Miss Lily in a nutshell

Andrew's Aunt Sue sent this card to us a while ago and Lily found it a week or so ago and has been playing with it ever since.

The Lily Report

I'm not sure where to start with Miss Lily. She will be 4 1/2 years old on Sunday this week. I really cannot believe she's going to be five years old in September. She's my little Lily. Even though we have Kellan now, Lily will always be my baby girl. She is sooo sweet to me. She is always telling me, "I love you Mama" and giving me hugs. She says things to me like, "You are so lovely Mama." and "You are the best mom in the whole world." Okay, how could I not love all that! :-)

As far as school, she's in the Koalas preschool class at Partners Preschool (the school district preschool) this year in the mornings on Tues, Wed and Thurs. She has three little best friends in the class: Ivy, Mary Rose, and Elizabeth. Their teacher calls them the "flower girls", even though Elizabeth isn't a flower name. And the coolest thing about all these girls is that Mary Rose is blind and the three other girls play with her as if she's just like them. They include her in their games. They've learned to talk to her in a way where they describe things more. Lily even walks around sometimes with her eyes closed feeling the wall to move so she can see a little of what Mary Rose's world is like. I think their compassion and patience is amazing for four year olds! And all of these girls as well as a few other kids from her class will all move together to the Zebras class in the fall (M-Th in the afternoons) with the same teacher.

Lily has really blossomed (no pun intended) this year in school. Last year she was tentative and shy. She only spoke when she was directly asked a question and she really only played with two other kids in her class. This year she is outspoken and a leader! Her teacher says she's always surprised that Lily never gets to the bossy stage with the other kids because she is always telling people "we should do [this]" or "How about [that]". But she is always nice about it and lets other people decide things too, so she never gets to the point of being bossy. Which I think is great to hear. I'd hate for her to be bossy to the other kids.

As far as all the academic stuff, she's right where she should be at with colors, numbers, letters, writing her name, etc. I'm not so concerned about that stuff. She has a whole nother year before kindergarten which is plenty of time for her to learn that stuff. I'm just so pleased with her social progress this year. And she's not even really that shy anymore. Just a bit. But now, even when we're out shopping or running errands, if a lady stranger asks her a question, she'll answer instead of shrinking behind me. She's still scared of strange male figures. But you know what, I'm totally okay with that. She even has a male teacher at swim lessons and she will NOT let him touch her or go near her. She HAS to have the "girl teacher". Andrew and I are totally fine with her being scared of boys. She can be scared of boys for as long as she wants. ;-)

Other than swim lessons, Lily's only other activity is Mrs. M's weekly class on Friday mornings at the Staring Lake Outdoor Center. Each week they focus on a different letter of the alphabet and learn about animals that go with that letter. I LOVE Mrs. M's. It's educational and fun for Lily and each class is ONLY $6!! You can't beat that!

And just to be fair, here's some of Lily's artwork. Though, I'll be honest and say I don't think she shows the same aptitude for art as Ella, but it's fun to see her progress.

She has since started writing the letters of her name in the correct order. ;-)Abstract with watercolors.That's a space ship in the middle there and she "did a pattern" around the outside.This is Rin-too from the animated show Kai-lan. I couldn't believe she drew this herself. I had to ask her if Ella helped her and she told me very proudly, "No! I did it all by myself!"Just coloring in Handy Manny....one of her favorite characters. :-)

Well, I think that's it for the update on Lily. :-) Oh! Two more things! She's very proud that she can buckle her own seat belt in the car now (and so am I! Makes life so much easier that I don't have to climb in to buckle her into the "way back" of the car) and she is finally night-trained. That's right, no more diapers for Lily! Whoo hoo! Now, we just have Kellan in diapers.

