Kat's big weekend

We went to a BBQ at the home of two of Dan's co-workers, Mike & Megan. She was the best baby there (alright, technically also the worst, as she was the only one). She had fun and everyone took a turn holding her and playing with her.



Dan and Kat in the brand new baby prison from Jim & Julia. It came today, thanks very much. It will get a lot of use for many household members.


Kat's first theatre performance- we went to see Wind in the Willows in Volunteer Park, which we all enjoyed. She either watched intently (like when the ducks came out quacking) or played quietly throughout. We found a nice shady spot and relaxed on our blanket. She was a great patron of the arts. She did share my sandwich during the show, apparently she likes turkey and cheese on wheat.



Kat LOVES the baby swings- though in these pics, she's distracted by the baby in the next swing.

Visit to Heidi's former workplace

Kat and I stopped by to visit my former co-workers on Thursday. Janet took these pictures. It was really good to see everybody and I always realize, when we do get together, how much I miss them. We had a lot of fun together (likley too much).

Kat's Room or cats room?

Mel & Greg, I missed your anniversary when I was sending out shout-outs from Guatemala City. Sorry and I hope it was a happy one.

Congrats D & L! And welcome, Eli, to the family!!!! He was born yesterday and I'm sure his sisters can't wait for him to come home. We can't wait to meet him.

Kat's Room or cats' room?
Apparently the subtleties are lost on the resident felines....... There are things that I had never considered when bringing a baby into a pet-run household. For instance, the pets ignore the Cider House Rules that say no barking when the baby is asleep. And the dogs insist on the dinnertime celebration upstairs, even if Kat is sleeping. Trying to rock a baby to sleep when 2 cats insist on using the litter in the next room, followed by the electric litter box sweeper doing its thing over and over and over because the girls can't use it correctly. These all add to the fun. And then there's the clean-up crew. They are very thorough.


That would be Hermy in Kat's winter hat box. She seems to like it there.


Then there's Emma, who took a break from the changing pads to hang out on Kat's bookshelf.

Kat, Daddy and her sock monkey.

I love the ballerina stance in the bouncer. Yes, that is American cheese- we were working on getting it into the hand and then to the mouth. As you can see, we had limited success.


Kat went to the Dr this week- The Center for Adoption, where they specialize in international adoption. The Dr. was just fantastic in my vast pediatrician experience. He was awesome about examining Kat in a way that made it fun for her, he treated the med student with great respect and even asked after us, as to how we were doing, did we have support, any signs of post adoption depression (such a thing does exist, I have read). He did, however, hightail it out of there before it was time to give her the three booster shots that he wanted. He said they see a lot of babies from the clinic that she went to and they have a lot of faith in the Dr and the effectiveness of the vaccines, etc from Guatemala, so he just wanted to re-do her 9 month boosters. At one year, they'll do blood work to check her titers and who knows what else. Oh yeah, he said she looks great- is a great size (possibly a tad on the hefty size) and it was expected that her gross motor skills would be behind. So, I guess our homework for the one year visit is to work on teaching her to feed herself and to crawl.



Tomorrow, we're heading to the Y and after Kat's 2 hours of child care, it's family swim time, so we're introducing her to the pool. She loves her bath, is fascinated by the hand-held shower nozzle- always sticking her hands and often her face in front of it (I use it to rinse her off after her bath), so we figured we'd throw her in the pool and she if she can swim.

It's early, but I'm pretty sure that Kat is a top contender for 'baby of the week' at our house. The last several nights she went to bed around 9:30 (after we stuffed her in a sleep sack), and slept till 9:30 AM, with a brief interruption that falls sometime between 4-6, for a diaper change a bottle (that she feeds herself in her crib) and then she settles right back down for a few hours. We woke her up at 9:30 this AM.....how cool is that? I'm sure that our bubble will burst sooner than later, so we are enjoying the current baby schedule.

The Kat in the Box

Luckily, Dan alerted me to the situation so I could act quickly. I don't think he meant for me to grab the camera....

We went to the Guatemala adoption meet up tonite. A very Seattle cafe- in a church basement, with a playroom and amateur hour going on in the main room (and some pinched face lady came over and closed the door to the playroom, as though we had no right to be there and children should be seen and not heard in a playroom). And a pay-what-you-feel-like coffee bar. Do you think $1.50 for 2 Snapples and 2 cookies was too much?

There were two moms there and 3 kids- all 4+. They were all very nice and Kat had a great time watching the big kids play silly games they made up, like 'burglar', which seemed to consist of one kid "throwing" poison on the other, presumably the burglar. We were all entertained watching those imaginative kids.

And there were two more older girls, but they and their parents didn't deign to come into the playroom until the other children had left. They never even acknowledged the existence of any of the 8 of us who were in there the whole time. It's great to see such wonderful American values being taught to these children. I can't fathom why they bothered to show up, if socializing with other kids/parents wasn't the point of the outing. They could have taken their eco-friendly Birkenstocks and home-grown granola anywhere if they just wanted to feel superior to people, but apparently they had to feel superior to other Guatemalan kids and adoptive parents.

