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Elias and Friends

As you may have heard, Becky and Josh Sorensen had their daughter, Abby, on Elias' due date, Feb 12 - four days before Eli was born. And our other friend (that's right, we only have two friends), Wendi and Paul Johnson, had their son, Reed, on Feb 25 - nine days after Eli was born. Here are pictures of Eli's first meetings with each of them.

Poor little guy was overcome with emotion... Abby pretended not to notice him. Already she's playing hard to get.

As you can see, Reed and Elias took to each other right away. You know a good friend when silence isn't awkward.

Projectile What!?!

Well, I thought that I had seen it all. I really did. I mean, I'm kinda young and all, but I've seen a lot and I feel that up till this point that I had seen a lot of people, places, and things, but tonight my eyes were opened.
Here's the stage, Aunt Mary volunteers to change Elias. Elias our mild mannered son is quite docile at this point and gives no objections. Geniene and I finishing up our dinner offer our sincerest thanks and continue to eat.
Mary gets started on the diaper change and I quickly suggest she cover him up so that he doesn't pee on her. Alas, my warning was too late. Without notice a stream of pooh comes flying towards Aunt Mary and she dives out of the way.
Somewhat stunned, we all take a moment of silence contemplating the preceeding moments happenings.
Did that just happen? Did Elias just projectile pooh? Suddenly before my eyes are weird variations of the Exorcist. Is my child possessed? Now mind you, that this all happened within the space of about 45 seconds, and at this point he is still docile and content.
Fortunetely, the moment passed quickly and I realized that my dear child was not possessed. This was just one of those moments that we'll remember in the future and laugh. In the end everyone was okay; Elias kept sleeping, Mary was safe and the carpet was cleaned.
There is a moral here. When changing your baby, cover him up!

Daddy getting ready to change his son's diaper. He's so good about it. Dan, who has never changed a diaper in his life, took quite naturally the position as soon as Elias was born. It's amazing to see him so relaxed when he holds a crying baby. He has so much fun with him.


I needed a walk last night, so we bundled little Eli up and hit the sidewalk. Dan insisted on carrying him as opposed to putting him in the stroller, and since Eli is still too small, we aren't able to use the Baby Bjorn just yet. He absolutely loved the walk. He was awake for half of it, content just to be held by Daddy and hear our voices as we talked and the movement of us walking in the crisp evening air. About halfway through, he fell into a deep sleep which lasted for quite awhile.


These are just some cute pictures I took last night. I'm constantly taking pictures. I realized yesterday that I wasn't in any of them since I'm always the one taking them! So here is one of me. Not the best, but at least it's something.

I know most of you have been eagerly awaiting pictures of Elias and I just haven't had a lot of time to post them. The pictures are easier to post then to write about how everything is going.

Here are some pix of him today after his first shower ever. He was great...absolutely adorable. He actually really loved the shower! I had this adorable puppy dog robe that we wrapped him up in. Shortly thereafter, he fell fast asleep in his crib. So cute.

Every night gets better. Last night, I only woke up once to feed him. He doesn't like sleeping in the crib at night. I think it's b/c he wants to be close and the crib is so big for him now. I put him in his car seat last night and he slept better than ever. It allows me to rock him to sleep too without having to worry about putting him down and waking him up. I think we'll go with that for a little while. We'll see how it goes.

Mom is here for the week. I don't know what I'll do when she's gone. My sisters, Angela and Tiffany, are coming down for the weekend. They can't wait to see their nephew. Eli's Uncle Tim and Aunt Melissa (also his godparents) are flying into Albany next weekend to see him, so Dan and I will drive up there for a couple days. So at least we'll have events to keep us busy for a little while still.

I'll continue to post pictures as I get them. He really is so cute.

Jonathan Elias Simrak

Jonathan Elias Simrak came into the world at 7:02pm on February 16, 2006. He weighed in at 7 lbs. 11 oz. and was absolutely perfect. We are all three doing well.

My Valentine

As I was leaving the Sorensens house last evening after dropping off dinner, I got a call from my dear husband on his way home from work asking if we had enough money in the grocery budget to grab a light dinner at the Drafting Room in Springhouse, PA. After assuring him that we certainly had enough for Drafting Room Nachos (the best nachos I've ever come across), we decided to meet there.

As I watched my dashing Italian husband walk across the room to our table for two, I self-consciously realized that he was still in his nice work clothes, complete with tie and shiny shoes, while I, his 10-month pregnant wife, was wearing excercize pants and his Las Vegas t-shirt. Nevermined the fact that I didn't have conditioner in the shower this morning, so my hair was especially poofy. I quickly forgot (as I hope he did) when he leaned over to give me a kiss and handed me a card he had made for me.

On the front of the card was a blurred outline of a woman in a wedding dress, very much like mine. Behind her were the words of Abe Lincoln: he had sung these lyrics in his sister's wedding when he was a boy.

The woman was not made from one of the bones in the man's head in order to make it possible for her to lord it over him, nor was she made from one of the bones in his foot in order to enable him to trample and crush her. On the contrary, she was made from one of the bones in his side, so that they might share life together in mutual protection and concern and love and care.

