After a long day - which is actually several long days. Baby Kate is here. She was born on 09/08/07 (which is kinda cool) at 9:29pm weighing in at 8 pounds 8 ounces measuring 19 1/2 inches.

Haley and I are doing well but are pretty exhausted. Unfortunatly, this time of year is the time to have a baby. This means Haley had to share a recovery room and I got kicked out and sent home. I'll try to catch some sleep at home and then head back in the morning.

Thanks for everyones continued prayers. Please pray for healing for Haley. Also be in prayer for baby Kate. The nurse said she sounds like she has some liquid in her lungs and needs to "cry it out". Kate never really put up a large fuss after she came out, so she probably just needs to get upset and cry for a bit.

More coming soon.

-dan

Well, after almost 24 hours everyone is doing pretty good. The Doctor said Kate is perfectly healthy and everything looks great. Haley is recovering, and doing better.

Mom and Baby should be home tomorrow.

As a side note - a major milestone was passed in the Wachdorf household. Not just the obvious birth of the baby. But I (Dan) changed my first diaper. I change a Kate diaper BEFORE Haley did. Not only that, I changed a gigantic blow out diaper. Who would of thought a little baby can fill up a diaper so much.

Well, we made it home from the hospital yesterday and survived the first night. Haley's mom "Gam" made it in last night and we are grateful for the help. For now, more pictures. Haley will try to get a real blog entry up soon.

Kate in her home coming outfit.

Kate in her crib.

Kate making a funny face.

Kate making a funnier face.

Kate and "Gam"

Kate stretching

Sleeping Kate

Kate hangin' with her dad on the couch.

More pictures. Still no post from Haley. She promises one soon.

Kate entertaining herself in her chair, given to her by her great Grandma Mimi.

Kate sharing a moment with Haley.

Kate stretching on her "lambi".

A close up.

Kate doing her morning stretches.

Kate listening intently to Dad tell her the story of the Aggies triple overtime victory over Fresno State which occurred on the day she was being born.

Hi, everyone!

It has been so great for me to read all of your love and happiness for us in the comments. Thank you for being so excited for us and so joyful about welcoming out little girl into the world. Every day when we check the blog, we tell Kate we're collecting her fan mail. She's going to have a massive ego if we keep that up, but for now I don't think it's going to her head too much.

Today is almost one week since she was born, and I am starting to feel more like a functioning member of society capable of having coherent thoughts, thanks entirely to the loving care I am receiving from Dan and my mom. Dan has been the absolute model of a wonderful husband and great daddy and has borne with great humor the fact that he now has two crying women in his life. And my mom arrived on Monday with several suitcases, including one packed with ice and Southern food staples like fresh okra and green peanuts for boiling. I may be the only woman in the history of the world to actually gain weight post partum. This means that I also get the benefit of her extensive knowledge of babies, which is considerable, since she did have five of them. Mom and Dan have been feeding me, doing all the shopping and house cleaning and such, and making me take naps when Kate is sleeping, and thanks to them I am recovering in great luxury. Here is the okra, in case you don't believe me.

I have so many thoughts to share that I've been trying to put them all into categories for future posts. One whole post will be about hospitalization. I've been blessed with great health my whole life, and have therefore never been in the hospital before, and while everyone on the staff where Kate was born was just fantastic, I have to say I did not enjoy the whole hospital experience. So that will be one post. Then I have a lot to say about labor and delivery, not to share gory details, but more to relate to you the story of how it came about that in the hours leading up to Kate's birth, we ended up watching a triple overtime Texas A&M football victory against Fresno State while being attended to by a nurse who was, no joke, a Fresno State alumnus, and also checking in periodically with another Texas A&M Aggie whose wife was having a baby down the hall. Our room was football central. When I married an Aggie, I knew football would be part of my life, but I have to say I never thought it would be part of my birth experience. Of course, I might not have found this all so humorous if it weren't for the fact that I had had an epidural by that time and was therefore in a pretty good mood. For the 14 hours preceding the epidural, I was not a big fan of noise. Or people. Or breathing oxygen in and out of my lungs in order to continue living. But that's just me.

For now, the thing that occupies a lot of my mind when I'm not trying to figure out some immediate mommy task like how to work the Diaper Genie is the fact that I am now a mom and that Dan and I are parents. It's not that I didn't know this was coming, but there is something very overwhelming about the reality of it that has caught me off guard at strange moments. When we were checking out of the hospital, there were all of these forms to sign indicating that we understood that we were getting a human baby and we were responsible for her once we left the hospital, etc. Every time I was supposed to sign, there was a line, and under the line, there was the word "Mother." And I thought "Oh my goodness. I am a mother now. I am signing legal documents as a mother. This is so weird." I know that one day soon, it's not going to seem that remarkable to me that I'm a mother, but for now, it's pretty amazing.

There are plenty of things about the last week that I know I will remember for the rest of my life even when I am old and can barely remember my own name, but my favorite memory so far is this: The day that we were discharged from the hospital, my hospital roomate checked out early in the morning. The labor and delivery floor had been extremely busy, and so it was the first time that we had the room all to ourselves. Even the nurses were leaving us alone at that point because there wasn't much left for us to do but final paperwork. So Dan and I got ourselves set up in the two arm chairs in the room, got Kate all wrapped up in blankets and sleeping, put on some music in the room and got out the Calvin and Hobbes comic books we brought to the hospital in case we had a random moment just like this. It's a silly thing, but one of the first things that I loved about Dan when we were dating was that it was so easy to laugh with him. And one of the first things we enjoyed laughing over together was Calvin and Hobbes comic books. So on the day we brought Kate home, we sat in the hospital room and read comic books, and at one point, we were laughing so hard that Kate was bouncing up and down in my arms and I was actually afraid I was going to wake her up. But she just kept sleeping, so I was looking down at her beautiful little face, and holding Dan's hand, our new little family having a good laugh together. And I thought "This is the happiest moment of my whole life."

