Mark & Mandy

Robin and Duncan sent elsie a kiwi wearing an All Blacks outfit.

As you can see the bird has a large beak …

That is perfect for … CHEWING!! Don’t worry Robin and Duncan, she just got a little taste.

Elsie had her four month old check up today (two weeks late).  She was right on target for growth:

Weight: 12lbs 13.5 oz (25th%)
Height: 24″ (25th%)
Head Circ.: 16 3/8″ (60th%)

We had 4 vaccinations which seemed to be harder for me than Elsie.

She wasn’t posing much for me today – instead she was showing dr. kamon her tricks.

Grabbing her feet:

Holding up her head and then rolling over …

And of course, standing tall and smiling!

Elsie is finally taking a bottle (of breastmilk) – this is a huge step (although right now everything goes into the mouth).

Here is grammie giving elsie a meal – with Elsie’s help of course.

Mandy and I consider ourselves moderately environmentally conscious and would like to be more so. We recycle all containers and papers (Mandy occasionally throws around the word nazi when I chide her for putting recyclables in the trash). We started composting – though Lola has decided that compost is the most intriguing thing ever and has mortally wounded our current compost bin. We justify our purchase of an SUV by telling ourselves that we work at home. We replaced almost all non-dimming lights in our house with florescent bulbs (they make all sorts of bulbs at http://www.1000bulbs.com that look just like normal bulbs) which I highly recommend as they last much longer (like 10 times) than regular bulbs and are a lot cooler, which is nice in the summer time!

But to top it all off, we have been working on getting solar panels installed. What, solar panels, those ugly 70’s things that heat your water? No, I mean real electrovoltaic solar panels that generate electricity. This wasn’t an entirely altruistic decision, though it does assuage our guilt at the fact that the two of us consume about twice the national average energy for a house.

XCel energy has been told (Colorado Amendment 37) it must generate at least 3% of it’s energy from renewable sources this year and at least 10% by 2015. So to get them there, they have set up a “Solar*Rewards” program (link here) that provides fairly generous rebates for consumers to set up Solar Panels as long as they can claim them as part of their renewable energy portfolio. The rebates are so generous that they cover more than 50% of the cost of the panels.

Given our perfect south facing roof, we can accomodate a lot of panels, so we decided to go with a 6.5kW system (that means peak production will be 6.5 kilowatts) that was installed on our roof over the past few weeks. The installation included the panels, two inverters and now we’re just waiting for XCel to come and install a new net-meter that will allow us to put juice back into the grid if we produce more than we consume. Once it’s all switched on, we’ll get a readout of our power generation and we hope to be able to get a real-time and historical view of the production so we can feel good about our expenditure. I also hope that in time, solar panels will become a real selling feature to the new eco-conscious youth of America, but that may be hoping for too much!

Here you can see our red house (second from the left in the front) and its 36 solar panels ready for action (thanks Dave Fish for the aerial photo)!

Here are the two inverters – yet to be turned on – and the soon to be replaced power meter.

We hope this makes up for the fact that we are using disposable diapers with Elsie. Sorry Earth!

When grammie was here she had lots of tummy time with elsie – she doesn’t like tummy time and so she quickly learned to roll to her back. I will post a video but here are some quick photos of the bean on her tummy …

Posing for the camera

A little smile

Time for a bite

Frustrated

starting the roll

And done! Hooray!

Some photos of Elsie in her jumperoo – she is pretty excited to have her feet touch my improvised booster on the floor and of course loves to chew on the bee.

turns out the play mat that I have been having elsie play with is finally interesting to her – she played so much the other day that she fell asleep. She has her little sidekick with her in case the animals try anything funny.

Elsie has mastered the “grab and shove in my mouth” technique.

Of course fingers are always yummy:

Putting stuff in your mouth  is soooo funny!

Donna was in town for some HP leadership training and was able to come down and meet miss elsie lane!

for the last two weeks Grammie Pammy was playing Grammie Nanny. We spent one week in Montana and one week in Colorado before we had to (sadly) put grammie back on the plane yesterday.

My parents are completely set up with baby stuff – all of her friends gave her a “Grandma shower” for her birthday (last december) and she has everything that we need – swing, bouncer, pack-n-play, stroller – you name it.

We got to try out all of it and realized traveling to montana is a breeze.

Here are some shots from the week:

Bath time:

Napping in grammie’s arms

Grammie took elsie to Jazzercise one day:

To make sure I got my work done, my parents set me up a great workspace complete with a second monitor:

Pammie had her second week in colorado … we had lots of tricks last week with Grammie here. Posts to come!

We miss you already Grammie!