Four on the floor

I suppose these represent the test run for the upcoming 6-month shots. It's nice having a baby who poses without instruction.

Getting saucered

The other day Anni unearthed the Exersaucer that was gifted to us months ago by her cousin.
Elise has been using a saucer at school in recent weeks and gets a kick out of it.
Imagine the look on her face when she saw Anni set up one for her at home. It wasn't a look of excitement. It actually was a look that said, "Well, would you look at that. So where have you two been hiding this thing for the past couple of months? What other toys have you squirreled away?"
Anyway, as the photos suggest, she enjoys the saucer at home, too.

Patches

It was only hours -- minutes, maybe -- after Elise was born that we noticed she has a distinguishing mark: a small patch of blond hair on the left side of her head. We like it, especially when a breeze catches the long, whispy hairs and they stand on end. It was a fun early discovery.
She is now almost 6 months old. In that time we have changed hundreds of diapers, bathed her dozens of times, watched as she rolled around endlessly in just a onesie, nibbled on her toes -- she thinks it's hilarious, as all babies probably do -- and rubbed plenty of lotion and sunscreen on her lanky shanks.
So imagine our surprise when we got back into town after our vacation and it was mentioned to us that Elise has a birth mark on the back of one of her knees.
Yeah, right. We're her parents; we would have noticed that.
Wait, really? Sure it's not just dirt? There's a birth mark?
Yep.
Now, she's a big, long baby, but so big and long that we failed to notice a birth mark the size of a silver dollar? No, apparently we're just not very observant.
Does it matter? Of course not, but we're just amazed it took this long for us to notice.
On a related note, I learned last week that Anni has a peg leg.

Sideways

Back home to our Maine squeeze

Question: What's better than a week spent in Maine, eating lobster, scallops and other sea dwellers, hanging out with great people at a wonderful location and watching good friends get married?
Answer: Only one thing -- returning home to Elise. (Cue the "Ahhhs.")
Anni and I got into town this evening after having spent the past 7 days in and around Bar Harbor, Maine, where our friends Petra and Lee got married just feet from the ocean near sunset on arguably the perfect summer day.


It was a spectacular vacation. We ate unbelievably good food, met some great people (Hey, Lee and Petra: Not a bad group of friends you've got.), enjoyed Bar Harbor and scenic Acadia National Park, took part in an amazing wedding and reception that was capped by an oceanside bonfire and, if that were not enough, admired some picturesque sunsets.



Do I still have a case of wedding sappiness? Perhaps, but it was a great celebration, so that's to be expected.
Even before Elise was born we decided that we would make the trip sans child, opting to leave the 5-month-old to be watched (and fawned over) by both sets of grandparents. It worked out well for everyone involved: The grandparents had unfettered access to Elise, she was well cared for and Mom and Dad got a much-needed vacation.
Still, a string of fantastic days, scenic mountain-top vistas and $13 lobster meals could not keep us from thinking of the little one.
It was nice for the three of us to be home again.

Anni greeting Elise tonight.

Mom and Dad thought Elise's
made-in-Maine blueberry hat was pretty cool.
Turns out sleep trumps new outfits.

Photo drop

I realize I need to write more, and that's coming soon, but for now here are some photos from the past couple of weeks.
By the way, Elise is 5 months old.

We're trying to keep the bedtime routine simple, but it usually includes a book or two.

Bryan on Elise's baptism day.
He wears ties all the time -- from the backyard to the bathtub.

Shades with Jenee

Q time with my Aunt Renee

This strikes me as a practice pose for the State Fair photo booth.

When babies attack. Laura survived.

Elise and Dan

The farmer checking her carrot crop.

Getting a leg up

Sometimes I wish she'd answer me when I ask, "Lady, why are your feet sticking straight up in the air?"

Movin' picture show for fast scrollers

I've given up on trying to upload video to the blog for the time being, but I did manage to catch Our Little Tumbler in action with the still camera. So if you scroll fast, these photos might actually look like the split-second sequence I took them in.

