I've had a very busy week, and hence the lack of blogs. It has been very hectic at work, and this has lead to a long schedule, and not much time with Kara and Katherine. However, I can report the following things:

Katherine is really starting to develop rapidly now. She is becoming self aware, and although I haven't seen it, Kara has told me that on numerous occassions, she stares curiously at her hands, arms, feet, and so forth, trying to examine them and figure out what is going on.

She is also inching closer towards crawling. She sits up really well now, and can sit for long periods of time. She is also going from a sitting to crawling position, but she just doesn't have the strength to pull off a crawl yet. Kara told me that once she also went from sitting to lying on her back in a deliberate motion.

She's really interested in her surrounding, especially the cats. She really likes Maggie, and laughs and gets really animated whenever Maggie is around. Maggie, like all cats, typically maintains a distance just out of reach, but tonight she was game to sniff Katherine and let Katherine touch her very briefly.

She's sleeping like a dream. She goes down without any fuss, reliably, between 8:45 and 9PM and sleeps until at least 6 or 6:30, then stays quietly in her crib awake until it's too much, and she wants some company. Her waking time has been inching a bit earlier, which is a drag. She got up at 6 on Monday, which made for quite a long day for Kara.

Still, we can't seem to regulate the naps during the day the way Ferber advises, so we're giving up for the time being, because the night-time sleep is so good.

I need to be Ferberized myself. I have been burning the midnight oil on work projects, and it really hit me today, unfortunately. I even took a nap when I got home, which is incredibly rare. So then, of course, I get all awake, and can't go to sleep. Arg. Well, I'm off to try anyway.

Ah Father's day. Very, very nice. I blew my diet out of the water with brunch at Johnny D's and dinner at Rudy's. I drank regular coke instead of diet. Kara did the kid bathing and putting down.

I wanted to go out and buy something, but I couldn't get it done. I just got a nice healthy check from my former mortgage company with an escrow settlement, and I figured I could afford some kind of trinket, but as is often the case, I choked, and wound up with nothing.

Nevertheless, we did go out and shop, and picked up some other fun things for the house and so forth. We had Katherine out all day, too long, really, but it was very pleasant because we don't get a chance to do that very much.

And then, well, today happened. Today was OK. There really is no, "crap I have to go to work" kinda thing with me, because I really enjoy my job a lot. I mean, there's a thing where you say, "hey, it'd be nice to have a few days to do something", but with a baby, the dynamic is a bit wierd. Anyway, I worked late today, and Kara had a tough day with Katherine. I could hear her on the phone crying. It was a bit better when I got home, but by the time I made it here, she was just starting the bedtime routine, I hadn't eaten, and so forth. I helped a bit, and we chilled out for a few hours. Now I'm poking around, and will probably try to get a few more work things done.

I've scanned a bunch of the artsy photographs Friday evening. I haven't had a chance to put them up, because they require a lot more effort than the Katherine pictures in her gallery. I usually scan them at 1200 dpi, and they create really large files. Then I have to clean them up a bit. I crop any borders showing, and use Micrografx to remove any dust or other imperfections. But that's about it. I really don't play around with the actual photograph too much. It's very rare that I will adjust contrast or anything else that might detract from the real, scanned photo.

But the files created by the scanner are usually 70 to 100 MB, and loading them and even just cropping them takes awhile, and it's not particularly pleasant work. A few clicks followed by a long wait.

Anyway, I will have them up soon.

I'm not sure why Blogger didn't post last week's entries. There were actually more blogs than usual. I'm hoping that by posting this, I'll trigger the others to go.

Happy Father's Day!

It was my first, and it was OK. We went out to brunch, Kara, Katherine, my Dad, and me. We went to Johnny D's, a usual spot for us. We usually go for brunch there about once a month. It's kid friendly (well, for brunch anyway), and if you go early, like 10ish, before the booze starts flowing, you don't have much of a wait, if anything.

I've been kindof dieting, so having a huge plate of French toast was very rewarding. And I got a nice little card from Katherine (I think her mom might have helped a bit).

Dad is doing OK. Kara ran off to see Gram. I just couldn't do it today. I went last week and it was pretty unpleasant. She's suffering from more pronounced dementia, and it's very hard to have a conversation. So I just spent some time, but she got a little wierd towards the end, and a little wierd with Katherine, and I left soon after.