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?

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