It's true that my brain is currently controlled by lethal amounts of post-baby hormones and therefore, my perspective on the world is perhaps a bit intense at any given moment of sadness or happiness. But the thing is, I have had that exact same thought again at least once every day that has come after that one, even on the days when I've been overwhelmed and tired and scared of all the things I don't know about being a mom. So while every day I realize again just how unalterably our lives have changed because Kate is here, that doesn't scare me like I thought it would when I used to think about having a baby and how it would change our lives. Instead it feels like we've traded in one life full of love and blessings for a new life that somehow, inexplicably, has even more of that beauty and grace than we had before. And I wouldn't change it all for anything in the world.

Thanks again for checking in with us. We'll keep the baby pictures coming.

Here are some new photos of Kate. Don't laugh at me for how many of them are essentially variations on the theme "Baby lounging on sheepskin." It might look like the same photo to you, but that's just because the various facial expressions of my baby aren't the most fascinating thing in your world.

Dan finally got to break out the stroller he's been learning to drive when we took Kate on her first walk around the neighborhood. Kate seemed less interested in this than us, but I suppose when you're in the stroller, there isn't much to see.

Dan in diaper-changing action. He's actually very good at this. I'm so proud of him.

The previously mentioned sheepskin series:

When she yawns, it makes me yawn. Of course, I think she yawns out of boredom. I yawn out of sleep deprivation.

These are the little feet that were kicking me so vigorously at the end of my pregnancy.

And hanging out on the couch with her Gam.

Hello, everyone. Apologies for the lack of photos yesterday. It was a busy day, because we took Kate to the pediatrician, where she was declared very healthy, and gave her her first bath, which was quite an adventure. It wasn't a real bath since her umbilical cord hasn't fallen off yet, but she really needed a sponge bath after a late-night feeding that ended with her somehow managing to get spit up in her own hair. I'm pretty sure having your kid smell like puke is not a sign of competent parenting. Perhaps it's fitting then that my Mom actually did the bathing, and I just took pictures.

Kate looks sort of apprehensive about the whole thing. I think she's figured out by now that any time we undress her down to her diaper and lay her out on her back in a room with bright lighting, something she's not going to like is coming.

And, as expected, she did not love the washcloth.

By the time we got to doing her back, she looked sort of resigned to the whole thing.

And once she was all clean and warm, she didn't seem too traumatized. But she did look at us sort of suspiciously for the next couple of hours, just like in this picture.

I'm actually considering giving her more baths since it makes her so alert. A lot of my life right now is spent trying to get her to wake up enough to eat. I took this picture at around 3 a.m. the other night after I had spent at least 15 minutes undressing her, jostling her around and basically doing everything short of hanging her upside down by her toes to get her to wake up, all to no avail. Here she is, snoozing away.

And yawning, just to emphasize how very not interested in eating she was. I think she's mocking me when she does that.

During the day, I try to keep her up for a little while after she eats in what is probably a futile attempt to help her learn the difference between night and day. This usually goes pretty well in the morning and gets harder and harder as the day goes on. In this picture, though, I had just changed her clothes, and she is doing her heartbreak and anguish face to show me how unhappy she is about that parental decision. She has the pouty lip thing down alarmingly well for an infant. I think we're in big trouble when she gets older and wants a pony.

And lastly, I might as well go ahead and confess to the Internet that we are bad parents and have succumbed to the lure of the pacifier. It turns out that this kid is a sucker, in the sense that while she isn't interested in productive eating all the time, she does very much enjoy having something in her mouth, and she'd be perfectly happy if I served as her human pacifier all the time. But since I have goals in life, like taking a shower, it's nice that she will settle for a paci. Also, we're entertained by the fact that it looks comically large next to her baby face right now. I told you. We're terrible parents.

Hi, everyone. Has anyone ever told you how you can't get anything done when you have a newborn in your life? Well, in case you didn't know, you can't get anything done, partly because you don't have time between feedings, diaperings, and trying to get some sleep, but also partly because you don't have any attention span, and so you walk into rooms with a purpose and then have to stand there for 45 seconds hoping to magically recall what that purpose was. So while I meant to post pictures all day yesterday, it just didn't happen. But now, here are a few photos for you.

First of all, the big news around here is that Baby Kate now has a belly button. I am glad about this, because frankly, the umbilical cord stump kind of freaked me out. Also, her little belly button is pretty cute.

This is Kate doing her "I have a full tummy and I am happy" face.

Kate tries out the blanket her Aunt Dinah made for her.

Kate being cute.

