Tennessee Turtles

Katelyn's word that she associates with the letter T is "turtle". Any time she sees that letter anywhere, such as a book, a sign, my t-shirt, or whatever, she points it out. When she saw Tennessee's football helmets and their logo on Saturday, she immediately said "T - Turtle" several times. So, around this house, the Vols will now forever be known as the Turtles.

With any luck, this will catch on nationally. I could probably make some joke about how Kiffin should go back into his shell or that next year we'll be making some turtle soup or something, but I won't.

Such A Mess!

A few updates/stories from the daddy of the world's cutest toddler:

Katelyn will at least attempt to say just about any word she hears now. She said "bumblebee" pretty clearly the other day. Lately she's been stringing a few words together to make sentences, such as "Where did [whatever or whoever] go?". The cute "Mo" has become "Elmo", and "nana" has become "banana".

Katelyn was in her crib saying "Hi Mommy!" instead of going to sleep. Tammy went in and rocked her and told her she didn't want to hear another peep out of her. Katelyn's response: "Peep!"

Katelyn keeps getting in trouble for telling Angel to hush when she barks. We're still not sure if she even knows what it means, but she's heard that so many times as the response to the dog barking that she keeps saying it. I'm pretty sure I heard her say "hush" to Tammy while Tammy was being loud when Katelyn was trying to go to sleep, but I may have made that up.

Katelyn said or did something she wasn't supposed to, and Tammy explained to her "That's not funny". Katelyn's response: "Funny!"

Pretty much any time I'm not in the room with her, she'll say "Daddy work".

She is still obsessed with the moon, and has been for a while. She'll flip through books just to find the pictures that have the moon in them, and there's a children's song/video on Youtube called Catch the Moon that she makes us watch repeatedly. Oh well, it's beats Barney. She always wants to find the moon in the sky when she is outside at night. Or during the day. Even when it's cloudy.

When she's in the mood, she will give good hugs and an occasional kiss (which is sometimes more of a lick), but if she is not in the mood, she does NOT like for you to hug her.

She loves saying "Uh-oh" repeatedly, even when she's done something on purpose.

She loves to go through her alphabet magnets or the bath tub ones and say a word that starts with each letter of the alphabet. She can't quite get them all, but she does really well. She also does this during her alphabet videos.

She knows which book she wants you to read her at bedtime, and if you choose the wrong one, bad things ensue. It's safest to just let her pick it out and hand it to you.

She always requests a napkin during her meal, which she uses to wipe her tray, wipe her hands, and wipe her mouth. Last night, I spilled some water on her shirt at bedtime, and she asked for a napkin. I gave her a paper towel, which she then rubbed on her shirt, and then at her mommy's request wadded up and dropped into the trash can.

Any time she sees a phone, she wants to call Gammy or Pop.

I already have her hooked on football. It comes out more like "ootball". Tonight I was watching a reply when she got home...she seemed all excited at what was on TV. Then she was playing with the remote and accidentally changed the channel, and seemed genuinely upset that there wasn't any more "ootball" on the screen.

Family Zoo Trip

Ricky had a day off from work so our whole family went to the zoo. Katelyn kept saying monkey, monkey as soon as we got there. That was her favorite animal last time. Each time we go she gets more and more excited and she can really talk about the animals now. She loves trains so every time she heard it she said choo choo. It is so cute. She got really excited when she actually saw the train. She even got to ride it.

We took her to the butterfly exhibit just so we could hear her say butterfly. She says something like "budderfy" or "udderfy" depending if she decides to say the "b" or not, either way it is adorable. She liked one butterfly in particular and kept going back to that one spot to see if it was still there.

She had so much fun playing in the fountains. She just laughed and laughed when the water splashed her. One time the fountain went off right in her face. It startled her a bit, but she was fine. We had to laugh at her expression : ) She was hesitant at the petting zoo, but I finally got her to pet a goat and she even tried to brush it. The brush was upside down, but the goat didn't seem to mind. It was a great zoo adventure.

