Megan's getting married!

And I'm really busy! More posts next week!

Rollin'

I just have to tell you this. I am blogging this while driving down the road. Correction, not driving, riding. We all know driving while blogging is a no no. But I am not typing from a phone or anything, my super techy husband has set up the laptop to connect to the internet through his phone. I am on the internet on a computer in the car. Weirrrrd. But cool. Now I would never have suggested this. I am all for chit chatting, license plate games. classic rock on random stations and thinking quietly in the car on long trips. But I gotta admit, put the ol internet in front of me and it is just too tempting not to check in on it. I'm on the information superhighway on the regular highway. (hee hee hee).

For those of you who are wondering, Ella is doing just fine fast asleep in the back seat, having been lulled by a magical head massage from her Daddy before we switched drivers.

Look closely . . .

I was looking at some of my baby pictures today. It is funny how much Ella looks like I did! Do you see it? Most of the pictures I found were of me older than she is now. But I have definitely seen her make this face. It's so interesting to see how genetics plays out.

Trip to DC

Our trip to DC was really fun! We had a great time with our family and got to have some fun walking around town and visiting some of the museums. Overall the kids did great! And Ella really enjoyed meeting her cousins. Check out the intensity of this stare! I think it is saying, wow you are soooo cool! I can't wait to be like you when I get bigger!

Here's another shot of the girl cousins goofing off at breakfast with the lone dude cousin looking on:

While we were walking around town we ran into the host of our nation's capital and had to take a picture with him, of course:

And at last, here's Ella resting in her little nest on the bed at the hotel. She was quite comfortable with our room!

Off to DC--civics education starts early!

Today we'll take Ella on her first road trip! We are only going to DC this time which is a good practice run for our much longer drive to Florida next week for the wedding. Ella is really a girl about town so far! We appreciate her patience. Hopefully the long drives will go as well as the carseat nap on the way home from breakfast this morning.

We are really excited for our trip though because it will be Ella's first time meeting her cousins (also because Paul and I are excited to see Angela and her family of course!). I sense some really cute photo ops in the near future! And Paul and I always love to go to DC. It is such a fun town. Since we are pretty nerdy we just bask in all the free museums. We'll see how this trip works for that though. The what-to-do vote will be split between 4 adults, 2 preschoolers and 2 infants. I think each infant vote equals like 5 or 6 adult votes too when you count them up. But hopefully we can convince Ella to vote for riding around peacefully in the Ergo. I'll let you know how it goes. But it should definitely be some good family time!

Ella loves Daddy

Ella smiles at me a lot too. But she pretty much ALWAYS smiles when her daddy plays with her. : )

1234

Any of you as big a fan of Feist as I am?



I found this on Dear Baby, a mommy blog I read. I am so excited to watch Sesame Street with Ella when she gets big! What a great show!

Holding Ella

Even though it breaks my back and I have to do everything (like typing right now) one-handed, I just love holding Ella. She just relaxes completely on my shoulder, with maybe one arm wrapped around hugging me. I can hear and feel her little yawns and my cheek rubs against the deliciously soft hair on her tiny head. When she's sleeping and startles awake, a squeeze and a few little pats are all it takes to comfort her. She just feels so cozy and close. It's sweet.

Bonnet

I just love the baby bonnet! I never would have thought to buy one for Ella, but this gift from Aunt Lynn was such a treat for Ella to wear. I couldn't leave Paul alone the whole time she had it on, "Paul look at her!" "Paul, how cute is she?" Poor Paul. I wish we had some female family around here so he wouldn't be conscripted into admiring adorable pink stuff so often. But he was a good sport. I even caught him fluffing the ruffle at one point while he was holding her in church. It is really hard to resist!

Snapdragons

Aren't these beautiful? I love the farmers market. I was saying to Paul, I think the colors and lush texture of these flowers looks just like May. Not April or June but May. They're perfect!

Guess who slept all night last night? Not me! : )

Ella turns 2 months old today! And someone must have told her that big girls sleep all through the night, because that is exactly what she did last night! I thought we were lucky with 2 4-hour stretches the night before, but I couldn't believe it when I woke up at 4:30 after having put her down at 11:00 and she was still snoozing. Unfortunately I had to get up all by myself to go pump without Ella's little midnight snack. But I did so veeerrrry quietly and she kept sleeping until 6! Then after breakfast, went right back to sleep until 9:00! Paul hasn't slept so well since she was born, he said. (Except for our little vacation to Florida I guess, but who's counting? ; ) ).




