Oh May!

Ok, so I totally missed posting about Ellie at 3 months. This is what she looked like back then.

Yeah, she's adorable. At 3 months, Ellie was rolling over, grabbing and holding on to toys, and smiling all the time. She's such a happy girl!

Anyway, today she is 4 months old. Where does the time go? She is getting so big and I just can't believe it. Here are her pictures from today...

She is so much fun! She makes me so happy. These days, Ellie loves to listen to classical music, sit in her Bumbo and talk, read/eat books, play with her toys, go on walks, and she loves her toes. She rolls over as soon as you put her on her belly unless you put some toys in front of her to keep her interested. Her hair is awesome. It sticks straight up, but it has a really cool wave to it. Thanks to Granny Montague, she has a fine collection of headbands and bows to go with all her cute clothes. She is such a good baby and we are just completely in love with her.

This picture cracks me up!

Mid-roll!!

I promise she likes it.

Have you ever had feelings for a nun?

In other news, so much has happened the last few weeks. Danny finished his student teaching!! After many, many late nights, anxiety, and pure heck (ha) it is over. He's in the process of applying for jobs and has had a few good interviews. He graduated at the end of April. Both of our families were able to come out and support him. That same weekend, Ellie was blessed. My mom made her dress. Didn't even use a pattern. It was beautiful. We loved spending time with our family and we are so thankful for their love and example.

After many failed attempts at the whole jumping thing, this was my best shot.

After 2 years, I left my job at Deseret Book. I now am a full-time mommy. I love every second I get to spend with my sweet baby girl. She is so worth it! Danny is working at Vivint. He is really loving the food there. Everyday I ask him what he had for lunch and I always regret it. Steak, burgers, salads, and the list goes on and on. Lucky boy. We've started getting in to fishing. Danny got a pole for his graduation present. We finally caught a big one today. All his hard work paid off :) We're excited for the summer and hopefully my next post will bring good news of a teaching job. Yeah! 

Ellie Belly

Our little girl has passed the 2 month mark. What a wonderful two months it has been! We absolutely love her! She's so much fun! She went to the doctor this past week and weighed in at 10 lbs. 9 oz. She's just over 22 inches long. She's growing, growing, growing, which isn't surprising considering how much she eats. Here are a few fun thing about Ellie Ann.

-She LOVES her hand. She'll look at it for a bit and then it's straight to the mouth. She's gagged herself a few times, but still has fun.
-She still enjoys her bath. I had to move her to the big bathtub because she gets so excited, water ends up everywhere! She could splash in there forever.
-She is such a good talker. She has the sweetest little voice. I just can't get enough of it.
-She also loves to sing. Some of her favorite songs include Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Happy Family, Popcorn Popping, "A" You're Adorable, and of course the ones we make up for her.
-She loves walks. Once you put her in that stroller, she's out. This led to some pretty long naps last week when the Montagues were here.
As for dislikes, she's a pretty happy baby. As long as you get the food to her fast enough and let her sleep, she'll always be happy. We definitely lucked out with her!
Anyway, we're doing well. I go back to work this coming week. I'm trying to be brave, but tear up about it a lot. Danny finishes his student teaching in 2 weeks. Not that we're counting. We had a fun-filled visit with my family last week. Ellie had a lot of firsts- Zupas, Sizzler, Park City, Costco, Winco, JDawgs, University Mall, Target. Her love for shopping definitely started to grow while they were here.
Anyway, enough talk. On to the pictures.

Go Cougars!

Silly grin.

Gotta get that hand.

Oh so sad.

Just call her "Bucky."

Love her.

One of her favorite toys.

Meeting Aunt Emma for the first time. They had a good talk. Obviously.

Two month picture. I forgot to take a picture until right before bedtime. Poor baby.

Saying goodbye to the Texas folk. Love ya'll.

She's Here! She's Here!