Masterpiece Monday

Here are Ella's latest two art pieces from her after-school KidzArt class:

Do you see she named her tugboat "Bella"? Isn't that cute! The art teacher had drawn this image in black and white (so just the black outlines) on a whiteboard and the kids had to copy it and color it in. Ella LOVES using permanent marker to do her drawing, since she doesn't really get the chance to use those much at home. I also think its fun to see that she's drawn this without erasing anything.
Ella's parrots. They had a picture on the board of two full-color parrots. Again, Ella does all of this, including the outlining, on her own--no help from the teacher!

I can't wait to see what she brings home this Thursday!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I still have to get that Lily update posted that I promised several weeks ago now. I'm hoping to do that later today. And Ella has a new artwork to feature as well. But for now I'll leave you with this adorable photo of the three kiddos dressed in their St. Paddy's green. :-)

Family Movie Night 2010

Now that our basement is finished and we have a 55-inch flat screen hanging on the wall. We can have Family Movie Night in true MOVIE fashion! We even have lights that dim down there, surround sound, and a Blu-ray player. What fun!

Here's the list for 2010:
Toy Story 3 (in theater)
Toy Story
Tooth Fairy
Mr. Troop Mom
Hotel for Dogs
Curious George 2: Follow That Monkey
High School Musical 3
Spongebob: Viking-Sized Adventure
The Princess and the Frog (DVD)
Garfield: Pet Force
Planet 51
The Hannah Montana Movie
High School Musical 2
Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian
Garfield: The Tale of Two Kitties
High School Musical
Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs (Blu-ray disc)
Monsters Inc. (Blu-ray disc)
Dennis the Menace
Eloise at the Plaza

The Pattern Fair Project

I wanted to sneak one more school/art thing in here with regard to Ella. Again, this happened at the beginning of November and I've been meaning to post about it since then.

Ella came home one day with an assignment sheet for a family project to create a pattern of some kind. There were no boundaries really. They gave suggestions like "make a beaded necklace" or "string popcorn and cranberries". Well, I didn't really want to give Ella the examples they had listed because I wanted her to be creative on her own and come up with something.

I gave her several pieces of different colored paper, crayons, scissors, and a glue stick and just let her be. I told her to just play around and see if she could come up with something. I came back several minutes later and asked her what she was working on. She'd created a strawberry, banana and some grapes and said she wanted to make a pattern out of them. So I worked with her and she came up with her fruit pattern. I asked her if she wanted to put her fruit pattern in a fruit bowl and she said yes. So I helped her make the fruit bowl and she actually came up with doing two MORE patterns on the fruit bowl. So her project had a total of three patterns on it. Then Andrew helped us mount it all on a piece of poster board.
Now, when I heard that they were having a "pattern fair" at school in the cafeteria. And parents were invited to come at a certain day/time to come see all the kids' projects. I pictured them hanging these things up for everyone to see on the wall. So we all had it in our minds that the project should be BIG. Well, ha ha, that wasn't exactly how it went.

The kids all sat at the lunch tables and the parents walked around to see everything. There were three kindergarten classes there. And the funniest thing was that they were supposed to sit in their class order...which is alphabetical by first name. Which means that Ella is #5 when they line up that way. BUT, she had to sit all the way at the end of the table because her project was soooo big! LOL! It worked out all right though because she got to sit next to her friend Vivian which was a special treat because they are never in line together.


I just have to point out that Lily dressed herself on this day and did so in patterns just for Ella, because she knew we were going to the Pattern Fair! Isn't that cute?! (you can't see them very well, but her leggings have a pattern on them as well)

You could tell, Ella was soooo proud that her project was the biggest and that she had to sit in a special place. I'm glad that she's not old enough to be embarrassed by that yet. :-) And I have to say, I do think hers was the most creative project there. ;-) Luckily, Ella didn't want to do a paper chain (what Andrew had suggested) because there were at least three other paper chains there. ;-)

The Ella ART Report

Oh wait, I'm not done gushing! I forgot, I was going to talk about Ella's art! I know I'm a parent and have an incredibly biased opinion. But I truly think Ella is gifted when it comes to art. I am continually amazed at what she comes up with all on her own.

