Happy New Year

We're so thankful to be beginning the year with two healthy, hearty daughters, no ailments for us this year so far, a home, a job and great friends and family. The holidays have been fun, and totally crazy. We're so thankful that Eloise joined us a month ago. She's still thriving and changing and growing everyday. We are, too. Dalia and Mama are learning new ways to be together and Dalia is easily accepting her loving Daddy's attention. Eloise is quite agreeable and very mellow. She often falls asleep just by holding Mama's hand and loves to snuggle and gaze at her Daddy. We've tried a bottle a couple times now and she's taken it like a champ. We've also been out with her to dinner a couple of times and she pretty much just sleeps. While Mommy is getting used to not sleeping much (Dalia's nap has effectively dissapeared with the arrival of Eloise), we are all doing really well. Happiness reigns. We've really enjoyed having Daddy home for the most part this past month and are all blessedly grateful for a sleepy, mellow baby (albeit very noisy grunter) to keep our routine from being completely upset. We are all totally in love with our new little girl. Dalia can't wait to come in and see her in the morning and Eloise seems quite pleased with her sister's attention.

It's been way too long since I last posted. I don't even know where to start. I guess I'll just do a sampling from the last month.

This is Dalia's family tree

Dalia and Dad went to Zoo Lights and it snowed

Dalia's tree

Dalia got to pick out the Xmas tree this year. We planned to go cut one down, but a certain little someone decided to come early, so Mark and Dalia went up the street and picked out this cute little thing. Dalia enjoyed decorating it and kept saying, "Merry Christmas!" I think she's confused about why it's not Christmas yet. As I write this she's with her Gigi decorating her tree. She's surprisingly into Santa this year.

new photos

Eloise rocks! We all love her and are transitioning pretty easily so far.

Big Sister

Dalia became a big sister a month early! Eloise Orr Vermeys was born at 7:28 am on Sunday, November 28. She weighed 6 pounds 2.4 ounces at birth and measured 20 1/4 inches. Mom's water broke after a day of early labor on Saturday. She spent the night laboring at the hospital with Daddy, her wonderful doula and awesome labor and delivery nurse.After a long night without medication, Mom entered that last, difficult stage (as if any of it's easy) of labor and asked for a dose of medication that got her through, taking the stress out of contractions, letting her make it the rest of the very short way through pushing (for about 10 minutes) and meeting Dalia's baby sister without any major intervention. Even though she is early, Eloise is healthy and robust, feeding great, breathing great, looking great. Mom is doing wonderfully, too.

Dalia is very proud and excited to be a big sister now, can't wait to hold baby and take pictures of and with her. She would rather her sister be named Blackberry, but has started to call her Eloise already.

The name Eloise came to us the moment baby was placed on mom after birth. Orr is Juli's family name and was her middle name prior to marrying Mark. In Greek, Eloise means "sun", which we can sure use to get us through the winter.

Mom and sister com home tomorrow. Dalia chose to have her wonderful Daddy home with her tonight after a couple of fun sleepovers with her Gigi. Life will never be the same and I think we all are thrilled we get to spend a whole extra month with our little Eloise.

Visit with Uncle Tony

Wish we could be with him all the time. Dalia (and the rest of us) love him so much. It was a peaceful, great weekend. We got to go to the food carts, a phenomenon that picked up around here after Dalia was born and so we haven't had much occasion to go. Also visited a park on a day when otherwise Mark and I would have tried to distract Dalia with indoor activities, but it was beautiful (the westside is much more beautiful in winter). Spent lots of time with Gigi and Pops and got to see our beloved amigos, The Nevarezes. Mostly just hung out and had fun. It makes me so happy that Dalia gets to have a relationship with my big brother and some time with him before she becomes a big sister.

A couple of originals

Here are a couple of Dalia originals. The first is her rocking to a tune called, "Go Down". I have no idea why she was saying this, but she sounds like she's been listening to some of Mark's more, um, metal type music. The second is a song she wrote as a tribute to Mo Willems' Pigeon (with a hot dog).

faces

Here are a couple of Dalia's faces. She's getting more and more detailed adding hair and ears, sometimes feet. She always makes the expression she's drawing. Also, in this first one, she has written her name. No help from me at all except to tell her what the letters are.

