Kaylee and Alice: Round One

You know the law of Baby Thunderdome.
TWO BABIES ENTER. ONE BABY LEAVES.

Kaylee: You are no match for my Spinning Lotus position ...

Alice: Feel the fury of my Tiger Claw!

Kaylee: Beware my Flying Death Noogie!

Alice: You cannot harm what you cannot touch.

Kaylee: FLAMING DUCK OF FURY!

Kaylee: And a sweep to the leg ...

Kaylee: Bow to my superior skills or
I will be forced to kick you in the butt a second time.
You may now call me Master ...

Alice: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

5 months old

As of this afternoon. She decided to celebrate this milestone by waking up at 4 am chatting up a storm. Not hungry, not grumpy – just wanted to talk. She gets that from her mother.

What a difference five months can make, eh?
11/30/06 and 4/30/07

Kaylee today: Chatty

Weekend edition

Spent the better part of Friday and Saturday avoiding Rae and Kaylee because of work, a friend in town and some of the best/worst karaoke I've ever seen. (Really, if you're going to attempt "Wild Thing" you should at least know how to pronounce Tone Loc.)

MattE flies back into Gary Chicago International Airport (snicker) first thing in the morning. And Becky, Matt and Alice drive into town that afternoon. They're here for a week – expect photos. And speaking of photos, here's a couple Rae took over the past few days …

I'm not sure if she looks pensive or sad.
Either way, it's probably just gas.

Attack of the giant bald head. The kid doesn't seem to mind.

Kaylee today: Sweaty

Unconditional love

You know, there is nothing like the feeling you get when your child has (almost) slept through the night. You walk into her room to wake her up, gently nudging her awake. She stirs, looks up and smiles like she's seeing you for the first time. She's smiling so wide she can't open her eyes. She starts to squirm, trying to get to your open arms, and she rolls over ...

... to reveal that she has crapped her pants in the night and it has leaked out of every side of her diaper. She's been sleeping in a puddle of her own filth for hours.

Yet she's still happy. And damn cute.

I think there's something wrong with my child. I think she's a morning person.

Kaylee today: Filthy

Yeah, I went crazy with the photos

Three posts in one day. All with photos. Let's just say I've been a little behind in downloading images off the camera.

Kaylee got this thing from my aunt this Christmas. You hit it and it makes noise. I've found that it is a wonderful thing to keep her occupied while Rae is gone and I'm busy getting ready
… And then you take it away.

Look! She's sitting up! What you don't see is that in the next frame my hand is flying in to catch her and set her upright again.

READ MY LIPS ... AL-EEE-GAY-TOR.

Kaylee today: Pukey

Not quite Kaylee

Just a little taste of Arizona. The blooms on these cactus* (in our front yard, planted for our anniversary) only last one day. These popped open today – and there are a few more on the way ...

*Cactus, cactuses and Cacti are all acceptable plural forms of cactus. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle ...

A study in red

Kaylee has finally learned what the camera is. She anticipates the flash – even when I'm not using one. Click to biggify.

Spoke too soon

Rule #1 of baby blog: When something goes right, you don't talk about it. Because it won't happen again.
Rule # 2 of baby blog: YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT SOMETHING GOING RIGHT.*

Case and point – telling you all about Kaylee's wonderful night of sleep. Last night? Not so much. She was up pretty much every hour. Rae got the worst of it – but we're both exhausted today. I'm hoping tonight will be better – but if it is, I'm not telling.

Kaylee today: Vocal

* My apologies to Mr. Chuck Palahniuk – whose legions of space monkey fans would probably beat me senseless for borrowing from "Fight Club" so poorly and blatantly. I am Jack's deep, deep regret.

Silent applause please

It's almost 8 a.m. and Kaylee has been asleep in her own bed for almost six hours now. Sure she was up to eat at 2 a.m. and it took us about 2 hours to put down around 8 p.m. - but this is starting to get a little easier. Just a little though.
UPDATE: She slept until 9:30. Now we just need to figure out how to get her to go to sleep sooner, because she can't sleep this late during the week.

Kaylee today: Rested

She's trying so hard ...

Kaylee's pretty much got that rolling over thing down. Front to back is easy, back to front she gets most of the time. That combined with her scooting ability has started to make for one mobile little kid.

But she's not content with that. She's starting to figure out the whole crawling thing.

I'll lay her down on her belly and play with the dogs just out of her reach. She stretches and scoots and kicks and rolls. You can see her trying to figure it all out. She knows what she wants – and where it is – she's just figuring out how to get there.

