Bath time, fun times!

Happy Birthday Jeff!!

Jeff is __ years old today!!! Hurray!!! (I'm not leaving it blank to be nice or anything... I'm just not sure. If I did know, I'd write it because I'm that kind of son-in-law!)

Katherine, Lyla, and I are very lucky to have Jeff as a dad/grandpa/father-in-law. We love his heart, curiosity and love of learning, musical talents, sense of humor, love for his family, compassion, and energy levels that can keep up with 3 granddaughters!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRANDPA JEFF!!! HUZZAH!! HIP HIP HOORAY!!!

And the pictures:

A special message from Lyla to you

Happy Birthday Allison!!!

Hurray!! Yippee!!! Allison turns one today! I can't believe how big she's gotten, I mean she's walking, climbing on stuff, terrorizing her sister Emily... it's awesome. Katherine and I are so proud to be her aunt and uncle and miss her so much. Can't wait until the next time we see you!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALLISON!!! WOO WOO!!!

Here's a video I pirated from Allison's Faith's blog:

Here's a couple of my favorite photos of Ally:

3.25

Katherine and I went to the funeral of a man from our church earlier this summer and I was touched by a story our pastor told which I'll paraphrase here. A man and his four children were on the way to the funeral of their wife/mother and a large truck blew threw a stop sign almost slamming into the side of their van. After the family had settled down, the father asked the young children would they rather be hit by the truck or by the shadow of the truck? The children replied "the shadow." To which the man said, "Because of Christ's victory over death, death for us is like passing through the shadow of that truck."

Anyway, we both miss Doctor Jones a lot. I keep thinking that things I see out of the corner of my eye are him. They're not. We're doing alright with it, plenty of good things are going on in our life and we have many many things to be joyful about. If you don't believe me, take a look at these pictures of our recent trip to Sandy Pines with our friends the McDowells and the Schalks... yes, this was Lyla's first boat ride.

I lost a friend today

Hey team. Katherine and I are both broken hearted by a rather sudden deterioration in Dr. Jones's health ultimately leading to a decision to put him down. We had noticed this week that he wasn't eating and was much more lethargic and so took him to the vet on Tuesday. Their examination and subsequent x-ray revealed that he had substantial tracheal deflection and fluid in 3/4 of his lungs. The potential causes were either congestive heart failure and/or a growth, but ultimately he was having difficulty breathing and it was only going to get worse. Katherine and I both agreed that we did not want him to suffer the distress of his condition worsening and opted to euthanize him. He passed at approximately 1:30 pm on August 12, 2008.

Doctor Jones was my cat for almost his entire life, ever since my college roommate and his girlfriend brought him home one day in November 1998. He was a great cat, though most people were afraid of him due to his tendency in the early years to run out from hiding behind something and randomly swipe at/bite whomever happened to be in his path. He definitely mellowed as he got older and has been a faithful companion for my entire adult life.

He probably is most notable for two things: his size and for always wearing a tuxedo. He was what you'd call a "large" cat... or a small puma; he wasn't fat, just big. He always looked dapper in his black tuxedo with white socks and always increased the class of whatever he participated in.

Doctor Jones would have turned ten this year. I'm sad that Lyla probably won't remember him though I am glad that I will remember them together, her unmuted fascination with him and his trepid tolerance of her. Katherine and I are not sure how we would have managed the next year or so of Lyla's being mobile enough to get to him but not having developed enough to know to approach him gently. But I do appreciate that recently Doctor Jones would let Lyla get close enough to grab at him, as if he had accepted her as part of the family.

I am also glad at how much Katherine came to love him. I don't know if people understand or appreciate the relationship I had with him. He was my cat, one of the main colors of the tapestry of my life, part of who I am, and in the four years of knowing Katherine I have been blessed to see her love him in much of the same way I do. And although it broke my heart to watch Katherine realize our lack of options yesterday, it's one of the greatest tributes (and thus validation) that he was and will always be part of our family.

I'm dreading having to tell the people that I know love Doctor Jones. Liana, Greg, Pace, A-Man, Coleman, Trixie, Cichy, H-Bar, Jeff, Julie, Ben, Will. Those are the ones that pop into mind right now, but I know there are more. I'm sorry if this how you are finding out. I didn't really plan for this and it may take us a few days to get our act together. Anyway, I plan on scanning a bunch of photos I have of Doctor Jones and putting them up so all of you get a chance to see how handsome he is. But for right now this is the best I can do.

Super cute

Um, Lyla's awesome.






Here she is crawling:

Lyla is eight months old!!

Lyla turns eight months old today, which is hard to believe. I just discovered that I'm already forgetting some of the cute things she's done, so I'm going to make more of an effort to record them here. As of this point, Lyla has complete control of her pacifier. She can pass it from hand to hand, pick it up when she drops it, sometimes without looking. And if she's feeling generous, sometimes she pops it into my mouth while I'm talking to her. It's super cute :) She also gets a big smile on her face when we do "This Little Piggy" and sing "B-I-N-G-O".
She is eating Stage 2 foods now (sort of mushy/chunky) and loving them. Applesauce is a favorite, and bananas. The only thing she hasn't liked at all so far is apricots. She can drink out of a sippy cup and eat Cheerios. She would try to eat everything we do if we would let her. Lyla is very interested in food at all times. She has her bottom front teeth, and I've been expecting the top ones for a few weeks now, but no real signs of them yet.
She loves other kids, and gets very excited when she sees them. We play the most with our next-door-neighbor Ian, and Abbie and Josh from church. Peek-a-boo and pulling hair are the favored games.
Her favorite book right now is Hello Bee. She loves looking at books and banging things together. She responds to her name, and says Mama and Dada, occasionally in the right context. Her absolute favorite thing is to pull herself up on our hands and "walk" around the apartment. She is so proud of herself when she does that, even though she walks like a drunken sailor.
And the newest development is that she crawls!! She put everything together for the first time last week, and is getting more confident by the day. We are loving every minute of this.

Pictures will come tomorrow, and maybe some video. Happy Eighth Month Lyla!!

update: this video was taken a few days ago and shows Lyla at the first stage of crawling (i.e. getting up on her hands and knees). More video of actual crawling to come soon.

The random things you find online.

It's interesting the things you can learn about yourself on the web.

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I really have no frame of reference for testing the validity of this assessment. The closest thing I can compare it to is doing child care for church with Katherine. Let's see, there were on average 15 children, spanning in ages from infant to 12 years old. Katherine would take the younger kids and I would take the older kids, so about 6 kids ages 7 to 12. After 2 hours of playing, corralling, feeding, and sometimes fighting (just kidding, more like getting beat up by) these kids I would be wiped. So yea, I could see myself lasting long enough to take out 22 five year-olds...

The question now becomes how will I use this knowledge?