Caroline and I started attending The Journey at MDUMC late last year. We joined the church a couple months later and it has been a remarkable experience. The community and service at The Journey are amazing and we have made many new friends. We are also very excited about having Emily baptized there in August.

The leader of The Journey is Rev. Daniel Irving. Daniel and Jean Irving have become great friends of ours and came over to see Emily soon after we got back from the hospital. The newest member of the Irving family, Boaz, their 8 week old puppy also came over to play with Mella. I shot some video of the dogs playing and have been meaning to put it together for some time now. It's only taken me a little over a month to get to it, not too bad considering all we've had going on. So here are some short clips of Mella playing with her newest friend.

Emily is 2 months old now. I can't believe it! We've had a lot of developments over the past month. She is smiling, pulling herself up when on her tummy, rolling over, cooing and sleeping 6-7 hour stretches at night. She even did one 8 & 1/2 hour stretch! We had her 2 month check up this week, the doctor's report was great and she is a healthy baby girl weighing in at 11 lbs 2 oz and 23 inches long. That is 2&1/2 lbs and 3 inches since birth. Pretty amazing!

Now that she is getting older she is a lot more interested in activity time so I've been experimenting with new things for us to do. In the midst of my experimenting, I noticed she is completely fascinated by the television. I don't feel quite right letting her watch the tube. But it is hard to ignore something that keeps her so engaged and quiet. Now I know why those Baby Einstein videos are so popular - I guess its an acceptable way to prop your kid in front of the tv. I need to get some of those. We've also been working on grasping and playing with toys. I always put the toy in both her right and then left hand to see which way she responds better. Up until recently there was about the same amount of holding time on each. But lately she seems to have a stronger grasp and a much longer hold with her left hand. So she might be a south paw like her Dad and both her grandmas, or I might be reading too much into her rattle hold. Both explanations are possible! I've also been putting her on her tummy a lot as you can tell from the latest gallery. But she is getting so good at rolling over that she flips as soon as I lay her down. I'm not sure how to keep her on her tummy now. I think she figured that out just so she could get out of tummy time. What a rascal!

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Caroline took Emily to the grocery store this afternoon. But I'm not seeing a lot of room left for food in that basket. Hopefully it's just a diaper run.

I wanted to let you know that we added an email subscription feature to the blog. There is a box towards the top of the right sidebar where you can sign up to receive an email whenever Caroline or I put a new post up. (You can also sign up via RSS). This should be a convenient option for those of you that are checking back to see if we have posted anything new, and also for everyone we have been emailing when we put new posts up. Also, if you decide you don't want to be notified any longer you can easily turn it off.

If you try it out and have any problems just let me know and I'll try and help you get it setup.

It's been a while since we posted a new photo gallery. A lot's been going on, Emily is a very busy girl. In this set of photos we document Amma's visit to see her first great-grandchild. It was exciting to see Amma, Carol, Caroline and Emily Carol all together. We also took Emily on her first road trip. The three of us loaded up the car with an amazing amount of gear for a simple weekend trip. Emily got her first taste of the sweet life on Lake Travis and then we took her to her first party. My mom and aunt had a party for my grandparents who were clebrating their 60th anniversary. It was a great trip and Emily was a perfect road trip companion the whole way. As long as we stay over 60 mph she stays asleep and it's smooth sailing.

Also in this photo gallery we have some pics of Emily playing on her activity mat and practicing her latest trick. Emily has learned to roll over from her stomach on to her back. Exciting stuff, I know! (And very advanced for her age, we are such proud parents.) She has also started smiling quite a bit. It's fun to make goofy faces at her and get her to smile at you. This is the first genuine reaction she has shown responding to us. She smiles quite a bit now and Caroline has been working diligently to capture it with the camera.

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Caroline sent me this photo a few minutes ago.

And she raises an important question in her email, "What do you suppose Mella is thinking?". Maybe someone reading this has a good idea and can provide an answer in the comments.

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I want to start by apologizing for the long delay in posts and also for not getting the previous posts back up in a timely manner as had been promised. These kinds of things can really kill a websites following, so I understand that I'll need to be more diligent from here on out. Everything seems to have been restored for the most part. I have a top notch hoster and really all the credit goes to him for getting things back online without any significant data loss. The only known issue remaining are the thumbnails for the shower pictures don't display, but if you click the boxes the full size photos will come up. If you notice anything else not working please let me know.

We'll be posting more photo galleries soon. Just a little teaser....Emily went on her first road trip last weekend and also had her first visit to the lake. Very exciting stuff.

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