california adventures

Baby Eliana is having such great adventures on her new play mat! Here she is working on holding her head up.
Mommy and Auntie Hilary laugh at baby in her "Samuel L. Jackson" city girl hat.
Cousin Piper adores her baby cousin Eliana - Eliana is still a bit uncertain of life in the big city.
Eliana was exhausted after a shopping extravaganza. Thank goodness she had her snazzy new hat to shield her porcelain skin from the L.A. heat.

What a big two days we've had! Our travel day was exhausting, though Baby E proved how fantastic she is, once again. In certain situations, i.e. airports and planes, the general level of tension when you have a newborn - even when they're sleeping, is so high, it's hard not to feel anxious. It's the feeling that at any moment, the shit can hit the fan and all hell will break loose. Luckily, we had no such moment during our travel day. The little princess slept during the entire first leg, from Missoula to Salt Lake City. She then was alert in the airport, checking out the crowds from her Ergo carrier. She promptly fell asleep again while mama was cruising the nasty restaurants (I think I called them "skanky" to my mom on the phone - why can't there be decent, healthy options?), and slept the entire two hour layover. Then on plane #2 she charmed the pants off of the other passengers, even helping us finagle our own row when some kind man gave up his primo seats for us. There was a bit of fussing during the first three or four minutes in the air, she then made a big poopie, and then promptly fell asleep again. I decided to go "trashy mama" style and keep her in her poopy pants for the duration of the plane ride because she didn't seem to mind (thank god for disposable diapers!). I then changed her in the Burbank airport, found my beauteous mama by the baggage claim, sissy came to help us with all our gear, installed the carseat in my mama's Honda, a quick, lets-just-be-on-the-safe-side-nurse, and we were off. Easy!

We then had a lovely evening. Eliana continued to beguile her big girl cousin Piper and her auntie Wendy. Piper had a million questions about Baby Eliana and wanted to "see her nakedness" among other fabulous things. What a sweet time they had together. After a delicious dinner and playful bath, Eliana managed to sleep a whopping 10 hours straight through the night! (Of course mama couldn't seem to decompress and spent much of that time watching her amazing daughter sleep - why can't I be more like her?)

Today we woke up and went on our morning walk - city style. Eliana was entranced by the sprinklers, cars and the general hustle and bustle of South Lake Avenue. We then met up with my mama and had a stellar time shopping. Elie slept like a champ, even hanging out in the Ergo while mama tried on pants in Anthropologie (Mama also found the sexiest mama pants she has yet to see for her post baby body, feeling, finally, like the pre-baby diva she once was...how does one pair of pants do this, you might ask? Well when that pair of pants has a button and doesn't have the word "maternity" somewhere on the tag and comes from a snazzy big city store, you feel pretty darn foxy....I digress....). She then woke just in time for me to feed her in the lovely, oversized dressing room of Coldwater Creek where Gran was trying on clothes. By the time we were browsing in The Children's Place (where we found the ever so excellent purple sparkle butterfly hat, which when worn frontways looks like a city style newspaper boy hat, but when worn backwards makes Eliana look an awful lot like the ever so handsome, Samuel L. Jackson) Eliana was snoozing again. What a gal!

The afternoon was pretty mellow, though she didn't have any other long naps, resulting in an evening crying fit for about 45 minutes of "Elsinore" style wailing which was very strange, as I haven't seen that for a few weeks, which makes me wonder if sometimes she wants to remind me that she is, indeed, a mere twelve weeks old and I am generally getting off really easy with all her naps and compliant plane behavior, etc., etc., so I just try to take a deep breath and continue to sing "Bushel and a Peck" and rock and pace and hold her until finally she falls to sleep, done with the whole ordeal.