The Blog Venture Begins...and the story of Ella

I'm not very web-savvy. I don't really know how to do this whole blog thing. But recently I've heard a lot of remarks like, "Now, I sure haven't seen any pictures of Ella in awhile!" Well, the original solution was to send emails...but with all our family and friends, that's about a billion (give or take) email addresses, and we only seem able to send about 3 pictures at a time, out of the thousands (give or take) that we have...so, the Vogt family blog was born. I'm sure it will be great fun eventually, but right now it's rather daunting. How do I begin? Perhaps with a story...

Really it begins long ago, when the Lord had written my days in His book before I had lived one of them (Psalm 139). Those ordained days included a moment when He took away my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36), wiping clean my record of sin (Colossians 2) and justifying me by grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3). Those ordained days also included a wonderful wedding: May 13, 2006, I married my amazing husband Johnny.

...and now, of course, we know that those ordained days included bringing another life into the world. The day after Christmas 2007, I had a positive pregnancy test, confirmed 2 days later by my doctor, and my whole world was happily turned upside-down. I'll never forget hearing that little heartbeat for the first time! Well, the doctor said September 4, and the sonographer said August 22, but my little sister Elayna said, with absolute confidence, that my little girl would be born August 27--a Wednesday, the same day of the week that Elayna was born 14 years ago. I laughed at her prediction and joked with her about it, but never thought much of it. Tuesday, August 26, very pregnant and uncomfortable and hot, I drove to JGI to pick Johnny up from work (one of our cars was being worked on), and we stopped to pick up 2-for-$1 tacos for dinner. I think I ate four or five...a decision I would come to regret. About 10pm, I started having contractions--not very strong yet, about 10 minutes apart. About 12:15am, I was in a heap in the floor, with contractions every 2-3 minutes. About 1am, I started vomiting and I told Johnny I didn't care how long the doctor said to wait; we were going to the hospital. We checked in about 2am on Wednesday, August 27, and Ella Christine Vogt was born at 9:13. My sister is so smart. ;)

The first 2 weeks, Ella slept nonstop. I usually had to wake her up to feed her. The waking up process usually took about an hour...haha, she's a heavy sleeper. Then at about 2 1/2 to 3 weeks, the crying started. I've never experienced anything like those evenings of pacing the floor while she sobbed, fussed, even screamed, for reasons entirely unknown to us. It was a crazy time...but there were still so many fun and wonderful moments. I'm not even really sure when the crying stopped...but at 10 1/2 weeks, she's much happier and calmer, smiling and cooing a lot, and absolutely adorable. She used to cry if she wasn't being held; now she cries if you try to pick her up during what we like to call "wiggle time." She kicks those feet so high, I've often joked that she's going to learn to do backwards somersaults before she learns to roll over!!

Well, most of you probably knew all of that already, so I'll skip to the part you're really interested in: pictures!
We took this one when Ella was about 1 week old. Pretty, isn't she?

Here she is at about three weeks, sleeping soundly:



The middle two were taken between 5-6 weeks; the bottom four are recent--about 10 weeks. In these last two, she's stretching--Johnny took a whole bunch of shots while she was waking up. As you can see, she's quite animated when she first wakes up. ;)

And, just for fun, because he's adorable and because we haven't forgotten about him: Coda at bathtime!