Katie's First Christmas

December was a blur of celebrations for our family. Early in the month, we decorated our tree and Katie helped Sriyesh put the angel on top.

Then we headed down to Florida to celebrate with Anne's parents. We had a great time, and Katie was able to meet many of Nana's friends at her annual cookie exchange. She even had her own seat at the party.

The next stop was Shelby, where we celebrated with the new great-grandmother. We went to see Santa, who made an early visit to Darwa's house.

Katie enjoyed playing with her new toys...

...and also the wrapping paper.

We finished off the holiday week in Eden with Sriyesh's family, including a great party on Christmas Day with friends in Greensboro.

Happy New Year, everybody!

Click on the photo below for more Christmas pics.

Katie's First Christmas

Katie's four-month pictures

As happens when kids are in day care, Katie has spent much of the past month sick -- first with a cold, then with an ear infection. She's feeling much better, but now we think she's teething. All that to say, it's been hard to find a time when she felt good enough for her four-month pictures.

But we persevered and think we got some cute ones.

To give these photos some scale, at Katie's four-month checkup, she weighed in at 13 lbs, 8.5 oz (around the 50th percentile) and measured 25.75 inches (the 94th percentile). We don't know where she's getting this height (maybe from Anne's dad), but if she keeps it up, she'll be taller than Anne by middle school!

As we mentioned in the last post, Katie has started using her hands more. She really enjoyed grabbing her Christmas dress.

She also loves removing her socks!

A bunch of firsts

Katie is becoming ever more aware of the world around her. She watches people walk across the room now and smiles when she recognizes them. She's even rolling over -- almost. She can make it from her back to her tummy with the exception of one arm that gets pinned underneath.

Katie also has gotten much better at using her hands. She's started touching our faces and grabbing our clothes, but it also means she's starting to play with toys. She loves touching books when we read, banging on her inchworm to make it crackle, grabbing the toys on her bouncy seat and clasping her hands in front of her.

She also enjoyed the sounds she could make on the bag of yummy Amish kettlecorn we bought on a trip to Hershey in November.

On that same trip, Katie laughed for the first time! She has a wonderful throaty little giggle. It was hard to replicate at first, but now she laughs frequently, especially when we make funny faces at her on the changing table.

Katie also experienced her first snow in November. The dogs enjoyed checking her out in her snowsuit. As you can tell, she's enjoying the new attention.

Katie enjoyed having Thatha, Achi and Uncle Priyesh visit for her first Thanksgiving. She showed off her skill at hitting the toys on her activity mat and enjoyed some good cuddle time.

Finally, Katie took in her first Carolina basketball game on December 28. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any baby-sized blue hair!

Click below for more recent pictures of Katie.

Katie 3-5 Months

Three-month portraits

As promised, we're trying to take portraits of Katie every month. This time, we made our way to Cherry Hill, N.J., so that the same photographer who took her terrific two-month pictures could do it again. (He was in King of Prussia last month.)

Two outfits and a cute hoodie later, we had some real keepers:

Stay tuned for month 4!

Katie's Christening

On November 2, Katie was christened (baptized) in the Episcopal Church.

Sriyesh's brother, Priyesh, is her godfather and Anne's oldest friend, Julie, is her godmother. All four grandparents and Julie's husband, Travis, visited for the weekend and the celebration.

Katie was an angel during the service, sleeping almost the whole time, except when the water was being poured on her. Amazingly, none of the seven babies being baptized cried.

We scheduled the christening a couple of months before Katie was born to make sure she'd be able to fit into her gown, the same one worn by Anne, her cousins, her father and uncle. It's more than 60 years old! It fit just fine, with just the top button undone.

Now the challenge is getting our act together on Sundays to get her to church!

To see more pictures from the christening, click below.

Katie's Christening

Katie's photo shoot

We plan to try to take Katie for monthly portraits during her first year. It's going to be amazing watching her grow and change! We missed Month 1, but Month 2 more than made up for it.

Our favorite is this shot of her lifting her head. Just a few days after this picture was taken, she learned to raise her head and shoulders off the ground and look around -- something we'll be sure to capture next month.

Katie smiles a lot now; in fact, when we picked her up from her first day of daycare, we found her smiling adoringly at one of her teachers, Miss Connie. Here's an example of her little grin; more are below.

Somehow we didn't get around to taking pictures of Katie on Halloween, but luckily she wore her costume for some of her portraits.

By the end of her photo shoot, Katie was exhausted.

Click the link below for more great portraits!

Katie Halloween and Two Months

A Carolina Girl

Katie made her first trip to North Carolina during the first week in October to meet our extended family and friends and visit more with her grandparents. She was an angel on the flight to North Carolina, and while she didn't always enjoy the long car rides during our stay, she loved the people and activities. As she was cuddled by person after person, we learned she's never met a stranger.

In Eden, Katie met her uncle Priyesh and several of Sriyesh's family's good friends.

We then went to Shelby, where she spent the afternoon with her great-grandmother, Darwa (Doris Edwards).

In Mt. Airy, she met her great uncle Tom and great aunt Mary, as well as some of Anne's family's good friends.

We then headed to Chapel Hill for Katie's first UNC football game and to meet our tailgating friends (including her cousins Elizabeth and Frances).

She was awake almost the whole time taking it all in; the only thing that startled her were the fireworks when our team scored (which they did a lot).

Katie also had the chance to meet some of our good friends in the Triangle.

We were especially excited to introduce her to Caroline Conner, daughter of Emily and Lee. Emily and Anne are childhood friends and were roommates at Carolina, and we hope for the same for our daughters (born just four weeks apart).

Unfortunately, the girls slept through most of their first meeting, but we expect plenty of giggles later.

Whirlwind trip concluded, Katie hit the sack and slept for several days.

There were way too many cute pictures of Katie from our trip to include in one blog post. Please check out our album (below) for more pics!

Katie's 6th-8th Weeks