A quick note from Jon to say that our mostly empty website (see links section) is not so empty anymore. In particular, I encourage interested parties to read Beth's personal blog on her section of the site for some deeper thoughts and reflections. Meanwhile, the Photo Archive will soon be populated with many photos at full resolution, suitable for saving to disk and getting developed at a photofinishing store if you are so inclined.

Ah, the joys of parenting! Elena surprises us with something new all the time. The past few weeks Elena has shown a deep fascination with the visualizer on Jon's computer. She especially loves when we play Trance/Dance music. In fact, she loves the same music that she did in the womb and will attempt to dance to the music and smile big smiles when it comes on.


Elena turned 10 weeks yesterday so she is now 2 and 1/2 months old! And wow is she big for her age! She is almost 14 lbs now (13 lbs, 14 oz to be exact) and is getting longer too! She has almost completely grown out of her 0-3 month clothing and is now wearing her 3-6 month clothes. Here she is playing in her new fun toy: the Tiny Love 3-D Baby Gym that our friends Myles and Karen let us borrow. Elena will play in her little gym for 20-30 minutes at a time, allowing me some much needed time to get things done around the house.


Elena loves her giraffe towel. She especially loves when we let her shower with us and then we wrap her up in her towel, put her on her changing table, and sing to her. She smiles so widely sometimes we can barely see her eyes.

Elena's favorite stuffed animal is Mr. Monkey. Elena loves to talk to Mr. Monkey, hug him, and even tries to "kiss" him. She also loves sitting her chair which vibrates.



When Jon gets home from work, he usually loves holding his lil girl and playing with her. The easiest way to calm Elena down is to put her in her baby carrier. She usually konks right out. Here she sleeps with Jon as he surfs the web (one of Jon's fav pasttimes).

Having a little baby to care for can be challenging at times, but Jon and I have such great joy in watching Elena learn new things. Recently she has learned that she has hands and will hold them out in front of her face and try to use them. I wake up and step out of the room and come back to find her reaching out for me with her little arms and hands spread wide. It is a beautiful sight!

January 2, 2007

It's a new year and we have more tales of Elena our Moon Monkey! (that's one of Jon's pet names for her. Don't ask me why, but it makes us all laugh!)

On December 9, my dear friends Amber O'Neill and Joanna Pallister threw me and Elena a wonderful baby shower. Amber organized the shower and Joanna hosted the shower at her house. I feel so blessed to have such great friends and felt blessed to be able to share my shower with my mom who was in town to help us with Elena.

Elena turned 6 weeks old last Thursday and we had our final midwife appointment. Elena weighs 12 pounds on the dot and is almost 24 inches long. She is healthy, fast-growing little girl! Jon and I have been greatly rejoicing in Elena's new use of sounds. Besides making "oohs" and "ahs," she has started repeating the sounds we make. This week I was singing to her and she starting singing back to me in perfect pitch several times! I was SOOO excited! And then she sang back to Jon as well. We aren't planning her career in opera yet, but it is great to know that she can sing!



Here you can see the great joy that my dad has in holding his little granddaughter. Elena is so strong that she is standing when we just use our hands to steady her. My dad visited us in Vancouver from December 19-28 and it was such a joy to have him near and watch him interact with Elena!



Jon insisted that Elena "open" her own presents. Here Elena opens the beautiful gift that her Grandma Ovelina and her Grandpa Dave sent for her to open on Christmas Eve. Inside was a lovely ornament for Elena's first Christmas tree!




Elena also learned to smile just before Christmas as you can see in these two pictures.



Elena received her first stocking and Jon and I thought it would be funny if looking back she got to see that she FIT in her stocking!

Elena keeps surprising us with all the new things she is learning to do. She has begun talking in baby gibberish and seems like she is going to be a real talker. She is always "telling us stories" and "singing us songs" : ) She also loves staring into people's eyes and smiling. Her favorite game is "flying baby" which Jon plays with her every day!

On the not-specifically-about-Elena front, Jon and I have been busily putting together our applications for PhD programs and hope to find out in the next few months where we will be living next and which program we will working in. It is very exciting, but also a lot of work especially with a newborn!

Well, I must be going. Elena is waking up from one of her afternoon naps and needs my attention. We send our love to all and our well wishes in this New Year!

The further adventures of Elena the Wonder Baby...


Elena is now over 2 weeks old and growing bigger by the minute. In fact Elena grew a pound in her first week and has continued to grow quickly since then. She also seems to be getting longer. Her little feet stick out of her receiving blankets now.

We love our little bunny! This picture is from Elena's first week of life. We will be very sad when she can 't fit in this little sleeper any more.

