Week 24

My sweet little baby is 24 weeks old now, and not so little anymore, though she is just as sweet! Well, most of the time... ;)

It was a pretty exciting week for the Looten household... During the week, Elena finished trying vegetables! We tried green beans and peas this week, and she actually really liked them. Not as much as sweet potatoes, but she liked them enough. It's been fun since then because I get to kind of mix up what she gets every morning. It's so fun watching her, because she opens wide for the first bite, but then when I put it in her mouth, she makes a horrible face. I guess she just expects oatmeal, which she LOVES, and then gets a veggie of some kind instead. I'd probably make a face, too! But after a couple of bites she starts pounding most of the veggies. In a couple of weeks we'll get to try FRUIT! :) Hawaiian Delight here we come...

Anyway... other than that, Elena got to be home with Mommy for Friday, which is always fun. Except, of course, that Mommy spent the whole time cleaning! Elena did discover a new trick on Thursday & Friday when she was home with me, and that was rolling over. She's rolled over before, but always only once after lots of effort. Thursday and Friday she decided that she would just roll over and over every time she gets laid down. So that's made life really interesting, because now she's actually mobile. She doesn't really have a purpose to her rolling yet, like she doesn't roll towards stuff, but she definitely moves around a lot more now! She loves grabbing her feet, and kicking all the time. She does this funny thing where she kicks with both legs and looks like a frog. It's pretty adorable, too.

This past weekend we had the Lootens in town again for Jessie's shower on Sunday afternoon. We had LOTS of women from the family and friends over, and Elena got held by everyone! She was a good sport about it, and even spent awhile hanging out with Gracie, the flower girl from our wedding. And, true to form, since there was present opening, we stuck a bow on Elena's head! :)

We had a great week, and the snow days provided some much needed home time for Elena and I. We missed Josh all weekend, since he was gone Saturday skiing with the youth group, and the boys didn't really hang around for the shower on Sunday! But this coming weekend we get to spend all weekend home together as a family, just the 3 of us. Those times are so precious to us, our little girl is growing up so fast and we don't want to miss it.

Thankfully, with our digital camera never far away, we'll at least have about 4 million pictures to remember her as a baby! Here are a few more...

Green beans are YUMMY! Not so yummy looking smeared all over her face, but cute anyway! :)

Aunt Ruthie brought Elena a little present: sheep slippers!
Aren't they sweet?
And, apparently, delicious!
We're MOBILE! I had to take this picture because I laid her down on the white blanket on the floor while I vacuumed around the living room. By the time I finished vacuuming she was halfway across the room and facing the opposite direction. Life as we know it is over!
At the shower with Aunt Jane, and a bow on her head! Hanging out with Gracie! Isn't it hard to believe that this is the same little girl who was our flower girl?! The one that refused to smile... :)

Modeling a present from Grandma Price... Josh and I decided she looks like the statue of liberty, so she's posing like it! Grandma Price bought her some bunny ears, too, so stay tuned for pictures of those!

Happy week 24, Elena!

Week 23

Look at me go! Week 23's post is done (close to) on time! :) Thanks a lot to the weather for that! If I wasn't home for a snow day, this post might never go up... but here it is!

Week 23 was full of adventures for Miss 'Lena. We spent the weekend in Illinois visiting my grandparents, and Jess and Mike, who flew in from CO. It was an amazing trip, that side of the family is rarely all together, and we had EVERYONE there this weekend- there were 41 people for dinner on Saturday night! Elena got held by lots of people, of course. Most of them hadn't seen her since Thanksgiving, so they were pretty amazed by how much she had changed. It's always interesting to have people see her like that because I don't notice the changes because they are so gradual. It makes me step back and look at her, and I'm always amazed by what I see. She changes so fast!

On our way to Illinois, Josh, Ruth, Elena, and I stopped in St. Louis to see Josh's cousin, Stevie, in an opera. It was Elena's first opera (and Ruth's, too, for that matter). She was amazingly well behaved, she only made a couple of noises, and those were during the intermission anyway! Everyone around her talked about what a good baby she was.

This week we also finished trying the yellow/orange vegetables. The results are in: squash is not good, carrots are ok, and sweet potatoes are YUMMY!! She tried the squash first, and she ate it, but she never really liked it. It took 3 or 4 days to finish off one jar. Then we gave her sweet potatoes at Grandma & Grandpa's house and she ate over half the jar at one time. So, obviously, she's a fan of those! She liked carrots ok, but not as much as sweet potatoes! She is really getting good at this whole eating thing. She knows when the bumbo comes out and she gets a bib that it's time to eat and she gets so excited.