It always makes me so happy to watch her just grab some paper and markers or crayons or whatever and sit down and start creating! Of all the gillions of Christmas presents she received this year, I believe it is safe to say her absolute favorite has been the crayola art set she received, just like the one pictured on the left. She has this open almost everyday. And we put it away when guests come over to play so that it can stay her special thing.

I've been keeping a stack of Ella's artwork for awhile now (since last summer) meaning to scan them and get some posted on here. But we never got around to getting them scanned. The sun happened to be shining beautifully on our kitchen table the other afternoon. So I grabbed my camera and just took photos of them (next time, I'll have to remember to put white or black foam core under them on the table). I was actually inspired to do this when Ella brought home her first artwork from the after-school art class she just started.
The assignment was to draw the windmill from a drawn picture of a windmill they were looking at. It's funny, both Andrew and I asked her separately if the teacher helped her draw the black lines at all. And she said no! She did it all! Ella also told me that is a doghouse in red to the left of the windmill. Anyway, I'm hugely impressed, but again I'm biased. :-)

I'll continue to feature her art class works in the next few weeks.

Here are a couple more of my favorites and what Ella had to say about them:

"Fruit Bowl"--Ella just wanted to "decorate the whole page"."Grapey"--Another from Ella's Fruit Bowl Period.
(The whole fruit bowl fascination started with Ella's Pattern Fair project.)
"Lil"--This is Ella's first official portrait. One afternoon, Ella said to Lily, "Okay this is what we're going to do. You sit here like this." She had Lily sit criss-cross applesauce. And then proceeded to draw Lily sitting there, looking up at Lily every so often and then drawing what she saw. So what Lily is wearing in the picture is what she actually had on that day. And then she "just wanted to make a polka dot background."
"Me and Daddy Golfing"--This is Ella and Andrew mini-golfing at Golf Zone in Chaska, MN. Golf Zone is a regular Daddy/Daughter hangout all year long. They have both an indoor mini golf course as well as an outdoor course. Here's what Ella had to say about the picture, "I have the pink ball and daddy has the red ball. It's outside by the water." That is the rock wall there in black in the foreground.
"Untitled"--Ella made this during art at school. There were papers with different shapes on it and they could pick whichever shape they wanted and draw whatever they felt like out of it. Ella told me the turquoise is a waterfall. And the girl is Ella walking across a bridge over the waterfall.

And now here is a slideshow of more artwork by Ella from August through now:

The Ella Report

This post is very long overdue. I've been meaning to write up an Ella Report ever since school started in the fall (and of course, I will get to a Lily Report as well--but probably not until next weekend, after her conference this coming Wednesday).

When we got Ella's teacher assignment in the mail last August, I was thrilled to learn she had Mrs. Fogarty as her teacher. I'd heard fabulous things about her from other parents and she seemed so sweet and caring when we visited during kindergarten open house last winter. She bent down and talked to Ella and gave her a hug back then and it just really stuck with me. Well, we have not been disappointed in Mrs. Fogarty at all. She has been a fantastic kindergarten teacher for Ella. So nurturing and kind. She LOVES Ella. She tells us every opportunity she gets how wonderful Ella is. How she wishes she had a whole classroom of Ella. How Ella is a perfect student. Isn't that the most wonderful thing to hear about your child from their teacher?

At Ella's conference this past week, Mrs. Fogarty said Ella was the most conscientious, happy, kind student. She perseveres. If something is difficult, she works through it. She never gets frustrated. She is so nice to all her friends. She is so excited to learn everything. Mrs. Fogarty also said she believes Ella is kind beyond her years. So much more so than an average kindergartner.