Belly Buttons

Katelyn's been really fascinated by her own belly button for several weeks now. She'll say "belly", pull up her shirt, and point to it. One time, right after she ate, her belly was so full that it stuck out and she couldn't find her belly button and cried.

Anyway, tonight, Katelyn and I were playing on the floor. I was lying on my side, and my t-shirt had come up a little bit too much and was showing some skin. Katelyn crawled over next to me, and with a horrified look on her face, poked her little finger inside my big, hairy belly button. Then, still with a disturbed look on her face, she quietly grabbed the bottom of my t-shirt and pulled it back down to cover everything up.

It's amazing how quickly little girls learn to be embarrassed by their daddy...

Melts My Heart

So indulge me for a moment because I have to write about the sweetest and funniest thing that Katelyn just did. She seemed tired so I laid her down for her afternoon nap a little early. I rocked her while singing our nap song and placed her in the crib. I blew her a kiss as I was going out of the room and she seemed fine. Well about 10 minutes goes by and I had not heard anything so I figured she was asleep. Then suddenly she starts crying a bit. It was not much so I just listened to see if she would settle back down. She was still crying some so I went upstairs to check on her. I could not resist picking her up. So I sat in the glider with her and she laid her head on my shoulder and we rocked. I love when she snuggles, it just melts my heart.

I figured she had fallen asleep so I just kept rocking. After a little bit she raised her head off my shoulder and just looked up at me with those big blue eyes and her mouth wide open. Then she laid her head back down and did it over and over again. Every time she looked at me with that expression I did it back and she just laughed and laughed. Apparently she just wanted Mommy to come and play with her. She was not at all interested in sleeping. It was such a fun and tender moment. I love her so much!

Fun With Family And Almost Crawling

I just realized this morning that it has been six days since Katelyn and I have been by ourselves. Katelyn and I went to Huntsville on Thursday and then Grammy came back with us on Saturday. She just went home yesterday evening.

Katelyn's Great-Grandmommy had a lot of fun playing with her all day on Thursday and Grammy and Poppy got to spend lots of time with her over the last several days. We even saw Uncle Stew and cousin Shanna on this trip.

We went with Grammy to the craft show in Huntsville and then while Mom was here we went to Soho to eat at Zoe's and shop around a bit. Poppy arrived yesterday and it was off to the outlet mall. We have taken Katelyn everywhere in the last few days.

On another note, as of last week Katelyn has pre-crawling mastered. She has been creeping on her stomach for a little while and then last week she figured out how to get her knees under her and push off with her feet. It almost looks like she lunges for want she wants. All she has to do is coordinate everything together and she will be off. It could be any day now. I admit I am a little nervous, but very excited for her to learn this new skill. Our world is about to change once again.

Katelyn has also tried a variety of new foods lately. She has had some green beans, mac & cheese, noodles, watermelon, canteloupe, and even some potato from the inside of a fry. She really liked that. She gets really excited anytime I pull the Gerber puffs out of the pantry. She loves those!

She is growing up so fast!

Quick Tooth Update

We discovered a few days ago that Katelyn actually has two teeth coming in. They are side by side on the bottom so it was very hard to tell. One of them you can see when she opens her mouth to smile and eat. I am still trying to get a picture of the little teeth, without much success. If first you don't succeed.....

Katelyn's Fourth Month CheckUp

Katelyn had her four month checkup a little over a week ago. She weighed 13 lbs and 10 oz and she is 24 1/2 inches long. Those numbers put her in the 50 percentile for both height and weight. She did really great with her shots again. She did not start to cry until after the shots were over and then for just a second. I hope she keeps this up : )

Newspaper Story

Tammy and I (and pretty much the whole family) were in The Birmingham News on Sunday. The front page of the Lifestyle section had a picture of Tammy and Laura, and then the continuation inside had a picture of the whole family from when Michael and Laura announced their pregnancy. I'll scan in the article from the actual newspaper at some point, but until then, here's the link to the article on al.com.

Also, one of the pictures from the article was on the front page of al.com (it's not anymore). Here's a
PDF of what it looked like...

