feeling better

today is a new day and we're doing much better. last night the little lady finally settled after a marathon feed - pushing two hours! thank god i have a good book! i'm thinking she must do some form of sleeping when she has those long nursing sessions, not rem sleep, but something somewhat sufficient. when she finally went down, she slept a whole eight hours! that's her first stint that long ever. i was amazed when i woke up and looked at the clock. we've had a nice, lazy day today. this morning the photographer who did the free photo shoot of elie when she was two weeks brought by beautiful birth announcements that she made. then, after a stellar baby and mama "dreamgirls" dance session in the kitchen, auntie kelli came over to hang with bucket while i wrote thank you notes. i whipped those babies out and felt oh so accomplished afterwards. we then went to lunch at scotty's with jeff's folks and auntie kelli and the bucket was absolutely fabulous. she nursed efficiently in the booth, and then sat quietly at the table like a good little lady. her gran would be so proud of her manners. she just stared and stared at the colorful stain glass panels on the windows, dazed and amused and beautiful.

these pics were taken in mid august at eliza's first birthday party. i love the one of jeff and elie sitting on the swing.

illness and baby

tonight i'm done. the only way for me to take this "time to myself" while jeff jostles upset bucket (of the fussy persuasion) is for me to write on this silly blog. i've been super sick for the past two days with yuckies coming out from both sides. the little lady did fine yesterday and slept a ton to compensate for mama's hard time. this morning i thought i was feeling a bit better and tried to spent an hour at work while elie stayed with her grandparents and auntie. of course i learned at work that all the other teachers on my floor were sick, including one potential case of the chicken pox. not news to put a new mother's heart at ease. now she's screaming and has been awake since i got home at two. it's almost eight thirty, way, way too long for little bucket to be up. she's nursed for three different hour long stints and i always think she'll come off the breast and sleep. but then she breaks into the hiccups and wakes herself up and we're back to square one, her little blue eyes alert and piercing. i feel so empty, haven't put much in my system for 48 hours, yet so worried and so, generally, marginal. it's a new sensation for me. to not really care that i'm sick, but to then wash my hands raw to try and keep the germs from my baby. i absolutely abhor vomiting (i'm not saying that anyone likes it, i'm just saying that to me, it's one of the worst things in the world), yet the other night when i was retching, i wasn't feeling sorry for myself, i was immediately projecting into the future, worst case scenarios. people keep telling me that my breast milk has given her wonderful antibodies and this that and the other thing and i guess i'll try to hold on to that. and she is now quiet, thank the good lord, her daddy jiggling her on his knee and patting her gently on her back in the dark living room. thank god i'm not doing this alone.

all the babes at mama's lunch last friday

remembering

this morning we had our six week check up at the birth center. elie was less than thrilled to wake up in the car seat on the fifteen minute drive to the place of her birth. i kept telling her that this was a very special visit to the place where so many people worked together to bring her into the light. she continued to scream in her carseat, not impressed by my story. so upon entering the center and upon sharon, the receptionist, seeing how upset she was, we were sent back into the birth room so that i could nurse her. oh to be back in that room! it was the same one where i spent that long monday working, dancing, laughing, screaming, cussing, crying, loving, sleeping, finally, with my baby in my arms. she eventually settled on to my breast and i was able to take it all in. the sleigh bed with the fancy red sheets. the beautiful black and white photo of a newborn baby. the tub (ah the tub!), the mantel and flatscreen t.v. (do people ever watch t.v. while in labor??), the big, fat scented candles, the fancy cd player. the room seemed so small, but in my memories it's enormous, a hotel suite, a small conference center. when jeanie came in to meet with us, i was flooded with emotion. here is the woman who brought my baby into the world! what a tremendous job she has. so we talked about how everything was going and i bragged about eliana and her fabulous sleep cycle and good nature, and jeannie checked me out and gave me the thumbs up for repairs ("it looks like you never even had a baby come out of there!") and we finally, sadly, said our goodbyes. after all those appointments, weekly at the end, and all those hours of labor, we've been released, on our own, into the world. i feel so independent suddenly, like no one is watching over me and i, somehow, should know what to do.

