Well, seems I have some free time ... we were planning to mow tonight, but I forgot, it's monsoon season in north Texas so no mowing tonite. Gee, I'm crushed, I was SO looking forward to it. Not.

So Katie started day care today ... Skip and I both took her, just so we'd "know the drill" of what to do in the mornings (most days Skip will probably drop off and I will pick up - that will force me to leave the office early to beat traffic, oh darn, gotta leave early). We checked her in and got her to her room, got her bottles in the fridge and left her in a bouncie seat - she seemed pretty happy. I held up really well until SKIP started to cry ... and then I teared up a little bit but it wasn't too bad (I feared crying all the way to work).

I left work at about 4:15 ... and it STILL took me over an hour to get to the day care, largely because of the monsoon (what IS it that about rain that makes people forget how to drive??!!??). I got there and Katie was happily playing on the floor. I got a good report from Mrs. Lori - they really liked Katie, she hardly cried (just a little bit once when she was being changed), she smiled a lot, and was very cuddly (which the teachers all really liked). Apparently the babies all got loaded up into a little buggy thing and went for a ride around the day care, and Mrs. Lori said Katie just smiled at everyone and was talking and just having a good old time.

Of course, Katie started to cry once I got there to pick her up ... I'm going to say because she missed me so much, she was just overcome with emotion when I got there. She was unfortunately wearing a different outfit than what we started the day wearing ... seems she yaks as much for other people as she does for us. Oh well!

Well, maybe since we have a reprieve from mowing tonight I'll spend some time getting us ready for CA ... and see if Daddy can upload the pictures from Katie's first day of "school" so we can get them loaded to the web page. That's all for now ... the next update will be interesting, I'm sure!!!

Well, time for a new adventure for Katie - a trip to Nebraska. I'd like to say it went as well as the trip to Colorado ... but it seems Mommy and Daddy aren't very smart and don't learn from past experiences! We left on Thursday, about 9:00 a.m. or so, and Katie did very well UNTIL ... just north of Hays, KS. Then she decided she had had ENOUGH of this car seat, thank you very much, and she started to wail. Skip would try rocking the car seat in its base, giving her the pacifier, singing, talking ... it was kinda funny, we'd stop the car, he'd get her to quiet down a bit and say "GO" - then I'd floor it and we'd head up the road a mile or two and she'd start in again (and of course, there was no place to pull over on this stretch of two lane highway, in the middle of nowhere, KS, in the dark ...) Finally stopped in Phillipsburg, KS, where Skip tried getting Katie out of her car seat and walking around with her, get her settled and almost asleep, back in the car seat ... and she'd start to wail. He'd repeat the whole process and she still wouldn't go to sleep (this is all somewhere around 9:00 or 10:00 at night ... honestly I'm not sure as I was a bit beat at this point!). Finally, Skip put her in her car seat, removed it from the base in the back of the car and walked with her in her car seat ... and THAT, of all things, put her to sleep - so get the car seat into the car and FLOOR IT - GO GO GO before she wakes up!! Go figure. She slept until we got to Holdrege - our destination - where she woke up and amused DiAnn and Angie for a while before going back down for the night. We decided we hadn't stopped often enough or long enough to allow Katie to stretch out, like we did on our way to Colorado - seems we drove pretty hard.

We were back in Holdrege for Skip's 20th high school reunion (damn, are we really THAT old?). Friday night's event was just a meet & greet kinda thing at a local bar, and Saturday was dinner at the country club. DiAnn and Angie got babysitting duties ... and we got a phone call at the bar at about 11:30 on Friday night. Seems Katie would NOT go to bed - Angie rocked and walked her, Katie would settle down and start to nod off, Angie would put her in her crib ... and WAAAAAH! (Sounds like our driving adventure!) Katie started her wailing at about 8:30 - so she worked herself up quite a bit (part of the problem is that if she gets tired AND frustrated at something, she won't fall asleep.)