As far as Academics, Ella has improved in everything from the fall. She could only verbally identify 15 or so of her letters when asked in the fall. She has them all now. She knew how to write several letters of the captial alphabet in the fall and now can do all of them capital and lowercase. She can write her numbers all the way to 39 now and can actually count to hundred and count to a hundred by tens. There was a phonemic quiz (having to do with reading skills) that she only got 4/24 in the fall and got 24/24 this time. Also, rhyming was an extremely hard concept for Ella this fall and we worked and worked with her on it. Now, she has rhyming down with now problem! (And so does Lily from listening to us work with Ella!).

Her reading is coming along spectacularly. Amazingly actually! She reads to us at night now! And the other night she read to Lily at bedtime.

And all of this from a kindergartner!! I'm constantly amazed at what is expected in kindergarten these days. I remember painting on big easels with tempera paint in kindergarten. I remember filling out worksheets where you wrote the word "cat" over dotted lines and then colored a picture of a cat. I remember playing and doing puzzles. I don't remember doing anything close to what Ella is doing in kindergarten.

The final thing I asked Mrs. Fogarty was how she felt in terms of Ella being prepared to move on to first grade next year. Mrs. Fogarty said she had no doubt that Ella was completely prepared to move on to first grade next year and will do great!

So enough gushing. Sorry to go on and on. We are just so proud of Ella! And I just wanted to get this down before I forgot some of it.

More Kellan Photos

As if I haven't inundated you enough already with photos of Kellan, I have updated the Lily Bella Photography blog with MORE.

Go here to read the post I wrote over there.
And here to see the photo album.

If you know anyone with a newborn, I'd love to get more experience taking newborn photos, it was so fun! I'd love for you to send them my way.

Enjoy the photos! And if anyone out there (grandparents? family?) want larger prints of any of them, just let me know which ones and I'll get them ordered for you.

Happy First Month!

Kellan is ONE MONTH OLD today already! Some new photos....
He's smiling a bit now when you coo and talk to him. Just in the last day or so he's starting to having longer periods of being awake. He took what I would clearly say is a morning nap and an afternoon nap yesterday. AND slept for a five-hour stretch last night. Yay!!

Where in the World is Andrew?

Andrew is actually in Tampa right now for the IDEA conference. He gets back tonight. No new photos from there, but here are a few more from his shoot in San Diego the end of last week. These three are all at Petco Park on the second day of shooting.

Adjusting Well

Jeez, Kellan is almost a month old, I guess I should probably update this blog, huh? Now see, that's why I got all those updates up while I was in the hospital. I knew as soon as I got home, I wouldn't get around to updating this for awhile.

We seem to be adjusting pretty well to being a family of five as opposed to four. The nice thing about new babies is that they sleep ALOT so they sort of ease you into life with them. Kellan is a little gem who sleeps pretty well (though better during the day than the night, I would love to get that switched around) and eats TOO well. I say too well because the kid doesn't know how to tell himself he's full and he actually overeats. This causes quite the spit-up situation and I've been nailed on multiple occasions. But we're slowly adjusting to that and figuring out how to deal with it better. Though Kellan gets quite angry and dramatic if I decide he's had enough and he clearly thinks he needs more.

We figured out the overeating thanks to the nurse practitioner at the Ped. office. When we told her about all the spitting up he was doing and judging from the fact that he had gained back some weight just a couple days after coming home from the hospital she suggested he was overeating and helped us figure out what to do. At his two-week checkup, Kellan was up to 8 lbs, 2 oz. And she said he was eating like a "Rock Star". We also had quite a bit of the spit-up situation under control.

I can't believe he's already almost a month old! Crazy how fast time is going and I'm cherishing every second I can hold and cuddle him because I know it'll be gone too fast and he's my last baby.

Lily is in love with Kellan. She loves to hold him, and is always curious what he's up to. She wants to talk to him, sing him lullabies, help "watch" him if I run out to the mailbox or take Ella to the bus. And Ella loves him too, wanting to hold him when she gets home from school. But she's not quite as intrigued as Lily. Perhaps Ella has more of a "been there, done that" attitude even though she was only two when Lily came along and probably doesn't remember much.

