Best friends...

Grandma and Grandpa Hey were in town Friday night and Saturday morning to see the munchkin. Grandpa Hey couldn't believe how much she's grown in the past 3 weeks! We ventured out to dinner at Saltgrass, which was actually a good location since it was so loud, so she wasn't much of a distraction to other patrons when she cried. She was pretty good though and only cried a few minutes at the end of the meal. Dad took her around to look at all the pretty lights and that calmed her down. If you didn't know, lights are 1B on Kaitlin's list of friends - she could look at them all day. I've heard it said that since babies are fresh from heaven where it's filled with light, they love to look at lights here on earth because it reminds them of home. Item 1A on her list of friends is ceiling fans. If she's ever freaking out we just have to take her into the living room and show her the fan and she's immediately enthralled. All the toys in the world and she prefers 4 spinning blades on the ceiling - who knew?

First real bath

Notice the trend of firsts here! Last night Kaitlin got her first real submerged bath in her fun little tub. We had been giving her sponge baths up until her appointment on Tuesday just because I was scared of her belly button. Side note - there's a phrase I never thought I'd use. I guess life is pretty good if one of your top fears is your daughter's belly button. Dr. Meyer said it looked good though, so she was ready to move on up to the next stage in bathing. But I digress. I went to get the tub ready while Scott was removing her diaper and cleaning her up so she didn't have any poop in her first bath. Apparently I should've told him to stand by for a while because it took me about 5 minutes to attach the base on the tub and get it all ready, during which time Scott came into the bathroom holding a naked Kaitlin who proceeded to pee all over him! What was funny was that she was crying (because she was naked - she's very modest) and she stopped mid-wail to empty her bladder on him. He still hasn't reached my status though, as she sharted on me during the pictures on Sunday. Which, by the way, he freaked out about. I had to tell him "Honey, this is the first of many bodily fluids I will have spewn on me over the next few years." Anyway, back to the bath, as soon as she was laid in that warm water she immediately stopped crying and got a look of "Waaaaaiiit a second, this isn't so bad!" She loved every minute of it! She couldn't stay in there forever though, so the whole episode ended poorly with her screaming again as she was removed from her new favorite spot. But it's good to know that she enjoys it, so we will try to streamline the process next time and make the before and after portions as short as possible.

Remember the monster I mentioned a couple posts ago....

Well, she's still growing at a phenomenal pace! We had our 1 month checkup today (even though she's only 3.5 weeks) and she weighed in at a whopping 11 lbs even and has grown to 23 inches!! If she were able to stand, she'd officially be taller than Buddy, much to his chagrin. Dr. Meyer said that she is doing excellent and that this is the kind of growth you want to see - a steep curve at the beginning and then she will even out. She said based on Scott and my build she doesn't expect Kaitlin to be huge and that she imagines she will end up in the 50-75% bracket, but for now it's great that she's up there in the 98th! Way to go Kaitlin!

First Pictures

Ummm, I think we'll get the next professional photos of Kaitlin when she's old enough to understand us - say in about 3 years. The poor girl had what was probably the worst day of her short life thus far on Sunday. She was naked, angry, and needed a nap, but what did her mean old parents do? Subjected her to 2 hours of endless posing and manipulating, trying to get that perfect shot. We got about 25 minutes of calm Kaitlin at the end of the shoot, when she was just so worn out and sick of crying that she resigned herself to lay there with a vacant stare. I imagine she was transporting herself back into the womb, thinking "I'm in my happy place." If so, she's remarkably good at zoning us out. I suppose we'll see that skill again when she's a teenager. Needless to say, she slept like a baby last night. I had to wake her at 2:30am after she went SIX HOURS without eating - unheard of! And had I not woken her, I think she would've kept on snoozing trying to undo the damage we did to her poor psyche during that torture session. So she hopes you enjoy the birth announcements you'll be getting, knowing that she had sell her soul to the devil to obtain them.

First pictures, Aggies vs. ULM and Cowboys-Dolphins.

Well, we've got a big weekend lined up for Kaitlin. Today, a photographer is coming out to the house to take her first professional baby pictures. In order to assure she is calm, cool and collected, we will have to fine tune our schedule to ensure she eats and has time to fill a diaper before the photographer arrives. The last part of the schedule is paramount as the majority of the photos are of her naked, so things could get messy otherwise. I am also hoping that my inclusion in the photos will be minimal, if not non-existent. I think the prenatal photos were traumatic enough for me!

Nanny, Lou Ann an Aunt Amanda all came by to visit last night. Lou Ann gave Kaitlin a gift bag full of Aggie and bath time stuff. We're pretty excited because most of Kaitlin's Aggie gear is still too big for her to wear, but Lou Ann's looks like they'll fit her now! We'll get them washed up this weekend in time for Kaitlin to try out their luck when the Aggies play Miami this Thursday. Kaitlin was pretty upset this morning when I told her the Aggies would not be on t.v. this weekend. However, she was relieved to hear that she could listen to the sweet musings of Dave South as he calls the game online.

