The Week Gone Goodbye

Continuing on with our hero theme, the foremost hero of week one was, of course, Elinor herself.  (Sorry, can't figure out how to rotate that.)

In one week's time she went from snug as a bug in a rug in here

 to combating this brutal world of oxygen and vital statistics, one flailing limb at a time.  Thus far her coping methods seem to be a combination of sleep,

skepticism,

and leaving it to Dad to figure out.

 That will probably get her pretty well through the next 18 years.

The next big hero of Elinor's first week of life was this lady:

my mom, Nin.  Sometime we'll re-write A.A. Milne's "Three cheers for Pooh!  For who?  For Pooh!  Why what did he do? I thought you knew, he saved his friend from a wetting," etc. to be about Nin because she always leaves us cheering in her wake.

Nin arrived Sunday night after we had already retired for the evening carrying not drums and whistles but barbells and dumbells, i.e. my youngest brother's old weight set.  This was my dad's baby gift to Elinor.  He heard that she had Abdiel's broad shoulders and wants her to live up to her potential.  We're setting it up right next to her bassinet.

Nin then awoke early Monday morning, sent Justin off to Scout Camp to help the boys set up (he returned that evening and tag-teamed the next three days with the other leaders) and prepared a magical 4th birthday for Ms. Gwyndelin.

Can you even believe this girl is four?

 She is.

 And pretty proud of it.

Nin took the kids shopping for Gwyn while Elinor, Gwyn, and I chatted and rested downstairs.  Nin made a gorgeous mermaid cake, per request, and a delicious dinner as well.

The next day was one of forgetting.  Julia forgot that her violin teacher was in Europe.  So everyone went early to play at the park while Julia went to her lesson, except that Julia didn't have a lesson.

But it all worked out okay in the end.

When they returned home, they met their aunt Caci in the church parking lot behind our house for my mom to watch two of Caci's kids while Caci had a dental emergency tended to.  When she returned from the dentist, Caci forgot that she was not supposed to park in our driveway because the city was going to be resealing the asphalt on our street.  In the twenty minutes that she was come in to pick up her kids, the street went from unsealed to sealed and there was no getting out.

Since they had intended to go see Incredibles 2 that afternoon anyway, they all piled into the van parked in the church parking lot and Caci treated.  So that all worked out okay in the end, too.  We did feel a bit bad for the cousin at Caci's house left home baby-sitting!  Sorry, Jace!

They got to see more of Caci and all her kids the next day--and Chari and her baby Charlotte to boot-- when my mom hosted a Mermaid Beach Party in her basement apartment portion of our house.  Since this was the favorite part of Nin's stay for everyone--and Elinor and I were just lounging up in our cave while it was happening--

I'll let one of the girls write up a separate narration of those adventures.

Nin was passed out in exhaustion from all that fun by the end of the day, so we let her rest in yard work on Thursday.  Our trees and flower beds have never been so happy.  Julia and Elisabeth both went to their respective sessions of a multi-stake Family History conference during the day, and Nin helped put their excitement to work by taking them to the City Center temple that evening after dinner to do baptisms.

This morning after making us a delicious breakfast, delicious lunch, grocery shopping, and packing, we said goodbye to this week's hero.  Elinor thinks she'll sleep the whole ride home.