The girls are doing well besides dealing with a new baby in the house. They both have conferences coming up so I'll be sure to update on their school progress...which is actually something I've been meaning to do for months. And as soon as I can get Andrew to scan the images for me (I've asked about 5 times!), I can't wait to show you some of Ella's latest artwork.

Without further ado, here are some photos of the grandparents with Kellan and then a slideshow of some more photos from Kellan's first weeks.

B-Pa made these shirts for him and the girls to wear when they visited us in the hospital! Too cute!

Nana Mary visited us for the first week of February to help out while Andrew had to take a business trip. She was so fantastic cooking us meals and helping chauffeur the girls around.

Kellan meeting his maternal great-grandmothers Betty and Mazie for the first time. :-)

Just as Nana Mary was leaving us Grand Pat and Bubba arrived for a visit for a few days. As you can see, Kellan is not lacking attention or arms to be held in!

The heart above is from Ella's kindergarten class. Each of her classmates signed it and they gave it to her. We sent some photos to school with both of the girls and Lily's teacher made the poster above and hung it outside her classroom. Wasn't that so nice of the girls' teachers?!! We now have them hanging in Kellan's room.

Where in the World is Andrew?

I haven't done a WITWIA post in awhile. He was in Baltimore last week and this week he's off to...
Sam Diego! For a shoot with the Padres on the USS Midway air craft carrier. That would be Adrian Gonzales in the second photo. Ah man, I am sooo jealous of the warm weather in San Diego. I'm sooo tired of the snow and cold here. Andrew is lucky he gets to travel to warm parts of the country. He's off to Tampa on Monday and Tuesday. Like I said, so jealous! I'm living vicariously through him. :-)

Lily Bella News!

Just wanted to share a link with those who are not on Facebook or linked to the Lily Bella Photo blog through Google Reader...

Check this out when you get a chance! :-)

Kellan's Birth Story--Part Two

So far, Kellan eats like a champ! Much better at latching on than Ella and Lily when they were newborns. He's also had several wet diapers and bowel movements already. They hope for one of each in the first 24 hours and he's had 4 or 5 of each already. So all his systems seem to be working great. The only thing even remotely interesting that they have been keeping an eye on is that he makes little noises constantly while he's sleeping. It actually sounds like he's purring a bit. :-) It's the cutest thing ever. And they aren't too concerned about it, but they do check is O2 levels every now and then to make sure he doesn't still have any fluid in his lungs or anything. So far, his levels are all completely normal and he just seems to like making noise and being vocal, even while he's sleeping. (update since first writing this....he seems to have everything cleared out now. He's not really making the cute sleeping noises any longer.)

My dad brought Ella and Lily over just before supper last night and they were so excited to meet him and hold him. They were so good about taking turns and giving him kisses and loving him so much already. Lily in particular was LOVING holding the baby. She touched his fingers and toes and kissed his head. Petted his hair. It was adorable! His hands were covered up so he wouldn't scratch himself and this bothered her. She felt he wanted his hands out. :-) They were also excited because Kellan had brought a present for each of them. They opened up their bags and found they each had a brand new Pillow Pet! Lily's was a ladybug and Ella's was a leopard. They had really been wanting these and were thrilled to receive them.

We let the nurses take him to the nursery for a bit last night so we could get some real sleep. Everything has been going well today, but Kellan has had an eventful day and is now sleeping quite peacefully. Late morning, the OB doctor on call came in and whisked Kellan away to circumcise him. They give him some lidocaine so he doesn't feel anything, but they do strap his legs down so he can't move and the whole thing is quite the experience for him. He was pretty upset after he got back to our room. It took us a minute to figure out that his cord stump was also poking him. The nurse had just removed the clamp and the sharp edge was poking him. Poor little guy. Then, the pediatrician came in to check him out. Kellan was a bit upset about all of that too because he had to be undressed, poked and prodded, etc. He checked out totally fine with no signs of jaundice or anything else. After all of that, the lab guy came in to do his heel prick. When that was done, he finally was able to calm down and is now sleeping peacefully and deeply in Andrew's arms. Such a rough thing to be forced into the world and then be poked and prodded when all you want to do is eat, sleep and be held!

