Ellie's Here!!!!!!

We welcomed Miss Eleanor Ann McMillon to the world on Saturday, November 8th at 7:55 AM. She came out with a precious wail and let everyone know that she was cold and not too happy that she was leaving Mommy's tummy just yet.

The facts:

Weight: 9lbs. 2.6oz

Length: 21"

Head Circumference: 13 1/4 cm

Chest Circumference: 14 cm

I went into labor naturally last Friday morning when I woke up. I even went to work until about 1 pm, when I decided that these were probably the real contractions. So, I met Josh at his clinic and we went to the hospital where I was admitted. Ellie came a week and a half early, so everyone was pretty shocked that I had a 9 lb baby in me, much less that I was able to have her naturally. We were very fortunate that she is a strong little one and tolerated over 24 hours of labor. She has beautiful dark blue eyes, a full head of dark hair that gets lighter every day and chubby sweet cheeks. Here are a couple of pictures for now. Josh will add his two cents once boards are over this weekend. Thanks for everyone's prayers. We are deliriously happy and completely in love with Ellie.

Major Catch-up blog

Well Everyone, we've been extremely delinquent in updating our blog. And to top it all off, we've had lots to blog about. I'm just going to hit the highlights and maybe Josh will write a more substantive post later.

In early September, we travelled to Raleigh to see the family and had a great time! It was great to catch a little bit of Indian Summer, see my parents and at least one brother and meet his very sweet girlfriend. Also, Josh experienced his first tropical storm.

When we came back to Portland, Josh took lots of tests including his last final exams EVER and of course, passed all of them with flying colors. The day he finished finals was his birthday and we celebrated the last finals/birthday just the two of us. (By this point, we're pretty tired!)

In October, we've been busy every weekend with something fun. So far, I've attended a Women of Faith conference, Josh has cut and chopped our wood for the winter (he actually hauled it down from Mt. Hood), Josh went fly fishing for a whole day, and we went to a pumpkin patch and corn maze. Josh has also managed to re-paint the entire upstairs of our house and move 3 rooms around. The office upstairs became Ellie's room, Ellie's old room became our bedroom and our old bedroom became a den/office. Can you say nesting?? Josh was a trooper and basically did all the work himself. I contributed to things that needed to get done by canning 30 pounds of green beans with a friend and having a garage sale. Oh and we helped a friend move too.

Below are some recent belly shots. This first one was taken before we went to dinner to celebrate Josh being completely done with all his required patient visits. Woo Hoo! Note the new living room paint color. We're not sure we love it yet, but it really needed to be painted again and we were sick of brown.

Sooo.... we've been a little busy getting things done and getting ready for Miss Ellie to make her arrival. Her new room is now ready and bags are packed and we completed our Childbirth prep class last week. At my last midwife appointment Josh was instructed on the fine art of catching a baby because we hope that he'll be the one to recieve her and hand her back to me. He did very well delivering the fake baby from the model, so I feel very confident that he'll do great if he has the opportunity. After all, the man will be a doctor in less than 2 months anyway and took the required Obstetrics and Pediatric classes. By the way, we have every intention of Ellie being born in a hospital with medical staff attending the birth, so this isn't some hippie free birth experience we're planning. :) We haven't lived in Oregon that long. As of tomorrow, I'll be 38 weeks pregnant and Ellie was considered full term last week, so just 2 weeks until she's due and hopefully she be here sooner. Stay tuned for updates.