Daily Adventures

Last summer I found the perfect walk to take every day with Chloe. I would strap her to my back in the backpack and go walk to Windsor Lake, around it, and then home. I assumed it was just a couple of miles or so- turns out it's 4.1 miles for the whole trip (thanks to my sister-in-law Bonnie for tracking that one online for us). A good walk. Anyway, this summer, Bonnie and I decided we were going to try to do it every day and so far we've been doing great. There are a few more kiddies tagging along this time- Bonnie has a double stroller for her boys and I put Linus in Chloe's old front carrier and Chloe goes in the stroller and that has been working well (by the way, for those of you who don't know, Craig's brother Brian and his wife Bonnie and their boys, Ethan [3] and Kaleb [20 months] moved into the basement here at the house, adding to the ever growing "Ellingson circle" here in Windsor). Here are some pictures of our adventures thus far:

Setting out from the house with the crew...

There are lots of pelicans on Windsor Lake- the kids love to point them out. Kaleb shouts "Pee-kin!" over and over and Chloe signs "bird" with her hands and screeches a lot when she sees them.

Stopping for a snack.

Linus just mostly sleeps through the whole thing.

There are these gian carp that swim in the water under the bridges and the kids like to look at those too.


Chloe trying to sign "fish" after we showed her how. Not sure she really got it, but she likes to point at them anyway.





It's great fun every day- I think Bonnie and I both look forward to it. Well, at least once we get ready to go- before then I'm sure both of us wake up trying to come up with excuses not to go, but we do it and though the walk is not too difficult, we get a good work out in the hot sun and the kids are already in the routine of it every day. I'm sure Linus will enjoy it more once he's old enough to really realize what is going on. :-)

Pound Dog

This post is dedicated to Michael and Daniel and Amber Ellingson, who taught Chloe how to "pound it". Chloe saw Linus' balled up fist and assumed that he wanted to "pound it" too.

Glamour Shots

Craig keeps pictures of all of us as a family at work with him by his desk and I decided that for Father's Day I would update those pictures for him so he wouldn't only have to look at the one picture of me and 4 month old Chloe that he's had forever. Except I didn't have many decent photos of Linus yet so that morning I sat him in front of our bay window and got some better photos for him. I put them in a little frame for him with some pictures of Chloe too.

Crazy Chloe

I was just going through some photos and thought I'd document some of the kooky things our daughter has been getting into as of late. She really has been adjusting well to having Linus around- it helps having her cousins and uncles to keep her entertained during the day. The only difficulties I've seen so far have been her trying to "burp" Linus by smacking him in the face or head or her recent realization that when Mommy is feeding Linus, she can't get up and stop her from getting into everything in our room that she knows she's not supposed to. I finally made her a little corner with a basket of toys and books and her rocking chair and at least that distracts her some of the time while I'm nursing. I just have to make sure to put away the important things so she can't get them before I start nursing. Other than that she loves to look for Linus when she doesn't know where he is and she's continuing to learn new things every day.

The other day Chloe woke up from her nap and decided that she was going to take her shirt off. Except she didn't quite make it all the way, obviously. Here she is doing the "get this thing off me" dance.

Chloe doesn't play with dolls or stuffed animals or anything girly- she takes out all of her cousins' and uncle's star wars toys and toy guns and swords and goes nuts with them. Here she is making a pretty threatening Jedi with her cousin's light saber.

Eating a poptart with Mommy at the park

Helping Mommy eat her curly fries at the hospital after Linus was born

Meeting Linus for the first time

Having a little brother can wear you out sometimes

Hello World!

So I decided that it was too much trouble to try to redesign our old blog page for Chloe, and since we now have a new addition to the family, I just made a new page for our whole family. This first page is dedicated to the new baby, and the following ones will be updates since then. So on to our bouncing baby boy...

Stats:

Name- Linus Cooper Ellingson

Birthdate- May 15th, 2008

Weight- 8 lbs 10 0z

Length- 21 and a quarter inches

Head Circumference- 14 and a half inches

The delivery went smoothly- six hours all together (which was a releif from Chloe's 18 hours). His face was bruised when he came out and the nurses had to put this happy little sign on his crib that said "My face is bruised!" with a nice cute cartoon of a baby at the bottom so that the nurses wouldn't freak out if they saw his purple face. Other than that everything went smoothly. They had to induce me since my water had broken the night before and my contractions never started that night, and they actually thought it was going to be a C-section since I wasn't progressing very fast and my doctor was concerned that he would get stuck coming out like Chloe did. Luckily, however, I went from 5cm to 10 cm in a couple hours and then I pushed twice and he came out. Yay for no C-section!

So far we've been extremely lucky in getting yet another angel baby- probably even more so than Chloe was, if that is even possible. He has his bad nights, sure, any kid does, but when he is awake he is usually just content to look around at the world and make funny faces. So far we're fairly sure that he looks just like his dad. Everything about him seems just as much like Craig as Chloe is like me. Typical nuclear family, girl looks like mom, boy looks like dad. He nurses well, he sleeps...okay, not as much as we'd like at night, but we're working on it. Anyway, we've been doing great these last few weeks and look forward to all that little Linus will bring into our lives!