Elsa took a nap and when she woke up, we started her birthday celebration!

She got many great presents–in fact, so many, that she can’t always decide which one to concentrate on at any given moment.

Elsa is very much “dress-obsessed” right now. She loves wearing dresses more than anything, and often when she wakes up in the morning, the first thing she says is “I want to put on my pink dress!” or “Put on the red dress with the snowman and I will spin around and around!” So, she went through at least three different dresses on Christmas day, as you will see in the pictures below.

Lynne’s parents brought over a box of dresses from the early 1980s when Lynne was Elsa’s age, and Elsa loves wearing these vintage dresses. In the pictures below, you may notice the white one doesn’t exactly look like it’s from the 2010s…

Anyway, here are some of the pictures we took. A few of them are from the birthday party Elsa hosted a week before her birthday, and the rest are from the day itself.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Christmas and Elsa’s Birthday 2010

Last month, we went down to San Diego for a few weeks, spending a week in a condo in La Jolla, and a week at a hotel north of the city.

Elsa got to play in the ocean and go swimming in the pools; we also visited the aquarium, the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, and all the other usual local attractions.

She handled the plane rides quite well, although we had to bring a bunch of new toys from the dollar store on the flight to keep her entertained.

Here are some pictures from the trip:

San Diego

It has been a while since I’ve had time to get on here and upload pictures or video of Elsa. Work has been crazy busy, and Lynne and Elsa have had a lot going on as well. But although we haven’t been sharing them yet, we have been taking a lot of pictures this summer and saving them up!

I thought I would start posting them over a couple of days, starting with a few sets of pictures from early in the summer. They start with Elsa’s one-and-a-half year birthday celebration in June, and include pictures through the end of July.

Most of the pictures were taken at our house, but a few are from downtown Seattle, the aquarium, and a local farm.

Elsa – June 2010

Elsa – July 2010

Last week, Elsa’s cousin Amelia visited from Ohio along with Jensen’s brother Carr and Carr’s wife Christy. Amelia is three-and-a-half months older than Elsa, and because they are so close in age it was fun to see them together!

This was the first time the girls have spent time together since they have both become mobile and talking, so we couldn’t wait to see what they thought of one another.

We had a great time, and the girls played together really well! By the end of the first day, Amelia would say “Elsa, Elsa” whenever Elsa would leave the room, and within a few days, Elsa was saying Amelia’s name as well (although the diction left something to be desired.)

Below are two sets of pictures from the trip. The first set are pictures of Elsa and Amelia together on various day trips. We took the ferry to Bainbridge Island to visit the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island and walked around for a few hours; this was the first boat trip for both girls. Some of the pictures are from a visit to the Bellevue Botanical Garden.

The second set of pictures is just Elsa (although Carr appears in a few of them as well.) We stayed a bit later at the Botanical Garden to let Elsa romp around in the grass.

It was so much fun seeing everyone together!

Elsa and Amelia – May 2010

Elsa at the Botanical Garden

It has been a while since we’ve posted pictures of Elsa, so I thought it was a good time to share a few of the photos we’ve taken over the last few months. As the weather has gotten nicer, we’ve been able to take Elsa outside a lot more, which she loves. Early next week she’ll be 17 months old!

Here are the most recent pictures, taken last weekend in our driveway and at Bellevue Downtown Park:

Elsa – May 2010

Here are a few from Mothers’ Day, when we took Elsa to go play in the fountains at Redmond Town Center, and then took her to a park near our house to go play.

Mother’s Day 2010

The next set is from the May Fair celebration at the Three Cedars Waldorf School. Elsa even made the newsletter (bottom-right of page 5.)

Afterwards she went swimming an the pool. Elsa loves swimming and goes several times per week; recently her swim teacher suggested pulling her out of Parent/Tot and putting her in the next level swim class, so today she’ll be in her first class with mostly 3- to 5-year olds.

May Fair 2010

Finally, here are a few pictures of Elsa at lunch and then out-and-about on a chilly April afternoon:

Elsa – April 2010

This week, Carr, Christy, and Elsa’s 20-month old cousin Amelia are visiting for the first time since last year. It will be great to see them and to see the girls play together!