Saturday night Dan, Mom, Dad and I gave Kate her first real bath in preparation for her first trip to church on Sunday. We set the kitchen table up as a baby tub platform and had enough bath supplies and towels on hand to bathe and dry off a soaking wet golden retriever. This, of course, turned out to be overkill for one tiny baby, but it's good to be prepared. Giving Kate the first of what I'm sure will be many Saturday night baths made me think of a funny story from my childhood. When I was about three years old, I stayed the night with the Thompson family from our church in Yazoo City, Mississippi while mom and dad went on a brief trip. On Friday evening, Mrs. Becky Thompson, who in later years was my dearly beloved sixth grade teacher, tried to get me to take a bath. Much to the embarrassment of my parents when they heard about it, I declined this offer, and confidently told Mrs. Becky that I only took baths on Saturday nights, to get ready for church. Apparently, I sincerely believed this, not because it was true, but probably because Saturday night was the only time my parents made a big deal about the bath time ritual, and so I started associating Saturdays with baths. We're most likely setting Kate up for the same association, but that's not all bad since she actually seemed to enjoy it. Here are a few pictures.

On Monday, my dad left town after flying in for a couple of days to meet Kate, the child that he and mom have decided will refer to him as "Geez," thus setting the stage for all subsequent grandchildren to do the same. Geez is short for "Geezer," which has long been Dad's nickname amongst his own children. Specifically, my brothers started calling him this when they were in high school, to emphasize to him how anciently old he was quickly becoming, as if having twin teenage boys wasn't enough to make him feel the passage of time. That probably sounds disrespectful, but it's actually part of Dad's tradition of showing affection through nicknames. Everyone in the family has at least one, if not several, nicknames given to them by Dad, and frankly, they are all more ridiculous than Geezer. A few of those nicknames include Tuna, Big Girl, Middle Moose, Baby Moose, and his crowning achievement, at least in terms of length, Audgie Mo Paudge, Queen of the Audgie Paudgies. With that kind of record, I was expecting that Kate would have at least one nickname before the weekend was over. But apparently, Dad wasn't able to find one that felt right, because aside from some brief references to Kate as "Mumu" (pronounced "moo-moo") he never really settled on one. Nicknames aside, I think they got off to a great start as grandfather and granddaughter. Here's a picture.

Greetings to all of you in the world outside my house. Actually, I have come to think of you in capital letters: "The World Outside the House," because these days that seems like a destination far, far away that I have vague memories of visiting. For me, life is a series of three-hour cycles centered around feeding Kate, and that doesn't allow for a lot of venturing out of the house or even very far from the couch, where most of her meals take place. But it's OK, because I'm pretty sure nothing as cute as Kate is happening outside of the house. And I have heard rumors that eventually, babies start developing interest in activities other than eating.

In the meantime, some of the people from the outside world are coming and going from my home to help out while Kate is so little. On Monday, my mom, Kate's Gam, left to go home to Mississippi after three weeks of cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and generally just pampering us. We were so sorry to see her go. Kate and I both cried. But we're not left entirely to our own devices yet, as Dan's mom, Kate's Grammy, has arrived to spend the next couple of weeks with us. Here she is soaking up some of that first grandbaby love:

And for the grandparents and others who can't be here right now, here are a few pictures of Kate doing her morning stretches on the couch after a nice big meal. This first one looks like she's practicing some sort of Baby Power salute.

Kate shields her eyes from the flashing cameras of the paparazzi:

No words today, just a few pictures of Kate. We know that's what you want anyway. She's four weeks old this weekend.

We recently tried out Kate's swing for the first time. As usual with new experiences, she looked apprehensive at first, but seemed to like it once she got over the unfamiliarity. Here though, I think the expression says "Why were these people allowed to take me home from the hospital?"

The word of the last month has been "swaddle." Swaddling is pretty much the only trick we've got up our parenting sleeve, but so far it works like a charm to get her to go to sleep. It helps that we were given this nifty little wrap with velcro patches that make it easy to swaddle a baby. The fact that it looks like a little miniature straightjacket just adds humor.

Kate is growing so fast, and one of the things I want to remember is how beautiful and tiny and perfect her feet are. Don't you agree?

And lastly, this photo is a little blurry, but she's making such a hilarious face that I have to post it. This is Kate's glamorous face, or at least her very prissy face. I think photos like this disprove the theory that things like femininity and masculinity are learned. No one taught her to pucker up her lips like that, people.

This is the first installation of what I hope will be monthly letters to Kate about the things she is learning and doing as she grows. Some people have scrapbooks; I have a blog. What I don't have is any original ideas, since I am stealing this concept from a couple of my favorite bloggers. I hope that one day, Kate will enjoy reading these, but it's more likely that she'll be mortally embarrassed that I preserved my rhapsodies about her cute little baby butt on the Internet, to be available via Google for all time. That's the beauty of parenthood, though. This is my child to traumatize as I see fit. She, in turn, can start a support group for Children of Bloggers and vow to write her own children's stories only in invisible ink or something. This first letter is a bit late, since Kate was one month old on the 8th, but cut me some slack. I had a baby a month ago!

Dear Kate,

Congratulations on one month of life on the outside, baby girl. You have accomplished quite a lot in the last 30 days or so. Mostly, these accomplishments have come in the form of projectile pooping. Your daddy and I think that if it turns out that you are a space alien, we will know that your mission involves pooping on as many Earthlings as you can hit. In fact, your first act outside the womb was to poop all over the doctor and nurse who were examining you. For a while, we thought your grand plan was to poop exclusively on medical professionals, since a couple of days later, you nailed the nurse who was weighing you at the pediatrician's office. But since then, you've pooped on me, your daddy, and both of your grandmothers. So far the score, as far as we can tell, is Baby Kate 7, Everyone Else 0. So good work. You're making the mother ship proud.

