Caitlin - Birth to 3 Months

Caitlin's Here!

On March 15th 2002 at 10:24am, Caitlin Andrea Rowand greeted the world. She is a healthy, happy baby and is in all respects normal - quite a shocking feat for any offspring of mine. :-) Her vital stats are below. (NOTE: If you visited this page when it was first put up, you might have noticed that the weight had a typo in it - it was 16 lbs instead of 6 lbs. Just a little bit of a difference, there... :-) Also, based on the excellent blood sugars, it has been determined that Caitlin is not diabetic - which is great news since she had a fairly high chance she would be.

The more observant computer geeks out there will recognize that she was born at 1K - very fitting for my daughter. More educated readers will note that she was born on the Ides of March. If you're like I was and have no idea what that really means, check out this site for the details on how meaningless it actually is.

6 lbs 2.4 oz
17 1/2" long
13 1/2" head circumference
Dark hair
Apgar scores: 8 & 9

Blood Sugars:

Time	Level
10:50am	59
11:50am	57
12:20pm	47
1:15pm	48
2:15pm	57
4:00pm	69

Pictures!

We have been given a really cool custom-made baby quilt for Caitlin. The quilt was made by a close friend of ours, Calie Berk, and was completed on a tight schedule so that we could bring Caitlin home from the hospital in it. Click below to see a bigger version of Calie and the quilt.

Below are some pictures from the big day. You can also read the archived pre-birth web page.

Below are pictures from her second day. We also recorded her cry so you can listen to the first or second recording if you'd like. The kid's got good lungs - must come from her Daddy. :-)

More pictures - this time from Day Three. We finally got some good shots of her with her eyes open. She was awake and very alert for about an hour around noon and for about an hour around 5pm - and I was there to capture it. The shot of me with my hand up is when I was trying to get her to look up at the camera. She's already very expressive facially - just like her daddy. I'm sure glad digital cameras allow so many "free" pictures - no film costs or developing charges. :-)

Pictures from Day Four - homecoming day. We brought her home today, and she's resting quietly in her portable crib this afternoon. We have also found out that, like most babies, she likes riding in the car. The last photo needs some explanation - it's of Kathy O'Connell (one of the nurses at the UW Medical Center) and a photographer from the UW Medical Center newspaper. They stopped by to take some pictures of us, so I shot one of them. The reason they stopped by is that I helped Kathy arrange a donation of laptops (pre-installed with Windows XP, of course) from Microsoft to the Ante-Partum/Labor and Deliver wards for use by the patients. Many of these expectant moms are in for days of weeks at a time on strict bed rest, and they had no good way to contact their families and friends. Now, they will have laptops in the room and can email people, play games, and surf the web (both for fun and for important info that all expectant moms will need). This will help to reduce their stress and anxiety level and thus help improve the chances for a healthy baby - when mommy is relaxed and nature can do it's work properly, baby has a much better chance of doing well.

Now that I have Caitlin at home, I set up and shot a quick video of her to post here. There is a short version of the video for those of you on dial-up and there is also a slightly longer version of the video for those of you on broadband. Sorry, but my camera isn't the greatest and I haven't shot much video on it yet, so it's pretty small and grainy. I'm sure I'll get lots of practice soon enough. :-)

Wow. Go a day without adding photos and people think something is wrong. You're all worse than drug addicts - without your daily "Caitlin fix" you get cranky! :-) To keep the masses calm, here are some more photos taken since we got home. You can see the Phil (our male cat) is quite interested in the new arrival, that Caitlin already has her Microsoft hat on, that Caitlin is wide awake and attentive at least part of the day, that she will sleep on our bed quite nicely, that it's snowing here (look real hard at the shot with the trees in the background...), that Deb's sister Sherrie and her husband Howard sent Caitlin a gift basket, and that I've already figured out how to use the computer and hold Caitlin at the same time. The last photo was taken mere minutes before I typed this, and my typing accuracy and speed is almost up to normal this way. Caitlin sleeps through just about anything - even my fast and brutal typing habits... :-)

This batch of photos includes stuff shot over the weekend and through part of the second week, as well as some photos of the gift package that my extended team at work had sent to me. (Thanks, Jason!) This includes Grandpa and Grandma McDaniel's first visit with Caitlin, and our first photo of the three generations of the women on Deb's side of the family.

On Caitlin's 2 week "birthday", we took her in to show her off to my extended team at Microsoft. Check out the visitor badge we got for her. :-) The first two photos were shot at home after the visit, while the others were taken at work by Serguei, one of the people who works for me, and emailed to me later in the day.

We got our Easter photos taken and posted. She got to dress up and go to Church, and she even got her first bath. Jon and Jason were home, and we got another photo of Jason holding his sister - Jon was busy and/or camera shy. I also got one shot of her on Monday at the computer. She's already following in her Daddy's footsteps! :-)

My mother came out for a visit, and we got some photos of Caitlin with her other grandmother. (The smaller photos are from mom's camera.) We also opened all of the gifts from the baby shower my mother had back in NJ. (I was a good sport and held up each item for the camera - Deb was busy taking notes for all the thank you cards...) Mom's friends got us some really nice stuff - and lots of it too. At this rate we won't have to buy Caitlin any clothes for a few more years! We really appreciated all the gifts and can't wait to see Caitlin in some of the outfits - especially the "I love my Daddy" stuff. :-) Deb's sister Sherrie and her husband Howard came to visit while my Mom was here, but they refused to let their photos go on the web. We did get a photo of the "kids camping chair for two" that they gave Caitlin, though.

More photos we've taken. It looks like Lil finally decided to make peace with Caitlin. Also, Deb took Caitlin out for her first trip to visit her west-coat grandparents at their house.

Caitlin has finally started to smile lots and is about ready to learn how to laugh - she's done several "almost a laugh" noises already.

On June 9, 2002 Caitlin was dedicated at our church. Here's are some photos of the event, including a chance photo of our pastor and his wife holding Caitlin after the service was over. (He's in a tie, and she's wearing a light blue dress.) If you know me, you should be able to pick out details of who's-who in the remaining photos. The second set are the ones from Calie's camera.