late night love shots

ups and downs

baby and i are trying to get used to the ups and downs. for example, on saturday, mama was feeling like a hundred bucks. we went down to the farmer's market where all sorts of admirers oogled at eliana. then after a restful afternoon, i got all ready to be in the "betty's divine" fashion show. i wasn't going to do it at first. while i was super flattered to be asked (especially since i've been feeling a bit of the post pregnancy frumps), i thought it was flippant and silly and certainly not something for a haggard mama to be to do on her saturday night. but my friend bri convinced me, and next thing i knew, i was being fitted in some fabulously sexy (and flattering, i might add) pants and getting ready to strut my stuff. on saturday i felt a little less ready. it seemed everyone else in the fashion show was much younger and much hipper than i, certainly not frumps in the least. they had more fabulously accessories and had definitely spent more time on their hair and make-up. but i went out there and did my thing on the runway. even though i was frantically searching the crowd for jeff and elie, trying to hear if she was crying, and really didn't care too much about how i looked, it was a good experience for a five week old mama.

then on sunday, riding on saturday's high, i took myself on a fantastic hike up waterworks hill. i did the whole loop, something i haven't done since my second trimester, or so, of pregnancy. it was the most gorgeous day we've had in weeks, bright blue sunshine, billowy montana clouds, and shiny, happy folks all about. eliana slept beautifully in her carrier and we came home three hours later sharing sweat. it was really sweet.

but that evening i got stuck with an exhaustion headache. the headache turned into aches and pains and the early signs of the flu jeff was just getting over. we made it through the night but then had to get up to go to meetings at work today. not easy. i know that going back to work is going to be extremly tough. elie hated being at that meeting and could give two hoots about all the procedures and policies of a new school year. we left at lunch, passed out, and didn't make it back. ah, the ups and downs....

out and about

so little eliana is really becoming quite a mover and a shaker in missoula and is learning to do all the things that good missoulians like to do. as i recently wrote, she sometimes enjoys going downtown and hitting the hot restaurant spots (and sometimes she screams!) but the one sure bet we've had with her so far, is hiking. this little girl loves to be put in her pouch, or more recently, her ergo carrier (the little missy is actually starting to weight enough that too much time in the pouch can hurt my back) and head with mom and dad into the wild. the other day, she had the pleasure of hiking to the top of mount jumbo, the mountain right behind her house. mom was feeling like a bad ass that morning, ready to do all the pre-pregnancy, recreational activities she used to enjoy. the weather was perfect and it was our las week to enjoy hiking with dad before he goes back to work. so up we went! she slept the whole way, sang her special "ooh and ahh" song, sweated with my sweat, and had a fantastic time. i love these pics of the family on the mountain.