On Sunday, we are hoping to make the trek over to Nanny's house. Kaitlin has been begging me to take her to watch the Cowboys on her Papa's big screen HD t.v. We planned on going last weekend, but the weather turned bad so we stayed home since Chunky is afraid of storms. Keep your fingers crossed that the weather stays nice tomorrow.

On a side note, Ben and I are heading to visit Big Jason at Parkland this afternoon. Jason was in a very serious car wreck on Wednesday, but thankfully is recovering well. He had a lacerated kidney, a broken collar bone and slight bleeding in the brain, which were all consistent with a high-speed car crash. They expect he'll be in the hospital another week and then will need six weeks at home recovering before he is back on his feet.

Please keep Jason and his family in your prayers.

We're growing a monster!

We had our second pediatrician appointment on Tuesday with Dr. Meyer, who will be our main physician. She was very nice and much less cartoonish than Dr. Vicktrin whom we met at our first appointment. It was confirmed though - Kaitlin is quite a strapping young lady! She's in the 97% percentile for height and 95% percentile for weight!! She weighed in at a whopping 9lbs 8 oz - a full 7 oz over her birth weight (which she wasn't due to gain back until her 2nd week birthday!) As my friend Brooke said, "you must be eating some extra fortified food or something!" Apparently it's from the Keith side of the family though, as Cindi has told me many stories about how quickly both Scott and Brandon grew. It will be interesting to see how much she grows before her next appointment!

Sad News on Chunk

Last Wednesday morning, Summer noticed Chunk's lymph node in his neck was very swollen. I took him up to the vet at about 4pm with the hopes that it was just an infection and nothing worse. I was wrong. The vet confirmed that he has cancer (lymphoma), which is very common in middle aged large breed dogs. While the cancer is treatable, it is unfortunately not curable. We have him on a 3-week run of steroids to help reduce the swelling of the node and give us some more time with him. The most aggressive form of treatment is full-blown chemo, which runs abut $5k and will only give him another year or so. As such, we're going to stick with the steroids he's on now. Summer and I are devastated, but are slowly coming to grips with what must be done. Thankfully, this form of cancer does not cause him much pain. The vet said that as it progresses, he will get sicker and stop eating, but that's about it. As such, our plan is to watch him over the next few days and weeks and take advantage of the time we have. However, at some point in the coming days/weeks we're going to have to send him home because we do not want him to suffer.

We ask that you all pray for Chunky that he not suffer and for strength for Summer and I.

First Trip to the Pediatrician - 8/29

On the 29th, we took Kaitlin to her first trip to see the pediatrician since she'd left the hospital. The waiting room at the office is a mural to the Little Mermaid and they have the video showing on an infinite loop. For those of you who do not know my little sister that well, she also used to show this movie on an infinite loop when she was little! I don't know how the admin employees deal with hearing that movie over and over again every day. Unfortunately, we could not get in to see her actual pediatrician, so we saw another lady who operates out of the same office. She was an Aggie and very nice, but was eerily similar to the Cheri Oteri cheerleader character, from Saturday Night Live. She was overly animated, maintained the same wide-eyed look as Cheri Oteri and must have had 25 cups of coffee that morning. Any who, they told us at the hospital that it would be up to 2 weeks before Kaitlin would regain her birth weight. When we left the hospital, she weighed 8lbs 110z. We were pleasantly surprised to see that she weighed an even 9lbs at this appointment and was doing a great job of putting on weight. Unfortunately, she got a little over stimulated in the weighing processes and peed all over the scale and then peed all over the padded bench she was laying on, as well. You'd think all that water would be good for another ounce or so, right? The pediatrician checked her eyes, reflexes and gave her a hepatitis B shot and sent us on our way with a clean bill of health.

Going Home

Apologies for the tardiness of this post, but I am trying to keep these in chronological order, so next in line is the going home story. Monday was our designated check-out day and a day that I had been looking forward to since the moment Kaitlin was born. As helpful as the hospital was, I could not wait to get my family home and under MY roof. Big Jason and I had traded text messages about this the entire time we were in the hospital. He was 100% right...there was nothing like the feeling of driving both Summer and Kaitlin home!

Both Summer's doctor and Kaitlin's pediatrician gave clean bills of health, so we started the going home show around noon. Ms. Carter had given us a beautiful white dress along with a pair of white knit shoes that Kaitlin wore home. The process started with me running cart loads of our things to the truck before we loaded up the family. The last cart load was full of flowers and gifts from all of you! My mom was there at the hospital to help us pack up and the Hey's were waiting at our house to help us unload.

Kaitlin did a great job on the entire trip. She got a little fussy when we put her dress on, but that didn't last long. She also was an unbelievable trooper when it came to the whole car seat thing. It took us a couple of tries to get her buckled in right and it was about 150 degrees outside, nonetheless, she didn't cry. In fact, she was snug as a bug the entire ride home. Speaking of which, that was the scariest drive of my entire LIFE! Everyone who drove past my truck received a James Koenig stare-down for being too close or driving too fast. Thankfully, the drive itself was pretty uneventful.

When we got to the house, John and Barb had tied some pink balloons to our mailbox and were waiting in the drive-way with the camera. We pulled in and John took lots of pictures, most of which are posted on the Shutterfly website.