Katie's had two bottom teeth for a couple months now, but her two top front teeth just started showing a few days ago. She's been a fussy a little more and drooling a lot more than usual lately, so we figured more teeth were finally on their way. We're pretty sure a couple more top teeth with be making an appearance soon. Despite the increased fussiness, Katie is still a remarkably happy kid. She has her cranky moments, especially in the evening when she gets tired, but for the most part, she's pretty easygoing. Of course, we don't really have a frame of reference since she's our only child, but we're pretty happy with how her personality is turning out.

One side effect of parenting that I didn't expect is how much abuse your pants take. Seriously, since Katie really started playing on the floor, nearly every pair of jeans in my wardrobe have developed holes in the knees. I guess that crawling around on the carpet tears them up.

Someone shoud invent "dad jeans". I don't mean the dorky kind that badly dressed dads wear. I mean good looking jeans, but with really super-reinforced knees that won't fall apart while crawling on carpet.

Katie has gotten incredibly mobile lately. She's figured out how to army crawl really fast, learned how to crawl on all fours and is really excited about learning how to walk while holding onto an adult. She's also pulling up on nearly anything she can reach and cruising around the living room furniture all the time.

We're pretty sure that she'll be walking within a few weeks, so we decided it was time to get serious about doing more childproofing. We have baby gates to keep her in the living room, but we wanted to be safe about cabinets with cleaning supplies and other dangerous stuff. Yesterday, I put latches in kitchen and bathroom cabinets and a few drawers.

So far, I've completely forgotten about them every time I've gone to open a cabinent and I've nearly yanked a couple out on accident. I really hope I get used to them before I acutally damage something.

Wow, I really have fallen off the writing wagon. It's not like I've been ridiculously busy, but I just haven't gotten my shit together to update this blog consistently. Katie has changed and grown so much over the past couple months and I feel like a slacker for not capturing it somewhere. So, I finally decided to quit feeling guilty about it and actually do something. :)

Katie's skills have really taken off in the past couple weeks. She had mastered army crawling and sitting up several weeks ago, but now she's getting better at holding her own bottle and feeding herself. For whatever reason, she just never really wanted to do either of those. I guess she was just content to let Tracie and I do the work. Last night, she actually didn't want Tracie to feed her baby food and instead preferred to pick up small bites from her booster seat tray.

In addition to getting better about feeding herself, Katie loves to stand while holding onto the coffee table and is starting to do a little cruising. She can't quite pull up and stand by herself, but she often would rather stand than sit on the floor and play. Naturally, this is way more exhausting for Tracie and I, and especially Tracie, since she's at home with Katie all day. Walking is undoubtedly right around the corner!

Damn, I just looked at when I last posted on Dad Life. Time to get back to it!

Over the past month, we traveled to Ohio for a funeral and Portland, OR for a wedding. In between, all three of us caught a cold at almost the same time.

Having both Tracie and I at home with a cold wasn't exactly fun, but at least we got it over with quickly. Katie caught it from us, but she only had a runny nose and felt bad for a couple days. It took Tracie and I the better part of a week to kick it. Hopefully we won't repeat that experience.

On the other hand, our travels turned out really well. Going to Ohio for my great uncle's funeral wasn't the most fun reason to visit family, but it actually was nice to see many relatives. Katie has turned out to be a fantastic traveling baby. She doesn't seem to really mind air travel at all. The air pressure changes don't bother her a lot and she hardly fusses on the plane. Of course, she isn't walking yet, so just hanging out on our laps is still OK with her.

Visiting Portland was fabulous! Not only was it for a happy occasion, but we got to visit a few fantastic places as well. Tracie and I had a lot of fun introducing Katie to Powell's, the best bookstore on Earth.

At the wedding, we crossed a big parental hurdle: we left Katie with someone who wasn't a family member or close friend! OK, we didn't leave her with some random person. Our friends who were getting married brought in a professional nanny service to provide child care for the little ones. The nannies really were great and Katie did well. She only had one little meltdown, but they texted me and she had recovered by the time I got to the room the kids were in.

It was a little bit freaky to hand our kid over to someone we didn't know, but the child care ladies really put our minds at ease. I wish all child/parent separation moments were that easy.

Earlier this month, I wrote about Katie's 9 month checkup and how her head shape was going to need some correction. Last week, we finally got her corrective headwear! It's actually called a DOC band, which stands for dynamic orthotic cranioplasty.

Getting started with it has been a little bit of a challenge because we have to be careful about skin irritation. The band works by holding her head in the areas where it's bigger and giving other areas room to grow. As her head continues to mature, the band will make it grow into the correct shape.

Unfortunately, the band has caused a little more irritation than the cranial tech people would like, so Tracie has had to take Katie in to the office twice in the past week for band adjustment. It seems like it's finally just right, so we let her sleep in it last night.

Katie seems to have adjusted to it fairly quickly. She tried to play with it the first time she had it on, but after that first day she didn't really seem to care about it. She's going to be wearing it nearly all the time for the next 12 to 15 weeks,so it's good that it doesn't bother her.

The band is just a plain white, but they did give us a whole sheet of guidelines as to what we can and can't put on it for decoration. The list of allowed items is pretty extensive. It includes paints, adhesives and other good stuff, so look for pics of her pimped-out band pretty soon!

Katie hasn't been sleeping in her bassinet for over six months now, but we haven't made the effort to get the bassinet out of our room. Finally last night, I took it over to my cousin who's expecting a baby in just over two weeks.

Just for fun, I put Katie in the bassinet for a minute before I packed it in the car. It's amazing how much she's grown since she was sleeping in it every night!

 

We spent the Labor Day weekend up in Flagstaff. On Monday morning, we headed over to Macy's Coffeehouse for a little breakfast. As we got there, we realized that we'd forgotten to bring Katie's hat and sunglasses in case we wanted to sit outside. Annoying, but no big deal.

After we sat down, we found that we hadn't brought any jars of food for Katie. Pretty big mistake, but Tracie always has the ultimate in portable baby meals with her.

No long after that, we discovered that we'd had a little diaper leakage. That wouldn't be a big deal, except we discovered that we didn't have an extra outfit in the diaper bag. Major fail! At least we had diapers. To top things off, we also found that the waterproof bag we usually keep with us for diaper emergencies wasn't in the diaper bag. Seriously, it's like we'd left out every important thing.

So yeah, we didn't exactly win Parents of the Year this morning. But you know what? Everything turned out OK! Katie just wore only a diaper until we got home and she was happy as she could be. It was a good reminder that as long as we give Katie lots of love, she doesn't really care what we screw up.

Katie's making some big developmental strides! Over the weekend, we figured out that she had connected the sound of "mama" with Tracie! She'd been saying "mamamama" for a while, but she definitely knows that it refers to Tracie now. We weren't sure what her first word would be, but now we know!

Over the past few days, Katie also started to understand waving. We weren't trying to work on that skill, but she just started doing it. She mostly waves goodbye, but if I wave at her, she'll wave back sometimes.

Along with clapping and getting close to sitting up, Katie's really moving along!

Yesterday, Katie and I had the best time just playing around! Katie and just spent time on the floor, playing with toys and having fun. It was so nice to just play and interact without having anything to do or anywhere to be. I think Katie really enjoyed having some daddy time and I sure enjoyed it!