grandparents galore

this little baby is so loved! she had a wing ding of a week while four of her grandparents battled over holding her, oogling at her, and generally and fabulously adoring her. they also hosted an unofficial competition to see who could take the best picture of her with their digital camera (grandpat don don is into the artistic shots, full of shadow and light, while roseann does the more direct, point and shoot approach, but did, by the way, end up with the best pic!). while she easily woos people with her delicious round head and delicate features, she definitely was not on her best behavior the whole time the crowd was around. my dad and his wife, mary, drove out from maine and found us eating at the old post on wednesday evening. after living in africa for three months, i was more than impressed with their ability to hop in the car and motor across the country to see their latest grandchild. but i guess i shouldn't be so surprised. about three weeks ago, my husband's parents, mort and roseann, packed up their whole life to rent a house up the road from us in missoula to be near eliana too. apparently grandchildren make grandparents do crazy things! it's been such a blessing to have them here. every day morty says, "she's getting longer!" and "look at that perfect head!" and "i'm telling you, she is the most beautiful baby i've ever seen!" and at his 82 years of age, i'm inclined to believe him. everyday roseann does her wash, perfectly folding her onesies just so and making sure they get put back into her newly organized drawers neatly (her mama is not so neat about those sorts of things!) nana roseann is also great at trying to imitate jeff's fantastic bouncing style and has even begun to master the football hold (as this seems to be her hold of choice when she chooses to be a fussy bucket). while it's not the sweet, cradle of a gentle grandmother, i applaud her efforts at doing what eliana wants, not what we think your average baby wants (because, as we all know, she is not your average baby!) deed (the so anyway, back to her bad behavior. so the little missy decided last night that she had had enough time out on the town. she was fabulous while we went to restauraunt #1 meet my dad's old artist friend for a glass of wine. then she continued to sleep like a champ as we walked to restaurant #2 where we were meeting jeff and his folks for dinner. but upon entering sa wathai place), she woke up and generally seemed disenchanted. i changed her while waiting to be seated, then fed her at the table (here we go again with nursing on the road), but she still wasn't content. luckily dad was there to walk her around the block and do some good jiggling. but still, not good. finally i sat down on the sidewalk under this little awning (judging by the smell of urine in that spot, i wasn't the first to camp out there...it was sorta gross but made me feel like a tough and dedicated mom, who cares if there's crusted urine on my skirt, right? my daughter needs to eat!) and gave her a good, dedicated mom feed. apparently at about six weeks of age they go through a growth spurt, which is clearly happening by the length and frequency of her feeds. so after that nursing, elsinore still continued to wail. we raced home and i tried to feed again in her rocker with her tunes. no luck. so my dad and mary offered to walk her around the block to give jeff and a break. they were in for it! i took them up on the offer and quickly took a shower and brushed my teeth (i've found that i have to do these two things whenever the opportunity presents itself as i never know when i'll have the chance to again...) we could hear them coming back towards the house as elsinore's wails are easily recognizable. the minute i took her from them she sorta calmed down (she's definitely into her mama right now) and we got back into her rocker and stasrted the whole nursing shabang again. an hour later she settled down and we went to bed. she slept from 11 to 4, which i'm totally down with, and then again from 5 to 8. not so bad for a little wailer. luckily my dad left his coat here, so they had to come by again this morning and they got to see her as her best self, little sweet, swaddled elie. it was sad to see them go, but so wonderful that they made it in the first place. this little girl will continue to be loved by people all over the country, and will become an excellent traveller, just like her mama, in an attempt to keep up with all her "peeps". we will hop on planes and drive long distances to greet her fans, but still be able to live in the peace of our little mountain valley home.

lovefest2007 extended

i don't think i went into enough detail while explaining the components of lovefest 2007 earlier. lovefest includes every single time eliana open's her eyes and looks at me, as if in love, as if discovering it for the first time again and again. lovefest is when she yawns and her little mouth kinda goes up higher on one side. lovefest is looking at her eyelashes as they grow, it seems, every day. lovefest is her little fingers, the dirt under her nails (how in the world did she get dirt under her nails? definitely her mother's daughter...). lovefest is the way she peeks out from her sprout pouch and looks at the light. it is her little hand when she grips my chest, the outside of her pouch, my finger. lovefest is the buttery popcorn smell of her dirty diaper. it's the loud "put-puts" she passes, like a frat boy watching a football game. it's her dolphin song. the way her smile is coming out a little more every day, ready to utterly break my heart.