Two Month Checkup

Katelyn went for her two month checkup today. She is now 10 lbs 2 oz and 22 1/2 inches long. She is in the 45 percentile for weight and the 50 percentile for length. She is doing great!

Katelyn also had her first round of immunizations today. We are splitting them up so her body is not bombarded with all those medicines at once. She didn't even scream or cry when they gave her the injections. Hopefully she will handle shots better than I did as a child. We gave her some Infant Tylenol, but so far she has not been too overly fussy.

She is right on track and very healthy.

Rumors

So we would just like to dispel any rumors that we had twins. We only had one baby I promise : ) Apparently Blue Cross got us mixed up with someone else and thought we had twins. They left a message asking how Katelyn and Gigi were doing. Hilarious!

One Month Checkup

At her one month checkup, everything looked great! Katelyn is 8 lbs 12 oz and 22 1/4 inches long, which means her weight and height percentiles are still 50th and 95th.

Our First Outing

Katelyn went for her 1 month checkup on Friday and everything looked great. She now weighs 8 lbs, 12 oz. and is 22 1/4" long. She is right on track and we don't have to go back for a whole month. Yipee!!

She was very hungry by the time we left the pediatrician's office so we went home and I fed her and then decided to go back out and get myself something to eat. So this is pretty easy to do by going through a drive thru, but I decided to be ambitious and get a taco salad from McAllisters. This required actually going into the restaurant with Katelyn. Ricky told me to not let anyone breathe on her. He's such a great dad : ) Total side note, sorry about that. Anyway I took her pumpkin seat in and stood in line to order. The seat weighs a ton by the way. Then I ordered and realized that I would have to carry her seat and my food and drink back to the car. How was I going to manage all of this? I couldn't leave her and take the food out to the car, and I certainly couldn't put her in the car and then go back for my food. They put my drink in a bag and I tried to carry everything myself, but it was not going to work. Luckily the nice guy who took my order came and gave me a hand by carrying my food out to the car. Well with a little help we made it and I had my taco salad : )

Birth Weights

So Tammy's mom noticed that if you take Tammy's birth weight of 7 lbs. 11 oz. and my birth weight of 9 lbs. 3 oz., the average is exactly Katelyn's birth weight of 8 lbs. 7 oz. Pretty cool, huh?

Welcome to Katelyn's Page!

We're still in the process of figuring out how we want to do the layout of this page, so be patient...we'll also have tons more pictures and videos to post soon!

first checkup

At her one week appointment on Monday, Katelyn was 7 lbs 13 oz and 21 1/4 inches long. That puts her in the 50th percentile for weight and the 95th percentile for length.

Everything looked great!

the end of a long but great week

We came home from the hospital on Thursday. The introduction to Angel went better than we had expected...we've had a few instances of Angel getting a little too close for comfort to Katelyn, but for the most part, she's pretty much ignored her. I'm sure that will change when Katelyn is older and moving around more. Angel has started standing guard by whoever is holding Katelyn a lot of the time.

Thursday night, which was really the first night we had with her (since she was in the NICU every night in the hospital), did not go very well. Katelyn wasn't very happy most of the night.

Tammy's parents left on Friday so we could have some time with her by ourselves. Things went pretty smoothly for the most part. Friday night and Saturday night were a lot better, and we actually got a decent amount of sleep. Katelyn has to eat every 3-4 hours, but in between those feedings she's sleeping pretty well, which means we are too. The nursing is going pretty well for Tammy, and both her and Katelyn are getting better and better at it each time. Katelyn hasn't had a drop of formula since I think Friday.

There is always a lot to do with a newborn at home...the clothes washing, bottle washing, rocking, feeding, etc...it has been a very tiring week but a great one! Tammy's mom is back tonight and will be here this week to help Tammy since I have to go back to work tomorrow. Katelyn's first appointment with her pediatrician is also in the morning.

Hopefully I'll find time to post more pictures and get Katelyn's web page all ready!

the day after the day after the big day

Still blogging live from Brookwood Hospital Room W243...

