"Oh #*@! She Can Crawl!"

That statement is what I heard John yell from the nursery last night. Yes, Cate is now officially crawling. She has been working towards it for several weeks now, employing various techniques including commando crawling, rolling, and creeping, but she finally figured out how to coordinate her arms and legs. We are both excited and terrified, as the house is not remotely child-proofed.

In other news, Cate continues to be on the petite side. At her last doctor's appointment (February 11, 2009), her stats were:

Height: 25.5 Inches (5%)
Weight: 13 pounds, 15 ounces (<5%)
Head Circumference: 42.5 cm (5 - 10%)

Overall, Cate is a healthy and happy baby. In fact, the two things people in public comment on the most are her size (a woman at Whole Foods actually called her Thumbelina) and the fact that she seems so happy. She loves to go in public and smile at people and (more importantly) she loves it when they smile back or talk to her. John and I are not sure how we ended up with such an extroverted child.

We are all enjoying Cate's first Mardi Gras. She went to her first parade last weekend and was an excellent sport despite staying up past her bedtime. This weekend, we are trying to make sure that Cate gets plenty of good naps in so that she will be in a good mood for all the parade action.

Cate's first parade.

Going to a parade with a baby requires some interesting skills.

You can never tell which part of the pacifier Cate will find most enticing.

Happy Halloween!

The end of October was pretty busy in the McCammon household. The weekend before Halloween, we spent Saturday afternoon at the New Orleans Art Market, which is held the last Saturday of every month at an uptown park. Cate got to show off some of her Halloween clothing and John and I got to check out some local artists and eat yummy Nutella and banana crepes.

John and Cate at the Art Market.

On my birthday, John, Cate, and I went over to James and Donna’s for dinner. Cate enjoyed seeing her cousins Jordan and Colin as well as Papa Mike. Jordan decorated a beautiful birthday cake and the whole evening was the perfect end to a wonderful birthday!

Cate helps me blow out the candles.

Colin and Papa Mike enjoy the cake.

As you may have heard by now, Cate was a peacock for Halloween. I tried to get as much mileage as possible out of the costume (although it was so big for her that she will probably still be able to wear it when she is 3!), so Cate wore her costume to playgroup on Tuesday and Gym Rompers on Wednesday. I think she ended up wearing it much longer on those two days than she did on Halloween!

Cate trying on her Halloween costume.

For Halloween, we dressed Cate up in her costume and walked up the street to our favorite sushi restaurant for dinner. Cate had skipped her afternoon nap and was consequently pretty fussy, so she only wore her costume for about ten minutes, but that was long enough to get lots of compliments!

Happy Halloween!

Cate hasn't quite mastered sitting up!

On the solid food front, we continue to make progress. Cate is now eating bananas, avocados, and oatmeal. The oatmeal seems to be much more palatable to her than the rice cereal, especially when it is mixed with bananas. However, as Cate has become more interested (aka excited) about solid foods, feeding her has become increasingly messy. Half the time, I just take all of her clothes off of her before she eats and put her in the tub afterwards. Fortunately, we have Ford around to help clean up.

Note, if you can't tell what's going on in this picture, Ford is licking the avocado off of Cate's bouncy seat.

Yum Yum!

We are pretty sure this is what Cate would say about rice cereal if (1) she could talk and (2) her verbal skills were sufficiently advanced that she had mastered sarcasm. Yes, much to Ford’s delight we recently started solid foods. Five months old was a little earlier than I had planned to start feeding her solids, but we have been looking for ways to get additional calories in our little munchkin. We followed the tradition of starting with rice cereal, but Cate does not seem pleased with the taste and/or texture. Fortunately, bananas and avocados have been much more successful!

Cate is suspicious of her first taste of rice cereal.

Bananas are much better!

Other notables since our last post include Cate’s first illness….it seems that Cate managed to pick up Fifth Disease (also known as Slapped Cheek), a common childhood virus. Her cheeks were bright red for about a week and while she wasn’t too sick, she was definitely out of sorts. Overall, it wasn’t too bad as far as first illnesses go, but it was pretty sad that Cate obviously didn’t feel so hot and there wasn’t much we could do about it.

Cate continues to roll over (still mostly front to back, with the occasional back to front roll) and her ability to grab objects has increased noticeably in the last month. John and I put her exersaucer together a few weeks ago and she has been busy mastering the various toys. Of course, the exersaucer, like most toys, isn’t really made for children in the fifth percentile for height, so her feet didn’t exactly touch the ground when we first starting using it….nothing a phone book couldn’t fix, though!