lovefest 2007

when i was pregnant, my dear childhood friend, shiraz, had her second son. a few weeks after his birth she said something like, "you have no idea what sort of lovefest your life is about to become." she was absolutely right. my lovefest is ongoing, non-stop, rockin and rolling all the time. last night i had a mega lovefest moment when i woke up at four thirty to feed eliana and realized that she had been asleep, happily since eleven o'clock. what a baby! then my lovefest continued after she slurped and sucked happily for ten minutes and promptly fell back asleep until eight o'clock! then the lovefest carried on when we got out of bed and saw her in the gorgeous, pink sleepsack that she'd been in the night before (she just got big enough to fit into this fabulous little suit). jeff was out dealing with lucy's medicine and i woke up famished. so i tried to put the little miss in her bouncy seat on the table while i poached eggs. again, what a trooper! she just sat and bounced and stared, wide eyed, at all the wonder that is our kitchen. then i was even able to push it and grate a gyno zucchini so that i can bake zucchini bread later today (or whenever i get to it...). now her dad is hanging with her so that i can quickly type a few thoughts, get dressed, and drink my coffee. then we're off to hike up the "L", part of mommy's 'lose that fleshy baby belly' plan. elie loves hiking. she sleeps in the sling and changes up her coos and dolphin cries depending on how we're walking. if we are on a steep incline she gets faster and breathier. when we are walking on moderate, flat ground she gets quiet and more rhythmic. and when i stop moving, she stirs. so i never stop, always rock, keep my hips moving just like during labor, and we all get what we want. lovefest 2007 rages on!

regalitos y amor

i remember thinking that the generosity we received upon getting married was overwhelming. people who i had never met were sending us checks, crystal candlesticks appeared from crate and barrel from lost high school friends. no one hesitated to let us know that we were loved. but i didn't know love like the love we've received since eliana has been born. actually, even before she was born, i was amazed at how embraced we were. i had four showers, none of which i planned. from my family and friends in pasadena to my old colleagues from another school to my current amigos and families from my job now, we were quite literally showered with affection. at the blessing that my friends bri and joellen hosted, all the beautiful women in my life went around the circle sharing loving words, poetry and advice, while i sat and soaked my swollen feet in a bath of rose petals and lavender oil. at first i felt uncomfortable receiving that sort of affirmation. it was so public. so all about me. would people think i was an ego driven ninny just for wanting that sort of shower? then i realized how ridiculous it is that women in our culture don't feel like they can be loved and appreciated in that sort of way. in some small, tribal cultures, women are given the ceremonial robes worn by warriors on return from battle after they give birth. in other cultures, women are not supposed to do anything for weeks after their baby is born and are pampered and taken care of by other members of the community. why in our culture is it not okay to be pampered? "thankfully, i do feel like i deserve to be treated like a warrior coming out of battle. what i did with my body on july 16th (and, heck, the nine plus months before that) to bring my baby into the world was no small feat. and since then, we have been showered with even more affection and generosity than i ever thought i could have wanted. every day a package of some sort awaits on the doorstep, sometimes from people who i hardly know. she has more clothes, more beautiful clothes then i could have ever asked for. organic cotton clothes, tye-dyed onesies, ralph lauren fancy tennis suits (seriously), patagonia snow jumpers- i tell ya, this girl can play any part. i have not had to buy her one single item of clothing, which is pretty remarkable given the clothes horse that i am. she has an amazing array of blankets. a special pink blanket with "eliana celie" embroidered on it. another fancy pendeleton, super montana blanket, again with her name embroidered beautifully on the fleece. a blanket hand knit by my 93 year old grandmother. another blanket hand knit by her special auntie hilary. she has a poster that tells about her name and all the historical things that have taken place on the day she was born. and my favorite, a little rocky balboa style terry cloth robe that is pink with green little antennae and other bug like markings with "eliana" written on the back. how wonderful it is that we love and embrace children the way that we do! how thankful is this mama to know that her daughter has been sent good wishes and hopes and cheer from all over, allowing us all to sleep well knowing that we are embraced with the love of our community. this pic is of elie in one of her fancy outfits, her lavendar "daddy's little princess" suit sent by aunt ginny in connecticut (good job, ginny, realizing that she is too small to wear anything but newborn clothes just yet!).