This has been an unseasonably temperate winter in Seattle: not a flake of snow, a minimum of rain, and the flowers and trees started blooming in late February!

Yesterday it was 65 degrees and sunny, so we decided to take Elsa on a trip to the Woodland Park Zoo (the largest zoo in the Seattle area.)

Elsa loves identifying animals and making animal noises (her favorite is the duck, but she is equally adept at pig, cow, horse, sheep, dog, cat, crow, elephant, whale, snake, bunny rabbit and a bunch more I’m sure I’m forgetting.) So we thought she would love seeing the animals in person.

We stayed at the zoo for almost three hours, but Elsa eventually tuckered out and fell asleep. Although she seemed to enjoy seeing many of the animals, spotting a duck brought out the biggest smile.

Here are some pictures from our trip to the zoo:

Woodland Park Zoo

I’d estimate that Elsa knows how to use more than a hundred words now, although her pronunciation on many of them is pretty rough and requires mommy or daddy translation. She often leaves off the first sound from syllables, so water is “ater” and “sleep sack” is “eep ack.”

About three weeks ago, she learned how to add words together with prepositions to form mini-sentences. In particular, she knows on, off, up, down, in and out, and likes to demand everything possible to change state. “Lights on!” “Music off!” “Walk out!” Sometimes, the meaning is clear, even if the grammar is not. “Book on!” means that she wants to read a book, for instance, usually preceded by “this one” to indicate the book she wants to read.

Here are some pictures from about a month ago that I haven’t had time to post, of a trip to Crossroads Park. Elsa loves the swing and the slide, and wants to go on them as much as possible!

Elsa – February 2010

Elsa can run and jump now, and she’s learning to stomp, walk backwards, and to go down stairs (with a hand from one of us.) The pace at which she’s learning words is definitely increasing, and she’s becoming more talkative during the day, especially around people she’s comfortable with.

December 25. Two holidays in one: Christmas and Elsa’s birthday all wrapped up in one exhausting, fun-filled day!

The morning was devoted to celebrating Christmas.

Lynne’s parents, sister, and grandma are in town, and they came over to the house around 10, just as Elsa woke up from her morning nap. Elsa went over to the Christmas tree and played Santa, grabbing presents and bows and learning to rip open wrapping paper. She had a great time opening presents and playing with her new toys! Among the presents she received were shape sorters, pull toys, and musical instruments. At the end, she opened her stocking and found jumbo-sized crayons to go with her new drawing paper!

Elsa has been walking everywhere for the last month; she seems to love the freedom (and speed) it gives her. So, all morning she was darting around the room, playing with wrapping materials, presents, and people. She knows how to say a couple dozen words now, and was eager to show them off to the family, including done, yes, up, down, book, duck, lights, keys, hat, home, and milk. She also learned that pigs say oink and was wandering around saying “oink, oink, oink.” (She is also getting great at imitating the words people say to her.) All in all, Elsa seemed to have a great time!

Then, Elsa went down for an early afternoon nap, and when she woke up, it was the beginning of the birthday part of the day! She immediately noticed the pink birthday balloon upstairs, and ran over to play with it, dragging it all around the room and batting it around.

We had a birthday/Christmas dinner of lamb, brussels sprouts, salad, carrots, and zucchini, and Elsa tried a little bit of each of the vegetables.

After dinner, we presented Elsa with her birthday cake: carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and a single candle on top. Of course, the first thing she did was to plunge her hand into the cake. I will also reveal that Elsa successfully extinguished the candle by herself, but I will leave the “how” up to your imagination until I have time to post the video.

We finished up with her birthday presents and cards, including a tractor that actually drives, a few books, and a few very beautiful pieces of jewelry.

Overall, everyone had a lot of fun, and Elsa was a trooper through all the excitement. Below are some pictures from the day; the first pictures are from the morning (Christmas) celebration, and the later pictures are from the more birthday-centric part of the day.

Christmas and Elsa’s Birthday 2009

Hope that everyone had a great holiday. We are looking forward to 2010!