About Our Katie » July 2006 Journal Entries » AboutMyBaby - online baby scrapbooks, photo albums, videos, birth and pregnancy announcements

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Sun, Jul 30, 2006 9:30 PM
I'm increasingly convinced that a love of (dare I say "addiction to"?) photography and scrapbooking is hard-wired in my family's DNA. What makes me suggest this? Three of Katie's current fixations:

1) Looking through MY baby photo albums.

At least once a day, she makes me pull these books from her shelf. She usually has a particular album in mind, and she protests until I hand her the desired volume. Amazingly, she "gets" that I am the baby in the photos. She can even identify very young, very slender versions of Paw-Paw and "Gan" in these mid-70s images. And, her great aunts and uncle should be flattered that one of her favorite games is to point to each of them (in a photo of them holding me my first day home) and have Gran or me recite their names: "Aunt Lynda, Uncle Jordan, Aunt Peggy."

2) Thumbing through her Elbow Lane memory book.

After every end-of-year performance/family picnic, Elbow Lane's teachers distribute personalized memory books to all the students. Katie got her first memory book in early June. It's a binder that contains an assortment of her artwork from the "school year," along with photos of milestone and everyday activities, inspirational/sentimental sayings and poems, and a personal note from the teachers. It's actually quite cute (and it saves me the trouble of having to store or sort through her "art"). At any rate, Katie LOVES her memory book. She looks at it over and over and over, studying photos, identifying friends, and looking for her former teacher Miss Jo ("Doe").

3) Visiting this website.

A month or so ago, Gran and Paw-Paw were babysitting while Steve and I went out. Katie wasn't happy to be left behind, so my mom pacified her by showing her Mommy-Daddy photos on the PC. Ever since, I have been catching her in my office chair attempting to get to the pictures (no success yet). But once I find her, she'll ask to see "Katie picts!" and then "more Katie picts!"

This morning, she had Steve rolling through various slideshows on his laptop. When he went to the "Watch Me Grow" album, Katie was downright outraged that some baby was sitting in the little plaid armchair. "MY chair! MY chair!" she shouted while pointing at her own infant self. We kept explaining that it was KATIE in the chair, but I'm not sure she ever bought it.

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Sat, Jul 29, 2006 9:30 PM
Gran says I need to create a list of all the words Katie is saying now. But, I maintain that that's easier said than done. The child is repeating almost every word she hears--so the list is expanding by the hour, if not the minute.

To give you a taste of her repertoire, here's a recap of a conversation Katie and I just had. She spent the evening with Gran while Steve and I went out to dinner. She refused to go to bed until he and I got home. Once we did, I took her up to go night-night. Here was our "pillow talk" before she turned in:

Katie: Katie mawwwl.

Susan: Did you go to the mall?

Katie: (Nodding emphatically) Katie MAWL Gan.

Susan: Gran took you to the mall?

Katie: (Nods yes and says some gobbledygook that I know means "stroller" in Katie-speak)

Susan: Gran took you to the mall and you walked in your stroller! What did you eat?

Katie: Gape. Cocoa. Mee-ulk.

Susan: Oh! You had some grapes and cocoa and milk. Did you go on some rides?

Katie: (Nods very enthusiastically)

Susan: Can Mommy take you to the mall sometime, and we'll walk with the stroller?

Katie: Nooooooooooo.

Susan: No?

Katie: Gan. GAN! GAN! GAN!

She also made a halfhearted plea for me to turn on the TV (we were lying on the grown-up bed). She sheepishly asked "Tubby?" and then followed that up with "Buddha?" (which is her signature way of saying "Boobah"). Once she was rejected on the entertainment front, she moved on to her standard beverage negotiations: "Cocoa?" followed by "Mee-ulk?" and then "War-duh?" She didn't get any of that, either, poor thing. ;-)

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Tue, Jul 25, 2006 12:45 PM
Yesterday was a day of firsts for Katie.

