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:
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| 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.
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| 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):
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| 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!
We’re finally back from the hospital; they kept us an extra day to make sure that Elsa and Lynne were doing OK.
As promised, here is some video of Elsa about 10 minutes after she was born, when they were at the tail end of measuring and checking her and getting ready to take her back over to Lynne.
We have a lot more photos and video to share, and I’ll keep posting them as I get time to sort through them and upload them.
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:
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| 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.
It doesn’t snow very often in Seattle, but when it does, there’s all-out panic.
Yesterday, Seattle Public Schools canceled all classes because the weather report hinted that there might be a dusting of snow. Of course, it never came.
This morning, though, Seattle got hit with a major storm during the morning commute. It started with rain which got everything wet, and then the temperature dropped, freezing all of the rain into a sheet of ice. Then a foot of snow got dumped on top of the ice. Traffic chaos ensued.
All of the Seattle TV stations are in 9/11 mode, with round-the-clock helicopter shots of empty highways and action reporters beaming back live pictures of steep hills where cars might just, any second, crash. One of the broadcasters breathlessly noted that tonight we’ll see “some of the most dramatic freezing we’ve ever seen!”
Here’s some video I shot around 9am from our living room; we have had another 6-8″ additional snow since the video (and it’s still coming down):
It is pretty chaotic, though. There are buses and trucks jackknifed across the highways, and people have abandoned hundreds of cars all over the roads. Seattle only has like a dozen snow plows, and all of the abandoned and crashed vehicles make it even harder to clear the roadways.
There’s no way we will be able to surmount our steep driveway anytime soon, with temperatures expected to be below freezing until at least next week and another storm on the way Saturday night.
We had the foresight to park one of our cars at the bottom of our hill so, when baby comes, we’ll have to put our crampons on over our shoes, trek down the hill, and hope we can safely navigate to the hospital.
Fun times!
Many of you have checked in to see if our baby has come yet, the December 14 due date having come and past.
Well, no baby yet, and no overt signs that she’s coming imminently.
On average, first-time mothers deliver eight days late, so we’re not too concerned yet.
For now, it’s just a waiting game.
Thanks for the good wishes; we’ll keep you posted!
We’re now less than a week before the due date and, so far, there’s no sign that her arrival is imminent.
By pure gut feeling, we’re guessing a 50-70% chance that she comes this week, although on average first children come eight days late. But we’re hoping she makes it out before Christmas.
The Christmas tree is up, the hospital bags are packed, the Hushamok is ready, so we’re just waiting for her to decide to make a break for it.
When she comes out, we’ll post pictures and video here, so stay tuned…
As of today, we’re 37 weeks along which means, in medical terms, the baby is officially full-term! In other words, if labor started today, the doctor would make no attempt to slow it down or stop it.
(We’re hoping, of course, that she bakes for a few more weeks.)
Among other accomplishments this weekend, we got the car seats installed in each of the cars. At first, it seemed like it would be easy because of the LATCH connectors on today’s car seats.
But then it turned out that the seats can’t go back very far if the car seat is directly behind them and the middle position doesn’t have LATCH connectors in either of the cars, so we had to learn to install them the old-fashioned way: with seat belts.
This turned out to be more complicated than I thought it would be, but hopefully we have them secured correctly now.
The house is in total disarray with the construction crew ever-widening the number of rooms they’re working in. Lynne puts the chances that the first steps the baby takes being on Ram Board as 15%.
Everyone have a happy Thanksgiving, and we’ll post here as soon as we have any more news.
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:
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| 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!
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| Tokyo |
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