The girls will be here for a visit again in just a bit and we will be discharged tomorrow, hopefully by lunch. The Viking game doesn't start until 5:40pm so we should be home in plenty of time to relax and watch that. :-)

I also want to say thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes for ME! It's quite a special and memorable birthday this year. And though we won't be partying too much, I am going to enjoy a slice of cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory tonight conveniently located just down the road from the hospital. :-)

Here's a few more photos for you:

Kellan's Birth Story-Part One

Even though we were actually scheduled to be induced on Friday, I believe Kellan would have been born on Friday or possibly today anyway. When I went to bed on Thursday night around 10:30/11pm I was having a few contractions here and there. Didn't think too much of it until they kept coming. They were really mild and random, so I went to sleep. I woke up around 1am with stronger contractions and decided I should probably keep track of them. They came about every 10-13 minutes for the next hour. So I got to thinking we may be heading to the hospital earlier in the morning than we thought.

I woke Andrew up to tell him that we might need to leave in a bit. The doctor had told us to go to the hospital when my contractions were 10 minutes apart (instead of the 5 minutes they usually tell you) because I had pretty quick and easy labors with the girls. I told him to go back to sleep and I'd let him know if I thought we needed to go. I got up and made Lily's lunch for Mrs. M's class the next day and did a few other quick things around the house. And in that half hour didn't have a single contraction. So I decided to go back and lay in bed and see what happened. Well, even though I had a few more contractions in the next few hours, nothing like before. So we proceeded with the original plan to go to the hospital at 7:30am. I believe he was pretty ready to arrive and I was still having contractions every now and then. So I think he would have come on his own in the next day or two anyway.

We got checked in with no problem and the nurse started Pitocin at 8:30am. Dr. Larson broke my water around 9am or so and the contractions came on pretty quickly. I was about 2-3 cm dilated when they first checked. It didn't take long for me to get to 4cm and I received my epidural with no issues. I was dilated 4cm at 10:25am. The nurse told me to tell her if started feeling pressure and she was going to come back in 20 minutes or so to check me again. She was supposed to call Dr. Larson back to the hospital (she was at the office doing her regular check-ups) when I hit 8cm. Well, when she checked me at 10:45, I was already at 9cm! So the nurse ran off to call the doctor. His head was right there 15 minutes later when the doctor arrived and we started pushing right away. Three pushes and at 11:17am Kellan was crying his little lungs out! He had great color and checked out perfect for everything they look for.

I was a little worried going into this delivery because Lily's delivery was sooo perfect (and Ella's for that matter--though I had to push a bit longer for her), I figured there was no way we could have a delivery that topped that one. But I have to say, Kellan's did! I certainly can't complain about a less than 3 hour labor. And so far the recovery for me has gone really well.

Behind the Name

We are overwhelmed by the positive response to Kellan's name! Almost everyone has told us they think it's a great name. We really like it (obviously, since we chose it), but we weren't quite sure how people would react to it because it's pretty uncommon. Just thought I would put down a little about how we chose it.

Picking a name for this little guy was no easy task! For some reason, with the girls, I knew by the time I was four or five months pregnant what I wanted the name to be and lucky for me Andrew pretty much agreed on them. This boy, however, oof-da. Several of my top ten names were nixed by Andrew because of random associations he had with the names. Then, there were several of his that just didn't work for me. We looked at the top 1000 boys' names listed on the social security baby name site and pretty much nixed the top 20 right off the bat even though there were several we liked in there. We decided against a top 20 name just because we wanted it to be something unique (there are THREE Ellas in our neighborhood alone! Who knew that would be the FOURTH most popular name in the state of MN when she was born).