For one thing, she was sent home sick--again. This time, it was for vomiting. She threw up her lunch during naptime and then again before I arrived to get her. On the way home, she puked in the car. And then she did it a fifth (and, fortunately, FINAL) time right after taking a quick clean-up bath. After that, she settled in for a two-hour nap and woke up feeling good as new. She drank plenty of water and some juice. She even ate some cantaloupe, rice, and broccoli and, right before bedtime, some animal crackers.

Alas, bedtime brought another first. This one didn't involve any bodily fluids, but it did represent a physical feat: Katie climbed out of her crib and made a surprise appearance on the landing overlooking our family room. It was after 9:00 when I glanced up and saw a quiet little "mouse" peering down at me. Steve and Gran (she's in town for one last week before school starts) and I promptly went upstairs. Steve asked Katie for a demonstration, but with all of us leaning over her, she thought she was in trouble and "hid" face down in the crib. Obviously, it's time to convert the crib into a toddler bed or perhaps just bite the bullet and get a regular bed that she can use in the long run.

* * * *

In overdue weekend news, Katie had a great birthday celebration on Saturday with Grandma and Uncle Keith (she is still asking about Keith every day!). She enjoyed eating her ice-cream cake and opening up all her presents. (I have to post the photos soon!)

On Sunday, we all said goodbye to Angel, who returned home to Dee's house. Katie is still talking about the dog and saying, "Bye-bye, Angel!" She's also calling Vito all the time ("Vee-oh! Vee-oh!") and she keeps trying to "love" on him like she did with the dog. Vito, meanwhile, has been researching apartments online.

* * * *

Katie is talking like crazy now! She's repeating almost everything she hears, she's identifying objects (animate and inanimate), and she's stringing words together to form rudimentary sentences. One example: "Mommy Daddy Katie pizza!"--her acknowledgement that we were buying a take-and-bake pie from Genuardi's for dinner.

She also enjoys a variety of "games." For instance, she likes to look at and talk about animals and the sound each one makes. She and Gran have been playing a game where Katie identifies all the "2s" that appear on her outdoor playhouse. And she's starting to imitate real-world scenarios in her play--so you can "order" a beverage from her, she'll take your "money," and then she'll deliver a cup of "milk" (which, by the way, seems to be all she sells!).

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Wed, Jul 19, 2006 11:30 AM
Katie was a bit under the weather earlier this week. On Sunday, she was unusually lethargic, so we took her temperature and discovered that she had a slight fever. On Monday, she still had a slightly elevated temperature but no other symptoms, so I gave her some Tylenol and took her to school. I soon learned that this is a big no-no. (She's never had a fever on a school day and I didn't realize she couldn't go. Duh!) Anyway, they sent her home at noon--when the Tylenol had worn off, I guess--and I had to keep her home all day Tuesday.

In fact, she couldn't return until she'd gone 24 hours without a fever--without the use of fever-reducing medicine. So I gave her one last dose of Tylenol at 7 a.m. yesterday and hoped for the best. Turns out, her fever did go down. Meanwhile, our neighbor Heather came over to look after her while I worked for part of the day. I could tell by her behavior with Heather that she was feeling MUCH better. I took her temperature again this morning, and it was fine.

Of course, Katie's fever wasn't all bad. We got to experience life with a calm, compliant two-year-old who passes the time by snuggling with her parents and sleeping a lot!

* * *

Today at 10 a.m. was Katie's two-year well visit. She got an excellent report. Her growth continues to be right on course. She is 33 3/4 inches long and weighs in at 26 pounds, four ounces. That puts her in the 50th and 45th percentiles, respectively. At 19 1/2 inches, her head is still between the 90th and 95th percentiles.

I asked the doctor to look at her tonsils, which look HUGE to me. She said they are normal--large normal, but normal nonetheless. The doctor also said it's time to transition from whole milk to skim milk.

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Sat, Jul 15, 2006 8:30 PM
In the last two weeks, I've fallen terribly behind in capturing Katie's latest antics. So, rather than trying to remember and write about them all (so much pressure!), I'm just going to record a bit of her birth story. I haven't done that yet, and if I wait much longer, I'm liable to forget it.