When we were waiting for you to be born a little over a month ago, one of the things I was most anxious to find out was what you would look like, and what your unique little quirks would be. On the other side of your birth, it's so much fun to be learning those things. One thing we can say for certain is that you love to wave your hands. From the minute you were place in my arms, you've been waving your hands around in front of your face in these elaborate patterns that look like you're either doing an obscure form of Tai Chi or trying to cast a voodoo spell to make us do your bidding. I routinely have to pin your hands down by your side to get you to eat or you'd sit there, fanning your hands around, until you starved. This makes me smile because there are quite a few people in your family, including me, who wave their hands around a lot when they talk, and unless I am sadly mistaken, it's starting to look like sweeping arm gestures are going to be part of your conversational style, too.

But perhaps the most unusual thing about you so far is the way you sneeze. There is no way I can really describe it in words, but after you sneeze, you make this sound halfway between a dramatic sigh and the word "Wooooo!" The first time you did it was in the hospital, and your daddy and I wanted to find something that would make you sneeze again, just so we could hear it. We still laugh every time you sneeze, and on the few occasions when you sneeze without making the Wooo! sound afterward, we feel cheated, and worry that you're going to outgrow this particular thing and never do it again. It is the cutest thing I have ever seen a baby do, even if I am a bit biased in your favor.

Speaking of your daddy, one of the other great joys of the last month has been seeing him fall completely in love with you. Your daddy spent a lot of time before you were born telling people that he was convinced he would be bored to tears by the infant stage of your life, and was eager for you to reach six months or so, an age when he felt you would be more interactive and fun. People told he wouldn't feel that way once you arrived, but he wouldn't listen. This is now the man who walks through the door at the end of the day and demands that you be immediately handed to him so that he can hold you and talk to you and catch up from the hours he had to be away from you. This same man just yesterday saw that an outfit you were wearing was getting a little tight and said "Oh no! She's getting so big! I can't believe she'll never be this little again." And this same man who professed to be so bored by infants sings made up songs to you when he's changing your diapers or getting you dressed, both of which skills he has mastered with surprising agility in the last few weeks. I think it is safe to say that you have successfully wrapped your daddy around your drool-covered pinky finger. I fear for the day you can talk and ask him for things. There will be no stopping you.

As for me, I have become that woman I was always a bit skeptical of. The woman who oohs and aahs over her baby's every feature and claims to be endlessly fascinated by a little eight pound person who basically eats, poops and sleeps. The woman who will, if she doesn't catch herself first, tell other people all about how the other day? You smiled! You smiled and it was probably because you had gas, but it was so cute! I used to think these women needed to get a grip, or at the very least get themselves a tin foil hat to shield them from the mind control beams that were clearly taking over their brains. And now I am one of them, and I am sure people want to break into open snoring when they talk to me. But I can't stop myself. Anyone would want to tell people about the best thing that ever happened to them, and therein lies the reason your daddy and I have become such utter saps in a matter of days: You are the best thing that has ever happened to us.

So congratulations on your debut month on the earth. If you are a space alien, we ask that you be merciful to us, your hosts on this planet. We have lost our tin foil hats.

Love,
Mommy

Yesterday was mine and Kate's first day on our own as stay-at-home mom and stay-at-home baby. We did pretty well, all things considered. I did make a couple of rookie mistakes, though. Twice, I got myself stranded on the couch without a cordless phone, and so of course several people called while I was feeding Kate and unable to go pick up the phone. But that's why we have answering machines.

Then in the middle of the day, I decided we needed to go on a walk. I figured I could use the excersize and Kate might enjoy a change of scenery. However, I failed to check the weather and it wasn't until we were out there that I realized that not only was yesterday cold, it was also incredibly windy. I looked like a crazy person, pushing a stroller into the high desert wind, leaning forward with the effort, with my hair blowing all over the place. Kate was fine, because the top of her stroller can be closed up, but that meant the only change of scenery she got was the view from the little clear plastic window in the top of the cover. Still, she looked pretty cute all bundled up in there. Here's a picture I took of her before we went out.

As for the rest of the first day of our new gig, I managed to eat a couple of meals, take a shower, and even do some laundry. Kate took some naps. So it was a productive day. We'll be climbing the stay-at-home corporate ladder in no time.

Kate was six weeks old on Saturday. Here are a few photos of her recent busy schedule.

She has been smiling more and more lately, and I think they are real smiles as opposed to the smile-like facial contortions she does when she's getting ready to fill up a diaper for me to change. At any rate, the smiling is just the cutest thing I've ever seen.

Kate recently met her Grandpa Wachdorf, who flew in from San Antonio to see her. Here they are discussing the World Series. Dan and his dad have been talking to Kate an awful lot about baseball, and she seems remarkably attentive. Maybe she'll be a little Red Sox fan.

If she goes to sleep unswaddled, this is what she does with her hands. And eventually she'll start waving her hands around and wake herself up. Then she looks at us like it's our fault she is conscious.

This bouncer seat my grandmother, Mimi, gave Kate is the only reason I get a shower in the mornings. She'll sit contentedly in there for up to a half hour. It's magic.

And here, yet again, is my child with a pacifier taking up half her face. She loves that thing. I just hope I can get it away from her before she goes to kindergarten.

It's a defining moment in your life when you roll over in bed, feel a sharp stabbing pain in your back and, upon further investigation, discover that you have rolled over onto a bright green pacifier.

I think I have found the culprit.

Kate is styling today in her pumpkin hat sent to her by her Great Aunt Jeri and Great Grandmother Nana. I think the "shoes" on her feet are actually mittens, but she didn't like it when I put them on her hands. So they make good footwear instead.

