Family Photos

Ellie has so far had the chance to meet both sets of adoring grandparents as well as her uncle Leo. She can't wait to meet the rest of the family - some in Michigan in February and some in Minnesota once her newborn cousin there is up for travelling or receiving visitors.


Ellie with Tata and Nana








Ellie and Grandpa Campbell

Grandma Campbell holds Ellie in the hospital

Uncle Leo is amused by the sleeping baby

The two proud grandmothers

Two weeks old!

Happy birthday, Ellie - two weeks old today!

Ellie has been doing very well, and has gained back her birth weight and more. She still has her nights and days mixed up a bit, but then her parents are generally on a fairly late schedule themselves.:) Roger has had two weeks off for paternity leave, which has been a great blessing, especially with recovering from a c-section.

Ellie still impresses us as being exceptionally smart - her favorite toy is currently a piece of black-and-white zebra print paper that was a shower gift from Katie K. Ellie loves to stare at it and already tracks it with both her eyes and head if we move it back and forth. Her eyes still cross periodically, but she definitely is gaining control of her muscles. Now if we can just get her to control her hands a bit better so she doesn't get them in the way when she's trying to eat we'd be making some real progress. She definitely has lots of neck control now, and if her

Welcoming the baby home

When I got home from the hospital there were pink and white bows and flowers everywhere. Grandma Campbell and Grandpa Severino are now very talented bow-makers and could go into business.



Grandpa Campbell hung the decorations on the wall of Ellie's room.




Roger still is excelling in his job of baby soother - here he has finally succeeded and they are sharing a nap.


Our first Sunday back in church Fr. Joseph gave Elizabeth Anne a blessing, echoing the blessing of Jesus in the Temple by Simeon.

She's Here!

Sorry for the big delay, but as you probably have figured out by now, the last post was no false alarm. I'll cut to the chase here since I'm typing this with one hand while the baby nurses:

Baby Elizabeth Anne Severino finally joined us, after 40 weeks and 4 days of waiting, 28 hours of labor, and ultimately a C-section on Monday, December 12, 2005 at 3:25 pm. Much to Grandma Campbell's delight, we resisted naming her Guadalupe after the feast day on which she was born. :)

She weighed 9 pounds, 4 ounces, and was 20 inches long, with dark brown hair and dark brown/gray eyes. I'll post a picture as soon as I can get one downloaded - we have taken about a million of them already, but of course none can capture just how adorable she is. I can quite objectively say that she is one of the most beautiful babies ever, but she's even cuter in real life with all her funny faces and gestures than in pictures which can't capture the 4-D "Baby Ellie" experience. Ellie finally was released to come home Thursday night and we're happy to be back where there aren't people taking your vital signs at four in the morning and where we can sleep on our own beds. Especially with all the grandparents here we've been incredibly lucky because we have all the comforts of home along with people cooking, cleaning, taking care of all the household tasks, and happy to play with the baby at all hours of the day and night.

Not only is she adorable, but Ellie has been an incredibly well-behaved baby. She rarely cries, and only does so when she is actually hungry or cold or needs something, and she almost always is quickly and easily soothed just by walking around a bit and a bit of personal contact. Our biggest trouble so far has only been to wake her up and keep her awake during feedings to make sure she's getting enough to eat - she's already lost 10% of her birth weight so we want to keep her well-nourished but she's just not that fixated on food. Must be her father's genes. :) She even slept through a heel-prick blood drawing yesterday to check on her jaundice. Pretty chill kid.

She's also quite precocious - both grandmothers witnessed her turning from her back onto her side while we were still in the hospital. Daddy swears she did a full push-up while she was lying on her stomach on his chest. And Mommy is impressed at her arm strength - it often takes two people to get her started feeding if she's trying to suck her hands at the same time (she gets a bit confused when she's hungry), because her arms are just so strong! She is very responsive to voices and seems to recognize her proud parents already. Roger is the champion soother, after taking on that role in the hospital so that Mommy could sleep between feedings, and she definitely recognizes his voice and the cute songs he improvises for her in Spanish - we're hoping to be able to raise her bilingual and Roger has jumped into training her already. Mommy of course is recognized as the milk truck, but I think she also is starting to know my face and we love just staring at each other when she's in one of her fairly frequent "quiet alertness" phases and doesn't just go into a milk coma after eating.

Okay, so this got a bit long - Roger found a pillow to prop the keyboard on so I ended up having more hands to type with. I'll spare you the details of the labor and birth for now, but hopefully will put that together soon. Thanks so much to all of you who have been praying for us. We'll try to keep more news and photos coming soon!

Is this it?

Just an update in case anyone is checking - I started having pretty regular contractions this morning at 8am, and we are probably heading to the hospital soon to check things out, pending final word from the doctor. So hopefully there will be an even better update in a day or so. All your prayers are appreciated, and we'll let you know when there's more news.

Still Waiting...

For those of you who didn't get the news yet...
there's no new news.

I fear Elizabeth has become too comfy in her current home and doesn't plan on moving right away. Alternately she's been listening to the apocalyptic predictions of the insane DC radio people telling us to start stocking up for a blizzard while predicting a measly 2-4 inches of snow overnight. I've been telling her we'll keep her nice and warm, but her grandparents are visiting from Los Angeles, and they are not saying encouraging things about how warm it is here!

The belly shot above is from about a week ago, and I feel like the baby is totally sticking straight out. I'm including a truly frightening shot of how swollen my hands and feet get on a bad day. I have been eating really low salt now and trying to drink a ton, but haven't been able to lie down enough to really get the swelling down. Besides, lately I'm trying to stay active to encourage the baby to drop and exit. I think the only cure at this point is delivery!

Puerto Rican Wildlife

We encountered quite a bit of the local fauna over the trip, including the aforementioned stray cats and lots of other stray dogs. It seemed that the cats preferred city life, while the dogs were more common in the smaller beach towns. Here you can see one dog that was hanging out on the roof of the roadside shop he apparently belonged to. The sign for shishkabobs below was a bit disturbing, but we assume they weren't serving dog...

Roger had the most memorable encounter with local animals, and still has the scars to show for it. One of the days in San Juan we were making a sand castle. He insisted on digging a moat (which I still maintain is structurally unsound because of erosion), and was sitting in the moat for a while fortifying the outer defenses. Unfortunately the moat was also home to a bunch of baby crabs - or at least that's what we assume it was because he had found some on his skin earlier - about the size of very small spiders. Sacrificing life and limb in defense of the castle, he carried on despite feeling them biting him. It wasn't until we went inside that we realized the extent of the damage. Luckily his skin heals itself of scars fairly quickly - as you can tell because the welt from paintball he got at his bachelor party is almost gone.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

The tropical storms hit in full force early in the week, with flash flooding on our second day in San Juan. By the time we got to the car the whole street was flooded, and when larger cars drove down the street for higher ground, it would actually float and shift a bit in the wake. We were amazed that we were able to move it out of there - inspired only by the car in front of us that was the same and drove out apparently unscathed. Except, of course, very wet. It took all week to dry the car out, but when we returned it to the rental company it was fine.

The rain continued through the week (but no more flooding), so we figured we might as well check out the rainforest in El Yunque where they should be used to such weather. It was wet enough that, again, the uppermost trails were closed, but we had quite a bit of walking and sightseeing to do closer to the base of the mountain. Here you can see me from the top of one of the waterfalls, and at another one where the water had flooded the path and we had to get across by climbing on the guardrails. Roger enjoyed playing Indiana Jones and exploring an abandoned building by a pool that used to be used for swimming.