Elena loves her Grandmama Mary Louise! After the joy of having Jon's mom Debbie Lightbown with us, we now have the joy of having my mom, Mary Louise Moskowitz, with us. Momma has been changing diapers and burping like the pro she is and we are SO thankful for the extra set of hands. We feel very blessed to have so much family supporting us!

Here in Vancouver we had a big surprise when we had a very unexpected snow. The city has been pretty crazy in response. Vancouver doesn't get snow very often and almost never in November! Here Jon celebrates Elena's first snow in front of our house (we live in the basement).

Jon often uses his finger to distract Elena when she's hungry so I can get a chance to prepare myself for feeding her. In this case, Jon decided to see if she would suck his nose instead of his finger. She DID! We all had a good laugh!

Like her mom, Elena loves chatting with her girlfriends. : ) Actually Elena (on the right in pink) had fun at a reunion party for our prenatal class. We placed all the babies on a padded mat on the floor and watched as they interacted with one another. Here Elena was looking at Lily who is only a week older than Elena.

Behold the power of the Baby Flower! We snapped this shot at our prenatal class reunion. Elena is wearing pink near the bottom of the circle and lying to the left of the only little boy in the shot, Joseph (wearing orange shirt and overalls). Joseph's mom and dad live on the same street that Jon and I live on and we have enjoyed having friends with a newborn so closeby. We all had to laugh because Joseph is such a ladies' man being the only boy with a whole group of girls. Joseph's the MAN!

This is the first time that a little girl held onto Elena. This little girl is Zara the daughter of our prenatal class instructor. She's four and was very helpful with all of the babies.

We love our little Elena. Though sleep is scarce, we find ourselves experiencing the greatest joy just playing with her, holding her, and getting to know her. She's a wonderful little person!

Our love to all,
Beth and Jon

Let the clamouring for photos hereby be stilled. I present to you Elena Larissa Stovell!







Elena was born at 5:26 PM on Thursday, November 16, 2006. Since Beth had been in early labour for two and a half weeks (!) already (the medical term is prodromal labour), and she was now ten days past her due date, we went in on Thursday morning for some pre-induction tests to see how little Elena was doing in there. She was a happy and strong little baby, but they discovered that there was very little amniotic fluid in the uterus, and so it was decided that we should induce labour right away, rather than waiting a few more days as would otherwise have been done.

Now, during those weeks of endless early labour, Beth had already gotten a good head start on things and went into the induction with 4 cm dilation already accomplished. As a result, after only three and a half hours of labour and forty minutes of pushing, Elena was born! Beth is still regaining her strength, but she is doing well and loves her little girl lots and lots. Dad is doing well, and everyone says he is clearly in love.

Elena is a happy and content little girl, who seems to find this whole-crazy-new-world-with-lights-and-sounds-and-colours-and-smells-and-stuff thing very interesting! She is quite strong and can already lift up her head and look around (though eye focus is still a trick to be conquered). Aside from eating and snuggling, her favourite form of entertainment so far is watching the visualiser effects on the computer screen as it plays techno music (her favourite in the womb). One can see the "Wow..." on her face every time!



Look for more info on the adventures of the bunny-eared wonder and her parents soon.

October 12, 2006

Portrait of the Great Delay

I thought I would give this blog a heading fitting of my lack of blogwriting ability. I have friends who like to blog everyday and share the most recent events in their lives. Jon and I basically forget we have a blog and then remember about once a month (if we are lucky!)

The pictures above are my most recent pregnancy shots (taken last week). I am officially 9 months pregnant with just a few weeks to go before the baby comes. We are SOOOOO excited!! Observant friends and family will also notice that I cut off over a foot of hair (13 inches!).

Anyways, the most exciting news right now is that Jon FINISHED HIS THESIS!! This means that Jon will be graduating in April and will be officially done with Regent in December!!! We are so excited! We went out to celebrate at the end of September. September 23 was Jon's birthday and I threw him a party. During the week prior to Jon's birthday I painted the baby's bedroom (blue trim with yellow stars and moons, for our space theme!) and very little party planning happened. We ended up hanging out with our friend Ross and having a great time watching a movie and eating yummy food. I also made a cake that was the ugliest cake any of us had ever seen, but tasted great! (Cocoa Fudge Cake with Caramel Icing). My gift to Jon this year was a birthday dinner consisting of his favorite foods: steak, tomatoes, and green beans in a red wine sauce, twice baked potatoes, and homemade cherry cheesecake from scratch!

We have had lots of fun over the past few weeks. At end of August, Jon and I went to the 2nd birthday party of Sophia Pallister, the daughter of our dear friends Wade and Joanna. We had lots of fun playing with the kids and mingling with the adults.



In this picture, Jon is pushing a little girl in a swing. It was SOOO cute!



Here are our lovely friends Wade, Joanna, and Sophia Pallister!