Halloween Sickie

After weeks of Dalia telling us she wanted to be a princess monster for Halloween, our neighbor gave us a Snow White dress. And while she has no idea who Snow White is, she was easily won over by her "princess" dress and had no interest in the awesome combo get up we originally set out to accomplish. She wore her "fancy" shoes and even got a little eyeshadow and lipstick (though after that wore off she wouldn't let me apply anymore). Now, all of this, including trick-or-treating, handing out candy and generally LOVING Halloween, happened with a high fever (of the past four days) and a trip to Urgent Care this morning. She has an ear infection, which I'm happy we are now treating - if we can get her to take the medicine. She was a trooper today despite feeling horrible. Hopefully, next year we'll make the Monster March with her little sister in tow as well. For now, we stuck close to home and didn't have any less fun for it.

Happy Halloween!

Baseball

Well, it's official, Dalia is a Giants fan. She's been exposed to lots of baseball watching the past few weeks, and last night (after having a monumental three hour nap - yes, the girl who doesn't nap) she got to stay up past her bedtime and watch the winning playoff game with us. It was all shouts and pacing and hat wearing in this house. She periodically would shout, "Go Giants!" and clapped and said, "good job, boys!" at just the right time. I truly believe she was watching and waiting as we were. I'm so glad we were both here to celebrate with Mark when his team won the penant. It was super fun. Anyway, I couldn't not post about this, seeing as how this is such an important milestone for Dalia in her Daddy's family. Can't wait for the World Series games. (Although, truth be told, it would be nice to watch something of my own for a change - all this Wiggles and Baseball is making me a little coo-coo. Well, I have until Wednesday.)

pregnant mommy with Dalia

Just thought I'd post some photos of Mommy just shy of 30 weeks pregnant with Dalia's baby sister. Dalia spent the night at her Gigi's house last night. First time away from home or Mom and Dad at bedtime. She did great. Can't believe what a big girl she is. In these photos she is intently drawing Archer and "spelling" his name for his birthday.

San Francisco

We're home from our trip now and had an awesome time in San Francisco and the bay area seeing friends, family and being tourists for Dalia in the city. Before she was born our friend Oralea (who lives in SF) gave us Good Night San Francisco and it's a book she's read since, well, forever. So, she wanted to see all the sites in our book. We drove down Lombard Street, stopped at the Golden Gate Bridge, went to Golden Gate Park (the coolest playground on the planet), saw Ocean Beach (though you can hardly see it through the fog), and the Windmill and had a wonderful meal with Oralea and Matt in their apartment in the city. It was the most fun we've had there since we moved there for a short time over 12 years ago.






Did I mention that San Francisco has the coolest slides in the world. We found this one in Eureka Valley (remembered it from a decade ago, but Oralea helped us track it down).

We also enjoyed hanging out with Aunt Ali, feeding the birds and squirrels in her backyard, Uncle Jimmy, seeing Auntie Guacamole again, visiting with Grammy Karen, having a wonderful evening with our friends Scott and Dana and meeting our newest cousin, Charlotte.






I think Mark left (part of) his heart in San Francisco. We'll have to get back there soon to retrieve it. Until then, we hope our time in beautiful California will stay with us through the new year as we await our new family member.
Dalia is just about the best traveler. She barely fussed, enjoyed the sites, and forced us to listen to nothing else but Casper Babypants (she can now sing all the songs and knows the names of each one).

We came home on Dalia's birthday. My mom was awesome enough to order a cake and bring home groceries so we could have a little celebration for Dalia with Gigi, Pops and Uncle Rob. She's had a week and a half of birthday celebration, ending today on Mark's 40th! birthday with a little party with a couple of friends.






This mom doesn't exactly know what I'm going to do with her all day now that we've had so many weeks of all day funtime. Thankfully, we have lots of new things and memories to keep us busy.