The wait has finally paid off! Ellie Ann Crane arrived on January 12, 2012 at 7:07 pm. She weighed 6 lbs, 11 oz and was 18.5 in long. What a beautiful babe she is! Everyone always posts "the birth story" on their blog, so I've decided to jump on that band wagon. Plus, it's a whole lot easier to type than it is to write in my journal...anyway, here we go.
The morning of the 12th, I had an appointment with Dr. Glenn. Debbie (Danny's mom) had flown in the night before, so she came with me. When they weighed me that morning, I had lost another 2 pounds. That was 4 pounds in 2 weeks. Dr. Glenn told me he wanted me to take a NST (non-stress test) just to make sure that everything was going ok and that there was enough amniotic fluid. They hooked me up to a monitor and did an ultrasound. It was fun to see Ellie again. I only had one other ultrasound at 20 weeks, so I hadn't seen her for awhile. The fluid was at 3.5 when it's supposed to be between a 7 and 24, so the nurse told me that Dr. Glenn would for sure want to induce me that day. WHAT?! That was super exciting, but I was worried about Ellie. They monitored her heart rate for 20 minutes and things looked good. That was a major blessing. After that, they took me straight to my room. Debbie went and picked up Danny and they grabbed our suitcase from home.
At about 1:30, they started me on the pitocin. Things went pretty quickly after that. My contractions were really intense and were coming really fast. Ellie was not putting up with it as well as we would have liked, so the nurse decided to put a monitor in my uterus to check the intensity of the contractions. Before she put it in, she measured me and said, "Actually, we're just going to have you start pushing." Woohoo! I was fully dilated. She called Dr. Glenn (who was in the middle of a haircut. He didn't think I would progress that quickly.) and told him to get down there right away. Then the fun stuff began. I started pushing at 6:15 and at 7:07, Ellie was born. That was so wonderful! Nothing prepares you for that moment when you first hear and see your little baby. All your emotions swell over and everything around you disappears except for that little one. Danny was able to cut the umbilical cord and they placed her on me. Oh, she was precious. All the worry and fear of the day melted away. They let me hold her for awhile (skin to skin time) and then Danny went with her to the nursery so she could get cleaned up.
We stayed in the hospital for 2 nights. It was wonderful being a family of three. I think that first night we just watched Ellie the entire time. We oohed and ahhed over every little thing she did. We tried to see who she looked like the most. We just couldn't get enough of her. On January 14,  we were able to come home. Those first few days were intense. You worry about every little thing and exhaustion just takes over. On the 17th, my mom finally came, along with my grandparents. I'm so grateful for Debbie and for my mom and all the help they gave us. We couldn't have done it without them.
Now Ellie is almost 1 month old. She loves to eat, sleep, chill in her bouncy seat, listen to Mama sing, and she's becoming a real conversationalist. She loves to have her head massaged and loves fleecy blankets. She loves to relax in the bath and loves when Daddy comes home from work. Ellie hates being hungry. She has no problem letting you know when it is time to eat. She hates getting out of the bath because it's just too cold. She is just like her daddy when she wakes up. It usually takes her a little while to be fully awake. It's so cute to watch her struggle to choose between sleeping and eating (so far, eating always wins).
We absolutely love our precious baby girl! She is more than we ever dreamed of and we love watching her learn and grow each day.

Picture Palooza

I have a wonderful husband. After reading our last post, he went and bought me a camera cord. What a guy! I love him! So here are some pictures to help you through the last few months of Crane life.

First up is our anniversary. We went to The Roof. Delicious! Afterward, we found some nice foreigners to take our picture. We're so multi-cultural. And those are the flowers Danny surprised me with. Eternal love. That pretty much sums it all up.

Laurel and I went to Taylor Swift in September. It was super fun! She is an amazing singer! We had tons of fun yelling...I mean singing our heads off. Baby will definitely be a Taylor Swift fan.

Next up, Halloween. Here are some pictures from our party.

We're pretty attractive, I know. But some people walk in the light, you know. Here's a few more of our party and The Pumpkin Walk up in Logan.

