8 Month Old Baby!

She is getting so big!  The chair used to be big!

A little October fun

Ellen in her super fun Halloween gangsta jammies!  She is such a festive baby.

 

Enjoying a little bit of fun on the front porch in the good weather.

 

 

Family pic at the Arboretum in Dallas.  Ellen making crazy face.  And crazy hands.  Just crazy baby!

 

7 month old baby!

Solid foods!! and fun out and about

Ellen's first time out in the soft pink thing cart cover.  She can sit up for the most part but was kinda falling over.  Luckily we were at Babies R Us so we "borrowed" a few teddy bears and stuck them in her cart for support while we finished shopping.

6 Month Old Baby!

It's a little late, but this was Ellen's 6 month birthday picture.  She sits up on her own now.  For the most part...

5 Month Baby!

Happy 5 month birthday to you Ellen!  Mommy and Daddy love you!!

Sitting, Rolling, new expressions!

This last month has flown by and Ellen has been transforming into a Big Girl right before our eyes!  (our tearful eyes)  It seems like it was just yesterday when she couldn't roll over, when she couldn't sit up and when she could fit into all those clothes that are now in the hand-me-down box.  While it is sad to see our baby girl grow up, it is also incredibly fun to see her do new things.  She openly smiles and squints her eyes at us now which makes us believe that we are at least doing some things right.  And she even helps us cook:

She makes crazy faces:

She lets Grandma know she is happy just to be hanging out!

She thinks of amazing jokes!

And delivers the best punch lines!

And then we laugh.  Ha ha ha ha ha!

..ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

And she's been on her best behavior when she goes out to eat across the street with Mommy and Daddy:

And when she goes to her cousin Kaden's birthday party in Clovis!

And still manages to find time to hang out with her best friend Preston:

Four Month Baby!

Happy 4 month birthday to our amazing happy baby Ellen!!!!!

4th of July

Ellen's first 4th of July was spent at our condo in Austin.  We grilled out front with the neighbors and then sat up on the porch for what turned out to be a great view of the city's fireworks show.

The Happy Baby Dance

 

3 Month Birthday!

Happy 3 month birthday Ellen!!

Eat Play Sleep

This was a very big week for us.  Lacee went back to work the Tuesday after Memorial Day and Ellen had her first day of school on Friday.  We decided not to do both things on the same day and that turned out to be a great decision.  It would have been way too hard on us to do both on Tuesday.  Luckily, Cathy and Brittany came down on Monday and stayed for the week to help us ease into our new routine.  We all woke up early in the mornings and Cathy had her instructions of our Eat, Play, Sleep schedule.  Lacee had bottles made up for Ellen and she actually did pretty good drinking three 4 oz. bottles like we had hoped, as well as maybe a 4th partial if needed.  We wanted to make sure this was do-able before we insisted that the DayCare ladies could do it.  Cathy, and Brittany, were tons of help!  Thanks guys!  And Lacee seemed to ease back into her work schedule pretty well.  But the real trauma came Friday morning when we had to turn loose of our baby girl to the loving women at Town & Country Montessori school.  Not that Ellen ever missed a beat, she did great!  And the ladies at the school were great too.  Very caring and very accommodating to us.  But we were sad.  And it was quite a sending off party for Ellen too.  Me and Ellen drove my car as I was on my way to work, Lacee drove her car as she left for work, and Cathy and Brittany came in their car as they were hitting the road to go back to Clovis (or whatever their next adventure was.  I think the lake).  And there we were, all of us in the parking lot of the school saying Bye to Ellen with tears in our eyes.  We even all went inside to give to the ladies Ellen's bag of personal things and each gave our own recommendations of how to calm her, how to put her to sleep and just explain in general what things make her smile.  Turns out we didn't need to do any of that.  She was in very capable hands and cooperated with everybody at the school.  Lacee and I picked her up that afternoon and she had made straight A's!  She ate, she slept, and she played.  Just like we asked her to.

Two Month Birthday!

This time she cooperated and had some great poses in her chair.  It's really cool because she just started to smile about a week ago.

Ellen the Adventurer!