sleeping with baby

i just have to take a moment to comment on how much i adore sleeping with my baby. we spent so long discussing where she would sleep. the co-sleeper wouldn't fit in our bedroom, even the mini was too big for our tiny love nest. the crib too big still, too foreign. the funky little bed we found at target can theoretically fit between us in the bed, but it means that we're both lying still on our sides, hitting the metal bars of elie's bed. and she just seems to sleep a lot lighter when she's not in our arms.

so i've surrendered to sleeping with my baby. and i love it. last night she slept with her head in my armpit, the only creature on the planet so thrilled with my post-baby-uber-hormonal scent. i kinda wrap my other arm around her little swaddled self and snuggle into her. at one point i got up to go to the bathroom and placed her gently on her papa's chest. she was making the sweetest face and he looked equally blissed out. they were so sweetly situated that i had to stop myself from getting up again to find the camera at four in the morning.

well...now dad's walking with her and talking with her about how lovely she is and it seems she is putting her little fist into her mouth. which means it is my turn to do what we do best.

exemplary

on the phone last night my mom commented last night that eliana is "rather exemplary." i most certainly agree with her. i have numerous exemplary titles for her including, "exemplary sleeper", "exemplary passenger", "exemplary party goer", "exemplary eater", "exemplary communicator" and "exemplary pooper." for example, yesterday we took a drive up to flathead lake to flee the horrific smoke in missoula. it was also miss elie's big debut in the carseat for more than ten minutes. exemplary passenger that she is, she slept the whole two hours up and the whole two hours down. rock and roll. she went to the farm party the other night and slept beautifully in her pouch for a few hours and then woke up for the band and danced and swayed with her mama, eyes wide open and alert, happy as can be. she is also extremely good at doing this sweet little hand to mouth thing when she's hungry so that we always know exactly what she wants. of course, she continues to eat like a champion and her little cheeks are filling out just as they should. lastly, just before i sat down to write this as she was coming off a nice long feed on the breast, i felt something warm and mushy on my leg. i looked down and saw that she had made an exemplary poop, through her diaper, through her onesie, down onto my legs. it was so exemplary, even, that when i stood up, it gushed to the floor, smeared on my hair and arm, and made it's way down both her legs. jeff gave her an exemplary hose down in the sink where she stared, alert as ever, at her daddy and didn't make a peep or complaint. what a little rockstar. i am so in love.

almost one month

in a half an hour my girl will be one month old. i can hardly believe it. tonight as i was making my way through all my best songs, singing my sweet heart out and rocking my fussy sweetheart in our rocker, i looked down and realized that she was absolutely the most beautiful thing i'd ever seen. she is getting so old and bright eyed and actually starting to resemble a human being, not just a strange little alien. right now she is lying in her daddy's arm in a perfect football hold, but she looks like a long, long little football. and her hair is getting so curly and think and it kinda sticks off her head in little, sweaty ringlets. when she settled this evening and came up from nursing, she looked at me with the purest, most beautiful little tease of a smile. i feel so very blessed.

i think back to where i was a month ago. huge. i was certainly huge. and afraid of giving birth and of all the pain but so equally anxious to get the whole deal going. i feel like i'm like a million years old since that month. i feel like i deserve to celebrate my one month old mom birthday as much as elie needs to celebrate hers. i feel like i've grown so much! like i've learned how to tap into this reserve of calm and patience that i didn't even really know that i possessed. like i now really understand the word 'selfless.' like i am absolutely fabulous and strong and beautiful and giving. i wish there was another word to use than 'blessed.' i feel blessed to be here, in this month, with my lovely, growing family. i feel such gratitude.

i forgot to say that the pictures are of the first eliana holding baby eliana. the picture of the three girls in the hammock is of the beautiful sisters, antigone, eliana and thalia in my yard.