Cate enjoys playing in her exersaucer.

Too bad her feet don't touch!

At this point, Cate isn’t showing any signs of sitting up. Although she enjoys being on the ground and enjoys standing up (with assistance, of course), something about sitting seems to make her uncomfortable. If you try to make her sit, she makes her whole body straight as a board and puffs out her stomach. As you can imagine, this makes putting her in the car seat lots of fun!

Cate looks cool while spending a Saturday downtown.

My Awesome Husband

Today we found out that John passed the Louisiana bar exam! Cate and I are very proud of him. Our regular baby-sitter Sam was already schedule to come today, so I got to join John for a celebratory lunch downtown with some of his co-workers. Now that Cate is down for the night, we are continuing the celebration by sitting on the couch, drinking beer, and watching football...this is what counts as excitement when you have a five month old!

Rolling Over

In this picture, Cate is all ready for the Saints game with her Saints onesie and Saints socks. If you look closely, you can also see Ford pouting in the background!

At Cate's 3-month checkup (she was actually closer to 3 1/2 months), the pediatrician asked if Cate had shown any signs of rolling over. At the time, Cate was showing absolutely no interest in rolling over. After all, she is perfectly content to be on her back and when she is on her stomach, she is generally too hysterical to even consider rolling over (Cate HATES tummy time). However, Cate suddenly rolled over on Sunday morning!

We were having morning playtime on the floor and when I put Cate on her stomach, she immediately rolled to her back. I thought maybe I had just put her in a funny position, so I put her on her stomach again...and she immediately rolled over! After she did it one more time, I decided this was the real thing and woke John up. Of course, once John was up and watching, Cate wouldn't roll over again. However, she rolled over several more times on Monday morning and John caught the action this time.

On Wednesday, Cate had her 4-month old checkup (she is actually about 4 1/2 months). The pediatrician said that although Cate remains on the petite side, she is doing great. Her stats this months are:

Height: 22.5 inches (5th percentile)
Weight: 11 lbs. (5th percentile)
Head Circumference: 39 cm (5th percentile)

Cate right before rolling over (we have yet to catch her rolling over on film).

Cate enjoys staring at herself in her mirror... notice the large stream of drool coming out of her mouth. So ladylike.

4 Months Old (Updated)

Cate is four months old today!

A day in the life of Cate...

Today, Cate woke up at 7 a.m. and started the day with a delicious bottle (we won't talk about the two times that she got up during the night at 2:30 am and 5:00 am). Then she played on the floor and in her bouncy seat while Allison and John ate breakfast and while Allison ironed a shirt for John to wear to work (what a wonderful wife!). About the time John left for work, Cate was ready to go down for her morning nap. She took a nap from 8:30 to 10. When Cate woke up, Allison and Cate got ready to go to playgroup at Children's Hospital. Allison and Cate went to playgroup from 10:30 to 12. The first thing Cate did ate playgroup was eat...she often wants to eat or sleep instead of playing! After playgroup, Allison and Cate ran a few errands. By the time they got home at 1:30, Cate was ready for a bottle and another nap. Cate's second nap lasted from 1:50 pm to 4:30 pm. When Cate woke up at 4:30 pm, she had another bottle (that was a long nap, after all!) and then Cate and Allison went to the dry cleaners on their way to the park. At the park, Cate and Allison walked for a while and then stopped to put a blanket down on the grass and play. When they got back from the park at 6:00, Cate had another bottle, followed by her nighttime bath. After her bath, Cate got a baby massage, was swaddled, and (yep, you guessed it) had another bottle. Cate was asleep by 7:00 pm.

Cate must have known that I was going to write about today because she was a wonderful, wonderful baby today! Most days don't go quite this smoothly, particularly in the nap department. Other things that were notable about today are that Cate weighed 10 lbs, 12 ounces and that she only wore one outfit today (reflux is still a problem...she went through five outfits yesterday!).

UPDATE: In celebration of being four months old, Cate slept through the night! She slept from 7 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.!!!! Let's hope this is going to become a regular thing!

Evacuation Plan in Action

Just wanted to give everyone an update on where we are....we left New Orleans at 3:30 am on Saturday morning and headed to Birmingham. Although it was tough to get up and leave that early, it didn't take us any longer than usual to get here, so it was definitely worth it. In contrast, friends of ours left New Orleans at 11:30am yesterday (Sunday) and it took them nearly 14 hours to get here (it is normally a 5.5 - 6 hour drive). So far, it looks like the damage to New Orleans isn't too bad, but we are not sure yet when we will be headed home. For now, we are hanging out in Birmingham!