We got to end Week 23 with a snow day at home! Well, sort of at home. I had a big presentation in front of the Board of Ed that didn't get canceled even though it was a snow day, so I had to go. But I didn't want to drive across town to take her to daycare, so Elena got to go with me! One of the directors who works in the same building as me was there, too, so she took care of Elena during the presentation. Elena was great, she met everyone in the building, and even the board members loved on her!

In writing this post, I've been noticing how many times I've said that Elena was great, well behaved, etc. We had a hard week for a baby. We went to an opera, we spent the weekend out of town and she got held by 40-some people, we had the Winter Bible Conference this week, too, so every evening she spent in the nursery at church for a couple of hours, and she went to a board meeting and got taken around by a total stranger for a couple of hours. And, through it all, she was awesome. We are truly blessed to have a baby who is so flexible and low-key. I'm sure there are challenges to come, and parenting isn't exactly easy now, but Elena makes everything totally worth it! I've never been happier...

Some pictures from our crazy week!

Hanging out with Aunt Ruthie and Daddy at the opera

Trying on Uncle Charlie's hat

Hanging out with cousin Gabe, who was fascinated by Elena.

Yummy, yummy sweet potatoes!

Toes are fascinating... especially on long car rides home!
This thumb has become very delicious in the last few weeks.

What a fun week! :) Hope you enjoyed! I'm sure there will be more pictures when Aunt Jess sends me the cd of her pictures from Illinois... there were lightening storms aplenty there!

Week 22

Ok, well, Week 22's post is late, but I was determined to do separate posts for these weeks! So I'm just going to stop writing at what happened by last Thursday, and I'll post again this week (hopefully).

Anyway, Week 22 wasn't all that exciting. Well, I guess it kind of was! Miss 'Lena turned 5 months, and got to start eating vegetables. Dr. Garb told us to start with yellow veggies, so we spent this week working on a jar of squash. She's not a huge fan, but she does eat it. It's so fun to feed her, although she makes a huge mess of it! She eats oatmeal twice a day, too, so she's getting to be a really big girl! She even sits at the big baby table at the daycare, although the teachers in her room have to make sure she doesn't steal cheerios from the other babies!

Grandma & Grandpa Looten came just to visit last weekend. Mostly, they came to see Elena, because they hadn't seen her since Christmas! They couldn't believe how much she'd grown up! Grandpa Looten & Daddy went fishing all day Saturday, so Grandma Looten, 'Lena, and I went shopping for a cute outfit for Elena. Saturday night Grandma & Grandpa babysat while Josh and I got to go to dinner and a movie. It was nice for Josh and I to have some time alone. I think the baby sitting went pretty well, until Grandma tried to swaddle Elena, and ended up making her really mad instead! It's kind of nice to know there's some things only Mommy can do! :) Ovearll, it was a nice relaxing weekend for them to visit.

We got to have our first Valentine's Day, too. We got her all dressed up in the new outfit Grandma Looten bought her. It said "I love Daddy," so we had to get pictures taken with him, of course! The daycare had a little Valentine's party for the baby, so I went over there at 3:00 to hang out a bit, then we busted out of there early! The sad news was, Elena had a massive blowout (I'm not kidding, it was up to her shoulder blades) and so far it hasn't washed out of the onesie, so that may be the one and only time she wears it! But at least it was really cute!

Here are some of the best pictures I have from this week...

Helping Mommy clean the house... we really needed to clean it (since we'd been sick and then busy it was a wreck) but she decided she didn't want to be set down. So, this was the only solution I could come up with! :) She's big enough to sit on my hip, but she doesn't know to hold herself on there, so the sling was a huge help!

Hanging out with Grandma Looten. Check out the thumb! She's really started sucking on it. She'll even take her binky out to stick her hand in her mouth instead. She's really funny because she can pull her binky out, and put it back in, but she forgets to let go of it, so she just keeps putting it in and pulling it out.

Another picture from the squash feeding!

She really watches everything that you put in your mouth. If you're eating or drinking and holding her, she follows the cup or fork or whatever back and forth. So I let her try to drink out of my cup. I'm not sure how much water actually got in her mouth, but it was pretty entertaining!

More sitting up in the bathtub! She's so adorable! I love that there are gobs of toys in her tub. And, of all of the toys she has, she plays with the cup that came with the tub for pouring water on her! Oh well... it doesn't get much cuter than this!

With her favorite Valentines on Valentine's Day! I sure am getting a lot of mileage out of that red and white Christmas bow!

