Christmas with Miss Katie

This was the first Christmas in many ways. It was Katie's first ever, the first Shaffer Christmas with a small child in at least 20 years, the first Waldfogle Christmas with a small child in about 35 years, and the first with a grandchild in general. Needless to say, it was a little crazy!

We attended Christmas Eve Mass at St. Joseph, where Katie broke her previous record of never fussing during Mass. Nothing terrible, she just didn't sleep all the way through and spent a good chunk of the service in Mommy's arms.




Christmas morning started at home with breakfast for Katie, and our family gift exchange. Simon took a liking to Katie's new teddy bear, and Katie decided to take her swing with her for the rest of the day.

The first half of the day was spent at the Shaffer's. Uncle Greg is looking forward to Katie getting old enough to take over elf duties but she spent this one in her swing. Lots of presents of clothes and toys, including a whole menagerie of little stuffed animals from the Aunties in Arizona!

The day was already pretty exciting, but Katie managed a couple of short naps.

Then it was over another river and through a different woods to the Waldfogle estate in Bethel. Another embarrassment of riches for the new Princess. She played pass-the-baby a little bit with Aunt Linda, Uncle Steve and Gram, and spent a lot of time wimpering in Mommy's lap when it all got to be a little too much. She really liked the twinkle lights on the Waldfogle's tree and the light-up village set up underneath it and spent a nice chunk of time just lying on the floor looking at it all.

Three Months Old

Tigger's starting to look positively small next to Katie! There's no doctor appointment this month, so we don't have official stats, but by doing subtraction on the bathroom scale, we know that she's right around 13 pounds now, and the way she keeps outgrowing clothes, we know she's getting longer every day!

We recently figured out that she's sensitive to some of the proteins in cow milk, so no more dairy for Amy - these proteins pass through into breast milk and give Katie some seriously unpleasant tummy problems.

She's getting more and more alert every day, and is even starting to smile AT people. She can play a version of "peek a boo" for about 5 minutes at a time and can find her hands - she often folds them together over her chest and almost looks a little menacing as she clutches her fingers together.

She still really hates tummy-time but we keep plugging away for a few minutes each day.

Two Months Old!

Katie growing like crazy! The band-aids on her legs are from her first vaccines - boy can this kid scream when she's not happy!

This picture is the third "Tigger Picture" in what will be a continuing series - our friend Sharon Rose gave us the Tigger as a gift when she heard we were expecting and told us to use it as a size-reference in pictures every month.

Her current stats:
weight: 11 pounds, 6 ounces
length: 23.5 inches

She's starting to focus on people - you can kind of see that in the picture. She definitely recognizes both Mommy and Daddy, and we're getting better at recognizing what she needs by the sound of her cry. She had her first overnight visit with Gram Waldfogle at the end of October and did just fine, even if she did eat everything we'd packed for her, PLUS a bottle of formula (gotta love those growth spurts!)

Claimed by God

Katie's baptism happened at St. Stephen Church at 11:30 Mass. We picked the date because that was when Carolinne and Susan could get plane tickets from Arizona :)

This picture is Katie with the proud parents and even prouder Godparents, Aunt Lee Anne and Uncle Jim------------------->

Here's a picture taken during the ceremony. Grandpa Dave brought his deacon things and was the celebrant for the baptism. Fr. Stan was really excited to have a deacon since we usually don't have those at St. Stephen!




Here's Katie ready for the walk to church in her fuzzy lamb coat that Gram & Grandad Waldfogle gave her.



Katie was baptised with water that Grandpa Dave had collected from the River Jordan long before she was even an inkling of an idea. Here's a video clip of the water and oil rites - she didn't cry at all - hardly woke up!

Happy Halloween!

This is the halloween outfit that Katie's Aunt Carolinne and Aunt Susan sent from Arizona. She almost outgrew it before the big day!

The weather was very mild, so we all sat on the front porch to hand out candy. One of the neighbors put his stereo speakers in the window and blasted WGUC's Beggars Night Broadcast - a whole program of mostly classical, spooky-themed music.

Much fun was had, and there was just enough candy left over to keep Mom and Dad from going to the after-holiday sales for more :)

Visiting with Gram

Katie had her very first overnight visit with Gram, Grandad and Uncle Steven so that Mommy could go see Daddy's play. In the morning, everyone went to church at St. Mary's in Bethel - all of Daddy's family's friends were very happy to finally get to see Katie in person.

One Month Old

Katie went for her 1-month doctor appointment today. She now weighs 9 pounds, 5 ounces and is 22.25 inches long.

She's above-average for height and head size and right on average for weight.

The doctor says she's growing into a "tall, skinny smart kid"

Rub-a-Dub

The umbilical cord fell off, and now we can give Miss Katie a real bath.


She was not entirely happy with the process......

We double-checked the baby book to make sure we weren't forgetting anything important, and had to laugh at the line "of course you don't need to worry about hair-washing yet".....

Katie the glow-worm

It took three days to get Katie home from the hospital because she developed "jaundice," which means that her liver isn't working quite right. A chemical called "bilirubin" is building up in her blood, and it can be poisonous.
In the old days, they would tell you to put the baby in the sunshine, because UV light will speed the process of breaking down the bilirubin. In today's high-tech age, they send you home with a fiber-optic mat that plugs into wall - we wrap it around her belly under her clothes and then giggle at the night-light effect.

She's doing really well - the jaundice and the warmth from the biliblanket make her sleepy and we're feeding her formula along with the breastmilk so that there's enough "bulk" for the bilirubin to "stick" to so it can be eliminated.

This treatment ended up lasting a whole week and every day she had to have a blood test from the visiting nurse.

Better late than never

I'm a dad !