I don't know that she'll figure it out soon – but she's going to figure it out sooner than I thought she would.

Kaylee today: analytical

(Side item of note: Rae is wearing pre-pregnancy jeans today. She seems quite pleased with that fact.)

Photo parade

HATS! KAYLEE LIKES HATS!

Eddie is a great dog.
But he makes an even better baby support system.
(You have no idea how many pictures I have of him
"cleaning" her from this shoot.)

What? You don't think dad writes all this do you?

Kaylee today: Bubbly

Kaylee world tour 2007 (take 2)

Reloaded because blogger ate my maps.

OK - I totally stole this idea from another blog (thanks JB) but it was just too good not to. I'm subscribing to some great data, part of which shows me who is looking at the site. Faithful readers, prepare to meet yourself:


The dots here represent you guys. The bigger the dots, the more visits in any given week (that huge dot is the home office and our legions of Tucsonan fans). Illinois is pretty much covered as is Da Region. And if you know my friends and family – you can probably figure out California, Atlanta, Colorado, North Carolina, New Jersey, etc.

Though I have NO idea who some of these dots are. But they keep showing up week after week. So either I have family I don't know about, or we've got fans. (I'll try not to let it go to my head.)

But wait, there's more:


Apparently, Kaylee is huge in Europe too. We're rocking ISP's in the Netherlands (Becky), Germany (we're bigger than Hasselhoff there – right Andreas?), Hungary, Greece and Cyprus (Hi Connie).

And we get one lonely dot down in Australia on a pretty regular basis. So here's a shout-out to Abbotsford – you guys have great taste in blogs.

So, what does all this mean? It means I know if you're looking at the blog or not. You're not just watching me, I'm watching you. So keep clicking ... more hits could mean a better Christmas present ...

Kaylee today: Famous

And one other thing ...

Rae didn't learn from my past mistakes. She was playing with Kaylee, bouncing her up in the air, and she forgot one very important thing.

Always keep your mouth closed.

Cause if you don't – sooner or later, you're going to get a mouthful of baby spew.

Rae today: Cheesy aftertaste

Baby's gotta eat

RANDOM PHOTO OF THE DAY: Kaylee really only ever grabs her feet when she knows it's time for a diaper change. I think she wants to help. It's really just too damn cute.

So today I was all impressed that we managed to get out of the house at a decent time, despite Rae and I sleeping in a bit. Then Rae called me at about 1 pm to let me know that I remembered milk, but failed to take any bottles to day care.

I got the bottles there in record time, but the damage was done. She just wasn't having anything to do with the bottles today. So now Rae is working overtime just trying to fill up that empty belly.

Kaylee today: Hungry

Going to visit G'ma

It's official. We're flying to North Carolina to visit Great-G'ma Rice (GG for short.) Well, we're also flying to North Carolina to hang out with a bunch of thirty-year-old men who don't know what personal hygiene is, live in their parents' basement and whose ideal woman is on Star Trek. But that's besides the point ... We're planning on hanging out in Winston-Salem for a few days so GG can get to know Kaylee.

What's "fun" is that we're taking the red-eye flight out there. That should be a fun experience for Kaylee's first airplane adventure. We're flying out at 8pm and arriving in Charlotte at 6am the next morning. I just hope she sleeps ... and I'm sure the people sitting next to us do as well.

Kaylee today: Stretchy*

* Inspired by the Chicago Sun-Times' "weather word," where they pick one word to describe that day's forecast for the front page. It's just a fun feature I thought I'd add to the end of each post to further describe Kaylee's activities (and test my vocabulary skillz.)

Deadly Arizona Shoe Lizard

OK - not so much about Kaylee ... but she is in the video.

(Make sure you watch to the end)

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

Just a quick update. Kaylee's rolled over in the past ... but as of this morning she's rolling all over the place. You put her in one position, leave the room, come back 30 seconds later and she's somewhere completely different.

We're either going to need to buy a bigger blanket, or start vacuuming more often.

I'm voting for the bigger blanket.

Face time

Just a cute photo. No caption.
I had one that was lots of fun, but Rae made me change it.
Editors, bah. What do they know?

Fighting the Sleep Beast

So we've been bad. Or lazy. Or both. Kaylee's been sleeping in our bed since Rae went back to work. It's just been easier and Rae and I have enjoyed (almost) sleeping through the night.

Doctor of Babies wasn't too thrilled with that. He "strongly encouraged" us to break her of the habit now. He said it would be easier now rather than later.

