permanent damage?

some of you know when i was pregnant i craved strawberries. well, we didn't see the effects this had on young stella until just recently. we hope the damage isn't long-term...

stelly's happy place

sun afternoon october 16th, we went into stelly's nursery to get her up from her nap and found her sucking her little baby thumb. since that time, she and her thumb have been inseparable, especially when she's sleepy or when she gets frustrated. daddy calls it going to her "happy place." it's so cute now, but we'll let you know how we feel about it in a few years! can anyone recommend a good orthodontist?

happy birthday, grandma b!

while we were home in ohio the first weekend in april, we celebrated grandma's birthday coming up this thursday. stelly sends her love and kisses to you grandma! have a happy birthday!

stella gracey face

stelly turns 8 months old today. where has time gone? here are some pics i took of her today before she watched her baby mozart DVD.

instead of a bow

mommy didn't put a bow in my hair today so i was wondering if this looks OK instead?

the neat thing is, it doubles as a bracelet too! how cool is that? i bet daddy wishes mommy was this low maintenance!

A Noble Career

An anonymous writer declared,
"There is no nobler career than that of motherhood at its best...With what diligence then should she prepare herself for such a task. If the mechanic who is to work with "things" must study at technical school, if the doctor into whose skilled hands will be entrusted human lives, must go to medical school...how much more should the mother who is fashioning the souls of the men and women of tomorrow, learn at the highest of all schools and from the Master-Sculptor Himself, God."

getting bigger???

my shirt says "getting bigger everyday" but why am i still wearing 0-3 month jeans? i guess i'm just petite because as you can see from these pictures, i am almost ready to crawl. i must at least be getting stronger everyday! are you ready for this, mom? catch me if you can!

studying with dad

don't let the little fish toy fool you. stelly is really concerned about much deeper things than nemo. in this picture her dad is writing a paper for his non-pauline epistles class and stelly keeps submitting her points about why he shouldn't be studying hebrews in that class since she is convinced of pauline authorship. now where's dory? nemo's getting lonely.

What's up Doc?

Stelly has recovered from the flu and her appetite has returned. She was all smiles when she heard we were resuming her new food explorations with carrots for lunch.




Stelly loved them! (Whole carrot was for picture purposes only! She ate them pureed! ;))

stella's friends

stelly is feeling better today but was still fevered last night. we trust she's on the mend and will be back to her chipper little self soon. she misses her friends, so i thought i'd reminisce and post some pics of her enjoying herself with her friends in the recent past.

sick on valentine's day

our usually smiley sweetheart is a sick little cupid today. she still wants to send love to her family and friends!

Back from Hiatus

Well, for those of you with an RSS feed to this blog, you’re probably quite surprised to see an update appear! And for the rest, you probably won’t discover this post for several months. So, if you’re reading this in August, SURPRISE! Anway, I have a renewed interest in blogging about young Stella, and several things to show you from the last several months. Unfortunately, Stella is sick today-we were up most of the night with her. She and Erica just returned from the doctor and the verdict is that she has the flu. With that said, I’ll post a picture of happier days than today and then get cracking on some video of Stella’s first meal. Stay tuned…

sufficient

psalm 19.7_11
7 The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; 8 the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; 9 the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. 10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. 11 Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.

"it [the bible] is still the first book which fits the child's mind when he begins to learn religion, and the last to which the old man clings as he leaves the world. in short, it suits all ages, ranks, climates, minds, conditons. it is the one book which suits the world."

-j.c. ryle, "how readest thou?"

friends

last week stelly had a visit from her friends who live in dunbar, wi. pictured left to right is stelly with maggie and madeline fipps.

bitter-sweet

Yesterday was a bitter-sweet day for our little sports fan. Stelly's favorite basketball team, the Detroit Pistons, went into a game last night against the Dallas Mavericks with an 8-0 record. Much to her dismay, their rank as the only undefeated team in the NBA so far this season came to an end after losing to the Mavs.

By the end of the game she was devastated!

However, she was consoled by Ohio State's win over Michigan. She loves every other Michigan team except the Wolverines. Having parents from Ohio, her blood runs scarlet and gray.

Way to go Bucks!

Our Treat

These are pictures from the halloween party at Daddy's work.

Effort

Effort is what this picture is all about. She is not crying or yawning. She is doing everything in her miniscule power to lift herself up, and thats what this look is all about.