I always wanted children, but a few years ago I gave up the dream. I was getting too old and I had never found anyone to share my life with. Which was a shame, because I always thought that I'd be missing out on something really special if I never had a kid. Then on December 27th, 2005 a miracle happened -
I met the girl of my dreams and this time she seemed to like me, too.

After that my life just got better and better. I got an apartment that I loved (and she loved it, too). Amy moved to Cincinnati from Akron to be with me. We got engaged. She moved in with me. We got married. We moved into a house (or half of one at least!). And now we've started a family. I've got everything that I ever wanted and I'm happier than I've ever been or ever dreamed I'd be.

Here's how it happened - at two o'clock in the morning of the morning of Friday the seventh, my gorgeous wife woke up and left the bedroom. I figured that she had to go to the bathroom like every morning at two (I generally wait till three thirty) so I rolled over and went back to sleep. Some time later, she nudges me and says, "Are you awake?" I mumbled something in reply and she says, "I hate to tell you this, but my water broke. Are you awake now?" I was immediately, if not completely, awake. As the fog slowly lifted and I realized that I wouldn't be getting back to bed and would have to get through this possibly very long day on just two hours of sleep, we sat on the bed and flipped through all of her maternity books trying to decide what to pack. Because naturally we had planned to pack that night since, you know, we had so much time left....

It was decided that we needed some supplies, so at three in the morning off I go to the all-night Kroger's in Hyde Park. My shopping list was probably the strangest I'd ever seen - maxipads, tortillas, Gator-Ade and granola bars. I bragged a little to the guy stocking shelves by the Gator-Ade, but it was his own fault for asking if I was having a good night. Besides, it was too early to call our families and I had to brag to someone. I was running all over that store like Rob Petrie or like Jimmy Stewart in some old movie (stopping to look at the dvd's to see if they had the second season of the Muppet Show because I knew Amy would like it), trying to find everything so I could get back to my house and take Amy to the hospital. Eventually, I did and off we went.

At the hospital Amy was amazing. I knew she would be, but it was something to see. She went through the whole labor naturally, with only a saline drip and no support from the doctor, who offered her a thousand dollars if she got an epidural and didn't like it. But she showed him. They was a difficult hour or so, but we got through it. And she never yelled at me, called me names, tried to break my hand or tell me that I was never allowed to touch her again. You know, all the things I was afraid of!! Another thing I was afraid of was how I'd react to seeing the birth. But once it started, I couldn't take my eyes off it. After eleven and a quarter hours of labor, the munchkin was ready to come out. When it did, the doctor said, "Okay, Daddy. Tell Mommy what it is."After nine months of wondering what we were growing in there, we were finally going to find out and it was all up to me! So I look down to find out and the stubborn little bugger has its hand between its legs! So the doc removes it and now the umbilical cord is in the way!! So they flip the baby over and present it to me bottoms-up. Everything is so red and swollen that I have no idea what I'm looking at. So I take my best guess and say, "It's a.....girl?"

And I was right!

Katherine Eileen Waldfogle (that's the first time I've written it!) was brought into this world at 1:16 p.m., Friday, September 7th, 2007. She was 7 lbs .08 ounces and was twenty and a half inches long. She has a full head of brown curly hair and is, bar none, the most beautiful baby in the world!

But they won't let me bring my baby doll home. Not yet. Katie developed a little jaundice today and they want to keep her another night. They've put her in what I call the tanning booth and are going to observe her overnight. I know that this happens to a lot of babies, but this one is mine and I hate her seeing her like that. I know that tomorrow everything will be fine and I can bring her home but tonight I sit and worry and write my first ever blog at three thirty in the morning. Last week, I would have just been getting up to pee.....

I'm going to miss sleep, but I wouldn't trade this for anything.

It's a Girl!!

Katherine Eileen Waldfogle made a surprise early appearance on September 7, 2007

Amy woke up at 2am like normal to go to the restroom, but instead her water broke. Contractions started up right away about 9-10 minutes apart. Mark took her to the hospital a few hours later.

Everything progressed just as it should without any medications needed and Katie was born at 1:16 that afternoon, after about a half-hour of pushing. Mark cut the umbilical cord (which had a complete overhand knot in it!!)




birth weight: 7 pounds, 0.8 ounces
birth length: 20.5 inches
APGAR score: 9
(the doctor told us that only doctors' kids get 10)

baby bump!

Once we finally broke the news to the family, Carolinne (my sister in Arizona) asked for photo-updates of the expanding baby-bump. This is the first one we took on 5/5/2007.

The baby was VERY cooperative with our plan to keep the news to ourselves until the end of April, and Amy's belly popped out literally the day after the grandparents-to-be had been told.












We had these grand plans to take pictures regularly, but only managed three photo-sessions.

This is the second, taken on 8/2/07.










This is the third, taken on 8/27/07 - only a week or so before she was born!

Amy's belly button never popped out, which was a disappointment to Mark. At this point, she was just starting to have trouble with swollen feet, needing help to get up from the couch our out of bed, that sort of thing.

Katie-Bob's first pictures

Here are the sonogram pictures, taken at 20 weeks. The baby was declared completely healthy in terms of everything they can check this way. The doctor knows the baby's gender, but we are still waiting to find out whether we've got a Katie or a Rob growing in there :)



a little bit of thumb-sucking going on here...






both the doctor and the technician commented on how LONG the legs and arms are - fingers too. where might that come from, dad?






the baby seems to know we're peeking in and is looking right back at us

heart-to-heart

We heard katie-bob's heart beating today with a doppler device. It sounds like the old "Space Invaders" game shooting effect and it's good and strong according to the doctor.

We are still waiting to tell the family, and we kind of like having this great news as our own secret, but on a day like today, we're just bursting to share!

*(retroactive posting)