Meeting Marie Elizabeth

After a busy couple of weekends and a long day yesterday, it was nice to sleep in today and have a leisurely breakfast while perusing wedding venue sites.

Then it was on to get ready for lunch with our friends Jeanne, Mike and their seven-week-old daughter, Marie Elizabeth!

Some things that I was once told by a new mother that I remember each time when I'm getting gifts are:

1. Getting a complete meal to freeze and reheat for dinner later is very helpful for new parents who are too tired to cook a meal from scratch.
2. Diapers are one of the best gifts you can get for new parents - they are always needed!
3. If you buy clothing (which I tend to do for a baby shower, and then buy diapers after the baby is born), buy it in larger sizes since parents will get a ton of newborn clothing that the baby will quickly outgrow. I tend to get clothing sized for 12 months as a safe bet.

So for lunch, I made two pans of my Mac and Cheese - one to eat today and one to be frozen for later - since I don't cook much, this one of my tried and true recipes:

I was lazy and went with a bagged lite Ceasar Salad to accompany the meal and a mixed dessert plate (consisting of small portions of desserts I had made in the past month and frozen) - including brownies with Andes mints, chocolate chip cookies, cranberry oatmeal cookies and chocolate and cream cheese chocolate chip cupcakes:

For the frozen meal to be eaten later, I included a bag of four Pillsbury frozen garlic rolls (I highly recommend these) and a bag of the cranberry oatmeal cookies, as I know Jeanne and Mike enjoy them in particular.

The food was what I was stressing about before arriving at their place - upon arrival, the focus was all on Marie!

Marie is adorable! For seven weeks, she is at a healthy weight and therefore, doesn't have the typical scrunched-up newborn appearance. I fell in love right away with her wide eyes and long eyelashes and was pleasantly surprised by her calm personality. She remained chill while being held and loved moving her head and listening to people talk. And, if you can't tell from the picture, she was decked in head-to-toe LSU gear by her proud parents and alums:

While Andrew passed on holding her due to her fragile appearance, I was able to get my baby fix for the day (Did I mention the chubby cheeks? the soft hair? the little fingers? All so cute!)