Of course, by the time we got home, Katie had finally pooped herself out and had fallen asleep. We figure it was just the newness of DiAnn's house, plus having different people putting her to bed (after all, it's always been me or Skip doing that) that freaked her out. I'm happy to report that we were able to enjoy our dinner on Saturday night without any phone calls from DiAnn and Angie!

The trip home was likewise as long - thanks to an INCREDIBLE rain storm north of Wichita - we actually had to pull off to the side of the road a few times, it was raining so hard. And there was some hail - just what I wanted on my new car (the Jeep sold - that's a whole different story for another blog) - but fortunately it seems we didn't get any damage. Plus we left Nebraska late - so we rolled into the garage at about 12:15 a.m. this morning. Ugh.

I officially went back to work last Wednesday, although I worked from home that day since Katie doesn't start day care until tomorrow (7/31) and I worked remotely off and on from Nebraska. I actually went back to the office today, Skip stayed home with Katie so that all I would have to worry about was getting MYSELF to work this morning, which was really nice (thanks Richard for suggesting that to Skip!!). In a way it was nice to get back to work - to get back to a routine - but I really missed Katie a lot, that was hard. Tomorrow she officially starts day care - a place called Creme de la Creme (a chain).

Finding a day care was, as Skip put it best, a lot like looking at houses - you just know when you walk in if the place is going to work or not. The first day care we checked out we really liked ... except that in the infant room, the cribs looked like cages at a pet store, stacked up in the wall one on top of another with a "grate" kind of thing to open up to get the baby out. Uh, no. Second day care - 400+ kids. We went to tour and there were kids, parents, and teachers running all over the place, music blaring out of one of the rooms - total chaos. Uh, no. Another day care had absolutely NO security - no cameras, no one waiting at the receptionist desk up front, no security on the door (Skip and I just breezed right in). Uh, not only no but HELL NO.

Creme de la Creme was spotless - found out they have a full time cleaning staff (a lot of day cares have their teachers clean the rooms and toys) - so that was nice. The infant rooms were very nice - they didn't feel "institutional" at all, they felt a lot like home. Once Katie gets to be about two years old, she'll start on their curriculum program - art, Spanish, reading, music, play time, I forget what else. It's a pretty amazing place and we just knew that was the right one for Katie. The only downfall is that the facility that is most convenient for us doesn't have any infant openings until December ... so she'll be going to a facility that is a little out of our way until then.

SO ... that's what's up with us of late. I probably won't get a chance to update the web site again for another week, but that one will have all kinds of news - not only does Katie start day care tomorrow, but we get our first plane trip on Thursday to see Uncle Scott marry Missy in California. Ought to be an interesting week ... !

Well, we went for our follow up with Dr. Owen today and we have good news - the EEG shows no evidence of any kind of seizure. Katie did have several "spells" (as Dr. Owen called them) during the EEG - instances where she just twitched or moved in her sleep. One was apparently much more pronounced than the others, so Dr. Owen did review the results with one of his partners but they agreed it wasn't anything to worry about. Katie hasn't had any more occurrences, so I'm chalking this up to Katie learning new movements (and a bit of paranoia from a new mommy). On a side note, Katie now weighs 6 KG (why do they weigh babies in KG, and not pounds?? Thank heaven for the Internet - that's about 13.2 pounds.)

After our appointment, Katie and I went to Northpark Mall in north Dallas and walked around a bit - we had a lunch date with a former coworker, Catherine, who had twins Olly and Hannah in March, so it was a chance for us to ooh and ahh over each other's babies and compare notes on fun mommy topics like sleep (or lack thereof), bottles/formula, poop, the whole bit. Catherine's due date had originally been 5/20 - one week after Katie's original due date - but she had the babies two months early so it was interesting to see how the babies "compared" (Olly and Hannah, for starting out under 4 lbs each, are catching up to Katie rather quickly!) Northpark is a good mall for munchkins - very nice family bathrooms (if you've ever had to change a diaper in a public place these issues become VERY IMPORTANT). Of course, I'd expect no less from a mall that is home to such tony stores as Neiman Marcus and Tiffany's, heaven forbid a mommy dressed in her best Juicy Couture not have a plush changing table for her wee one.

