Claire and I ran a couple of errands together this afternoon--a kid's clothes store, Costco, and the grocery store. A month and a half ago, these errands would have taken me 2 hours, max. Today, it took 5. Our outing including the following:

Public crying fits: 1.

Throw-ups that soaked me to the skin: 1 (an improvement over yesterday).

In-car diaper changes: 2.

Parking lot feedings: 2.

Generous offerings of unsolicited parenting advice: 1.

Strangers cooing at my daughter: >12.

Forehead kisses: >30.

Smiles from Claire: >5.

Before Claire was born, Elliott and I would always refer to having kids as ruining our lives. And we totally have. And it's totally awesome.

We get this fancy schmancy camera yet the majority of my pictures of Claire are from my smartphone....but as they say, the best camera is the one you have on you. Here is a random sampling of Claire in low res.

Claire's been enjoying her daily phototherapy sessions. Look how stylish she is!

We're pretty into Claire and into her name, as well. Feel free to leave your suggestions for cool nicknames in the comments section below.

First, some close-ups of Claire:

Some oogling pictures:

Grandma R (Grammy) taking a turn...

(Again, the black--really, dark brown--hair is such a trip.)

Finally, some more camera phone pics from last night. Look at that cute 8+ pounder!

Thank you, our sweet unborn lovechild, for providing the justification for blowing a ton of money on a fancy DSLR camera. We've long lamented the fact that we never take enough pictures, a trend we wanted to reverse before Baby Girl comes.

The Houston Arboretum, inside Memorial Park, has long been a favorite place of ours to go for walks, and after the hottest summer on record in Houston, the weather this weekend was absolutely amazing--a little crisp in the mornings and turning warm during the day--so that's where we spent some time Saturday afternoon. Sadly, the trees in the park, like many of the trees in Houston, haven't survived the drought. It was sad to see so many Xs painted on the trees that need to be removed.

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It's that time of year again when we repent for being bad bloggers and give a quick rundown of the last year.

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One of the things I love about mine and Elliott's relationship is this: every once in a while, one of us will throw out a totally unrealistic idea, and then the other says, yeah, okay, let's do it!

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The other day David A left this comment on our blog:

you know why i love your blog? because every time i get sad that it's been a full month since obama's inauguration, i can visit your website and relive the historic experience as though it happened yesterday!

Well David, we were doing it just to keep your heart happy, but I'm afraid we can't hold out forever. I've resisted. I've stalled. But the time has come for another post.

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