KatieLu Had a Farm....

Katie's battling a high fever tonight, but after a bit of Tylenol she's making animal noises for the first time!

Milestone of the Day: Katie's crawling!

What a fun age this is! As Katie approaches the 9-month birthday this week, it seems like she is doing something new everyday. Her favorite activity right now is grabbing onto Mommy (while I'm sitting) and pulling herself up to standing so she and I are face to face.

Today we were at a playgroup at my friend Sara's house, and Sara's cat Misty was a few feet away from Katie. Katie was so excited that she decided to get to the cat as fast as she could -- and that meant crawling for the first time!

While I didn't catch the crawl on film, here she is a few minutes later trying to crawl toward Misty again (and not quite doing it).

Oh, and you'll see that she's wearing the patch in this video. We had an eye appointment yesterday and got a good report from the doctor. While he encouraged us to continue to patch her eye, he was delighted that her blocked tear duct has finally cleared up on its own and that she is apparently not favoring one eye over the other. We're thanking God for His healing and for the good report. While there's still a discrepancy between her eyes, it definitely could be worse.

Our Day with "Hairspray"

Yesterday John and I left Katie with my mom and went up to New York City to see "Hairspray" on Broadway! Katie and her grandma had a wonderful 16 hours together, and John and I truly enjoyed a day together with "just the two of us."

Before the show, we met up with our friends Allison and Amar for a yummy sushi lunch at Ruby Foo's. Our hour and 45 minutes with them was way too short. Allison is one of my best friends from childhood, and we attended college together as well.

Then off to the show, and "Hairspray" was simply amazing. I've become rather obsessed with the movie version that came out last summer (Katie and I have seen it at least 5-6 times by now) and the stage version, while a bit different, was no less fun. The sets and choreography were so creative. And it starred several people we knew of -- George Wendt (Norm from "Cheers") played Tracy Turnblad's mom Edna, Darlene Love (Danny Glover's wife in the "Lethal Weapon" movies and a nominee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) played Motormouth Maybelle, Tevin Campbell (who had a few R&B hits in the early 90s) played Seaweed, and Ashley Spencer (a runner-up on last year's TV competition "Grease: You're the One That I Want!") played Tracy's nemesis Amber.

I haven't been this obsessed with a musical since seeing "Wicked" four times, and I'm sure I'll want to see "Hairspray" on stage again soon. But until then I'll have to keep singing the songs to Katie (changing the words, of course; my lyrics are:

Good Morning KatieLu!
Don't you know that I love you?
Don't you know you're a movie star?
I love you just the way you are!
Good morning KatieLu!
And someday when you take to the floor
The world's gonna wake up and see
KatieLu and me!
and

Good Morning KatieLu!
Don't you know that I love you?
Don't you know you're a fantasy?
Don't you know you're God's gift to me?....
and so on).
I'll also treasure these photos!

Happy birthday, Daddy!

Happy birthday to John! Last Friday was his birthday and we headed to the beach for the weekend to celebrate. We ate dinner at Nicola Pizza (left), where they stuck a candle in a giant roll and announced his birthday on the loudspeaker so the whole restaurant could sing to him. You can see how red he was. :-)

Afterwards, we went to Friendly's for dessert (right), and the Friendly's servers sang him a special Friendly's birthday song. The kid sitting across from us was more impressed with Katie than John though. He drew this for us:

But the best entertainment of all occurred after we got to the beach house. Just before bedtime, Katie pulled herself up to standing for the first time. It was very exciting! You can watch her 3rd "pull up" in the video below.

Happy Valentine's Day!!

So it's a day late.... Actually, today's John's birthday so I should actually be posting a tribute to him. But seeing as how he's enjoying a day off of work, I'll leave him alone and instead post photos of Katie in her Valentine's outfit.

Patched Participant in the Potomac Primary

"Sure I'm not 18 yet," says Katie, "but I can vote with only one eye, so how can you deny me a ballot?"

Babies, babies everywhere

I'm surrounded by new moms -- in my Bible study of 23 nursing moms; in my playgroup with several of my best friends and their babies; and now there's a new crop: several more of our friends are pregnant -- including two of my best friends from high school, Abbie and Michelle, who are both due in March. We celebrated their baby showers over the last 2 weekends.

(this was the cake at Michelle's shower -- so cool!)

And while we're celebrating new babies, congrats to Sarah and Jason and family! We look forward to meeting Lincoln David.