Kate is completing her garden-themed costume with her sweet-pea outfit from Abby. Yes, our child's wardrobe has been exclusively provided by other people. We didn't plan it that way. The clothes just kept coming.

This is a face she has started making a lot lately when I get out the camera. I think maybe she is trying to tell me to stop taking her picture so much.

Trust me, she has her non-happy moments, too. For instance, the hour-and-a-half crying jag she went on this afternoon did not make me want to pull out the camera. But how can you resist such a cute smile?

Dear Kate,

On Thursday, you were two months old. You celebrated this milestone with a stroller tour of Old Town Albuquerque, accompanied by myself and your great-grandmother, Mimi, who came all the way from Mississippi to meet you. It was a nice day out, and we walked around to all the shops and had lunch downtown. As the day wore on, I kept expecting you to get tired and start crying. By the time we headed home, I was tired enough to feel cranky. But you were angelic, sleeping soundly in your car seat, the perfect Hallmark greeting card baby.

I tell you this story not to nominate you for Baby of the Year, but to illustrate the following point: As the second month of your life draws to a close and the third begins, I officially admit that I have no idea what you're going to do from moment to moment, much less day to day. Motherhood, I am finding out, is one giant guessing game. And you just love to keep things interesting. Because you see, a few days before your performance in "Kate Sleeps Through a Long and Tiring Excursion" you treated us to the world debut of "Kate Screams for an Hour-and-a-Half for No Apparent Reason on a Random Sunday Evening." It was epic, the way you screamed, evoking such tragedy and heartbreak. Bravo. Really. You were stunning. At least, your daddy and I were certainly stunned. I was also considerably freaked out, because the next morning, Dan was leaving for a business trip. It occurred to me that if you chose that exact week to start giving lots of those kinds of performances, I might never regain my mind enough to speak in coherent sentences again. So I braced for the worst, convinced that Dan would come home on Wednesday to find you still shrieking and me in some sort of catatonic state of shock.

Instead, you spent the whole 48 hours that your daddy was gone being so unbelievably cute that I was terribly sorry he wasn't there to see it. On top of that, you slept for seven whole hours one night, which meant that I got the longest stretch of sleep I've had since your birth. You haven't done it again since, but that, too, fits in with my new theory that mothering you is going to be a lot like playing charades. In the dark. Maybe when you start talking we'll be able to work out a more reliable system for communication, but in the meantime, I think I'm just going to have to roll with it and know that some days will be good, and some will just be hard, and there may not be any good reason for that.

This is not going to be easy for me, because if I love anything in this life, it is order. I love to know what to expect. I love to know why I should expect it. I am the kind of person who makes little lists of things to do every day and takes great joy in checking them off, one by one. Thus, it makes me feel totally incompetent that when it comes to you, my tidy little systems of discerning patterns and planning ahead are sometimes just completely useless. I think you know this one some level, and you are laughing a maniacal little baby laugh at night in your crib. Speaking of which, here's a picture of you the morning after your seven-hour sleep stretch. I came in to your room to find that you had managed to scoot yourself from the middle of your crib to the far side in spite of the fact that you were swaddled. You were also apparently quite proud of your little Houdini imitation, because you were laying there grinning.

This has certainly been the month when you've turned on the smiles, and when you smile that open-mouthed gummy smile of yours, it makes up for every minute of fussing you might do at any other point in the day. Your daddy and I frequently stop whatever we're doing so that we can look when you start smiling, and we'll do pretty much any ridiculous thing to get you to keep smiling once you start. And then I have to go get out the camera. It's a vicious cycle.

I think the smiling is part of the overall increase in your awareness of the world around you. Every day, it seems that you become captivated by some new object in the house and want to spend long stretches of time staring at it. For a couple of days, you were fascinated by the book shelves in the living room. I was all excited, thinking you were naturally drawn to the great works of literature on the shelves. But the next day, you stared with equal rapture at the dangling teddy bears on your swing, which was a setback for my plan to have you reading the classics by age three.

Since you like to look around a lot right now, Dan and I decided that it might be a good time to learn to use the Baby Bjorn, a hilarious looking harness that basically turns a baby into a fashion accessory to be worn on the body. Contrary to what your expression in this photo would indicate, you actually do like it, and you ride around the the house with me a few times a day while I do little tasks, and you turn your head from side to side, scouting for new things to stare at.

But by far the thing you love more than life itself this month is your lambi. Lambis are these little sheepskin mats for babies, and when the Rice kids were little, we all had one. My mom has pictures of all of us as babies on these things, and when you were born, she ordered you one. For a while, you didn't seem to take too much notice of what surface we laid you on, but in the last couple of weeks, you have developed a real preference for the lambi, and you'll lay there rubbing your face on it and grabbing big fistfulls of it in your hands. I'm thinking we're going to need a backup so that the world does not come to an end if this one ever needs to be washed.

Not that the laundry gets done in a timely fashion around here lately. I think you know by now who is to blame for that. But I probably need the bursts of chaos and unpredictability you've brought into my world. Left to my own devices, I'd very likely enter into some early state of elderliness, sitting on the porch with an afghan on my knees, reading a book and drinking tea, and start my golden years at the ripe old age of 35. I would make a great old lady, because that's the kind of thing I absolutely love to do. For now though, I'm finding that waking up every day and finding out what is going on with you is much more fun than anything I would come up with on my own, even if I never know what to expect. I hope you are having fun, too.