In this pic, Jon and I are looking happy at the end of my 7th month of pregnancy. (In August).



This is a picture of Sophia blowing out the candles on her b-day cake. She is adorable and we love her!

This past week was Canadian Thanksgiving and Jon and I spent time with our friends the Pallisters again at their annual Thanksgiving feast. When I say "feast," I mean "feast!!" The food was PHENOMENAL!!! There were tons of loud "yums!" coming from us!



Wade, the master chef of the Incredible Team Pallister, is carving the turkey.



Our Thanksgiving Party!

Besides eating an amazing Thanksgiving dinner at the Pallister's, our dear friend Kirsten Jarvis invited us over to her place for a Thanksgiving dessert/game night. We played Cranium for several hours with lots of close friends.






Those of you who have taken the time to get this far in our blog also get a very special surprise. Below is a picture of Jon pretending to be Pamela Anderson while playing Cranium. Enjoy!!

Wow, time really goes by quickly! I can't believe it's been a whole month since we last wrote! I (Beth) am WAY bigger now and entering my 7th month of pregnancy this week. I'm also entering my third and final trimester. November 5th feels like it is coming very soon and simultaneously is very far away. Here I am in all my most recent pregnant glory!

Since our last entry we have been busy spending time with dear friends and spending time with our daughter-to-be. Our friend Danielle Akert and her two beautiful children have been visiting from Switzerland so I have gotten the opportunity to play mommy's helper with a two year old and a 4 month old. Good practice for the future! We also had the joy of celebrating the second birthday of Ari St. Louis, our friend Shannon's son. We gave Ari a little wooden train and a book called "Everyone Poops" all about exactly that. ("Everyone Poops" included drawings of different animals pooping). Our presents got quite a response! Shannon said it was a great gift because she was potty training Ari the next day. Ari is the little boy in the middle holding the little train we got him. His mom, Shannon, is pointing towards the camera.

In the baby department, our most recent excitement has come from learning that the baby's eyes have now opened and she can see light. According to the baby books, babies at this age will respond to a flashlight placed on the mommy's tummy. So we tested this out and, boy, did it ever work! She came right up to investigate this weird shiny light thing. We decided we had to take it to the next level and throw her a baby rave. We started playing her some of her favorite music (Andy Hunter) and flashing the flashlight on and off in time to the music. She found this very exciting and danced in rhythm while following the light wherever it flashed! Our baby is a regular PARTY ANIMAL!! Like her momma and daddy!

We have also been blessed with an abundance of baby items starting to come in. Family has been sending us baby blankets, clothes, stuffed ponies (thanks, Ovelina ), and so on. Some of the items have been hand made, others were handed down from previous generations. All of them have been very special. We have also been receiving donations of baby items and furniture. We now have a crib, a changing table, two diaper bags, a bassinet, and a jolly jumper that hangs in the doorway, as well as some little baby clothes for 0-3 months. Our apartment is officially being babyfied!

On a side note, something very strange happened to Jon last night. Through a strange combination of chemical reactions, Jon's hair first became streaked platinum and then turned Atlantic Blue! Such a rarity of natural occurence is quite remarkable. (We may have helped mother nature a bit!)

By popular demand, we present photos of Pregnant Beth! Note the large belly. She's pregnant, and she looks good doing it.

Beth and I have had an eventful few days. On Sunday morning, I decided to try to see if I could feel Baby Bunsen kicking. I was rewarded with a solid little thump right in my hand! We should have tried it sooner...

On Monday, we went to have our sonogram. Beth was convinced her bladder was going to explode, and complained bitterly about how miserably difficult it is for a pregnant lady to hold her urine to begin with, never mind with that much water in her system! The baby spent a while hiding from the sonogram lady before being cajoled out into the open by Beth's pacing and coaxing. And then we got to see that...

We are having a daughter!

She takes after her mother in that she stayed nicely posed for her picture, but only until she got bored... We got to see her from many angles, and even watched as she did a flip! In this picture one can see the profile of her head and face looking up, and her torso to the right.

Our baby girl has been very responsive to her daddy's voice lately, so we decided to strap the headphones to Beth's belly last night and played her some good bass-thumping electronica. She was surprised at first, spent a little while deciding that this was the most seriously cool thing she could remember ever happening, and then (being the hyper-intelligent little girl destined for world domination that she is) she realized that the best response was to have her own little rave party! What amazed me most, however, was the fact that within 45 minutes or so, I could feel her thumping against the uterine walls in almost perfect time with the music! Our baby's got rhythm!

In other not-so-interesting news, the car is in the shop today for an expensive brake repair job. :( Why can't someone invent a perfect non-degrading material to build things out of?! Stupid laws of physics, always ruining everyone's fun. Hrmph!