Dedicated to the One we love

Today was a special day for our family. As a symbol of out commitment to raise Katy in a Christ-centered home, we participated in a baby dedication ceremony at our church this morning. This is what Brian and I shared with Katy during the service:

"Katy, today we are publicly dedicating you to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, as a commitment to Christ to love you and provide for you a Christ-centered home that nurtures your spiritual growth."

That's my Dad and Sue on the left, my sister Melanie in the middle, then my mom and Greg, and then Joe and Judy Rimelspach on the right (elder in the church who prayed for us).

The other thing we did this weekend was take Katy into my work and see how she did in the therapy clinic. She was tired (we went a little too late in the day), but it was really fun to see how she reacted to the different toys, and I'm keeping any eye on her sensory systems.... Brian thinks I'm paranoid. :)

Uh-oh...free video posting on the web

As you may have noticed from my post on January 15th, I have figured out how to post video clips online for free using YouTube. I know, this has the potential to be extremely obnoxious, but I promise, I will only use it to post darling videos of my baby girl reaching MAJOR motor milestones. Speaking of major milestones :), I mentioned recently that Katy learned to crawl. She has now greatly increased her speed and confidence, and moves freely throughout the house. It's cute, and of course, you can see the video HERE. I apologize in advance for the camera bouncing, trying to capture your 8 month old in the perfect 30 second clip has it's challenges. And as you can tell from this video, she is feeling better, praise the Lord.

Progress despite difficulty

We are still trying to recover from Katy's ear infection (yes, I mean we, as in all of us in this house feel the effects of her ear infection...), but it amazes me how even when she's sick, Katy continues to develop and progress. There are these little sweet moments in the middle of whiny exhaustion. For instance, for months Katy's only verbal response has been "bababababababa", but just yesterday she very clearly started in with "mamamamamama". She obviously doesn't associate that with a name for me, but she's making the sound, which is a start. And she has this little toy with the disney faces that pop up, and we always pop them up for her and she loves to close them, over and over. Today she clicked one of them open, and she giggled and looked proud of herself, clicking it open again and again. Brian reacted as if she had taken her first steps. These little precious moments (not the statues) are what get me through a few hours of fussiness and antibiotic-induced baby diarrhea.

We've also made some household progress this weekend. Despite her not feeling well, Brian still took Katy-duty on Saturday so that my Dad and Sue and I could paint the dining room - a project I have wanted to do since we got married. Here's a before and after. It's hard to tell, but the new color is a subtle shade of green.

Before...

During...

After...

On another note, one man's trash is truly another's treasure. We got this fridge for free on one of Brian's list serves. Nice that it's white and matches the new kitchen stuff and it's bigger and nicer than our old one (we gave our old one to our tenant to upgrade hers.)

A rough few days

Katy's had a cold for about a week, and when I came home from work on Tuesday afternoon, Melanie said, "I think Katy is sick." That started a rough few days. Katy had a fever, bad cough, and runny nose, but worst of all, she was miserable. Which meant we were all miserable. I could not put her down for even a second without her crying to be picked back up. And even while I held her, she clutched me and whined. It made me so sad. :( I called the pediatrician but they said to wait. Today I couldn't wait any more, so I took her. And lo and behold, the poor baby has an ear infection. Bless her little heart, she's been in pain this whole time. The good news is that she's already feeling better. But man, getting her to take that nasty-tasting medicine twice a day for the next ten days will be an interesting challenge. Luckily I've been practicing every 6 hours with the ibuprofen.

Hopefully we are on the mend now. We missed all of our activities this week, so I'm really hoping we're getting better so we can get back to playgroup and sign class, etc.

Poor sweetheart...doesn't feel good....




Her earache didn't stop her from learning to stand in her crib, thus disturbing her sleep a little further...


A sign that she's feeling better. Pulling up to stand on everything that doesn't crawl away. The doctor was shocked!!!

Grand(parent) Central Station

Katy is lucky enough to have 3 grandparents, 3 step-grandparents, and 4 great-grandparents who love to spoil her. Although none of them live closer than an hour and a half drive, we do get to see them quite often. This weekend alone, for example, we had 5 grandparents pass through our doors. And what did Katy decide to do to celebrate? She learned a new skill: Brian's mom and John were babysitting while Brian and I were out attending a couple of different events, and while we were gone, she decided to pull herself to standing.


VIEW THE VIDEO ONLINE BY CLICKING HERE!!!!

Now this girl has been working toward this goal since the day she was born. I remember when she was just a few weeks old and we would hold her on our lap and she would stand on her feet. At her 4 month appointment the pediatrician couldn't believe how well she was standing (better than she was sitting), and in our Christmas portrait, we had to take her picture standing up because she absolutely REFUSED to sit down. So it's only fitting that now, only a week after she started to crawl, and when she's not quite even 8 months old, she decides to learn to stand with the assistance of the furniture.

She's also quite hilarious about it. Now when we put her in the middle of the floor with her toys, she immediately crawls toward the coffee table as if it were magnetized and begins her attempted ascent. Sometimes she makes it to her knees and decides that's enough for this trip, and she plays for several minutes. looking very grown-up.

This also presents some other interesting challenges, such as keeping herself awake at night attempting to stand in her crib. Combine that with a cough and a low grade fever and I'd say we're in for a long night.

