Christmas Interruptus: Upper Respiratory Style

...the cough that just wouldn't go away. As I mentioned in the previous Christmas post Kate has been sick since last weekend. She was still functioning just fine until Christmas Day when she stopped acting like her happy self and stayed fussy for most of the day. She kept getting worse and on Friday night after her bath started coughing and choking but couldn't stop. She started throwing up mucus (sorry for the graphic mental image) and coughed continuously for an hour. After talking to her pediatrician back in Texas we took her to the OU Children's Hospital ER last night. We were there until 5 am today, but I am thankful to say her RSV test came back negative--so we didn't have to stay in the hospital for further observation. She has an upper respiratory infection, but since its viral there's nothing she can take to help it. She definitely seems to be doing better this afternoon, but she had to miss two of our family Christmas celebrations and it will probably be at least another day or two before she ventures out of the house.

Christmas, part 1

...our first Christmas with Kate. We loaded up the ole' silver front wheel drive sleigh early on Tuesday morning and headed northeast to Choctaw. Unfortunately Kate has been sick for the entire trip with bad congestion, a barking cough, and a runny nose. Now Amanda and I both have it. Sick or not we had great Christmases--the first on Christmas Eve with Amanda's family and on Christmas Day with mine. I have a literal ton of photos from these days, so there will be a lot of parts to the Christmas post. Here are some of the photos from day 1...


Uncle Jason and Cousin Kason reading to Kate


Aunt Kaci...there is a post coming with some of the fun hats Kate got from Aunt Kaci


Mommy helping Kate open her first present of the year


Kate enjoying her new bouncy seat

Stylin'

...our daughter's increasingly large wardrobe. It's so much fun to shop for little girl clothes and it shows. Our family and friends have been so generous in making our little girl the most stylin' girl in Lubbock! Here are a few pictures of her recent outfits.

Sporting her rainbow leg warmers from Aunt Kaci. She loved them.

We love Christmas! Aunt Kaci bought the shoes in Oklahoma and I got the onesie here...and they matched!

My Aunt Nancy in Austin got her this adorable outfit. She wore it to see Santa. Can you tell Michael is wrapped around her little finger?

And then there's what Granny has purchased. She loves wearing the hat and it comes in handy on freezing days like today.

One potato, Two potato, Three potato, Red Splotches?

...Kate's first attempt at eating baby foods. Well, technically she's been eating the rice cereal once a day for several weeks, but this was her first foray into vegetables. The feeding chart the doctor gave us at the last visit said to introduce vegetables first, typically carrots or sweet potatoes first. So, we started with some organic sweet potatoes (only sweet potatoes and Vitamin C in the ingredients). She was eating them just fine, even smiling every now and then. The kid is amazing at eating off a spoon by the way. Anyway, she was about half-way through the sweet potatoes when all of a sudden she broke out in red splotches from head to toe. Freaked out? Um, yes. Notice there aren't any pictures on this post? Yeah, well you try to think about taking pictures in a moment like that. A couple of Benadryl administrations later and all was good. We won't be trying sweet potatoes again anytime soon. Seems like a strange thing to be allergic to...doesn't it? But, she does love the carrots, so she's not allergic to things the color orange. That was one of my guesses.

A Famous Moment

...a moment of silence at church yesterday. Before I go any further to tell the rest of this story, take a moment and look at the pictures. What do all of these movies/characters have in common? Let's review...

There's Shrek, the lovable, but gross ogre...

The "dinner" scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (makes me almost throw up thinking about it)...

Elf, where Buddy the Elf downs an entire 3 litre of Coke at once...

And of course, our daughter, Kate...


Figure it out? Let me answer by telling the rest of the story. Yesterday while at church we needed to feed Kate. Which, by the way, is a much faster process than it used to be. About 10 minutes and she's done. Well...she ate during the sermon and finished just as the preacher was wrapping it up. He closed yesterday by asking us to take a few minutes of meditative silence. Everyone went quiet. Except for Kate. She had the "burp heard around the world," or at least the burp that made everyone in a 6 row radius turn and look. It was the loudest burp I've heard from her yet, which is saying something. But who would think a cute little 4 month old could burp that well? I'm assuming not many people, so I can only imagine all those people in the surrounding 6 rows thought it came from me. It didn't help that we and our friends sitting next to us were now fighting back laughter, which was uncontainable and bursting with gasps and snorts. Not exactly reverent, but very, very funny.

Thanksgiving, Part 2

...the Douglas' Thanksgiving on Saturday. We were able to spend a lot of time with the immediate family, Jason & Kaci and the boys, and Amanda's parents. Well, Amanda was able to spend a lot of time with the family. I spent a lot of time outside playing football with Kason. If you're reading this Kason, congratulations on beating me so badly. It won't happen again...Fred.

Speaking of Kason, here is a series of pictures I took with Kate and her cousins Kason and Krece that I thought was too funny to pass up. Apparently Kate crying had a serious effect on Krece, but Kason remained calm and kept holding her trying to get her to stop.

Things started off okay...

but, quickly disintegrated...

she still won't stop will she Krece...

oh my gosh, make her stop...

Thanksgiving, Part 1

...Kate's first Thanksgiving Day. We were able to spend all day with the Harringtons (and Maynards!), and I think Kate thoroughly enjoyed herself. Or, more likely, everyone else thoroughly enjoyed Kate being there. Not that she didn't have a good time, she's just a little young to say one way or the other. Anywho. Pictures. I have pictures. I have a lot more that I will be posting all week, so stay tuned.