10:55 AM - We are going to be spending one more night in the hospital. Katelyn is completely off of her IV and they have allowed her to come up in the room with us for a while last night and today. She should be able to stay with us all day today until about 8 PM if we want. Tammy's getting a little more mobile, and we both slept really well last night. Katelyn's chugging a bottle at the moment, and we're starting to mix more nursing in with the bottles. Best of all, Katelyn's sugar has been stable enough that they don't even have to test it anymore. Today will be much more relaxing than yesterday, and we won't have to cram into the NICU to see her.

2:05 PM - I just added a video to the photo gallery...use the same address as before and it's the last thumbnail on there. There is no sound, only the picture. I don't have all my video editing stuff at the hospital so it's nothing fancy.

9:15 PM - We are looking forward to having a wireless baby tomorrow. Even though she's been disconnected from the IVs and the monitors, they left all the wires in for when they have to do stuff. This makes changing diapers and handling her a bit of an adventure sometimes. She was with us in our room all day until about 8, and she'll be back up here after she gets a bath and some more medicine. We are still set to all go home tomorrow, most likely sometime after 2 PM.

10:28 PM - I have made a page of all things Katelyn-related at http://www.1122productions.com/katelyn. That will eventually be the centralized place for everything.

the day after the big day

Continuing the running diary from yesterday....

9:45 AM - Unfortunately, we haven't actually been able to see Katelyn very much so far. Her blood sugar keeps dropping down too low, so she has been put in the NICU. She was in the room with us some overnight, but at some point this morning (I think it was around 4 AM) they said they were going to have to admit her. She's going to be in there for at least a couple of days, but we can go downstairs and visit most any time. Her condition is fairly common when the mom has gestational diabetes. Hopefully she'll get balanced out and everything will be fine.

10:39 PM - Okay, so I didn't have any time for updates today. I spent most of the day giving tours down to visit Katelyn in the NICU for friends and family. Also, the lack of sleep finally caught up to me so I briefly zoned out in the little bit of down time that we had. Everything is fine...Katelyn just had a really long first 24 hours. Her sugar seems to have stabalized now, and they have actually let her leave the NICU and come up to visit us in the room twice.

10:43 PM - I really wish they didn't close the Chik-Fil-A and the Subway at 3 PM.

11:18 PM - The first collection of Katelyn pictures is now online here.

the big day!

I realize that most likely no one will see this until after Katelyn has arrived, but I thought it'd be fun to keep a running diary as best I can during the day.


9:21 AM - We're coming to you live from Labor and Delivery Room 11 here at Brookwood Medical Center. We got here about 6:15, and got Tammy all settled in. They broke her water and gave her the pitocin a little while later. Then the contractions started. They gave her a mild painkiller that has made her sort of sleepy, which is where we're sitting now. The nurse says so far everything is good!

10:00 AM - They just gave her the epidural, and not being able to feel her legs is a little weird for her right now. She's making great progress still.

10:38 AM - So I wouldn't call it the highlight of the day or anything, but I was very excited that they have Cherry Coke Zero here at the hospital.

12:47 PM - Tammy's sleeping now. She got pretty sick earlier, so they turned off the epidural pump and gave her like five different things to try to make her feel better. All the monitor's show Katelyn doing great. I will now find out how the hospital's Subway compares to a normal one.

1:30 PM - Time to start pushing! If I don't have another update for a while, you'll know why.

3:07 PM - Progress has been made, and Katelyn is now turned the correct way. Tammy was starting to hurt so they turned the epidural back on, and after it kicked in she couldn't feel enough to push very well. We're now taking a 30 minute break from pushing so Tammy won't be worn out. After all, we're not in a huge hurry or anything.

3:09 PM - Not that anyone cares, but I'm doing fine.

10:44 PM - Katelyn was finally born at 7:03 PM. She was 8 lbs 7 oz and is 21 inches long. She's beautiful! Tammy ended up pushing for about four hours (with some breaks in there). Katelyn wasn't cooperating and we almost had to do a C-section, but Tammy was stubborn and determined to deliver her. Lots of pictures and video will soon follow. We're in room 243 at Brookwood for anyone that needs to know.