Also, now that Ella is officially a bigger baby, we are starting to use some of the other diapers we got before she was born, but that she couldn't fit into before. They are still a little big, but it's close enough. These are all in one diapers from Kushies. They have a little flap that is almost removable, but attached at one end, which is sort of weird to me. I guess you are supposed to fold it so there is more absorbency in the front for a boy and the middle for a girl. Maybe it's attached so it doesn't get lost? Whatever. It seems to work ok for it's very first trial run. And that is good since these are a cheaper brand. We'll see.


Anyway, with 2 months under our belt, I think everyone is a little more comfortable with this being born thing. I can't believe how fast it's gone!

Just chillin'

Hangin' out with Mama on the couch

Home again

We made it back safe and sound to Durham. The second flight was A-ok too. Not quite as perfect as the first one, but still the whole experience was not bad and sort of restored my faith in the human race--common grace I guess. A nice older lady, a great-grandmother on her way to visit her 7 month old great grandchild, offered to switch with me so I could have my own row again. It was really sweet.

It is so nice to be a whole McCall family again. Ella and Paul were really happy to see each other.




Shortly after this, we were back inside and Paul was playing with Ella again and she did her first little laugh! It was so cute! She had the biggest smile on her face and this little hahhh came out. We loved it!

Unrelated, I took some adorable bath pictures this morning.




So we're back to "normal" again, whatever that is!

Florida!

We have been having a really nice and exciting time in Florida with lots of love for Ella from aunts and uncles and Gramma and Granddaddy.

Meggie's shower was fun too! She got lots of pretty presents and we had lots of wonderful friends over to celebrate:

Here's Ella in a beautiful dress that Gramma bought her:

It's been fun to be home!

We made it!

Whew! The trip actually went really well. And the funny thing was that a lot of the imagining and planning I did came in handy! [Hand patting self on back] : ) Paul was so kind to help me through security and everything before work. It was so nice to have his help! But one crazy thing I learned about the charm of a darling baby girl--even TSA employees will coo and treat you gently if you bring one along. It was surreal. They kept saying things like, "oh don't worry about it" and "let me help you." Stunning.

By the time we had gotten to this point, no fewer than 2 out of 3 paci's had hit the floor. The third went down minutes after we were seated on the plane. Doh! But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here is Ella in Daddy's arms waiting apprehensively to get on board.

So like I said, we lost the third paci just shortly before takeoff. But it was ok because then it was time to give Ella the bottle to help her ears out. And it totally worked! After we initially got settled in our seat (the nice steward put us in one with no one next to us), Ella really hardly fussed even a little bit. I bet the man who I heard mutter "blah blah blah . . . screaming baby" while we were getting comfortable felt bad when he saw how good she was the rest of the flight. Here she is sleeping sweetly on the plane:

The same nice steward even fixed my Dunkin Donuts coffee with cream and sugar for me and brought me a cup of hot water which I used to clean the paci's and warm up the bottle for the descent (feeding schedule is out the window today). And I got to enjoy my coffee because Ella wasn't crying, yay! Then after bottle #2 on the way down , we got to see Grandma!

It can be done folks! (But we still do need prayer for the return trip!)

Packing . . .

So we are getting ready to go to Florida for Megan's bridal shower. Woo! The picture above is Ella helping me pack. The picture below shows how we feel about all the preparations and the plane ride and everything:



This is seriously the most involved packing list I think I have ever made. At least for a trip this long. I have been rehearsing how we will go through the airport, what we will do and what we will need on the plane, thinking about how many outfits and supplies we'll need for the trip itself with cute outfits for both of us for the shower and Mothers Day, and trying to remember gifts and other things I need to transport down there. Yikes! Having a little one really complicates everything. At least they serve Dunkin Donuts coffee on my Jet Blue flight. Maybe I will be able to talk the poor soul who sits next to us into mixing up my cream and sugar for me while I hold Ella. I am thinking about bringing earplugs for that person as well. Do you think it would be a nice gesture? ; )

Been kinda boring around here lately

(sorry for the lack of posts!)

Out and about

Well the McCall family had a rockin and rollin saturday, and Ella did great even though she did wake up with a serious case of bedhead. : ) We got her cleaned up and ready to go in this little dress that I love:


Ella seemed pretty excited about the dress too.




And of course Mama and Daddy were loving all those pretty little smiley faces:




And off we went, first to the farmers market, then to a great craft show in Raleigh called the Handmade Market, then finally to Rob and Anna's wedding. It was a great day! Although we seriously felt like we were running top speed all day. Ella handled all the action very well, with just a little bit of crying in her carseat. She smiled at many of the people we met and slept sweetly through the boring parts. But today we are enjoying a nice quiet day at home!