Evelyn Grace

We feel so lucky to have her. I don't know what else to say really. She is a great sleeper, eater, and pooper. Not so great burper. She is over 8 lbs now and getting longer, of course. And she is a strong little thing. She already has strong neck muscles and will grip your fingers with her little fists. 

But here is the good stuff: 

Bouncer Chair

On her way to her 2-week check-up.

You can kind of see how she fit inside of me...kind of...

I wonder if she wants to go back...

Lounging with her daddy.

Swaddled.

Swaddled and sleepy.

Swaddled and asleep.

The cat refuses to be replaced. She doesn't necessarily love Evelyn, but she hasn't tried to attack her yet either...

She always puts her little fist on her cheek. It is adorable.

I like this one.

Her favorite unswaddled sleeping position. Born to be a champion.

And here is a little video Forrest took in the hospital where you actually get to see her with her eyes open.

One last thing. My Grandma Grace passed away a few days after Evelyn Grace came to us. I was lucky enough to be able to go to the funeral which was a beautiful experience for me. I never knew my Grandma Farnsworth very well. My mom is the youngest in her family so by the time I was old enough to really know Grandma, she was already fading. But being at the funeral and hearing about her life made me realize how much of what is good and worthwhile in me, I owe to her and to my other 3 grandparents. She was a kind, loving, faithful, Christ-like wife and mother. She appreciated beautiful things and created them but she never sought the limelight or the attention of others. She painted, played the piano, sang, arranged flowers, cooked amazing food, and wrote. I never realized how much I wanted to be like her until now. On the funeral program, they printed the following poem which is the piece of her that I want to share with you:

A Prayer for Christmas Eve

It snowed tonight, and down our country lane

The stately pines are wearing crowns of snow

That glitter where the blue-white, icy flakes

Reflect the frosty moon.

Their overladen branches bending sketch

Self images upon the stark expanse

Of hanging farmhouse eves.

Below the ice-fringed ridges of the roof

A single window sheds a golden gleam

Across a stretch of newly fallen snow.

Framed there a Christmas tree

And night-clad children, waiting Santa Claus,

A fireplace wherein a crackling blaze

Defies the winter’s cold.

God, let it snow on battle fronts tonight,

Great swirling flakes of blinding, stinging sleet

That falling, drift and pile near barrack doors,

On landing fields and tank sheds too, on roads

And where machine guns nest, where ruin lurks

And war-wrought scars deface.

For while the snow falls fast and thick and deep

The Storm Troops mayhap rest and think of home

And loved ones there, and fun, and Christmas Eve

And in unguarded moments, He

Whose day the morrow brings.

God, let it snow on fear-sick cities too.

Soft floating flakes that fall so deeply heaped

The eagled steel must rest.

Disguise the wretched wrecks of gutted streets

Beneath a blanket soft and white and still,

No air raid signals need disturb at all

The stillness. Men there too

May dream of Christmas Eve.

So let it snow both here and there tonight

And grant this world on evening of respite.

It’s Christmas.

Grace Bateman, December 1941