51 Photos of Eliza

One for (almost) every day of her life. This is the third installment, it gets bigger every time, and so does Eliza!. It's fun!

Eliza Daily Photo Video Number 2

A new, bigger and better video comprised of Eliza's daily photos is available for your viewing pleasure! She is certainly growing up right before my eyes. I am glad to be undertaking this project as it is already fun to be able to see the change in recorded fashion. I will be there in real life to see it, but like they say, "Take a picture it'll last longer." And it's true. The old brain camera doesn't work as well as a Sony DSLR for remembering things sometimes.

Alright then, here it is. I hope you enjoy watching it. The music is silly in this one. See you next time!

Slideshow of Eliza Photos

I have created a little slideshow with the photos of Eliza and/or Me and/or Amanda I have put on Bradmanda.com. I hope you like it. It should update with new photos as they are added so keep checking back every so often for more!

Eliza's Daily Photo Video Number 1

Hi there, I have been diligently snapping away while Eliza is in the NICU to get her photo of the day, with a little help from Grandma C when we could not make it. Eliza is 13 days old today, tomorrow she will be 2 weeks, yay! She is doing great there, but we are really ready for her to come home. She has got a little bit to do yet before she can so we just have to wait. But anyways, here is the video of her 13 days in still picture form! It's a little bit harder with her in the NICU to get a good photo some days, they will improve when she gets home, don't worry. Ok then!

Babies Are Awesome

We're still here at the hospital, today will mark one week. I was pretty worried when we first got here with all this happening so soon and all. But the more time went by and the more I learned about premature babies the less I worried.
And now little baby Eliza has been born and all is well. She is resting comfortably in her hotbox in the NICU just growing and growing. The only concern with her now is there is either fluid in her lungs, what would go away over time, or she might not have enough surfactant in 'em in which case she would need a breathing tube. The doc we spoke to yesterday was fairly sure it was just some fluid though, so we'll see.
This has been an amazing experience for Amanda and I (and Eliza too.) It is so incredible how this whole thing works. I mean, Eliza started out as two tiny things that merged into one tiny thing and then grew to be this wonderful little girl. And all this happened right inside my wife!
All the books and shows and things people say couldn't prepare me for the actual experience of having a baby. Even if I went back to school and got 7 different English degrees I could not express in words how freakin' awesome this is.
I know it will not be all fun and games the whole time. But for now, I am simply enjoying our miracle of life. When we got to hold her yesterday it was about the best thing ever. She is so small but will grow so big.
I feel like a different person now that we have her. Everything I do now has to be for her, not me. Every decision I make now effects not just me or Amanda,  but Eliza. And I can't do anything what may bring her harm.
A'ight then, I will be going now. Thanks to everyone who has called or wrote to us or an intermediary regarding our situation. We appreciate your concerns and it was very nice of yous. Stay tuned to this here blog for more in the future. Things will really start ramping up once we get to bring Eliza home in the next some number of weeks and you wont want to miss it!

Eliza - One Day Old

Dear Eliza,

You are one day old right now (4:43 am, August 8) and are so beautiful. Your mom and I are so excited about you. It's ok that you were a little bit early. You are in the NICU so we don't get to bring you home or anything but you will be there in no time since you are in good health and have a great team of doctors to watch after you. We did get to hold you a couple times this afternoon and evening. It was so nice. As time goes by we'll get to hold you more and even stay the night with you!

Well Eliza, I will see you later today. I hope you were good overnight and got some good sleep to help you grow big and strong and help you move on out of there.

Love,

Dad

Baby Names

Well as mentioned in the Welcome post, the last ultrasound we had seemed to indicate that the baby is going to be a girl. We had both been sort of wanting it to be a boy, but girl was a strong second! We had been creating a list of possible names for either sex and just waiting to get some sort of confirmation on which one it would be. Speaking of that, did you hear the one about the people who won't tell whether their baby is a boy or a girl?? Weird!

Anyways, so we think it's going go be a girl baby and that's what we're going with. We have picked up quite a few little baby clothes from the thrift stores and/or garage sales we frequent but most of the clothes could be either sex. We're keeping away from pink and blue and sticking to more neutral colors so if it happens to come out a boy we can keep most of our stuff and not have a pink boy baby (not that there's anything wrong with that).

We've also picked out a name for our little baby girl! And that name is Eliza Ruth. We think it's a pretty name, we didn't have it focus grouped or anything but it passes our own personal test and that's what matters. I like the old fashionedy sort of sound it has. A classic name if you will.

Where do the names come from you might ask. Well, Eliza doesn't have any special significance that I know of, it's just nice. Ruth is the name of my grandma and Amanda's great grandma, so it's a family thing. Putting them together creates a whole new name for a real neat little girl.

If you go to the baby name popularity chart you can find that, in 2010, Eliza was the 240th most popular girl baby name and has been steadily increasing in popularity over the last 20 years as you can see in the chart. The data the Social Security people have goes back to 1880 where Eliza was the 85th most popular name. So, we're picking a main name that is growing in popularity but not the most popular. Do you want to know what the least popular name was in 2010? Me too, so I went and found it. It may not have been the least popular but they cut off the rankings at 1000 so it's the least popular for all intents and purposes. So without further ado, the least popular girl baby name in 2010 was......Dania. Suffice it to say that was not on our list!

Now I bet you really wanted to know what the most popular baby names were for 2010. And once again I will oblige you and give you the answer you seek. I'm going to just list the girl names since that's what we care about now.

1. Isabella
2. Sophia
3. Emma
4. Olivia
5. Ava
6. Emily
7. Abigail
8. Madison
9. Chloe
10. Mia

And there you have a little bit about baby names. To recap for those of you just now joining us: We're probably having a girl baby and are going to name her Eliza Ruth. Eliza is an up and coming name in the name game. Mitch Hedberg is hilarious. And that's the name of that tune.