If this is easy, I'm glad we didn't wait.

The good news is, when she finally falls asleep she stays down and only wakes up for the occasional feeding. The problem is putting her down. You'll think she's asleep, lay her down and BAM – wide awake and playing with her feet. (Which is really cute by the way.)

So you try it again. BAM – wide awake, but this time she's ticked off. Really ticked off. Screaming and crying and writhing and wiggling and flailing and spitting and snotting and kicking hitting and clawing and did I mention screaming ticked off.

It frustrates me to no end, primarily because I can't seem to do anything to calm her. I can talk and sing and hold and bounce for hours and she'll still scream. But Rae? She takes her and calms her down almost instantly. (It takes another half hour to put her down, but still ...)

I'm golden with the kid in the morning – and afternoons are great – but at night I'm persona non grata.

That's fine.

I'll just remember this when she's old enough to want to borrow the car.

Four-month checkup

So I got take a half day off work today, that was nice. The downside is that I had to take Kaylee to get round two of her cootie shots. That wasn't so cool. She was all smiles until we took her into the exam room – then she would scream if Rae or I wasn't holding her.

DOB (Doctor of Babies) says she's in great health. Growing just like she should. He wants us to hold off on introducing solid food for another month or so. Which disapointed Rae – she was looking forward to making a mess with rice cereal.

All in all a good visit. Here's the new vital stats:

Weight: 13 pounds 4 ounces (5oth percentile)
Height: 25.25 inches (75-90th percentile)
Head: 41.5 centimeters (50th percentile)

After the appointement she was grumpy as hell ... but you would be too if you got stuck twice in each leg today.

Happy Easter

That's a recycled Christmas dress (that was too big at the time),
but I'm pretty sure the ears are holiday specific.

BABY ON WHEELS!!

Kaylee likes to stand up so much, we decided it was time to break out that last Babie's R Us gift certificate and get the girl some wheels. No, not the motorized Barbie Jeep (though I'm sure her dad will spoil her with one in a few years) we're talkin' walker.

She obviously hasn't figured it out yet – but she does manage to scoot herself across the room when you're not looking. But only backwards.

Kaylee likes it because it puts her on dog level – which allows her to get face time with those who rule the house. That's her first eye-level encounter with Eddie.

Porkchop seems to like it a little better. He's normally really skittish around her – but the walker allows him to come up on his own terms. Just wait until that tray is coverd in Cheerios ...

Best $30 I've spent this week. She's looked pretty much like this since we dropped her in. I don't see the smile wearing off until she falls asleep.

Good Friday

Rae had the day off today – so she brought Kaylee into the office.
Everyone oohed and aahed. Kaylee smiled and drooled.

All in all, a pretty good Friday.

Saturday will be better though – I'll be at home. (Though Rae and I are painting and I think I need to get up in the crawl space to move some wires.)

Good Friday. Great Saturday. But Sunday will be awesome.
(That's when The Sopranos starts up again.)

The day care scene

5:20 - Kaylee is sitting in her swing. She is happy.
5:25 - The door opens. Kaylee is very happy.
5:25.5 - It's another mommy.
Kaylee screams and continues to do so until …
5:35 - The door opens. It's Rae. Kaylee is very happy again.

Berry cute*

Yeah, some of them are a bit washed out. You'd think I'd learn how to use a flash. But all will be forgiven – just look at that face. How can you even begin to think about my half-cocked photography skills when you're looking at a kid as cute as that?!

* Yes, BERRY CUTE. I went there. I made a bad pun. Or maybe I have a speech impediment which only manifests itself when I'm typing. Yeah, bet you don't feel so hot about rolling your eyes at me now do you?

All about that Doctor visit ...

What kind of doctor? An EVIL doctor?

I mentioned in a previous post that Kaylee would be having her four month check up with the Doctor of Babies today.

I lied.

We have decided to swear off modern medicine. Kaylee has been fine for months without any aid from these witch doctors and their so called remedies. In the past 10 years or so I've never encountered an illness that a day of sleep and a bottle of Advil couldn't cure.

Except that last hangover ... that was a doozy.

But that's off topic. Anyway – no more needles, no more pills, no more doctor's inflated bills. Man survived for centuries without the "benefit" of modern medicine. You can keep your cat scans and antibiotics and defibulators and vaccinations. Kaylee will be fine without them all.







Actually, I misread the calendar. Her appointment is next Monday.

The blog regrets the error.

Happy April Fools Day

No tricks – just dad futzing around with the webcam.