The Harris Family

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

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

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!

After over 28 hours of labor, on 1:34 PM Christmas Day, our daughter Elsa Marilyn Harris was born at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle.

She was 8 lbs. 13 oz., 20 inches long, and beautiful.

Mom is recovering, and we’ll post many more photos and video of Elsa in a few days when we have a bit more time. For now, we’re a bit overwhelmed!

Here are a few of the first photos we took of her:

Elsa’s Birth

Thanks for all the good wishes before, during, and after what was a long, trying, and rewarding birth. We are so happy and proud that she’s finally here!

As of today, we’re 41 weeks, 2 days into the pregnancy. Doctors don’t let babies go longer than 42 weeks, so by sometime this weekend at the latest we’ll finally get to see her!

But, it could be even sooner. Tomorrow (the 24th), they may induce Lynne, but we won’t know if we’re on the schedule until they call us tomorrow morning. If we are, we could have the baby by tomorrow evening. Exciting!

We ended up getting 16″ of snow here at our house, and we will be walking up and down our driveway for at least a few more days. For those of you who have never seen our driveway, let’s just say that it’s a bit steep and a bit long. UPS doesn’t deliver, for instance. We regularly have seasoned service people (cable repair, plumbing, etc.) say it’s the most harrowing driveway they’ve ever seen. Walking down in labor and up with a newborn will be an interesting experience.

Here’s a picture I took yesterday; it’s very beautiful at least. Today, the mountains were out behind the lake but they weren’t yesterday when I took this picture.

Wish us luck on our icy drive to the hospital this week, and we’ll keep you up-to-date as we know more.

In June, Lynne and I spent nearly two full weeks in Beijing. This was an exciting an interesting time to be in China; less than two months before the Olympics, Beijing was a city in the midst of transformation. Cranes and construction were everywhere as the city prepared to reveal itself to the world.

Truth be told, we really enjoyed our time in Beijing. The city is vast but, in many ways, beautiful and modern. English is not widely spoken, but it’s possible to get around with little trouble.

The taxis, while plentiful, drive more aggressively and dangerously than any place I’ve been. I’ve never felt it more likely that I would die in a taxi (and that includes a ride in Buenos Aires in which a taxi driver got out of his car and punched out a fellow driver onto the trunk of the taxi we were in.)

The smog was crippling, and both of us experienced cold-like symptoms because of the reduced air quality. But we also experienced a few beautiful days, climbed the Great Wall, experienced the Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City, had some great dumplings, and saw most of the main historical sites.

Here are some pictures from our trip:

Beijing

I hope we’ll be back in China soon to continue exploring!

Next in our parade of taken-but-not-yet-shared photos, here are some pictures from the trip Lynne and I took to Tokyo earlier this summer.

It rained much of the time we were there, hence the umbrellas you see us carrying towards the end of the trip. Krispy Kreme sure was popular there, with Japanese people lined up for hours to bring home boxes of warm donuts to their families and co-workers.

I’ll post pictures of our subsequent visit to Beijing soon, but for now, enjoy these!

Tokyo

Today, Lynne’s sister Laurie threw her a baby shower!

Lynne, Laurie, and a few of her friends had lunch at Purple Cafe in Kirkland. They had a lot of fun, and the baby got a lot of cute clothes, toys, and other gifts.

Here are some of the pictures from the shower:

Baby Shower

We’ve decided to create a web site so that we have a convenient place to share pictures and videos of the new baby with family and friends.

If you want to easily keep track of changes to the site, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed. If you don’t have an RSS reader, don’t worry, you can just refresh this page and always see the most updated content.

To try out the new site, I’m going to post some of the old pictures that we never got around to showing people. Here’s the first batch, from our December 2006 trip to Antarctica:

Antarctica

We hope you like the pictures and our new web site!