Number of airplane rides we took during our three-week Christmas vacation: Five if you count every time we took off and landed on our way from Albuquerque to Mississippi to Texas and back. After all my anxiety, Kate handled the airplane like a champ. In fact, she slept through most of our travels. Apparently, to her, the plane sounds like an enormous sleep sound generator. Her fellow passengers loved her for that.

Number of aunts and uncles, other relatives and friends Kate met for the first time: 32 people and two dogs, unless I'm forgetting someone.

Number of Christmas gifts Dan and I bought for Kate: One.

Number of Christmas gifts everyone else bought for Kate: Eight gazillion. I am only exaggerating slightly, as you can see from this photo of Kate amid her bounty.

The gift Dan and I gave her is a Texas A & M teddy bear. OK, actually, Dan bought that for her, and while it's certainly true that Dan will use any excuse to buy Aggie baby swag for Kate, the teddy bear is actually an homage to the first gift Dan bought for me when we were dating, which was, you guessed it, an A & M teddy bear. I know. I can't believe that worked either. But I still have the bear, and I love it, and now Kate has one too.

Before you think we're terrible parents for only buying her one gift, and a fairly modest one at that, you should know that we had to completely redesign our packing arrangements for our return trip to include a suitcase the size of a refrigerator to accomodate all of Kate's original trappings plus her Christmas gifts from other people. This child now has a whole new wardrobe, multiple toys, videos, CDs, fuzzy house slippers, adorable stuffed animals and her very own inflatable yellow rubber ducky baby bathtub. Not a bath toy. A bath tub. You blow it up and put it in the big people tub, and the sides are nice and soft so that the baby can whack their head on the side all they want without sustaining any serious damage. Being a baby in 2007 is a pretty sweet gig, people. But back to the numbers.

Number of new rooms/ new beds we put Kate to sleep in during the course of our three week trip: Five rooms counting one hotel and one bed and breakfast, and four beds/other sleeping arrangements.

Number of sleepless nights all this change resulted in for me: Five. It turns out that the words "new" and "different" are not your friends when it comes to putting your baby to sleep. None of this was helped by the fact that about a week into our stay in Mississippi, Kate decided very suddenly one night that she was completely over being swaddled. Never wants to be swaddled again. Hates swaddling. Since she's pretty much slept swaddled since she was born, this represented a major change to be worked through, and working through it while on the road was, to say the least, unpleasant. But more on that in the four month newsletter.

Number of hours Kate spent being played with, walked around, held, and generally catered to in every way imaginable: Every single waking minute. Being the first grandchild on both sides of the family has its advantages. As oldest children, Dan and I both know that it also has its difficulties. For instance, it's pretty much guaranteed that as the years pass, Kate will get to do more than her fair share of babysitting younger cousins. But as the first baby on the scene, she has gotten an enormous amount of attention, so she can't complain. Basically, the drill during our trip was that Kate would go down for one of her naps, wake up, be fed, changed and generally attended to in all areas of hygiene by me. Then I would hand her directly into the arms of whatever aunt, uncle, or grandparent was standing there waiting. Then she would have at least one, and, at certain moments, up to five adults gathered around her doing all manner of ridiculous thing to entertain her until she started yawning or fussing or otherwise indicating her desire to take another nap. Rinse and repeat. Since we got home, she has spent a lot of time sitting in our living room, turning her head from side to side. I think she's wondering where her entourage went. Like maybe they are hiding.

Number of our belongings that will be returned to us via mail because I left them behind: Four. There's the baby monitor I left at a bed and breakfast in Fredericksburg, Texas, the cell phone I left at the security checkpoint in New Orleans, the blue jeans I left at Dan's parents house and the outfit of Kate's that had to be abandoned for immediate washing after Kate unloaded a massive diaper on it minutes before we were about to walk out the door on the way to the airport. Seriously, this thing was lethal. I can't imagine what would have happened if she had done that when we were in the air. I'm pretty sure an emergency landing would have been required. It was a biohazard.

Number of cars it took to get us and all our luggage home from the airport in Albuquerque: Two. Ours and our friends' Cody and Erika's SUV. You know people love you when they are willing to come out and save you from your overpacking.

How much fun we had: So much. It was such a joy to have our families get to know Kate and spend time with her. We felt so loved when we saw how unconditionally our families love her, and that just because she is ours, she is theirs too.

How good it is to be home: So good. I love our bed. I love Kate's bed, and that it is in a different room than our bed. I love our house. I missed our friends, and I'm glad to be back among them even as I once again wade through the process of missing all the family and friends we don't get to see because we live out here. This is the confusing part about living with parts of your heart in three places. But I think we're blessed to have three places that feel like home. Some people have none at all.

Number of loads of laundry I have to get through: Plenty. So that's all for now. But pictures and stories will come soon. Unless I left them in an airport somewhere.