A Lesson in Why Babyproofing is Important

Here is a photo of how I found Katy after leaving her unsupervised for a moment to make breakfast this morning:

Doesn't she have an ornery look on her face?

I've also discovered in the last few days how social Katy is, especially with other babies. Yesterday I went to a meeting to see about joining a playgroup with other moms with babies Katy's age in our neighborhood. The meeting went well and we're starting next week, this is as much for me as it is for Katy. But anyway, as soon as we sat down Katy was crawling all over the place, grabbing toys from other kids, smiling at them and grabbing at their faces ("gentle, gentle"). Then today we went to a Baby Sign Language class. Again, all the other babies are sitting quietly in front of their moms chewing on a teething ring and Katy takes off across the room to steal someone's winne the pooh. I kept dragging her back to my area, then she'd take off again. The neat thing is that I can tell she really likes being around other kids/people. So that helps me to know how to foster her development. She's gonna be a stinker. A cute one.

Painful, very painful

Oh, Jim, how I wish we had something (anything) to smile about. I am so very depressed, along with all of Ohio. There really isn't anything else to say. If you don't know the results of last night's game, you can look for yourself. I can't talk about it.

It's official!!!

Katy is CRAWLING!! Although she's been rocking and scooting and taking the occassional lunge forward on all-fours for a couple weeks now, today is the first day that I would really say she crawled, several times, more than a foot, in order to get something she wanted. I know, I know, everyone will say that I won't be excited about this for long, but I really am excited, because I can already tell that it helps her contentedness. She is such a busy and curious baby, and she gets really frustrated when she can't get to where she wants. So I'm hoping this will help her be a little more independent like she wants to be!

Here's Katy with 3 things that make her happy: her "baby", somebody's shoe, and most of all, her thumb.

The other exciting news is, of course, the championship football game tomorrow night. Oh my gosh, I'm so nervous. I mean, I really really really want to win. I think we should win. I think we deserve to win. I think we're a better team. We just have to go out there and get it done. That's all there is to it. Everyone thinks we'll win, oh....the pressure, it's KILLING me. We're having some people over from our new life group at church to watch the game since it's past Katy's bedtime. I guess all that's left to say is,

GO BUCKS!!!!

My little contribution to the kitchen project

Well, it may not be much, but I finally made some curtains to help brighten up the kitchen a bit. I made these ties because I love how bright and sunny the kitchen is now, but I'm not sure how I feel about the ties. Are they too country? You can let me know what you think.

We ordered tile for the backsplash behind the sink, and Brian hopes to work on it this weekend. we are gradually ticking off the checklist for finishing this major project.

If I had to summarize my activities over the past week in one word, it would be "organization". You know the after-Christmas drill: you put the decorations away, you have some new things to put away, and it motivates you to get rid of some old stuff and get organized. If you're one of the people who gave Katy a toy for Christmas, you motivated me to purchase this beauty today:

All those toys and look what she choses to play with. Actually that's how I was distracting her while I organized her toys. :) I've learned that having a kid is a revolving door or organizing things. She continually grows out of things that I need to put away for potential future kids, then get out the hand-me-downs that she is growing into. I was at Target the other day and about every third person had a Rubbermaid container in their cart. I guess I'll be joining them.

Welcome 2007!!

Happy New Year, everyone! I kinda like a new year. It's fun to reflect on all that God has done in our lives this year, obviously 2006 has been a big one for us. But I think 2007 is promising as well. I will celebrate my 30th birthday, Katy will celebrate her first. Brian's planning to run his first marathon, and we're planning to take our first family vacation. We know of at least 2 weddings and a couple babies (there's still time for that one, though). Anyway, who knows what 2007 will bring, I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Of course 2006 has been eventful for us. In addition to having Katy, which was rock-my-world life changing, there have been some other changes. We resigned from our staff position with Students For Christ, and have become participating members of Hertiage Christian Church in Westerville. I also resigned after 5 years of working with Columbus Public Schools, and I'm now working part time doing early intervention for my former co-worker Kay and her new company, Pediatric Therapy Partners (she doesn't have a website yet, but she'll be bugging Brian for one soon :) ). In general, life looks a little different this January 1st than it did last year.

This week has been really nice, though, we've caught up on a bunch of things, gotten some hang out time, and Katy is progressing along with new developments. One highlight is that I got to see my high school girls, Cindy and Jen, along with Jen's 19 month old Will. Katy and I took Jen and Will to Young's Dairy, an Ohio classic, so they got to hang out in the car seats:

Then we had lunch and ice cream, catching up on life spread out over the US. It is always amazing to me how our lives can change so much and be geographically so far apart, but when you come back home, you can just easily have a conversation as if it's 1995.

I also found a really good deal at a consignment shop, which makes me really excited. A couple of moms have told me this this Fischer Price Laugh and Learn House has been their kids' favorite toy from age 6 month-2+years, but it's $70. Well I had $40 from Grandma Martha to spend on Katy for Christmas, and I found it for, guess how much? $40. Sweet. Looks like brand new, and Katy likes it already.

Katy is getting stronger at crawling every day, she can move across the room in about 5 minutes with a lot of work and complaining. She also had another tooth poke through yesterday, on the top, and I am praying PLEASE oh PLEASE let that be why she's been so fussy this week. But we will see....