A few movies.

Decided to post a couple of short home movies that we have made of Eleanor. Each video is about 2 or 3 minutes long. Enjoy.

This first video was taken about a month ago, and it shows Eleanor anticipating kisses. We love this. We started coming in slowly for kisses, and before long, she knew the kisses were coming, and reacted accordingly.



This next one shows Eleanor standing up with her grandmother, who we call "Honey." She is advanced.



This next one was taken almost 6 weeks ago, and it was when Eleanor started talking herself to sleep. I would stand and rock her, preparing to lay her down. As we rocked, she would just start making these wonderful noises. Pay no attention to the ominous music in the background. It's supposed to be a womb noises CD, but it turned out to be some mixture of a horror movie soundtrack and Yanni music.



The last one was taken only yesterday, and she just started making this noise. It's kind of a cross between a laugh and a shriek of the mythical banshee.

Elle in a fly dress...

Not much to say on this post, just thought I'd post a few of the latest pics.

Kristin and Russ came into town last weekend, and Kristin took some family pics for us. Thanks, aunt KK.

Now that's a smile.

Two things make Elle smile more than anything in the world. 1. when Nikki comes to get her out of bed (only if she's already awake... if Nik has to wake her up, she is not happy) and 2. when we hold her up to our face and sing to her. huge smiles almost everytime. I'm talking like huge smiles, like I wonder if it hurts her mouth to stretch that much. So we've been trying to get one of these smiles in a picture, and finally we got close this morning. This is when we went in to get her up this morning, and she was a happy girl.

Eleanor is doing really really great. She's been sleeping through the night almost completely for the last few nights, and when she does wake up, she goes back down pretty quickly. She's also mimicking us a lot more. She makes this funny gurgle noise sometimes, so we started doing it too. Now, when she hears us make the gurgle noise, she does it back. brilliant.

Nikki and I are both keeping really busy. Nikki has been back at work for 3 or 4 weeks now, and we're starting to get the hang of it. We juggle the baby back and forth; so I have the baby when she's at work, and she has the baby when I'm in class. Nikki is taking one class this semester, and it's an online class, so she doesn't have to drive out to Belton this semester. However, she is having to study for her comprehensive exams on top of her classwork, working 30 hours a week, and feeding a baby every three hours. She's a machine. Here's the normal schedule, from my point of view:

6:00 - We wake up and hope that Elle stays asleep till 7:00.
7:00 - Nikki feeds the baby while I do some house chores
8:00 - Nikki leaves me to fend for myself
8:05 - Put Eleanor down on her play mat, sit down at the desk to start writing.
8:06 - Pick Eleanor up. She will have none of this "playmat" nonsense.
8:07 - Get frustrated cause I feel like I'll never get any work done.
8:08 - Remember that Elle is a precious gift from God, and feel kind of like an ass for getting frustrated
8:09 - Play, sing, and dance with Eleanor
8:20ish - Start trying to put Eleanor down for her nap
8:22ish - Pick Eleanor up. She will have none of this "nap" nonsense.
8:45 - Eleanor usually goes down for her nap around this time.
9:45 - pack up the girl and drive up to Nikki's work, where she feeds Eleanor
10:45 - arrive back home; go back and forth between playing with/consoling Eleanor and reading or writing at my desk
11:15 - Put Eleanor down for nap
11:17 - Pick Eleanor up. She will have none of this "nap" nonsense.
1:00 - Nikki comes home, eats lunch, hangs out, and feeds Elle, then goes back to work
1:30 - play with Elle
2:30 - Eleanor naps, and I work as much as I can
4:00 - Nikki comes home and feeds Eleanor.
5:00 - We go for a walk around the neighborhood
6:00 - Elle eats again, while we eat dinner at the same time
7:00 - bathtime for Eleanor
8:00 - Eleanor eats again, and goes down for the night. I go into the office and work for 3-5 hours. Nikki also works between feedings
10:00 - another feed for Eleanor, this one's called a "dreamfeed" where you don't actually wake her up; she just eats while she sleeps.