As many of you have so kindly pointed out, it has been about 50 days since I last posted. Well, thats what seminary does to me. For those of you who have been more persistent, I would remind you that it wouldn't hurt you to help me with Greek Exegesis of Philippians. I could use a research assistant. So anyway here is another pic that I thought you might enjoy. It was taken about 3-4 weeks ago when Erica and her mom decided to do an impromptu photo shoot in the back of a Toyota 4Runner. Anyway, this is probably my favorite picture of Stell and is the wallpaper on my laptop.

So, what has Stella been doing for the last 2 months you ask? Well, she doesn't do a whole lot to be quite honest. But in little ways she changes by the week. My last post was "learning to smile." She has definitely mastered smiling. She smiles basically at anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention to her and attempts to "talk" to them as well. We're not exactly sure what language she is speaking but I personally believe it to be some form of ecstatic utterance. She is also getting much stronger. When she sits in her bouncy seat, she is constantly doing what appear to be abdominal crunches but I think she is just trying over and over again to sit up. While she can't really do that yet, she is able to hold her head on her own and is constantly looking around taking everything in. In fact, she will not allow herself to be held in any way that might obscure her view of whatever happens to be going on at the moment.

And another mini-milestone occurred just this morning. Until today, she has been able to grab things while you hold her like hair, necklaces, your shirt pocket, etc. And until today this has been inadvertent as far as we can tell. Today, however, she was particularly enthralled with a colorful fleece outfit that had been given to her by her grandparents. In fact, she was so taken by this outfit that she reached out...grabbed it...and LICKED it. I'm not sure exactly how to take this response. I usually grab something in order to take a closer look. Erica usually buys my clothes for me and brings them home which she says is actually less hassle then actually taking me TO the store. Anyway, when she brings a new tie home my first response is not usually to taste it. But that seems to be Stella's approach. Perhaps she was testing to see if this was actually "performance" fleece as opposed to regular run-of-the-mill fleece. Regardless of her purposes, she has now been spotted several times this morning grabbing for something. Her grasps are usually unsuccessful for now. But only for now....

Learning To Smile

The Weekend

We went to Ohio this past weekend. Dad asked me to preach at Cambridge Bible Church back in May, and this is the weekend we agreed upon. Now I wonder if he really wanted me to preach or if he was trying to figure out a way to get Stella down to Ohio? Oh well.

So this was Stella's longest car ride and she did very well. She slept almost the entire ride. As I realized in a previous post, going anywhere is never going to be easy again and this trip certainly wasn't the exception to that rule. We had to stop to feed her which ended up tacking at least another hour onto the trip. But it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be because that really was the only complication. Well, that and the little suction cup mirror I bought to stick to the back window kept falling off.


I worked a half day on Friday and then we left. We arrived in Cambridge around 6 and went straight to my parent's house for dinner. We didn't stay with them this time because it would have been too complicated with Jenny getting ready to leave for college. She had to be there a week early. Unfortunately, that was pretty much all we got to see of my family since they were busy with the CBC picnic all day Saturday.
We didn't do a whole lot on Saturday morning and headed out to the church picnic on Saturday afternoon. The ladies of the church had a belated baby shower for Erica while most of the men played softball. It was very nice of the ladies since some of them had never even met her before. We are very grateful to them for their generosity. We had intended to stay for the whole picnic but it was extremely hot and Stella had been in the heat for too long.

We went to visit Erica's grandparents, Jerry and Wilma, on Sunday afternoon after church. Jerry was obviously a little hesitant to hold Stella although I don't really know why since he had three kids of his own. Isn't it like riding a bike?

Wilma looked a lot more comfortable. We left late Sunday afternoon. All in all, Stella did great.

The most amazing thing about the whole weekend is that Jodie let other people hold Stella!

Wired for Sound

For those of you who never heard the Stella sound byte from Streetcar (as well as another clip I found), you can now listen to your heart's content by visiting the "clips" section of my sidebar. It should prove to be an exciting experience for all. For some reason, I am unable to left justify the heading to make it uniform with the rest of the headings in the sidebar so you'll have to excuse that.

Steeelllaaaaa!