Love,
Mommy

Dan and I have been playing with the video feature on our camera this weekend, and have posted a short Baby Kate video to YouTube, mostly for our moms, who are missing out on some major grandbaby cuteness these days. But in just a week and a half, we start our holiday travels, so hang in there, grandmas.

That is me in the video, making ridiculous sounds that Kate thinks are funny. My alma mater is so proud right now.

Dear Kate,

Happy three months! Or as you would say "Aaaahahahahah lalalalala, ooooooh." Yes, this month, you have discovered your vocal cords, and now our days are conducted to the soundtrack of your babbling. For your whole short life before this, you really weren't much for making noise unless you were crying. If you were happy, you were quiet. Then, about a week ago, you started test driving your voice for other emotions, and now it's a big free-for-all. The talking is usually accompanied by a lot of smiling and a few sounds that I think will soon become your laugh. This is immensely rewarding, because now you actually respond to our various attempts to entertain you. I'm not sure if you actually think we're funny or you just enjoy watching us make fools of ourselves, but either way, we're all having a good time.

To tell you the truth, munchkin, I'm enjoying the end of this month more than I enjoyed the start of it. You see, this month in my development as a first-time parent, I have been learning about the concept of phases. I remember hearing parents say their kids were "going through a phase," but I never realized what it meant. Here's what it means. Occasionally a child will display some totally bizarre behavior that mystifies parents and defies all explanation. Then, just as the parents start to figure out how to deal with the mystery behavior, it abruptly stops, never to return. So "going through a phase" might as well be code for "trying to make me clinically insane by your first birthday."

The one thing I've got going for me in this area is the fact that I've been married to your dad for almost five years, and he, too, goes through phases. Specifically, your daddy has had a handful of hobbies during our marriage. First he had an Xbox, so I would buy him new games for birthday gifts and such. Then he got really into building and flying radio controlled airplanes and I had to learn how to go to the hobby store and talk to salesmen about airplanes. Then he decided that radio controlled cars were better because when they crash, they are usually fixable, unlike the airplanes. So the garage was covered in little tiny car parts, and I bought an engine for a birthday gift. For a while before you were born, he watched people play poker on television. I know. I can't think of anything more boring than watching other people play a card game either, but your dad loved it. I don't know what I would have had to get him for his birthday if that phase had continued ... a casino, maybe. But that phase ended too.

I don't know what phase you were going through this month, but it involved a week or so of more fussing than usual, followed by a week of even more fussing and refusing to nap, followed by five days where you fussed or all-out screamed for hours every evening. When you were at your worst, it seemed we couldn't do anything to console you. By the week of Thanksgiving, we were exhausted, and were so convinced that you were sick that we took you to the doctor. They checked you out, told us you were fine, and, I'm sure, wrote "Paranoid First-Time Parent Syndrome" down as a diagnosis. As reassuring as it was to know that nothing was physically wrong with you, it was also disheartening, because it meant that no one could tell us why you were so upset. We really felt like failures as parents.

And then, just as I resigned myself to a lifetime of shrieking, you stopped, and you've been your usual content self ever since. I am thankful that you're not planning to scream until we all go deaf, don't get me wrong. I just wish I could understand why you did it in the first place. Maybe then I could prevent it. Make it better. But we will probably never know what was bothering you, and what's worse, there will probably be more times in the future when you'll be upset and I won't be able to do anything about it. When that happens, I wish there was some way you could know how much I want to fix it. So much.

Speaking of my parenting failures, I read something the other day that made me feel that you might be falling behind your peers. I have this baby development book called "What to Expect the First Year." It's put out by the same people who wrote "What to Expect When You're Expecting," which I think of as "The Big Book of Things That Could, Maybe, Possibly Go Wrong in your Pregnancy." It's a useful book, but it annoyed me because the authors kept throwing in jabs about how I shouldn't be gaining too much weight. The basic message was "Remember not to get too fat, ladies, we wouldn't want you to keep that waddle once you've had the baby!" and things of that nature, even in chapters devoted to the months when any pregnant woman is guaranteed to feel like a water buffalo. Super helpful.

Early in my pregnancy, before I realized how much I would come to hate the title "What to Expect..." I picked up the guide to a baby's first year. At the start of each chapter, they list things that you might be learning to do that month. I was reading about month three when I came across this statement: "Baby should be able to pay attention to a raisin or other very small object." Really. A raisin. I had no idea that I was supposed to be dangling raisins in front of your face, but apparently, you should have been "paying attention to a raisin" since month two. So if you have trouble getting into Harvard in 18 years, you can blame it on me. And the raisins.

In spite of the lack of raisins, you are coming along quite nicely in your growth. At your two-month checkup, you weighed in at 10 pounds, 12 ounces, and are a whopping 23.5 inches long. This puts you in the 50th percentile for weight, and the 90th percentile for height. It also means that it's getting increasingly difficult to dress you. Your three month size outfits flap in the breeze around your slender little body, but the snaps that hold your clothes together lengthwise are constantly popping open. I don't know what I'm going to do, because they don't make infant clothes that come in "tall." Life is unfair. Ask your six-foot-six-inches tall dad.

You can hold your head up really well now, and you can also roll yourself from your stomach to your back. I say you can do these things because you often choose not to. I think you have my attitude toward physical exertion (Sweat? Why would I want to do that?) because oftentimes when I put you down on your stomach for some muscle-building tummy time as advised by the baby book, you decide that it would be a good time to have a lie-down. This is so cute that I usually let you, as opposed to ordering you to drop and give me 50 pushups, or whatever the What to Expect people would tell me to do.