I also really liked Irish/Gaelic names for a boy so that helped narrow things down a bit. But we still couldn't agree. Can you believe that after looking through the top 1000 names NOTHING jumped out as THE name for either one of us?!

Then we started looking up top names in other countries just for ideas. We came across Lachlan, the number 3 name in Australia. And when I read the meaning of it, I REALLY liked it.

The boy's name Lachlan \l(a)-ch-

lan\ is pronounced LAHK-lin.
It is of Irish and Gaelic origin, and its meaning is "from the land of lakes".
May also possibly refer to a Viking ancestor or mean "bellicose".

I mean seriously, isn't that a perfect name meaning for a boy born in the Land of 10,000 Lakes and Viking Country?! We could call him Lach (Lock) for short. However, once we put it with Ella and Lily, it became quite the tongue-twister and we decided to try something else.

Nolan was our second choice, for no other reason than we both could agree on it and find nothing wrong with it. Then, I was reading my People.com headlines one day in November and there were several articles about some actor in the New Moon movie named Kellan Lutz. All of sudden, Kellan jumped out at me! Kellan Andrew Isaacson. Had a nice ring to it. It had the double "ll" from our names. It seemed perfect. We didn't pick it right then and there, and kept going back and forth with Nolan. But eventually, when we checked the name meaning and mulled it over for a bit, Kellan stuck.

Here's the meaning:
Descendant Of The Brightheaded One (Irish)
Powerful (Celtic)
Gaelic Meaning - Slender; fair.

Famous real-life people named Kellan:

Kellan Lutz-actor

Kellen Winslow: Tight End, Cleveland Browns

Kellen Clemens: Quarterback, New York Jets

Nicknames for Kellan:
Kell, Kale

I'm not sure if the "brightheaded" refers to "fair" or perhaps blond or if it means smart. But either way, I'm fine with that. ;-) And "powerful" is always good.

Here's another fun tidbit I found while looking up the name:

Based on our research, most people would imagine a person
with the name Kellan to be: Nice, smart and tough chap.
In one word, you might describe Kellan as a(n) "smart" person.

Not sure if we'll ever do a nickname for him...though, Kale is kind of cool. That's the lowdown on Kellan's name anyway. Just thought it would be fun to record our thought process here. :-)

We weren't for sure looking for a name with an "L" in it. But I have to say, with the third baby and everyone knowing by now we don't tell the name before the baby is born, it sure was fun to see what people guessed for the name. Many people realized our "L" naming convention with Holly, Ella and Lily. We weren't set on that for a boy, but did keep it in mind. People were coming up with all kinds of things. My dad and Clare and the girls took to calling the baby Isaac as they knew that would for sure be the one name we would NOT pick (Isaac Isaacson). And our friends down the street started calling the baby Wally because they couldn't think of anything else with two L's in it. And actually I sort of think that's cute as a nickname for him. :-) The name guessing prize goes to Sarah Gortenburg though who spent countless hours pondering names with L's in various places throughout the name. My favorite she came up with was "Lsarahl". ;-)

One more note, one major reason Kellan stuck with me is that it actually has elements of all four of our names in it. Obviously, it has Ella's whole name (which is why we picked the -an version of the name versus the -en version), then the L's for me and Lily and the "An" and an "e" from Andrew's name. The reason this struck me is actually thanks to Andrew's Grandpa Milt. Back when we first introduced Lily to Grandpa Milt, he made a comment that we should have one more so we could name the baby Leah because that had a letter from each of our names in it. For some reason that always stayed with me. And when I told Andrew, he liked that too, so if this baby had been a girl, her name likely would have been Leah Drew Isaacson. :-)

Meet Kellan Andrew Isaacson

I will write more about our birth story in the next few days, but for now, here are the stats and some photos. I'll probably upload a few more tomorrow. There were too many cute ones, and I'm ready for some sleep. Everything has gone wonderfully today. The girls were so excited to meet their brother!

Kellan Andrew Isaacson
7 lbs. 14 oz.
21 inches
11:17 am