In Vermont

These first three pics are among my favourites of all those taken of Grace so far. She's started to smile a lot, especially when she first wakes up, and even seems to giggle a little bit at times.





This was us getting ready to go for a walk. She looks like a starfish in this oversized snowsuit. Her arms barely reach to the elbows.




This is Grace with her Aunt Ann. They spent some quality time hanging out on the couch.

Sleeping in the Big Bed

These first two were taken one morning when we put her in our bed for a few minutes. I love the way her hands are folded under her head. The last family-portrait-with-dog took some posing. So far Ceilidh doesn't seem to recognize that Grace is actually a person, since she doesn't move around like one. She'll figure it out when Grace starts pulling on her ears.

Being Yuppies In The Park

On the day we took this walk in Trexler Park in Allentown, the park was full of young couples with children who looked like us, creating the sensation of being on the set of a bizarre suburban movie.

All Dressed Up

Grace has a wardrobe that has to be seen to be believed, full of gifts from our wonderful family and friends and wall-to-wall pink. This is a hand-knitted sweater and hat that came from her Aunt Helen in Scotland. We got all dressed up for a doctor visit.




It was all pretty exhausting so she had to have a nap with Mom.

Meeting Nana and Grandpa McEwan

Grace got to meet her McDonald grandparents in the hospital (her Grandma Beth watched her being born) but had to wait a week to meet the Scottish-Canadian side of the family. Her Aunty Nichola and Uncle Bob are coming to see her this weekend.

Grace is thriving so far - at the doctor's office this week, she weighed 9 lbs and 7 oz, which meant she had gained more than a pound in the previous week. We can literally see her getting bigger each day, and sometimes I swear she looks bigger when I get home in the evening than she did when I left for work in the morning. She's beginning to look around and move her head much more, and still sleeps steadily in short (2-4 hour) increments. She's generally been a quiet and happy baby, so we think we're going to keep her.

Hanging Out With Dad

These pictures were taken in some nice light a few days after Grace came home. We're all getting to know each other.

In the hospital and coming home

After a couple of days at Lehigh Valley Hospital, we brought Grace home on Saturday the 20th. The staff at the hospital were unbelievably wonderful and helpful. It made the experience much easier to handle than it might have been.

Happy Birthday!

Grace Kelly McEwan arrived on October 18, 2007, at 1:42pm. (Her father was born about that time too, and he's not a morning person either). She was 8 lbs 11 oz at birth, and 21 and a 1/4 inches long, so she apparently got her mother's height.

Eileen's labour began in earnest late on the 17th, and she spent most of the night in the hospital enjoying the epidural. Both Dad and Grandma McDonald were present in the delivery room to help welcome Grace into the world.

Her name is a combination of Paul's grandmother's name and Eileen's late husband's name. That it came out as the name of a famous movie star was just a coincidence. We figured that people mistaking her for a princess would not be the worst thing in the world.

These are some pictures from that day.

Eileen at 40 weeks

I took some pictures of Eileen today with her full-term belly. She looks as beautiful as ever of course. Someone said to her that they always imagined her looking like a toothpick with an olive if she was pregnant, and that pretty much captures her shape right now. The background is the freshly painted wall of the baby's room.

Eileen at 32 weeks

There are no more ultrasounds after 20 weeks, which is a shame really -- those are lots of fun. Instead we get the pleasure of watching Eileen get bigger and bigger, but in one direction only. This is a picture from our vacation in Maine in August. We wanted at least one that would show off her belly.

Dusty at 20 Weeks

In these pictures you can see a lot more detail. Apparently at this point she was about the size of a Barbie doll - around 12 inches long (although, thankfully, without Barbie proportions in any other way). In the full body picture you can see a black circle in the middle of her chest -- that's her stomach.



There are some nice close-ups of the hands and feet and, of course, of the parts that let us know that we were having a girl. We thought that perhaps these might be ambiguous, but then we saw some pictures of boys posted on the wall. Even at 20 weeks, there's no making that mistake (and if they have made a mistake, our boy is going to have a lot of pink clothes).

Dusty at 10 Weeks

These are the baby pictures from the 10-week ultrasound. Dusty is about the size of a large gummy bear, and curiously shaped like one too. When you get the ultrasound done it is more like live video than still photography, and even at this stage we could see her waving around in there. Not surprisingly, ultrasound technology gets better all the time, so the pictures are apparently sharper than what was available even a couple of years ago. At this point though, there is no way to tell if it's a boy or a girl, no matter how good the pictures.