what's in a name

as many folks reading this may know, we had an awfully difficult time choosing a name for our child. my mom has always commented on my "haagan daaz syndrome" or my inability to make a decision (even the smallest decision!) picking a flavor of ice cream or an entree of a menu is a big deal to me. subsequently, my child's name was a huge deal! we both loved many spanish sounding names but jeff finally convinced me that my child was not really going to look like a magdalena or a flora and that indeed we are not or latin or central american descent. we loved the name "lucia" but unfortunately named the dog that and she has had her fair share of issues since we even discussed giving the baby her name and perhaps referring to her by one of her nicknames ("ladybird" perhaps, especially now that that namesake, ladybird johnson, is no longer with us). so we hadn't picked a name out when our baby was born.

then she came out! she came out with this beautiful fair skin and a tiny amount of light fuzz on her head, defying what i had thought about my child. the number of people who had said , "oh i can't wait to see the wild, thick, dark, curly head of hair your child will have" and then little peach came out, her own little, unique and unexpected self. we had to sit and get to know her a bit before we could give her a name. eliana had been a name we had both always liked. we know a little girl, eliana, who is the sister of one of my beloved students, antigone. because we are both teachers, it is hard to find a name for a child that we haven't both already taught at some point over the years and therefore have some sort of association with. but eliana just kept coming up. a few days before i gave birth, i was at school interviewing teachers to fill my position when i'm gone for maternity leave. i was giving this woman a tour of the school when i passed by a giant picture of eliana on the wall. i was filled with this sweet, warm and fuzzy feeling (a fairly common feeling when you're me and pregnant and emotional), and i thought, wow, what a beautiful, special child (with a lovely name!) then jeff and i both read the book 'three cups of tea' right before elie was born. in that book the protagonist names his daughter "amira eliana", and eliana means something like 'gift from god' in some dialect from pakistan. we both said something like, hey, did you see that the guy in the group named his daughter eliana? and then we let it go.

and celie. what about celie? well being an english major who focused on contemporary feminist, multicultural literature, i was always a big alice walker fan. the color purple was one of those real "first" books for me, a book that really opened my eyes about gender and race when i first read it in high school. i then re-read the book last summer because i was going to see the musical on broadway and i wanted to remember the nuances of the story. the play had a profound effect on me and i sobbed through the whole thing, gripping hilary's hand and grinning through my mega goosebumps. then all through my pregnancy i was obsessed with a handful of songs from the show, many of which use the name "celie". a trademark of my pregnancy was me standing in the kitchen sobbing, listening to the color purple and jeff coming in and rolling his eyes wondering what was fun about show tunes at seven a.m. that make you cry. i told him that good tears were a necessary indulgence for a pregnant woman, kinda like ben and jerry's. so jeff even got to know these tunes, especially one line in which one of the male characters says, "i don't want celie, she ugly!" and we would quote this line and laugh (i love having musical theatre inside jokes with my husband because that is SO not his thing....

then she was born. we both agreed she looked like an eliana. elie means light and eliana, in hebrew, means something like "delivered from god." she definitely came out like she was brought from god, two big pushes and there she was! i didn't even feel her head or shoulders pass, all that pain that i was ready for i missed, because she shot out so gracefully into the world. then i thought about the character of celie in walker's story. she is strong. she is smart. she is selfless. she is loyal and loving and accepting. what better qualities could you want someone to have? so there she was. eliana celie. eliana celie, the selfless, brave, smart and beautiful gift from god. our girl.

nursing nancy

good news! elsinore had remained on his far away planet and stayed far from our little home. in his place, we have another distant cousin, nursing nancy. nursing nancy is a lazy girl. all she really likes to do is lay around and eat. all she likes her mom to do is lay around and expose her breasts. mom, on the other hand, feeling better by the day, is trying to get out into the world again. so nancy and mama are having some nursing adventures. yesterday we fed during breakfast at dauphine's and dinner at biga pizza. mom is either, a. in denial that the world is seeing her cha-chas, or b. incredibly comfortable with her feminity and/or c. lucky to live in a fairly left community where breastfeeding in public is not taboo, but this little love bucket loves eating on the road. she also loves eating at home, all the time. luckily for all of us, for the past few days she has only been waking up to nurse every four or five hours and then sticks to a fifteen minute gulp and slurp fest, instead of nancy's usual "lazy girl's lunch" style which includes heavy resting in between long and luxurious sucks. sometimes in the night it's almost like she's having some sort of all you can suck contest and trying to win the grand prize at the fair. she has such strong little lips and and they just go to town. then she falls of and gets this super drunk little look in her eyes (they sorta roll backwards) and then she smiles a bit (just to remind me that she has my dimples) and then lets her head fall forward back on the boob where she promptly starts snoring.