Anyway, my little girl continues to grow and change so fast. She's really reaching for things, she's trying to sit up (and does with only a little support). There is nothing greater in the world then when she looks up at you with her bright eyes and a big smile. I could stare at her all day when she does that! It's hard to believe I could love a little girl that much! And I can't even imagine what we did before she came along.

Happy 5 Months!

Happy five months to my sweet little baby, who isn't so little anymore! As promised, we celebrated her "birthday" with the classic birthday treat... SQUASH!

She wasn't too sure whether she liked it or not, but it was awful cute!! I can't believe my little girl is eating big people food already! It doesn't seem possible. But here are the pictures... enjoy!

Finally!

Well, most of you know that I've been trying to get this on the video camera for weeks! But, I finally did it... so here's Miss 'Lena, rolling over! :)

(sorry about how loud my voice is, the mic is on the back of this camera)

Week 20 & 21

I really, REALLY don't intend to only do updates every two weeks. In fact, I even had last week's pictures downloaded and ready to go last week when everyone (except Elena) got viciously sick. So I spent all night Friday puking, all day Saturday feeling like I'd been hit by a MAC truck, and Sunday was the Super Bowl and church. Then, this week has just been crazy busy at work- twelve hours of meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday. So, anyway, that's my pretty lame excuse at why I'm doing a combined post...again. But, at least you had the laughing video to keep you company!

On to what's really important! Besides being really busy, the last few weeks have been really fun with Elena. She is getting so interactive! She really smiles and plays now, she loves rattles and her little mirrors. She reaches and grabs for things (sometimes toys, sometimes my hair- I can already feel the "Mom cut" coming on). She can roll over front to back and back to front now, though she doesn't do it often. She is trying really hard to sit up, too. She can't quite manage it on just the floor, but if she's got something to lean on just a bit she'll sit up for a long time. They said at the daycare that she's started sitting in the table now, which made me sad- only the big babies get to sit at the table! We started feeding her cereal again, oatmeal this time because Dr. Garb said it would be less constipating. Next week she will turn 5 months old, and we're going to celebrate with a nice helping of yellow veggies! I am so excited to start feeding her more foods. Rest assured, there will be many, many pictures! I keep trying to think of all of the neat things that she does now, and it's hard to remember them all. I'm so glad I keep track of what I can in here because otherwise I know I would forget everything!

Anyway, she's really a joy to be around. She's a happy baby, unless she's hungry (she got that honest) and she is growing like a weed. It's impossible to remember what life was like without her! I mean, there were whole days when the camera didn't come out! Now there are two cameras, plus a video camera, and none of them are more than a couple feet away at all times! That being said, here are some of my favorites from this week...

Truman has gotten used to Elena... he recognizes an accomplished napper when he sees one...

Clearly, he has no trouble laying on top of her like he does the rest of us!
WOW... check out the hair. You'll see similar hair if you ever see her Daddy (or her Grandma Looten) first thing in the morning.
She has discovered her toes! Which makes diaper changes very interesting...
She thinks she is much too big to lay down in the tub anymore! Unfortunately, she's still too little to really sit in it. But the little hammock that she used to lay in is perfect for sitting in now- it gives her just enough support. She likes to play now in the bath, too, which is fun, and it wears her out faster (always a good thing).
We finally caved and brought the last giant baby toy out to totally take over our living room. She loves this bouncer, even if she spends most of her time chewing on the edge of the frog seat. She bounces like crazy, even though...

her feet still don't quite touch the ground! She still makes the music go and the lights turn on, and seems to be having a great time! Now our living room is packed with baby stuff- a bouncy seat, a bouncer, a mat, a bumbo, a car seat-- and that's just the big stuff that lives there! Oh well, I wasn't ever very good at decorating!
We went to the Wild Game Dinner (I know, I know, no Wild Game for me!) and Ruth was taking Elena to get dessert for everyone. Well, Elena decided the whipped cream icing on the cake looked pretty good, so she grabbed a big handful of it (remember what I said about grabbing?!). The look on her face when she accidentally got some of it in her mouth was pretty priceless!
Nothing sweeter than a baby napping... look at the rosy cheeks!
So, there was this potato in the bag at Mom's birthday party, and we laughed because it was bigger than Elena's head. We went to take a picture of her with it, and she leaned forward and started gnawing on it. I was wiping dirt off her mouth for the rest of the night! But it's a pretty cute picture!

Well, that about covers it for the last few weeks. I will really try to do another post next week for week 22 all by itself, but work is very crazy, and I'd rather spend my extra time with her than in front of a computer screen! But there will at least be a post for 5 months, probably with some pictures of the yellow veggie introduction! So, stay tuned! Love you all!