After our trip to the mall I made a quick stop for shoes for Scott's wedding in CA - who knew it would be this hard to find shoes for a beach wedding, but it's been a challenge (part of it, too, is that I have a very hard time dropping $80+ on flip flops, fancy embellishments or no). I think we're all decked out and ready to go ... now it's just a matter of getting all of our junk on the plane!! Thank goodness we're only gone 3 days / 2 nights ...

Well, that's all for now. Katie is happily watching "Back to the Future" and playing in her bouncy seat, and I'm catching up on miscellaneous tasks here since I only have a week left before I go back to work.

Well, I'm typing this for the 2nd time, as the power just went out here for a bit and I lost what I'd started. Yep, another TX rain storm ... they just never seem to end, and our yard proves it!

Well, I've figured out how to get pictures and captions onto the pages, so now it's time to try the blog feature ... just in case you all were wondering what's going thru the new Mommy's brain this week.

Just got done posting pictures from our Colorado trip. We had been worried that the trip would be hell - with a screaming baby for 12+ hours in a car. Katie has sometimes shown her, ah, more colorful side after she's in her car seat - sometimes she'll even start her hissy fit when we first get her into the seat, and then there's no getting her calmed down other than getting her out of the seat. Well, whoever wasn't driving sat in the back seat with her, and we made "pre-emptive" stops along the way to feed and change Katie before things would get out of hand. Also, while we were stopped, we'd set Katie on the floor (we pushed the front passenger seat up as far as it would go) so she could do her little stretchy / kick routine, and that seemed to help. I'm happy to report we had no major Katie eruptions, just some minor quakes. It took us 15 hours coming and going to Colorado Springs - so our stops added an additional three hours. BUT it was worth it, and we both found the extra stops helped us, too!

Our next adventures will be a trip to Nebraska at the end of July (Skip's 20th class reunion) and our first plane ride to California in early August - Skip's brother Scott is getting married. THAT should be an interesting trip - Mommy and Daddy get to learn about traveling on a plane with an infant!! I just hope the bride & groom don't want to hold Katie while in their wedding clothes ... I have nightmares of Katie yakking all over both of them.

EEGs ... Katie had one this morning. When we were on our Austin trip, we went to San Antonio one day and Katie threw one of her massive fits at the River Walk mall. So we went through the mall to try to find a place to change her, finally settling on Dillard's. Of course, we get there and the downstairs bathroom is out of order, so we have to go upstairs - and Katie is still in full hissy fit mode (NO ONE in Dillard's or the adjacent stores was able to miss us). We (OK, me, we went to the ladies') set Katie on the changing table and her whole body sort of locked up - arms and legs straight out stiff, and a kind of freaked out look on her face. As soon as I set her up straight, she was OK - but when I laid her back down to change her again, she did it again. Same thing - picked her up, she was OK. Was able to get her diaper changed without any more incident, she settled down and we headed back to Austin.

Well, about 5 minutes out from Betty Jo's house ... hissy fit part deux: another dirty diaper. We get to Betty Jo's house and I change Katie's diaper, and she does it again - locks up, but when I pick her up she's OK. Get her diaper changed and she's OK - but then she did it again when she was playing, and this time Skip saw it and he thought it was freaky, too. So we went to see Katie's doctor, who did an exam and didn't see anything unusual, but then she referred us to a pediatric neurologist, Dr. Owen. He likewise did an exam and didn't find anything, but ordered the EEG just to be sure. So we did that today - Katie was NOT happy having a bunch of electrodes stuck to her head (queue up hissy fit). But once the techs were done messing with her, she fell asleep for the 30 minute exam. Dr. Owen should call me on Friday with some preliminary results, and we go back to see him in a week. Katie hasn't had any more "spells" so Skip and I are thinking that maybe they were just weird "Katie learning new things" episodes. We'll see ...

Well, that's all for today, I'm going to save this and see if I can get it published before the power goes out again!!

Jen