We walk side-by-side, hand-in-hand, with Christ in the center. We are enabled to love each other so deeply and so strongly because of Christ's foundation. Valentine's Day this year marked one-and-a-half years of marriage for us. As Dan pointed out, it's been fast, but great. I don't know where I'd be without the blessing of having him as my husband.

A Valentine's Baby?

Well, my faithful friends, while I would like the day to be today, I would think it a bit gay (excuse the expression) to have a son born on V-day. Cute for a girl, but not so much for the boy. Thus, the waiting game continues. I have had absolutely no desire to update the blog unless I could announce the arrival of our dear son, Elias. But alas, I felt the need to do it anyway lest I lose my viewers and get emails and phone calls asking if it's happened yet. May I just say that it gets rather exhausting to keep telling people that we have not had the baby yet? Mostly because everyone's eager to know and we're more than eager for it to be done with. And still it hasn't happened.

My due date came and went last Sunday with no exciting news from the Gregson-Simrak clan. HOWEVER, Becky called me bright and early that morning to say, "Well, Geniene, it looks like February 12th is a good day to have a baby." (I happened to think so too, but no avail for me.) I was overjoyed with her. She had been waiting for 6 days since her due date, Monday the 6th. She delivered a 9 lb, 1 oz bundle of pink girly girl at 7:35 that evening. Naturally, it occurred on the second day of the biggest snow storm in recent history. Her name: Abigail Elisabeth Sorensen. What's even better is that she did it without any medication whatsoever. Her first out of three children. That's definitely something to aspire to. My mother delivered 5 children w/o medication and I admire her for it.

As my dad pointed out, inspite of his own eagerness and anticipation of the impending birth of his first grandchild, there is reason to rejoice. Just in December, we all thought that Elias would come early and that his health was in jeapardy. How sad it would be if I wasn't able to carry babies to full-term! Although I was dilating early, they were able to stop it. Now he doesn't want to leave the dark, close security of the rapidly shrinking space between my pelvis and rib cage! We can rest in the fact that carrying other babies shouldn't be too worrisome for me and that Elias is a healthy, perfectly-sized bundle of joy (we hope) who will light up our life once he decides to join us. He has already begun to bring us joy, even though we wait with baited breath and eager anticipation for his arrival.

It's not easy living life in limbo. I suppose I should just relax and enjoy the time I have to myself to rest and get things done that I wouldn't otherwise have the chance to do. I've been contracting regularly for several days now (more intense than previous weeks). His head is as low as is possible. I'm effaced about 80% and as of yesterday, a good 1 cm dilated. It sounds like I'm progressing and I know that the time is drawing near. It could be tonight, it could be next Wednesday when they induce me. Hopefully, it won't come to that. I'd like this to be as natural as possible. Please pray with us that when the time comes (hopefully it will be very soon), Eli's birth will be smooth and complication-free.

Thanks for your concern and your enthusiastic interest. I really do appreciate it.

Yo' Baby!

For those of you who are faithfully checking in to see if you should welcome Eli into the world, the answer is still an emphatic not yet.

This new experience of being pregnant for the first time has caused me to reflect on a lot of new ideas and even re-think previously thought through ideas about myself and my future. Nothing could have prepared me for the whirlwind of emotions when I looked at the home pregnancy test and saw that it was positive! Even after years of someday wanting children of my own and thinking how "glamorous" (?!) it must be to be a mother, I was in shock. Sure I suspected I was pregnant, which led me to take the test in the first place, but I was still in shock. I seriously must have looked from the test to the box and back at the test again to make sure I was seeing correctly for a full minute (minutes can be really long in some situations) before asking Dan to come in the bathroom to look at it. He confirmed that it was positive. Then it wasn't just me who was going through the whirlwind of emotions. Our whole lives had to change drastically from that day forward. We were back to the drawing board. Like I said, nothing could prepare us for pregnancy, even though we knew there was a strong possibiilty. But not once did we wish our little unborn child to go away. Sure we wished a lot of things to go away, like nausea, hormonal mood swings, exhaustion, pain and the uprooted plans, but we have loved this child from before conception.

All growing up, I've dreamed at various times of being a mother and what it would be like for me. Since I did so much babysitting, daycare, and preschool teaching, I thought it would just come naturally for me. Now, I'm not so sure. How can I be ready for the next 20 years of caring well for someone so dependant on his parents? How will I know the right decisions to make when it comes to discipline and loving him? How do show him our dependancy on Christ and live out the gospel everyday, not only to him, but as Jack Miller once said, "Preach the gospel to yourself everyday." I thought about how much I would love my children and what it would be like when they called me "Mommy" or came to me for comfort. But now that I have my own son inside me, and I can feel him moving around, I think how much more precious Eli is to me than all the previously thought of scenarios of me with my children. You see, in all my dreams growing up, there was never the father to consider. Sure he was there, but he was a vague outline of someone I didn't yet know. He wasn't real. What makes Eli more precious to me now is that he is a part of Dan and a part of me. He is real. He is moving inside me and he recognizes both our voices. He knows his parents. He is fully made up of the intricacies of my beloved husband and me. He is the best gift God has given us. He is a pure miracle.