This is all subject to change on days when I have class, or days when Elle is hungrier than usual. It's crazy busy, but also fun. We're in love with her.


Elle's favorite pasttime is watching me study. I'm pretty awesome at studying. You should come over and watch me do it. (I know you're not supposed to put those Bumbo seats up on the table, but it's okay if I'm sitting right next to her. Back off.)

A very fly Baby Bjorn that our friends let us borrow. Stylish.

This has nothing to do with Eleanor, but

So this has nothing to do with our Eleanor (sorry), but my brother sent me this link and I thought it was hilarious. Please view.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBM854BTGL0&eurl=http://www.fistofblog.com/?p=6772

Contrary to what this looks like, my daughter really does like me.

Is it weird or somehow wrong that I laugh so hard when Eleanor cries like this? I just think it's hilarious. This is her pouty, "I'm sick of you people bothering me" cry, and she loves to bring it out when she's tired of us kissing her. Which sort of happens a lot. The kissing. And I guess the crying too. She better get used to it, cause it ain't stopping. It ain't even slowing down. At all.

Here's a few more pictures we've taken.

She has started to smile a lot, but it's been hard to get a good picture of a smile. As soon as she sees the camera, she just sort of stares at it, kind of emotionless.

Elle is always a hppy girl right before bath time. She can be crying her head off, and the second we walk into that bathroom, she's content. She and Nikki pose in front of the mirror.

This is another example of how her cries crack me up. I put her in this whatever-you-call-this-weird-thing and she's clearly not ready for it. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but her legs are dangling, and you can see her right hand sticking out the leg opening. Not an orthodox sitting position, but hilarious nonetheless.

Yes Yes Ya'll...

Well, I realize that two nights is only two nights, and babies routinely do things that you want them to do for a short time only to break right back into the old practices. I'm not getting too excited over this, but... Eleanor slept through the night. Twice.


Can I get a what what? Can a get a yes yes ya'll?


Last weekend, we had to leave town suddenly and got back into Waco on Sunday at about 6:00 or 7:00 PM. Eleanor had been really fussy throughout the car ride (she usually sleeps the whole ride), so we thought we'd be in for a long night. She went to bed at about 8:00 or 9:00, and Nikki fed her again (without waking her up) at about 11:00 PM. We went to bed and before we knew it, it was 6:00. Since the last few weeks of Nikki's pregnancy were pretty rough on her, it had been at least 3 months since she had 7 hours of straight sleep. The next night (Monday night), she went to bed at 9:30, and Nikki tried to do the 11:30 feed in her sleep, but Eleanor was not interested. So we were sure she'd wake up at 2:00 or 3:00 AM, since her last meal was at 9:00. Low and behold, we woke up at 7:00 AM! Eleanor went like 10 hours between feeds! And slept full on from about 10:00 till 7:00. Very proud.


Nikki and I are fully aware that some babies will sleep through the night for a few days or even weeks, only to start waking up again for a time. We're just grateful for these two nights! Here are a few pictures to remind you how beautiful Eleanor is (as if you could forget)...

We got a new camera lens...

So with our Christmas money, we decided to buy a macro lens for our Nikkon camera, and it allows us to take super close-up shots. If you ever see close-up pictures of a flower or a bee or something, it was probably taken with a macro lens. Needless to say, Nikki has been going to town, takng endless pictures of Eleanor's face, eyes, hands, feet, mouth, you name it. Posted a few here, and a lot more are posted on the smugmug website, http://www.nikki-rhodes.smugmug.com/ If you want to see how impressive these pictures can be, click on one of them to see it in full size.

Eleanor is growing up so much already. She is starting to smile (though we don't yet have many great pictures of the smile, I'm sure some will be posted soon), and she coo's all the time. Her favorite time of the day is the morning, right after her first feed of the day, usually around 7:00 or 8:00. She has started making a lot more eye contact with us, instead of constantly gazing at the fan. (Seriously, if you put your face in between her and the fan, she squirmed around until she was back in view of the fan.) Her sleeping schedule is becoming a bit more reliable, and even though we are nowhere near a full night's sleep, she has gone 6 hours a couple of times.