Baby collage

Beatrice has been quite the distraction as I've been trying to pack and get ready for our move (a week and a half to go, aagh!).  She is a great sleeper (Praise God!), but when she's awake she is just too beautiful to put down! I love all the rounded baby lines and the random, swimmy feeling of her newborn movement.  I keep trying to capture them on film (as if someway I could actually capture the feel of the newness of her skin and kicks and curious eyes - I know she will mature so fast, and the photographs will never do it justice no matter how good the lighting is).  After some inspiration from baby collages on Pinterest I remembered that I didn't have to fit her whole body in the frame - I could focus part by part and to get the roundness of her belly or where her hair smooths around her ear.  

She's waking up

Beatrice has been waking up more and more.  She is still a very mellow baby, and we are loving her calm inquisitiveness as she learns to focus on our faces (Mama, baby Bea is looking at me!  I think she likes me!). 

Sister lovin'

4th of July

My mom often made this flag cake with us as we were growing up, and Nora and Elsa were very happy to help frost and assemble the top.

Elsa had been talking about the big fireworks display all day and we were thinking about trying to go, but we were thrilled to get a last minute invitation to join a friends a few blocks away for a neighborhood culd-e-sac version.  With all the kids and friends around, easy front row seats, and no traffic jam on the way home, it was hard to beat!

Nora found the noise from the little firecrackers to be a bit too much, so our friend lent her his safety ear protection:

Gideon and Beatrice

The cats have been demoted yet again, but I think they've finally resigned themselves to their place in the family.  They hissed at baby Elsa, steered clear of baby Nora, sniffed at baby Oliver, and barely blinked when baby Beatrice came home.  

He knows what I like

I like orange-y peach roses.  I love them when he gives them to me fresh and new in the hospital the when our babies are first born, 

 and I love them a week and a half later at home when their orange dries into a vibrant surprising contrast.  I couldn't bring myself to toss them before I tried to captured their colors and lines in the morning kitchen window light.  

Happy grandmas

Nana and Oma overlapped a few days as they each came to meet Beatrice and help us out for a while.  (Nana made Beatrice the beautiful quilt draped on the right hand side!)

Bringer of Joy

We chose to name her Beatrice Grace because we like uncommon, old fashioned, easy to recognize names, and because the meaning of names is important to us.  

Beatrice means "blessed, happy, bringer of joy, bringer of comfort."  Beatrice has brought a new joy to our lives, similar to how God comforted David and Bathsheba after their son's death with the birth of Solomon (2 Samuel 12:24).  She does not replace Oliver or the relationship we had/would have had with him, but her presence and newness comforts us, and we are blessed to receive this gift.  

Grace has become a sustaining concept to us.  We rely on grace in each of our relationships as we flounder though traumas and the grind of daily life, making so many mistakes and offences along the way, and we utterly depend on God's free and unmerited grace as he forgives and sustains us every moment we live.

As I have written before, photography is a tool for me to help me focus on glimpses of blessings.  Unlike previous seasons during which blessings have been hard  for me see, the joy of our new daughter is so refreshing and simple and abundant.  I was supposed to be resting yesterday, but instead I pushed my post-surgical body farther than I should have and set up a photo shoot for Beatrice.  (Not that she needed any photo set-up or lace or flowers to make her beautiful, but she was such a good model and I was having so much fun!)

Not for granted

Beatrice is one week old and healthy.  When we wrote that she was "totally healthy..." in the email announcements it was not just because that is what is typically written in birth announcements - we don't take that for granted anymore.

Beatrice feels like a mix between a fourth child and a first-born. We are familiar with the basics of having babies and caring for them, but in many ways we feel like we're experiencing her so brand new with the same special awe and amazement we felt the first time with Elsa, and maybe even more so.  Every little "normal" development fills us with surprising delight.  

At first, while in the hospital, I loved holding her but didn't actually just sit and hold her that much.  When we got home it finally sunk in that, not only were we really getting to take her home with us, NOW!, but that I can pick her up whenever I want, for however long I want, and take her wherever I want, without the complications of wires, tubes, monitors, or medication schedules, and without the fear of triggering a heart-stopping vagal response or pinching a tracheostomy tube and setting off ventilator alarms.  I can pick her up and dance around the house whenever I want to.  She is pink and is already trying to lift up her head and knows how to nurse and I may never have to pump again.

And one day she will even smile back at me.  

Garden memorials

I kept the bulbs from the Easter Lilies that decorated the church for Oliver's memorial service, and they just finished blooming this week.  I have them in the container garden I brought with us to our rental, and I hope they will make it through the move to our new home in Birmingham, along with Oliver's tree.  I don't attribute an irrational sentiment to these plants, but I find them helpful, tangible props that help me process and express my thoughts, emotions, and memories.  

I think I love to remember Oliver as I garden because when I work with my plants I feel like I'm cultivating life, and it urges me to reflect with peace on the perfect vitality that Oliver now experiences while I grieve and miss him here and now.

The Peace Lily we were given for him is also blooming indoors; an elegant memorial, a single white spathe peering over lush and green, blooming just in time to greet Beatrice.  I am so proud of Oliver and how much he learned and how hard he fought during his year with us, and this flower by my desk reminds me to not feel guilty about enjoying Beatrice as I remember him.

Big sisters

The older girls' reactions surprised me a little.  I had thought that Elsa would like the baby OK, but that Nora would adore her and take her in as another of her beloved baby dolls.  

Instead, Elsa loves to hold Beatrice any chance she gets and talks to her and can't keep her hands off her.  

Nora loves her too, but is finding her arrival more challenging than we, or I think even she, anticipated.  I think it is a mix of being an active 3 1/2 year old (it is so hard to be "careful" around the baby when you are so excited about her that you want to jump and bounce around her head!) and adjusting to being a big sister again.  She has done very well transitioning from being the baby to being middle child with Oliver, then back to being the baby and now middle again, but it had not been without a few bumps along the way.  I love it that she tells us what she is feeling and thinking - she will actually say things like "Daddy, I want you to give me some attention now, please" - rather than just acting out about it, so we can try to meet her needs along the way.  She does think her new sister is very cute and loves to help out as she is able.

And Beatrice is getting used to her new situation with her sisters as well, namely the mixture of startling noises and the abundant affection they show her.  They call her Baby Bea.