Ella and Daddy had two special times today. First a bath. She cried the entire time.

Then this afternoon Ella took a good long nap and I took it upon myself to wake her up for her 4PM-ish feeding time.

The video below is of me waking her up, and thinking that it was a cry that we were about to capture on film. If you watch until the end of the video you will see (hear?) exactly what we caught on film.

Enjoy –

(music: Mute Math – “Reset”)

Our first trip to Wal-Mart with Ella was a COMPLETE success! She slept the whole time! We saw a few people from church and they were all honored to get a glimpse of our new daughter!

Jess is doing MUCH better today – she is still in constant pain from the major surgery she underwent, but the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be getting closer!

Ella is also doing very well – she is sleeping during the night for 4-5 hours in a row! That’s INCREDIBLE! When she does wake up, she feeds for under an hour and then goes back to sleep again!

The Lord is truly blessing our humble family with a good baby!

Tonight I chatted with my newly father-hooded cousin, Brock (Reagan was born 3.5 months ago). It was great to talk to someone with some newborn experience this close together! When I asked if he had seen pictures, he said, “Yes, I’ve seen Yella’ Ella!”

Funny.

Ella’s bilirubin level today (blood taken before noon) was aleady down to 14.4! (It was up over 17 yesterday – and was at 15.4 when we left the hospital on Wednesday)

Thank you for joining us in prayer!

Jess is doing remarkably well. We are without a doubt OVERWHELMINGLY blessed to have the support of both sets of parents. Mom Garrett has been here since Thursday morning and has been an overwhelming support. Tonight she and I will take “shifts” at bringing “hungry Ella” to Momma – after last night, where she allowed me to be sleep while SHE took care of Ella and Jess! Now that I’m a bit “caught up”, I can’t wait for my “new job”! (I will still be suplementing my sleep with a bit of Tylenol PM)

Tonight we finally took the time to give Ella her first “real” bath! Sure we can’t yet sit her in the sink and use the sprayer and such, but we put her on the towel next to the sink and I used my fatherhood skills (and the knowledge from watching the hospital video on bathing your child) and washed our baby Ella for the first time! It was awesome –

Check out my pink baby!

almost done!

drying off

Finishing touch – a kiss from Mommy and Daddy

More photos of tonight’s bath and some visitors, too, are available here.
Tonight, Ella also enjoyed her first-ever game of “thumb wrestling” with her Grandpa Sheets. Enjoy these two videos –

I’m lovin’ this!

Today at 4:45PM, our daughter, Ella Marie, came home.

It’s amazing to think that she was born just this week and already she is home with us in our home!

I can’t imagine you getting tired of seeing pictures of our new daughter, so in Ella’s honor, we’ve started her OWN website – www.ellasheets.com is now the site where you will find a NEW daily photo of our darling daughter. The idea is to take a photo of her EVERYDAY for the first year of her life – the biggest “changes” come during this year, so we want to capture those changes in digital-format and keep track of them there! Currently, you can view 4-pictures on that site – she’s been with us for 4 days, so there are 4-pictures! You get the idea.

The site may grow as Ella grows, but currently it holds a photo-a-day of our new baby girl!

Of course there will still be MORE photos here on stevansheets.com – in fact, here you go:

If you haven’t seen them already:

Ella on the night she was born – I’m rocking her in the nursery – her first rock with her Daddy. We’re waiting for the phone call that says I can bring her back to Mommy (who just underwent emergency c-section). The phone call comes right at the end of the video clip, too! (runtime – 1:08)

Next up – a video of me asking Ella what she thinks about the current gas prices (outrageous) and her reaction (and NO, I was not pinching my daughter to make her react this way!): (runtime (:32)

Finally, my “freshly arrived” daughter and a BIG yawn and continual hiccups (runtime – :43 )

Of course some photos need to round-out the video clips! Full photoset of today’s picture-taking is here.

Again, the full photoset from today can be found here.