This week, you and I are leaving to start our holiday travels. First we're headed to Mississippi, where your dad will join us closer to Christmas, and then we're all going to Texas. There are a lot of people in both places who are so excited about meeting you. I think they're right to be excited, because while you've only been on the earth for 90 days or so, I get to spend most of my time with you, and it's really a privilege to see what a unique, wonderful little soul you are. I can't take any credit for that, but still, I'm so proud of you. So I'm looking forward to month four. Remember to pay attention to your raisins.

I love you,
Mommy

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.

In case you have trouble catching the theme here, these are just a few of the sports teams that Kate's various relatives apparently expect her to root for in her life based on what outfits she's been bought. They appear to be overlooking the fact that she's got at least a 50 percent shot at having zero interest in sports whatsoever based on the fact that she is my daughter. But for now, she can't express her interest or lack thereof, so we're humoring everyone. Yes, she loves all your teams. She hopes they all win every game. Ra ra.

We start with the obvious: Daddy's an Aggie, and so are all the Wachdorfs. Grammy Wachdorf was physically unable to walk past this A&M cheerleader outfit in the Wal-Mart in San Antonio. I watched it happen. It was like the outfit had some gravitational pull on her body. It was the day of A&M's bowl game during the holidays, and so we had packed one of the many Aggie outfits Kate already owns so that she could wear it, but Dan's mom was trying so hard to rationalize this purchase that I couldn't argue with her. This is the conversation we had, word for word:

Haley: Oh, you know, we brought that Aggie outfit for tonight.
Lorrae: Yes, but this one has tights and long sleeves!
Haley: We're just going to be inside the house for the game.
Lorrae: But it's going to be cold tonight! I saw it on the Weather Channel!
Haley: You just want to buy the cheerleader outfit, don't you?
Lorrae: Yep.
Haley: OK then.

That's Grammy holding Kate up to show off her outfit.

Next we have a part of one of the many San Antonio Spurs outfits that Kate has ready and waiting for the playoffs. This one came from my cousin Shelley and her husband Phillip, who are rabid Dallas Mavericks fans. We don't hold it against them most of the time. The outfits are great, but my favorite Spurs accessory so far is a bib a friend of ours made for Kate that says "My heart belongs to daddy and Robert Horry." Kate might have to thumb wrestle me to see which one of us gets to wear it though, because Mama loves her some Big Shot Rob.

Next, we have the Florida Gators, courtesy of Uncle Josh, Aunt Hannah Wachdorf's husband. Josh, we love you, but Florida is really a stretch. If you find a little gator-shaped hat, I'd probably let her wear it just for laughs.

This next outfit is too big for Kate right now, but as you can see, she is about to chew a hole in that toy she's so eager to wear the United States Air Force Academy Fighting Falcons onesie purchased for her at the academy by her Grandpa Wachdorf, a proud alum. He has also promised to tell her everything there is to know about fighter jets.

And saving the best for last, we have the Louisiana Tech shirt that my dad, Kate's Geez, bribed my sister Audrey to bring home with her from his alma mater in Ruston, Louisiana. Daddy was concerned that Dan might not allow Kate to be photographed in this, since A&M and Tech occasionally play one another, but Dan says that since A&M always wins, it's OK.

I know there are more outfits coming. We've got multiple Mississippi State University Bulldogs in the family. We've got Middle Tennessee State University in there too. Dan roots for the Vikings in the NFL, against all reason. And one of these days I should probably buy her a Belhaven Blazers T-shirt, even though that will mean I will have to try to explain just what in the heck a "Blazer" is anyway. But all that can wait. I think I've confused the poor baby enough for one day. Go teams!

Over the Christmas holidays we were thrilled to get to spend some time with Daniel, who is my sister's fiance and soon to be the coolest member of our family, since he knows more about Mac computers, music and photography than all the rest of us put together. We love hanging out with Daniel and we were sad when we thought we wouldn't get to see him during Christmas. But then a photo shoot he was supposed to do in Nashville fell through, and he came on down to Hattiesburg for a few days, and there was much rejoicing. While he was there, he was kind enough to take some photos of Kate for us. She rewarded him by inventing a grumpy face that she made just for him pretty much every time he got the camera out, which was very frustrating. But Daniel is a pro, and he managed to get some great pictures of her in spite of her total lack of cooperation. And now we get to share them with you! It's so interesting to look at these pictures that were taken just a few weeks ago really and realize how much she's changed just since then. That's why I am so happy to have such a beautiful record of how she looked at three months.

This is my favorite picture, not just of these pictures, but maybe ever in my life. I think one of the powerful things about really excellent photography is that it allows you to see the beauty of something, even something you look at every day, and feel how amazing it really is. As a writer, I am jealous that photographers can do that without words, and can, in fact, make words seem so completely inadequate to describe the glory of the things God has made. This picture does that for me about Kate. I look at her every day, and I always think she's beautiful. She's my baby. But, like everything in my life, I also take for granted how incredibly blessed I am to see this every single day. This picture makes me feel the way I do when I actually take time to think about the beauty that God has poured into our lives by giving us this child. It makes me thankful, and I should be thankful.

I love this little face.

And little feet.

Here I am trying to convince Kate to smile. She wasn't listening.

Later we went outside, and Kate's Aunt Hannah was able to coax some smiles out of Kate. Hannah can usually coax a smile out of me too, even when I am being grumpy.