After a two year absence, Danny and I were finally able to go to a BYU football game. Laurel and Randall had extra tickets and for once we weren't working.As you can see, we were really, really excited. It was a lot of fun, even though our toes are still recovering from the cold. Jaymes came and visited us.

That just leaves us with Thanksgiving. It was just the two of us this year so we (mainly I) decided to skip the cooking hype and eat it up at Chuck-a-Rama. Brilliant idea! It was so good! The only sad part about eating out- no leftovers. But we're getting over that. Craig and Lana came to visit us that night. It was fun to see them. Wish they were closer.

Well, that about sums up this palooza. Life has been great! We're so excited for the Christmas season and for the upcoming birth of our beautiful baby girl. We have so much to be grateful for.

By popular demand...

It's that time again. Life has been wonderful lately. We've been really busy, but still able to do lots of cool stuff. Well, let's face it. Danny and I are just really cool people. A lot of our pictures are on my camera and, sadly, we lost the camera cord, so we're just going with whatever we have on Danny's camera. But, I digress.

This past month was Danny's almost favorite time of the year. He is a Halloween fanatic. He loves the decor, the jack-o-lanterns, the dressing-up, the-scaring-your-wife-silly bits of this random but delightful holiday. I did get him back a few times though, so I think we're pretty even on the scaring each other part. We had a fun Halloween party with lots of people we hadn't seen for awhile. All these pictures are on my camera, but everyone lived up to the "dress-up or beware" warning we placed on the invite. McKenzie and Von we're wild Indians...uh, Native Americans, Laurel and Randall we're a snake/lizard and a cow, Dean and Katie were crayons, Justin and Emily were Cleopatra and Marc Antony, and Danny and I were nerds (yes, we did have to add a bit to our regular attire). We had yummy food and played Werewolves and Villagers. Fun was had by all! Overall, October was a fabulous month.

Now on to what's really important. Baby girl is doing so great! We are super excited to meet her and can't believe there are only 9 weeks left of this long, arduous process (there have been fun moments to I guess). We bought a stroller, car seat, bouncer, and she is getting well-stocked in the clothing area. I made a bunch of headbands a while ago. They are pretty adorable. We still have to work on her room though. I'm afraid she may have to live in the closet, like my sister did for a few years/months :), but hopefully we'll get everything settled before to long. That's what Thanksgiving is for, right? So, I do have a couple of belly pictures. I've been really bad about these, but I do have a good excuse.

As you can see, things are looking pretty good :) We're so excited for our darling baby girl to be here. To hug and snuggle her. What a special blessing she is.

In other news, two years ago today, Danny and I held hands for the first time. Thank you Napoleon Dynamite.

And baby makes tres...

Well, here we are again. So stinkin' much has happened the last couple of months. But I'll try and remember it all.
First and foremost, we are having a baby girl! We had the ultasound today and everything looks great. She is beautiful! She already has a little bit of an attitude. I think she gets that from her dad. It was so amazing to finally see her. This was one of the best pictures she would give us. It was like she was thinking "Ok, guys. I'll give you a good one to start with, but that's all you get. Suckers!" Funny girl. So now begins the fun of buying baby stuff and packing our new apartment full of girly things.
Which brings us to our next topic. We moved! We're out of the tiny box of an apartment we were living in all summer and now we reside in what we consider a "great and spacious" place. It's two bedrooms, has a dishwasher and a disposal, is in a great ward, and we just can't say enough good things about it. It's perfect.
Danny and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. Since I work like all the time, we had to celebrate a couple days early. He took me to The Roof up in Salt Lake. We had an amazing view of the Salt Lake Temple as the sun was going down, plus it was an all you can eat buffet. Woohoo! It was a wonderful date. I love Danny and I'm grateful for him and all he does for me, especially during these last few months. He's been such a trooper.
Well, that's it from The Cranes. Signing off.