As you can see from the first two pictures Kate was stylin'. Okay, so she is always stylin'. In fact, she owns way nicer clothes than I do--from what I hear, that's called being a parent. I should point out however, that we have bought very few of her clothes, and the ones we've bought tend to be the basic onesies or footed pajamas. Don't you wish you still wore footed pajamas? I know I do.



My Grandma (Dad's mom). She was quite mad at me for taking her picture so much, but little did she know I was hoping to get shots of her not looking at the camera. I took some good ones of her, but this is one of my favorites. One word: Gravitas.

Kate with Grandma Donna.

At the end of the day, it was storytime for Kate (and Papa and Grandma too).

Loungin'

...having a weekend with not much happening in Lubbock and Amanda being sick. We spent more time than usual just hanging around the house being low key. It was great to have a weekend like that before the craziness of the holidays sets in, so we took full advantage of it. You can see by the pictures even Sophie got in on the loungin' weekend.

It is amazing to think that Kate is already 4 months old. She had her 4 month shots last week, so we were able to see how she was growing. Because she was born a month early her first doctors visit had her in the 35th percentile or below in every category (height, weight, head size). But after 4 months she is now in the 90th percentile of height (25.5"), 50th percentile in weight (14 lbs), and 95th percentile in head size (her head has to be big to hold that giant brain of hers right?). Anyway, she is growing so fast and doing new things almost daily. This weekend she really started playing with a rattle on her own, began noticeably responding to her name, and is getting stronger when you set her up. I couldn't get her to do it again, but I swear she chuckled this weekend--so laughter should be just around the corner. Amanda and I are having such a great time watching her grow and develop--we know it will go too fast, so we're trying to soak it all in while we can.

We'll be in OKC for Thanksgiving. See a lot of you soon!

Monkey

...Kate figuring out two things this weekend: 1) how to make noises on purpose and 2) how to play with a toy. She actually discovered both at the same time. Watching and/or listening to her on Saturday morning shriek at the pictured monkey below was too funny. Once she figured out the shrieking thing she did it all morning and into the afternoon, including while we were at lunch. Good thing the restaurant was a loud one to begin with! She was interacting with her stuffed monkey so well, that later she decided to hug it and sleep with it. Well, that was just too cute to pass up, so here are some pictures of our monkey sleeping with her monkey.

Did she like it? You be the judge.

...giving Kate her first taste of cereal. This week we decided she was ready for her first solid food (well, the solid part is debatable). So, we made a little bowl of cereal, sat her up on the counter, and started trying to teach her to eat out of the spoon. Here are some of the pictures from the occasion. You be the judge on whether or not she like it.

Ahhhh, Austin

....our need to get out of Lubbock for a few days. A trip every now and then to places with trees is good for the soul as well as the eyes. It had been too long since we had visited Amanda's Uncle Mike and Aunt Nancy in Austin, so we took off on Friday into the tree filled loveliness of Texas Hill Country. They have a great condo in downtown Austin that they were gracious enough to let the three of us crash for a couple of nights. I have a feeling that they were more than happy to host us because that meant more time with Kate, but we're not above using our daughter's cuteness!!!!
It was a bit of a whirlwind. We left on Friday at noon, made it to Austin by 7, went shopping in San Marcos all day on Saturday, went to dinner Saturday night, and headed back to Lubbock on Sunday morning. But the quick trip was worth every minute in the car. It was so great to introduce Kate to Uncle Mike, Aunt Nancy, and Sara. Here are a few pictures of our weekend (the up close of Kate shows how happy she was while shopping...uh oh). Apparently Uncle Mike's just look better in beards. We should have taken more pictures, but the trees and hills had us overwhelmed.

3 Month Photo Session

...needing to take our family Christmas card photo. But, we started thinking since Kate is now 3 months old we could have Denae come over and do some new photos of Kate and get our Christmas pic done at the same time. We're efficient like that. Those of you following our little blog know already that Kate is teething, and she was not in the best of moods (for Kate anyway) on Saturday. But, Denae was patient and took some really great pictures. Here is a few that she already posted on her blog. The full session photos won't be ready for a little while yet, but if they are like these we have some amazing choices for the Christmas card pic.

College GameDay!!!!

...ESPN's College GameDay announcing they "were coming to our city!" Amanda, the dogs, and I (and now Kate) get up and watch College GameDay every Saturday morning, so when we found out they were coming to Lubbock for the Tech vs. UT (who finally beat UT this year? Oh now I remember...Tech did!) we had to go. I was able to go out Friday afternoon and see Lee Corso and the rest of the set without a lot of people around. But Saturday, Tech showed up in great fashion to show Lubbock and the Tech campus to the rest of the country. We all had a great time, and even made it on ESPN for a brief second. There was a great sign that I never could get a picture of that was purple with a picture of "My Little Pony," with Colt McCoy's face substituted for the pony's face and it said "Colt? More like my little pony!" That Tech student should get free tuition for the best sign or something! Here are some pictures of our outing...

More Halloween

..a long day. We had a great first Halloween. We went to see daddy at work and then we went to our friend's house. THEN, my mom walked in! She surprised me and came down this weekend. Here are some pictures of our fun night.




Ahhhhh, now we're off to bed (oh, did I mention that "going to bed" for Kate means she's off to sleep for 10 hours!).