Four Months Old Today!

Today is Keelie’s 4-month birthday!!!

Okay, okay – so it has been “forever” since a Keelie Pic Update. Sorry. I know everyone’s life revolves around seeing new pictures of our baby.

We've decided that Keelie gets her hair, feet, lips, and dimpled chin from me, and her eyes and nose from Kori. We have no idea where her ears came from.

As I wrote earlier, she has started to turn over on her own. She’s hitting all sorts of developmental milestones, which is good, considering she’s turning Four Months Old. She’s gaining weight and height, and is where she should be as far as that goes. All of this means she is much more interactive with us, and cute as a button.

Especially when I have work the next day, Kori has been tending to Keelie when she wakes up in the middle of the night. Sometimes, when I’m home and Kori needs more sleep in the morning, I’ll take Keelie out of the bedroom and try to keep her entertained and fed.

For some reason, Keelie likes football - certainly more than me. Must be the colors and movement and men and noise - she likes white noise. Sometimes, when she falls asleep in a noisy room, I want to say “Could everyone please keep it UP?”

So, when Kori is catching some sleep and I am holding Keelie on a Saturday morning, I can try to watch the History Channel, and not hear anything because Keelie is screaming, OR I can watch football with a quiet baby. She quite often prefers that the person holding her walk around the room, and will fuss if they stop. Maybe she's going to be a personal trainer?

Her temperament has improved a lot. We figure she was dealing with some pain and have treated the likely cause. Hopefully, this will make her more comfortable and she can be entertained more by her toys while we do some chores.

Besides holding, feeding, and changing Keelie, what else have we been up to? Not all that much.

Closing out September, I read and reviewed a book for LaughingPlace.com in a short amount of time. Kori was supportive of that, thankfully, and she had some extra homework to do herself, as if tending to Keelie wasn’t enough!

We’ve finally made it back to the main service at church – the first time since Keelie was born. Previously, we’d gone to the group meetings only. This time, we chose going to the main service instead of the group meeting. Then we caught lunch with my mother and Kim, who were clamoring to see Keelie in-person again. Mike and Macon were also there. Blaine is driving now, so he’s scarce. Later that night, Kendra and Steve dropped by. It had been a while since they’d seen Keelie.

During the following week, we dropped in at Pam and Bill’s.

Last Friday, we met up with the Friday Night Group that we’ve only met up with one other time since Keelie’s birth. It was a larger group and a lot of people took their turns holding Keelie. We declined to join the group back at the house after dinner, as it was getting late and who wants a screaming baby in a home theater?

Over the weekend, we went up to my mother’s place for lunch and stayed through dinner so that everyone could see Keelie again. I also got my hair cut. Haircuts are becoming a lot less frequent since I grew “Apart of the Mouse”. Here's a cell phone pic from my mother's place...

We had dinner at Pam and Bill’s again this past week.

We also had some appointments over the last couple of days, including getting Keelie’s 4-month immunization shots. She was very, very upset. We heard a cry we hadn’t heard before! But the good news is that the doctors say she’s doing well overall. They have been very happy with her progress.

We're still getting gifts, and people have been so generous. THANK YOU! We are still trying to get birth announcements out to a few people. Thanks for your patience... Keelie has been quite a handful.

That’s all for now. You can read some of my thoughts about fatherhood over on my personal blog here.

Thanks for reading! You can e-mail us at KEPellman [at] yahoo [dot] com.
-Ken

No Screaming During the Bath, But Then Came the Shots

Last Sunday, Keelie hit the two month mark.

This week was the first time we were able to give Keelie a bath without her screaming her head off. Progress! I’m also enjoying the “Daddy & Keelie” time I get with her after working.

Changes have been afoot while we have been recuperating at home. We really enjoyed our friends from church that would meet as a group called Homecoming. The situation settled into six regular couples, three of us having young kids, and we’d meet weekly in homes. However, the group decided to go in a new direction and was basically absorbed into a larger group that meets on the church campus. One of the Homecoming families is about to move “permanently” to Africa, and they are expecting their second child. We're going to miss them.

Here's Keelie sleeping hard in a "nest" of pillows, Kori couldn't resist taking a picture!

Kori took these shots below when she noticed Keelie rising up off me during Daddy & Keelie time. Shelby couldn’t resist getting into the shots.

A kiss from Shelby?

"More pictures, Mommie?"

"Daddy, why does Mommie take so many pictures?"

Here’s Keelie reaching nine weeks of age on Tuesday, and raising her arms in victory.

Kori, Keelie, and I checked in with the lactation consultants again. Well, I didn’t need to be there, but I was. Things are looking good. Kori is doing a very good job and is producing a lot.

Yesterday, Keelie went to the doctor again so she could get her first shots. Four times, she had to endure needles being stuck into her thighs. Even though it was done as quickly as possible, Keelie was not happy about it. However, she’s doing well at gaining weight and getting longer. For her age, she’s at the 20th percentile for weight (as she was at birth), and 50th percentile for height. For hair, she’s off the charts. And she seemed to be in a good mood for most of the rest of the day. She was probably hoping that she could avoid more shots that way!

Kori ventured out for the first time without Keelie. She ran some errands while I stayed home and had some Daddy & Keelie time. Kori was happy to be fitting back into her “ultra-skinny” jeans. But then, she was looking like her pre-pregnancy self very soon after giving birth.

As you can see below, we’ve started to try out putting things in Keelie’s hair. You know - to get people to notice it. They seem not to see it, otherwise.

For dinner, we met up with Bob and Julie at the PCH Grill, located inside the Paradise Pier Hotel at the Disneyland Resort. They brought a present for Keelie - so nice! We hadn’t seen them in the longest time. The PCH Grill is where Kori and I ate on our first date, and look what happened to us! (Of course, we did go into Disneyland Park, too, on that date).

Finally, I’ll end this post with a picture of a gift that arrived this week for Keelie, sent by Adam, whom I consider a professional and creative mentor (even though he was never a PIO for a County of Los Angeles Department).

Meet Moxy. Now that’s a “stuffed animal”. Thank you, Adam.

As always, you can e-mail us at KEPellman at Yahoo dot com. A note to our less tech-savvy friends and family: By clicking on most of these pictures, you will see a larger version of the same picture.