Kate was totally not cooperating for these last two pictures of the three of us together on the pier, but I love them anyway because I think they make a nice conclusion to these photos, some of which were taken on the pier when we were waiting for Kate. We had a lot to laugh about then, and we have even more to laugh about now.

And, a close second favorite picture, this shot of our little family.

As always, you should stop by and check out more of Daniel's work here.

Dear Kate,

When I think back on this month, I am of the opinion that it is time for you and I to have our first little chat about the concept of things I do for your own good. I'm sure all parents, at some point, say "I'm doing this for your own good," and I'm also pretty sure that there hasn't been a child in the history of the world who really believed it. But now that I've landed on the other side of the parent/child wall, I'm here to tell you that it's true. Some of the things that you detest the most are the very things that I am doing in my attempts to be a responsible parent. It must be true, because I'm sure as heck not doing it for the fun.

The best example from this past month that I can think of would be the ongoing battle we fought against snot. Yes, snot. You caught your first cold this month. I'd been dreading it. I knew it was coming. Everyone we knew was sick, and everyone we didn't know was also sick. I fought hard. I sanitized things and washed my hands and shot dirty looks at the lady who coughed all over you in the grocery store. And in the end, you caught a cold from ... me. We were a sorry pair, but I think of the two of us, I had it better, for the simple reason that I can blow my own nose. You can't, and while that may seem like a small thing, it meant that you couldn't breathe. So I had to do something you hate and get out the nasal aspirator, or as it is affectionately known in mommyland, the booger ball. This device allows the snot to be sucked out of your nose ... assuming you let me get anywhere near your little pea-sized nostrils. You very quickly discovered your hatred for this process and you're smart, so you also figured out that if you thrashed your head from side to side, it would be really hard for me to catch you. And during the day, it was hard. At night, it was impossible.

Being a mom, I'm realizing, has some moments that make Fear Factor look like a tea party, and for my money, one of the best has got to be the middle-of-the-night sick child obstacle course. I'd come into your room at 2 a.m., swerving like a drunk person from sleep deprivation, congestion and general delirium, and determine that in addition to being wet, hungry, and pretty cranky, you basically had no unclogged airways left. So I would get you out of bed, turn on the hall light, and stealthily reach for the aspirator. Invariably, you would see me coming, and start flailing. I'd give it a couple of shots, trying to strike a good balance between getting the stupid thing far enough up your nose to do some good, but not far enough up there to damage your sinuses, and you'd scream. If things went badly, I'd miss your nose and have to start the whole process over again. If they went well, I'd then have the privilege of emptying the snot out of the aspirator onto a convenient surface such as my bathrobe, since I always managed not to have anything else handy. I'm telling you, if this were on a game show, I would definitely win big money and fabulous prizes. But I'm not in this for the glamor. I'm in this for your own good. So please cut me some slack.

Snot aside, this has been a really fun month for you. You have, as predicted, finally succeeded in getting your feet into your mouth, and you suck on your toes quite a lot. Now that you've accomplished that, your goal in life appears to be to kick your legs incessantly. All day long, whether I'm holding you or you're playing on your playmat or sitting in your swing or getting your diaper changed, you kick your legs. I think you're building up your muscles for crawling, which is something you're also quite interesting in doing as evidenced by the amount of time you spend on your stomach, waving your legs and arms around like a tiny, spastic Olympic swimmer and then seeming puzzled when your efforts don't propel you forward.

When you do crawl, I expect to just look up from folding the laundry or something and see you going at it. That's how I learned that you could sit up by yourself. I'm starting to suspect that you secretly practice your new tricks at night in your crib to make their public debuts more dramatic.For the last few weeks I've been propping you up and watching you immediately slump over, so I assumed you just weren't ready to sit up yet. Then last week we had a Super Bowl party at our house and as I was putting pizza in the oven, I glanced out into the living room to see you sitting up in front of our friend Susie like you'd been doing it for days. Show off.

This month, you love to squeal. You've discovered that your voice is capable of great volume, and as I write this, you're in the living room, playing with your toys and squealing with delight about ... something. I have no idea what. But you're happy. You have also continued to like for us to sing to you, and when I got tired of singing Old MacDonald Had a Farm, I started branching out. You're currently quite a fan of songs from the Sound of Music. I picked these because I knew the words to them, not thinking you would latch onto them in quite the way you have, and now I sing "Do, a Deer" about 15 times a day and feel like an idiot. I'm still glad that you like music, even if you do have terrible taste. And I'm thrilled to say that this month, you have really enjoyed being read to. We have started doing a little bed time routine with you at night, and part of that is that we read to you from your little Beginner's Bible that Mike sent you before you were born. We started noticing that you really loved that part of the night, so now we read to you some during the day. Here you are listening to Dan read "The Little Pea," which just came in the mail from my friend, Cara, who wrote on the inside page "To Kate: Welcome to the beautiful world of books." It made me excited to think about all the great books you'll get to read for the first time.
I hope you will love them.

By far the most fun thing about you this month has been getting you out of bed in the morning. Most mornings Dan and I wake up and hear you in your crib babbling to yourself. After a while, one or both of us will come in to get you up, and that is the moment we love the most, because every morning, when we walk into your room and look over the side of your crib, you break into the most ecstatic smile the world has ever known. You are so happy to see us that you kick your legs and squirm and giggle and squeal. We pick you up and you snuggle your face into our necks and we're off on another day together, our little family. And life is grand.

I love you.
Mommy

Time to buy your plane tickets, ladies.