Thrush hour

One of the benefits of my new job (yes, I got one; more on that over a stiff drink) is that the newspaper's office is 5 minutes away from the medical clinic we frequent.
I made that short trip this afternoon.
Anni called to say she was taking Elise to the doctor because her teacher suspected that our little one had a case of thrush. This, of course, is yet another in the long list of minor medical problems common to every baby -- or at least that's what you hear just before you're billed for the treatment.
Anyway, I met Anni and Elise at the clinic, where we got Elise weighed (15.08 lbs.) and diagnosed by the doctor: Yep, that's thrush.
Thankfully, she has a very minor case of the strangely named illness, so it should disappear within a few days of the liquid treatment.
Interestingly, if her case of thrush had been worse, we could have obtained a medicine that leaves the inside of her mouth purple for a day. Of course, if you're still breast-feeding, the baby's mouth isn't the only thing that turns purple. We chuckled with the doctor about that.
So we got the diagnosis and the prescription and left the clinic within an hour -- not bad by normal clinic standards.
"No purple breasts for you today," the doc said as he left the room.

Gerber baby and homemade Gedneys

It just wouldn't be summer anymore without a day spent making pickles.
Anni's family has been turning cukes into prize-worthy pickles for decades (generations?) and in recent years I've managed to get in on the action.
We introduced two pint-sized recruits to pickle production last weekend -- Elise and her cousin Jacob. Elise was a slow learner, preferring to gnaw on a cucumber ("Don't eat the raw materials!") while the rest of us stuffed, dilled, garlicked, boiled and prepped 42 jars of pickles.

I think we'll just give Jacob the whole jar that contains these cukes.

I'd suggest a caption contest for this picture,
but I have some dignity.

Parents gawk at one-baby rollover

Elise finally started rolling over for us tonight. She had been getting close, figuring out how to flip to her side before getting stuck.
But now rolling from back to stomach is almost easy for her.
Maybe it's because of all her practice at school. Turns out that Elise has been rolling all over the place at school for about a week. The teacher mentioned it to me Friday, thinking that Elise already has done that for us at home.
Uhm, nope.
Anyway, what an accomplishment, right? Yes, but it didn't take long to identify a pitfall of this new talent.
About 3 a.m. this morning we awoke to Elise crying in her crib. No surprise; she's been doing that a few times each night, usually because she spits out her Nuk only to realize spitting it out wasn't a good idea.
So I go wandering into her room (more on that development soon) and wouldn't you know she had rolled over and was all worked up because, well, she was stuck on her belly and couldn't figure out what to do. I flipped her onto her back, popped in the Nuk and went back to bed.
Twenty minutes later, same crying from the other room. I wandered in there and wouldn't you know she had rolled over and was all worked up because, well, she had scooted herself to the side of the crib and poked her right arm down the side of the mattress, wedging it between the mattress and the crib rails.
She looked like a panicked animal stuck in a trap.
Problem solved, baby on back, I went to bed.

(Note: Some of you might like to see video of this lady's smooth moves on the living room floor, and I'd be happy to oblige, but it seems we're having some technical difficulty posting video. Stay tuned. Although, by the time I get this fixed, she'll be waltzing.)

Why we suffer through winter

We're raising a child, but we're also raising vegetables this summer.
We've been snacking on beans and peas for a few weeks, but other stuff is ready for pickin' now, including potatoes, which we dug last night. Still to come are tomatoes and peppers.
Anyway, this little spread in the sink was part of our dinner tonight: Burgers (with basil and onion from the garden), steamed green beans and grilled potatoes with carrots and onion, all from the plot out back. Tasted fantastic.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention the fresh raspberries.
Now I remember why we suffer through winter in Minnesota.

Toys? Who needs toys?

Read the fine print

Unsatisfied customer

Unfortunately, this is not what Graco
has in mind for the face of its new ad campaign.
Elise hates being strapped into the car seat.
She's fine a few minutes later, but until then...