This was the exclamation with which I was almost invariably greeted when asked the name of our yet-to-be-delivered baby girl. It didn't even stop in the delivery room. The nurse that attended us up until 2 hours prior to the delivery had the same reaction upon hearing our daughter's name. She even had a story to go along with it which harkened back some thirty years ago to when she worked at McDonalds as a teen and would get off work at midnight with friends and drive down the street shouting the name at people they passed by. Even people at church would exclaim a somewhat more nervous and subdued version of "Steeeellllaaa" when we first came back to church after she was born. It seems that was the first thought in half the congregation's mind as her birth announcement was read from the esteemed and venerable Inter-City pulpit. I have added the sound byte of this seemingly famous clip to our blog in order to entertain you the first time and annoy you the 2nd, 3rd, 4th...well you get the idea. Don't worry it will be taken off soon. I will however add it somewhere else where it can be played at will so that those who are more easily entertained can listen at will and as many times as they'd like. (if you wonder what I'm talking about turn your speakers up).

The strange thing about all this is that few people actually know the origin of Steeeeellllaaaaa. Most would say the phrase and then mutter something like, "isn't that from some old movie...who was in that...Marlon Brando?" It seems upon retrospect that we (Erica and I) are possibly the only members of our community who had never heard the name pronounced in such a way. But we became so familiar with the reaction to her name that when people would make the inevitable reference, I would say something like, "Yeah isn't that from some movie with Marlon Brando?" as if I had some idea of what they were talking about. One person finally confirmed that the sound byte was actually from "A Streetcar Named Desire," a play by Tennessee Williams which was adapted to the silver screen in 1951. Marlon Brando did not play Stella. And I still haven't seen the film.

Doctor Visit

No pics this time, just info on yesterday's doctor visit. The visit can pretty much be summed up with this statement: Stella is getting chubby. The doctor told Erica that the general rule of thumb at the 2 week checkup is that the baby should have gained back its birth weight. For those of you who don't know, birth weight usually drops in the days following delivery (or so I'm told). Stella weighed 7lb 2oz at delivery and had only dropped an ounce when we left the hospital. Stella is now a healthy 8lb 3oz which means that she has gone above and beyond the call of duty as far as recovering her birth weight. In addition, this settles any lingering questions at the Owen household regarding whether she has been receiving the proper nourishment. The only other person gaining weight in this household is me strangely enough and I am determined to give her a run for her money. Thus far I believe I have been successful but thats another post...

On another note, you will notice that I have an RSS feed now, not because of this site's burgeoning popularity, but because I have lazy friends. Actually a lazy friend to be more precise.

Finally, more pictures!

I know its been a long time since my last post (believe me I've heard about it from some of you) so I thought I'd better put some pictures up. If any of you wonder what Stella likes to do, this is one of the main things.

And here is an update on how things have been going. We are in the middle of our third week as parents and we're finally flying solo. A big thanks to Erica's parents (first week) and mine (second week) for staying with us and helping out. Unfortunately, there aren't a whole lot of wildly interesting things happening i.e. she hasn't taken her first step, started eating solid foods, said her first words, or begun piano lessons, etc. We are starting to get used to the schedule, though, and Erica in particular is learning to live in 3 hour increments around feeding times. We took her to church for the first time last Tuesday and then to her first Sunday service. Today is her first doctor visit, so we'll see what happens with that.

I wanted to get Erica out of the house on Saturday so we took Stella to the mall just to walk around a little bit, but still be out of the heat. This little experience provided me with a preview of what is to come-going somewhere will NEVER be easy again. Stella's stroller ("stroller" just sounds too simple) is actually a monstrous off-road capable machine. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to putting things together and this stroller was no exception. It can recline, fold, and adjust in every configuration any baby in the world could possibly desire. It has cupholders and all sorts of compartments. And it is about the size of a small go-kart (read VW bug). It folds easily enough, but fitting it in the car trunk is quite another matter. In fact it basically takes up the entire trunk-no room for anything else! And I've still not quite mastered the turning radius as I hit a couple of innocent bystanders while trying to navigate through the ocean of 12 year old girls who shouldn't be at the mall all day anyway. I guess I should be thankful, though, since the "stroller" will come in handy if we ever find ourselves hiking in an area with large bolders to climb over or streams to be crossed. This stroller will handle rough territory like a Hummer.

Stell and Sunshine

This picture was taken by Joy McCarnan who has a talent for capturing the moment perfectly.

Some days are better than others...

Need I say more?