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?

Welcome Home

I know its been a while since I've had a chance to post something, so I thought I'd better get something up before I went to bed. We were finally able to leave the hospital this morning at 11:45. It seemed like it took an eternity because I was ready to go about 7AM. I took all the stuff out to the car and then...waited. For those of you who are interested, here is a rundown of how things went:

Erica was induced on Thursday at about 1PM. I thought she was pretty situated so I left her to get a couple more things from the car and call her Mom who was on her way from OH. When I came back, she was already starting to experience some major contractions. She was in a lot of pain for about an hour or so and then she had the epidural. Let me just say that drugs are GREAT. Her pain went away almost immediately. Jared and Charisse, Vivian, and her mom and I just sat around visiting with her and eating Subway when the Dr came in and checked her and informed us that she was ready to go (7:30). As you can see from the picture, this was the result at 8:38PM. My parents came up but were only able to see her just a little that night. They were able to see her a little before they left on Friday, though. Perry came up on Friday evening and was able to see her a bit today before he left around 4. Her mom will be around until Saturday of next week.

We are thankful to God for being so gracious to us in giving us a healthy girl and an uneventful delivery (I guess thats easy for me to say). He really has blessed us and we just want to thank Him for the good gifts He gives. Thanks also to those of you who prayed. I'll try to get some video up in the near future (but not of the birth don't worry!)

hangin' out with stella

8:38 7lb 2oz 20in

in the d

so far so good!

This is it!

Just wanted to let everyone know that it is 11AM and we are on our way to the hospital. Please check in here for updates-I will be leaving audio messages on the blog as often as possible. Please pray that God would bless us with a healthy delivery if He so wills.

More Nursery

For those of you who would like to get an idea of what the nursery looks like now that its finished,


click here

We are the Champions (my friends and I)

I went to Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions, today at lunch with some guys from work. Ford was having a partner recognition day for their suppliers. I took these pics with my handy iPAQ rx3715. They are of course horrible. Enjoy! We found the only remaining Truth About Trucks display in North America that has a working DVD player.
An intimidating front line if I've ever seen one.

This picture is an unsuccessful attempt at capturing the majesty of the Ford field logo. Pittsley is standing in the foreground. For those of you with 20/20, this is what its like to have 20/80 vision and misplaced glasses.
A shot of the locker room...each player has his own personal chair!
Jason Elwartowski giving a press conference in the spot normally reserved for Steve Mariucci our coach.
This is what it is like to come out of the tunnel to the applause and cheers of adoring fans.
Joey Harrington (jared) on left and Charles Rogers (me) on the right. We are discussing a scintillating play bound to gain at least 3 yards.

Nursery...In Progress

As you all well know, no child is ready to be born until his/her parents have exhausted every possible reserve of energy prior to the birth by "fixing up" the nursery. As you may also know, "fixing up" may involve quite a bit more than the phrase implies including things like removing doors, refinishing floors, repainting walls, refinishing furniture, stenciling walls, etc. But when its all said and done, I guess the end product is worth it to the parents if not to the baby who will not be able to even see more than vague blurs of our toil for the first several months.

Here are two pictures of the nursery as we have it so far-again, my digital camera does not take high-res pictures so these are somewhat grainy. The one on top is a picture of the wall with the stenciling. Erica traced the outline yesterday with an overhead projector and I started painting it last night while she was attending someone else's baby shower. I thought it was odd that she had purchased both red and black stenciling paint but started the task with black since that was what we had agreed on, right? When she arrived home, I proudly showed her the wall and she replied that it was nice but the wrong color. Fortunately I had not gotten too far into it-anyway, she had it finished by the time I came home from work today. The changing table is on the left as is an old dresser that we refinished. We bought the crib from the Haney's (he is the youth pastor at ICBC).

This picture is the opposite side of the room. Erica got the idea to remove the closet door to save space (when it swings) and to put up a curtain instead. I installed the shelves at the lower part of the closet using some old pieces of closet maid stuff we found in the house when we bought it. So thats where things stand right now. Mom and Dad have been furiously working on roller shades which we will put up when they arrive. In the meantime, we will be installing the curtains either tonight or tomorrow.

So if you have any other suggestions of what could be done to the room, please don't post them because we are tired!

A game for you...

One picture was taken at 4 months; the other was taken tonight. We're putting this up as a fun game to see if anyone notices what the difference is. Let us know if you think you have the right answer!

Erica went to the doctor today and was informed that everything was exactly the same as last week. She is 1 cm dilated and 70% effaced (I actually know what those things mean, too). She could still have her any day now. The nursery is almost done-we just have to finish a few of the finishing touches. Jared Compton helped me hang some shelves in the closet this evening. Erica's bag is packed and ready and I have the car seat in the car. (Can you tell this is the first time for us?)

One more thing, there may be some confusion about how to comment so let me clear that up (i.e. I don't know if anyone has even looked at this thing yet). Below each post, you will see the word "comments" and a number next to it. If you click on "comments" it will take you to a screen where you can post something if you'd like. Ok, more tomorrow...

The Very First Post!

I know most of you have already seen this picture, but I just wanted to show you what each entry will look like. I will try to keep this updated with pictures and news of all things Stella (and maybe a little bit of other stuff too) so that everyone can keep as up to date as they'd like. You can post comments below each entry such as, "Wow, I think that is the cutest baby I've ever seen!" or suggestions, or whatever you want.