Here's what I remember two years later:

On a Wednesday night, Steve was stuck at the office waiting for some executives to rehearse an employee broadcast. Recognizing this as a golden food opportunity, I called in an order for an individual-size pepperoni-and-onion pizza and a medium Coca-Cola with lemon from Donato's (may it RIP). I remember that it was raining as I drove down to Horsham to pick up my food--and that I had eaten it all by the time I got home!

I also remember having a pleasant burst of energy, something that had been in short supply for me at that point. From what I've heard, most normal women use this pre-labor energy to clean out closets, scrub the floor, or paint a room. Me? I decided to work on one of the homemade books I'd been meaning to make--the one about how our house fits into a geographical hierarchy. (My vision was to explain how our location can be narrowed down by planet, continent, country, state, county, township, neighborhood, street, and house number. I even downloaded and/or took corresponding images. Yes, I'm a dork, but I still think it's a good idea. And I still haven't finished making the book.)

Anyway, Steve finally arrived home around 10 p.m.--and he was dog tired and aggravated. We went to bed not long after, and I spent most of the night getting up for bathroom breaks. That wasn't so unusual; that had become the pattern for quite some time. What was unusual was that my stomach was really bothering me, but quite frankly, I just chalked it up to indigestion from Donato's. However, as soon as Steve heard my moans and groans from the bathroom (it was around 4:30 a.m.), he sprung up like a jack-in-the-box and started getting ready. I argued that it was my stomach acting up; he was 100 percent certain it WASN'T my digestive system (even though my water hadn't broken).

Another hour passed before I was sold on the idea that it was "time." My biggest concern, though, was some edits I needed to make to a multimedia script I was writing for a freelance client. Katie was 11 days early, and I had been procrastinating--thinking I had plenty of time to get to it. So at 5:30 in the morning, while Steve was on the phone with the OB-GYN, I wolfed down a bowl of cereal, modified some copy, and sent it off in an e-mail.

Then he and I headed to Abington Memorial Hospital, where I literally struggled making it in from the parking lot to a wheelchair. Yowza, contractions hurt. (Of course, Steve claims that his back and legs were aching so much that he was in worse shape than I was. After all, he'd had a long day Wednesday, and there he was on his feet ALL DAY on Thursday while I just "lounged in bed." Ahem.)

Anyway, roughly 12 hours later--at 5:49 p.m.--our little Katie was born. All in all, the labor and delivery weren't that bad (just like my friend Susan Super had told me!). Of course, then Katie inhaled amniotic fluid and got herself stuck in the Abington NICU for a week. But that's another story for another time...

* * *

Getting back to present day: We celebrated Katie's second birthday with my Kentucky relatives on July 2 and also had a very low-key party tonight at home. It was just Katie and her parents, sister, and Gran. She opened her presents and then we ate dinner and had the cake that Danielle (Dee!) baked in honor of the occasion. She definitely knew it was her birthday and reveled in the attention whenever we sang "Happy Birthday" to her. She answered "Katie!" when asked whose birthday it is and "Two!" when asked how old she is.

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Wed, Jul 12, 2006 9:20 PM
OK, OK, I admit I haven't been doing a good job with news or photo updates. For one thing, we were visiting in Kentucky for almost a week, and in the process of loading the car to leave Warrington, I forgot my digital camera (gasp!). So I didn't get to take ANY photos there, and that got me out of the usual swing of things. However, Gran gave me several CDs of pictures she took, which I'll update as soon as I can.

Speaking of Gran, she is back in town to help out with Katie this week. Why? Because yesterday I went to New York City with Mimi and Andrea Fanelli. We stayed overnight, and today we taped our appearance as contestants in a new Embassy Row/Sony Pictures Television game show called "Chain Reaction." Our episode will air on the Game Show Network in early August. Stay tuned for more specific information--assuming we can get it!

Anyway, that's a longwinded way of saying we've been busy, and I'm sorry for the lack of updates. You can all get your "Katie fix" soon--I promise!

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