Well Ellen has been getting out of the house quite a bit in the last couple of weeks and she seems to enjoy it.  We bought a Baby Bjorn holder that Daddy can wear and Mommy has a Moby wrap that we got from our good friend Holly.  These make for great walks across the street to our favorite patio restaurants and fun walks around the lake.

And Ellen's very first public outing!  We attended our good friends, Tiff and Calvin Winchester's wedding in Burleson, TX.  The wedding was beautiful and luckily for us was in an outside venue at a winery where Ellen and I kind of spied on the ceremony from beyond the treeline but she did get in the mix during the reception under the tents and on the dance floor.  Texas style!  Congrats again Tiff and Cal!  The pic is neither Bride nor Groom but is our dear good friend Mai.  This is also the first time Ellen got to make an appearance to her Dallas friends.

I think she enjoyed it.  And Mai the baby-whisperer is welcome to Austin anytime!

Easter!

Baby Ellen celebrated her first Easter last week complete with Easter basket and she just happened to receive all of her parents favorite candies from the Easter Bunny!

One Month Birthday!

Happy One Month Birthday to Ellen!  Sorry this post is about a week late but we promise the picture was taken at one month.  And thank you to our friend Rebekah for the fun stickers to help us keep track of her age.  We also thought we would sit her in her fun pink polka dot chair to help gauge how big she is getting...

Maybe next month she won't cry. 

Baby Baby Ellen!

Greetings from Ellen's blog weeks 3 and 4!  It is amazing how much she keeps growing!  More facial expressions, more distinct cries and something of a sleeping pattern beginning to start...  And oh the visitors she gets!  My parents (Stan & Donna) came and spent a couple days and then the next week cousin Jacqueline and Aunt Susan and Uncle Andrew came.

We're also just starting to get a little more comortable taking her out around the neighborhood.  And we bought a baby Bjorg carrier which she really, really likes!  If we take her out at the right times she'll actually sleep while we walk around.  So now she has been to Taco Cabana, Schlotzsky's, Uncle Billy's and the Zephyr train at Zilker Park with cousin Jacqueline!



Ellen Sharlene Surina!

Baby Ellen Sharlene Surina finally arrived at 8:42 AM on March 6th, 2012.  All 7 lbs 9 oz and 21 inches of her!  And she was worth the wait.  Life has gotten even better with her now in ours.  She was born at Seton Medical Center just North of downtown Austin which is a wonderful facility and staffed with the most friendly and competent nurses.  I mean, those nurses could not have treated us better.  Everybody was so nice and so helpful, they really did wonders to try and help minimize our stress.  Ellen gave us a little bit of a scare when she was first born (but everything worked itself out and thank God turned out to be just fine).  She had developed something called Pneumothorax right as she was born which meant she had some air inside her chest cavity between her lungs and heart.  But the doctors identified it right away and put a couple monitors on her and decided she should stay the night in NICU to be more closely monitored.  The NICU nurses were just as nice as the regular nurses and they made us feel at home when we went up there to spend time with Ellen.  We were allowed in there all hours of the night except for during shift change from 6:30-7:30.  Even though she had her little monitors on, she was mostly in good spirits.

If she wasn't eating or asleep:

Well the air in her chest went away on it's own and they never had to do any procedures to correct it, so all went well and Ellen got to come down to Mama's room the 2nd day.  And it was later that day when they decided they could discharge both mother and baby!  During this whole process we were fortunate enough to have Lacee's Mom Cathy with us.  She had been on alert in Clovis with her bags packed and managed to catch a flight which got her to the hospital in Austin about two hours after we checked in.  So she was there for the entire labor and delivery and she was also able to run back to our house to take care of Preston.  Thank you Cathy!!!  And we also must add a Thank You to our great new friends and neighbors Brian & Teresa for feeding Preston the first morning and evening.  And Katelyn came and visited us while we were in the hospital and we had a fun surprise visit from Katelyn's Mom Pat.  We are truly blessed to have such great friend and family support.  And it did not stop at the hospital.  Cathy ended up staying with us for almost two weeks and Karlton and Brittany came up for a while.  And as soon as they left, my parents (Stan & Donna) came up Friday afternoon to stay through Monday.  It has been a whirlwind of fun and activity but we couldn't be happier!