Yes, She's a Baby. And She's Here for Dinner.

I was never really one to think, “What are they doing in here with a BABY?!” before I had Cate, but now I’ve felt myself becoming a real baby advocate. Obviously, there are places babies shouldn’t be, but I feel like most of the world really ought to be pretty equal opportunity. I haven’t gotten any strange looks from people when we’ve taken Cate places (probably because we don’t take her places she really shouldn’t be) but in general I’ve found that I’ve adopted a, “Hey, she’s a person, too” attitude. In my mind, I hear myself saying to the world, “Look, she’s got as much of a right to be here as you do. And who knows! She may make even more of her life than you have of yours. At this point, she’s never been mean, she’s never hurt anyone’s feelings, she’s never taken advantage of someone else’s weaknesses, and (bonus!) she’s even wearing a really cute outfit.” So, yes, she is a baby. And, yes, she’s here for dinner. Don’t worry about it, world.

Our Little Ballerina!

Cate is going to ballet class with 5-year-old Eliza this week while Eliza's mom watches Cate for the morning. In preparation for her first dance class, we tried on her tutu from Nana Major. Here are a few shots of our little dancer:

Our Little Bookworm!

Cate is very grateful to be the charter member of Grandma's Book of the Month Club! Every month, Cate gets a box of books in the mail from Grandma. This month's books are almost all Easter books! Here are a few photos of Cate checking out a book about bunnies:

A Weekend in St. George

We had a fun such a fun trip to St. George this weekend! Nana and Granddad were in Milwaukee, but we made the trip down to their house and enjoyed every minute of our warm weather getaway. It was 80 degrees down there on Saturday and we opened all the windows in the front room and spent most of the day enjoying the wonder that is indoor-outdoor living.

Cate loved feeling the warm breeze! Unfortunately, we’ve learned that infant sun hats come in only one size. Whatever size it is, it’s too big for babies whose head circumference is in the 20th percentile. It drowns her little face, but we are good parents so we put it on her. We spent most of the weekend watching General Conference for church, but on Saturday afternoon we took a long walk around the golf course. We made delicious barbeque chicken sandwiches on the grill and went on a family date to Dairy Queen on Saturday night. It was after 9 o’clock but still warm enough to enjoy our treats outside. Pure bliss.

California Girl is trying to maintain composure about the fact that we came home to several inches of snow on the ground. Ah, April in Salt Lake …

Cate’s First Pedicure Confession: I’ve been wanting to paint Cate’s toenails since before she was born. Friday afternoon, in anticipation of our weekend getaway to St. George, I could resist the urge no longer. Once I decided it was officially time I couldn’t even wait for Cate to go down for a nap, which I knew would make my task easier. I just got my nail polish and got to work, right in the middle of play time—wiggles and all! It took a few tries and involved several Q-tips with nail polish remover on them, but I did it. Cate’s toe nails are painted! To be honest, I haven’t quite decided if it’s really cute or a little bit trashy, but she got lots of compliments when she was rolling sock-less in St. George this weekend!

It was hard to get a photo of her toes, but here is my best shot:

Home Again, Home Again … For several weeks now we have noticed that Cate just loves being at home. It’s hard to describe how you can tell what an infant prefers, but whenever we come home after any length of time away, she is so happy and relaxed. We could tell this even before she could smile, but now that she is smiling and babbling so much it is very obvious. She’s no trouble at all when we go away overnight, but boy is she happy to get home! We’ve started taking her right in to her room when we get home, and she just looks around and smiles and coos and every muscle in her little body relaxes a little bit. Tonight as we were all hanging out in Cate’s room right after we got home Sam said, “Seeing her so happy here is the best part of coming home.” I couldn’t agree more. We’re glad she likes it here.

Ice Cream, Ice Cream, We All Scream for Ice Cream! Don’t tell, but we gave Cate her first bite of ice cream this weekend! There we were at Dairy Queen, and I just couldn’t resist! I took my extra long spoon from my mini blizzard, put about 1/100th of a teaspoon of Sam’s vanilla on the spoon and put it right up to her adorable little lips. She—she, who loves anything having do with eating, her eating, us eating—stuck her little tongue out, made contact with the frozen deliciousness, did kind of a funky thing with her lips, and just like that, her first taste of ice cream was over.

For about half a second I had a second thought about what I’d done (knowing, you know, that the parenting books definitely say no ice cream until your kid is three or something like that, and even then, no processed sugar, for Heaven’s sake!). But I got over that pretty quickly.

I actually love thinking about that moment, Cate in her little blue polo shirt onesie and her cream colored bow, my handsome husband, and me … all sitting outside pretending it was summer, eating ice cream after dark on one of those still-slightly-sticky-from-the-last-family plastic tables with the benches attached. This, I thought, is what it's all about.

Rollin', Rollin', Rollin' ...

Cate rolled over last night! We were so surprised. It seemed like she was getting close, but my last words before she made her big move were, "I bet in another month or so she'll have this!" First, she rolled to her right. We were so excited we smiled and told her how great she was at rolling over. We put her back on her tummy, and she triumphantly rolled to her left. This video is of her third time:

Movie Star!

We've taken a few more videos of Cate, and here they are:

First, Tummy Time:

And next, A Chat with Daddy:

Our little chatter box is more and more fun every day!

March Madness

In honor of Coach K's 900th win, here is a photo of my two favorite Duke fans. This photo was taken the night of the Duke-Carolina game that was played at Cameron Indoor Stadium in February. It seems hard to believe, but I was a student at Duke when Coach K won his 500th game. I even bought the commemorative t-shirt. You can bet Sam and Cate will be wearing these outfits again Thursday night when the Blue Devils take on Arizona: