A First

Well, Ellie Bellie has had a rough weekend. We experienced our first bout of sickness with her. Let me tell you, if you can postpone that first, it is a good idea. I got home from work on Friday afternoon and sat down to feed her. She ate really well (mostly because she still wont take a bottle and hadn't eaten for 6 hours) and after her meal, I sat down to eat some lunch. I picked her up after I had finished and.... she handed her whole lunch back to me down my shirt. The whole afternoon Ellie was just so fussy, she wouldn't let me put her down. In fact, she wouldn't hardly let me sit down. I finally resorted to taking her on a walk because, if all else fails, a walk will calm our little girl. It did, but as soon as we got home she was back to crying and fussing. Now, one throw up isn't anything to fret with a newborn in most cases, but I tried to feed her again later and in the middle of nursing her she threw up again. This time it was not like other spit ups I have seen. It was yellow and super chunky. Yuck. I had been handling the events of the afternoon pretty well, but this put me into a stream of tears followed by a phone call to my mother. Thankfully, Brad got home about that time too. After a call to the doctor's office, consulting both our mothers, and talking to a good friend, we decided to not even try to nurse for the rest of the night. We used a syringe and fed our sick little Ellie Pedialyte and water throughout the evening and night. Today she has been much better, but is definitely still feeling the effects of this stinkin' stomach bug. I am glad that she is smiling a lot more and has a bit of her energy back. She is such a sweet girl. It's no fun to see her sick.

I tried to get a picture of Ellie smiling, but she got preoccupied with the flash on the camera

Ellie has become very good at finding her thumb (Should we discourage this? She doesn't want to touch a pacifier)

Going Ons

Last week I started back to work after a lovely ten weeks of maternity leave. It really went by way too fast. I am now working 4 days a week, in the mornings, to get my 20 hours in at work. It was so hard to leave cute little Ellie, but I know she is in good hands. I am not going to lie, I cried as I left her a couple of times. Once again, I know she is in very capable hands. To make things even harder, despite our practicing with a bottle, Ellie revolted last week and didn't take her bottle at all for the six or so hours I was gone on a couple of the days. That made her super tired and just not herself in the afternoons which of course led to more tears of worry that my little girl was starving and whatnot. Last week was probably the most emotional I have been since the week or so right after my delivery. We were both quite exhausted by the end of the week, but we made it through it. We had a nice weekend and a good day together today, and tomorrow we go back to work again whether we want to or not. Thankfully, I can say that I don't dread going to work because I hate my job, actually, it is quite the opposite. I have great coworkers, an understanding boss, and a fun, and usually calm, atmosphere to work in. This, at least, has made the whole transition a little better.

All is well at the Winter home for the most part. Brad is in the full swing of things in school. He really got to show what he was made of last week. It was a rough week. He had 3 tests 2 quizzes and a paper due, and miraculously he still had time to be at home with his wife and daughter without fretting too much about all of that stuff. I think he'll do well in graduate school. I am so proud of him so far. Anyway, we can't do a post anymore without a cute picture of our little one. So here is her "founding fathers look" (it is supposed to be a powdered wig) as Brad calls it. Geez, the things my husband does with her diapers. Hehe

A Great Weekend

We had such a wonderful, long weekend and we got to spend a ton of time together as a family. We started the weekend off extra early on Friday because Brad got out of class super early! It was such a welcomed phone call from him around 10:30 that he was on his way home. It was especially fun because Friday was my birthday. I wasn't planning on seeing him until about 5 o'clock Friday night when we were going to meet up after class in Salt Lake. So instead, he came home and made me birthday WAFFLES! I love Brad's waffles. They are so delish! Yes, that was great! And to make the day even better, Brad bought me icecream (it's the little things that make me happy). And to make the day pretty hard to top, we went to see The Lion King Friday night! We bought tickets for the show back in January or February, so we had been building up quite a bit of excitement for Friday night, and I was not disappointed. That was such an amazing show! I absolutely loved it! The music, the costumes, the actors,the dancing the puppets, oooo it was just phenomenal.
Saturday we spent a lot of the day cleaning the house. Brad worked his tail off in the yard mowing the law, trimming rose bushes, and weeding the flower gardens. He also took a load of branches and left overs from the previous owners to the dump. We were so tired by the end of the day that we just stayed home Saturday night and watched one of our favorite movies.

Ellie's blessing was on Sunday. It was a beautiful day, and Brad gave a wonderful blessing to her. We had a big crowd of people at our home afterward for a breakfast, and it was really a lot of fun.
Brad started dressing Ellie Sunday morning while I was still doing my hair. He had fun laughing at Ellie's "elegant exercise outfit" before he put the actual dress on her.

My mom and I spent the last week working on making the blessing dress. I always have high hopes for my sewing projects, but they usually get over my head. Thankfully, my mom comes to the rescue by helping me finish the project. I hope some day I can be a little more self sufficient in my sewing, but I guess I need the help while I am still learning. Anyway, we put the finishing touches on the dress on Saturday afternoon. I think the dress turned out really really cute.

She is such a sweet thing. She spent a lot of time meeting family members, and she was so well mannered through the whole ordeal. She was plenty tired by the time our house had emptied out, but we had so much fun.

We are a happy family. We are so grateful for all the love and support we have received from all of our family and friends. Events like these make you realize and really appreciate them all.

Monday was pretty relaxing too. We went to Hooper Tomato Days for a little bit, and then just hung out in Hooper for the afternoon. It was so nice to take it slow because I have a feeling that school is going to start picking up a lot for Brad, and I start back to work at the end of this week. It was so much fun to spend time together. I relish weekends.