Sleep on it

Tonight Anni and I were talking about how Elise is nearly sleeping through the night -- going from about 8 p.m. until 3:30 or 4 a.m., when she wakes hungry.
Of course, just as we were about to break our arms trying to pat ourselves on the back, the little one piped up from her crib, cried for a bit and then fell back asleep.
The new routine (is it a routine if it changes every few weeks?) is working quite well for everyone. Elise is adjusting to a bedtime of about 8 p.m. and seems happier during the day (even though she is teething), Anni gets more much-needed sleep and I don't have to watch infomercials or local cable access shows at 4:45 a.m. in order to stay awake during a bottle feeding.
Bliss, I say, bliss.
Almost. Anni just made it clear she still hasn't had a full night's sleep in nearly five months. True, and we're both still exhausted each evening.
Maybe our routine, too, should include an 8 p.m. bedtime.

Flower girl

Baptism Sunday

Elise was baptized Sunday at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, where Anni and I were married. Everything went well, thanks to the parents' brilliant idea to feed her just before the service started. During the baptism, she was fascinated by the shiny copper font.
Thanks to everyone who attended and came over for eats afterward.

Elise was baptized by Annika, the pastor who officiated our wedding. Annika's daughter sneaked into this photo.

Elise and her "honorary" godparents, Laura and Bryan.

The Wentes and Singels.

The past few weeks, abridged.

Uh, it seems like it's been forever since I updated the blog, and I'm not sure where to start.
Let's see. There was Elise's first Fourth of July, or as she'd refer to it: Just Another Day. No brats for her this year, but we did use a bottle rocket to send her dirty diapers down the block.
Speaking of bottle rockets, we had an unusually boisterous neighborhood that night -- our neighbor joked that it was like living in Baghdad -- and the little one wasn't too thrilled with all of the commotion. Eh, she got over it.

-----

Continuing with the firsts, we brought Elise along to pick strawberries with Dan, Erin and Avery -- an annual tradition for the Wente-Singel gang. She did just fine, but obviously did not pick her share because her white outfit was no dirtier when we were done picking than it was when we started.
Apparently I missed the bucket hat memo:

-----

A few days ago we brought Elise to her 4-month check-up. We've got a healthy baby, a great doctor and, no doubt, another inaccurate, big-dollar doctor bill that I'll have to argue. (I'll leave our battle over health bills to another day.)
Anyway, she weighed a pleasant 14 lbs. 13 oz. She is 26 1/2 inches long, so still busting through the top of the length-for-age chart. Every once in a while I'll look in amazement at how long she is -- usually as I nearly bump her head or toes into the doorway as we walk through. (Imagine a dog with a stick in its mouth trying to make it through a doorway.)
She got a few shots during the check-up, but that was a largely uneventful experience: Shots, brief wail, sleep.

-----

We have an eventful Sunday this weekend. Elise is being baptized into Westminster Presbyterian Church, where Anni and I were married. It is possible the same pastor who married us will baptize Elise.
We already are bending church rules a bit, which identify the church congregation as a baptized child's godparents. With that in mind, we've established honorary godparents, if you will, to Elise. (It was clear during our conversation last week with one of the pastors that that type of arrangement is quite common.) Anyway, we asked my brother, Bryan, and Anni's sister Laura to be Elise's godparents. They gladly accepted. We're happy.

-----

Transitioning ... transitioning ... transitioning ... OK.
Expensive baby toys are overrated. We have no uber-costly toys for our tot and do not need any, especially after discovering that she is much more interested in the wooden spoon that my mom gave Anni, who, while sifting through a kitchen drawer one day while Elise was fussy, decided to give it to Elise. Got that? Thought so.
That serving spoon is now starting to lose some of its decorative paint on the handle end because Elise gnaws on it. Who knew gums could peel paint? (At least her breath isn't peeling paint.)

-----

Lastly, another first to document.
Elise got her first taste of something other than milk and her knuckles.
Anni tried giving her rice (looked like porridge to me) tonight after she loaded up on milk. That turned out to be no problem whatsoever as she lapped up several spoonfuls of that stuff. She tried sucking on the spoon, too, which means she has watched how I react to an empty ice cream bowl.
We will gradually introduce the rice mixture before moving on to beef kebabs and a 12-inch meatball sub.