Boo Radley has been driving us CRAZY! I don't know if it's the baby (I don't really think so, I think it's the voices in his head), or maybe the heat but he spends all day and all evening when we're here, walking around coming up for pets and reassurance. EVERY TWO MINUTES he's back and as you can imagine, it gets old fast. I have just concluded that maybe it's the ceiling fans in the family room, as they've been on almost all the time since we got home and the breeze from them causes things to move around and maybe he thinks it's a whole host of ghosts? I have turned them off and he's now resting quietly on the floor and hasn't bugged me in at least 10 minutes.

We have discovered that our YMCA membership entitles us to FREE CHILD CARE!!! While at the Y, and 2 hrs max (I don't know if that's per day or per visit), and within their parameters- 4-8pm M-F, 8-1 Sat/Sun and then some. We were all there last night and probably will be again tomorrow. It's great for Kat, as we'd like her to get used to other people and kids, but aren't ready to do daycare or anything like that yet. But I don't want the concept to be completely foreign to her, especially as she approaches what is supposed to be the 'stranger fear' stage.

I just found that if you hold the arrow buttons and go up (or down) through this post, it looks like a movie of Kat in the box. I LOVE the continuous shoot function of my camera.

Kat's First Independence Day Weekend

Kat doesn't seem to care for the Geico Gecko

Sunday we went to the Tacoma Tall Ships Festival, which was a lot of fun (though you can't tell by Kat's face).



I'm thinking this was some type of landing vehicle.....


We didn't make it to see them under sail on Thursday, that would have been cool.

The Coast Guard cutter- might be newer than some of the others...


At the Independence Day parade in Bothell. That's Elvis behind us- Kat doesn't seem impressed. Kat's shirt may be too small, but it's the closest we had to something patriotic for her.

I'm pretty sure that Dan loves the BOB (the stroller has a name) more than Kat does. We'll see if he ever gets around to running with the two of them.

This is the coolest drawbridge, though that's probably not the name, as it doesn't actually draw up, the whole piece rises. We didn't see it go up, however.

This is a true replica of the Nina (that Columbus dude's boat). When Ann was in Seattle a few weeks ago, we toured it. Though now the crew gets to live down below- apparently back then they all lived on deck and the stores and live animals (suspended in mid-air, what would PETA have done?) got the holds below decks.

Maybe tomorrow I'll take Kat, the Bob and the idiot twins for a walk again around the neighborhood and manage to get a picture of it. It has to be pretty damn funny to see us coming.

More pics, see previous post

This is the second of 2 news posts. The text is in the one that follow this one, FYI, and more pics. I haven't figured out how to have more than 5 pics/post.

One of these days we have to try to cut her fingernails. They're long and sharp (maybe the FM filed them into points?) and she knows how to dig them in. I think I've heard/read that you do that while they're sleeping. Hmmmm

THANKS LAURA AND ADAM!! What a great box you chose for Kat!


And the roadster is tons of fun as well!


Does anyone else have this problem? Apparently the poor kid does NOT have cat/dog allergies (one of my biggest fears about the whole process), as she's been covered in their fur from the day WE met her (and long before they did). This is Emma, the new kitty, who enjoys sleeping on the changing pad and Kat's bookshelf- I have to get a pic of that. In between the books and stuffed animals, sleeps the kitty.


THANKS GINGER (AND WENDY & BRYAN). The dog book is a big hit.


This is one of the baby 'come to me series' She's pulling the blanket toward her to get her bottle. She's a master of this art.



This is Boo's parlour trick. We look like slobs, as we throw our empty pop bottles on the floor for him to take the lids off. He takes this job very seriously and will get up out of his chair if he hears the distinctive sound of a lid being screwed back on an empty bottle to carry out this task.
Downsides:
1.The lids are now choking hazards and must be monitored closely.
2. Can't wait to have the lid off a full bottle of formula/milk chewed off and the contents become one with the carpet. Oops.

Another Day

I haven't posted as while we have been busy, it's more that I don't want to bore the crap out of everyone with the daily minutia.

But we do have some progress and some new pics, and will definitely have lots of pics after tomorrow (Kat's first Independence Day in the US). She is still not reading the memos that I print out for her each night on when she will nap/sleep/eat the following day. I think she eats them. We're finding out, right now, that an over-tired baby does NOT mean said baby will fall asleep earlier and for a longer period of time. It just means you have a cranky, extremely tired baby on your hands with a completely whacked schedule. She napped at 1:30 for just one hour and I put her down at 8, crossing my fingers that she'd sleep through the night. It's 11 now and she's sitting next to me, playing with my toes and trying to get hold of the computer. Who said we have a lot to learn?

Her big Doctor visit is on Wednesday. Also Wednesday is a meeting of the Seattle Guatemalan adoption group, so we're psyched to attend that and meet folks who have that in common with us.

She is currently spending a lot of time chewing on her tongue, as she has her first top tooth coming in. She does not yet crawl, though has some shimmeying form of locomotion that she uses sometimes, if something is close by and she really, really wants it. Her FM gave us her blanket and I get the impression that she played on the blanket on non-carpeted floors and thus, could never gain purchase to crawl. BUT, she is the master of, if something she wants is also on the blanket, of grasping the blanket and pulling it toward her until the coveted object is in her lap. I have a set of pics showing this, I don't know how many I can post, but I'll try. They'll be at the top of the previous post as you're reading this one.

These pics are the baby-shimmeying mode of transport. I wouldn't be surprised to be able to report next week that she's crawling. Or maybe she'll continue to shimmey on her head....