my growing girls

my little girl will be one month old tomorrow. totally nuts. she is becoming a real little woman. she eats so much these days and is so efficient at letting me know exactly what she needs. she is now sleeping so peacefully on my lap after her, like, 33rd feed of the day or something. but really, what else do i have to do? it's smokey as all heck outside, so we can't go for a walk. i can't really clean the house one handed, can i? and who needs to get dressed? it's sunday. so we're just hangin. we had a very rough night. eliana was perfect, slept like an angel, woke up and nursed and then went right back down. but her sweet sister, lucy, is having a very hard time. after three weeks of different diagnosis and various, unrelated, yet equally distressing conditions, it was finally decided that she had some sort of auto-immune disease, perhaps rocky mountain spotted fever due to excessive tic bites this year. the doctor prescribed her a heavy regimen of steroids and antibiotics and we thought she seemed to be doing a bit better. intermittent strange behavior, but lots of zesty, zany old lucy moments to counter- balance. but last night she started with the terrible pain whimpers again. she also was doing this extremely distressing frozen standing - like she can't move because it hurst too much. while the baby slept, jeff and i paced like anxious zombies, trying to decide what to do. each trip to the emergency clinic adds another hundred dollars to our growing vet debt. we gave her more meds and called the vet and finally decided to just try and rest (modeling the behavior of miss elie, the perfect). then lucy took herself up to the the top tier of the yard and lay down. jeffy and i were extremely upset by this as she always sleeps by us and never goes up there if we're around. it seemed so surreal, so strange.

now it's the afternoon and she seems to be acting a bit more normal. she's asleep on the floor at my feet, while her sister is asleep on my lap and i'm wondering why i'm not asleep with them both. i just never knew i could love the way i love these two little creatures. i never wanted a dog and now i'm so smitten with this mutt from lolo. i can't imagine life without her. and we have such big plans for her and her sister. they hardly even know each other yet. so if you read this (and it seems a few folks actually do), please keep a special thought for lucy and her recovery. we will see the doggie disease specialist tomorrow and hope for the best.

missoula's red tent extended

we had our first new mama's lunch the other day. at first i was a bit overwhelmed. there were lots of babies and all their special little noises (from pigeon, to dolphin to elsinore and beyond!) and all these fun mamas ready to chat like mad about everything from wine intake and breastfeeding to checking to see if they're breathing in the night to baby acne and pediatricians. once i found my spot on the chair and busted out the boob like the rest of them, we settled into the groove. what a new social world this is! similarly, last night our little friend eliza had her first bday party. immediately upon arrival elie wanted to eat. luckily for me, there were already a handfull of breastfeeding mamas for me to sit with. very surreal, yet very fabulous.

in this shot we lined the babies up from biggest to smallest. guess what little grunter is on the end?? she is still such a peanut! i have to say, though, she is eating more and more every day. i'm pretty sure we could just sit and breastfeed all day long and elie would be thrilled. i'm resting her on my lap while i type and i can tell she hates it, so i have to continue later.

the other pic is of grandma roseann holding eliana by the creek the other day.

hot shots

breast feeding abroad

we are starting to get pretty good at this breastfeeding thing. i've actually been able to feed her while hiking a few times and jeff managed to spy on me from his folks house and capture it on film. it's kinda a paparazzi shot, very far away, but it does capture the gist of the beautiful land we live in and the nature mama style i'm groovin' in!

then there is a beauteous moment between elie and her grandpa morty (the baby magnet).

action shots of elie