Steve Piccolo's Blog » baby

Baby Bop Cake

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 06:48:23 +0000

It’s Kate’s b-day soon, and we were having a party, so Laurel decided to bake a cake for her. She went online and found some clip art of Baby Bop. For those of you who are unversed in children’s TV shows, I’ll tell you that Baby Bop is a friend of Barney the Dinosaur. Kate loves watching Barney and especially Baby Bop (unlike me). Anyway, Laurel found some clip art of Baby Bop, printed it out, and baked an amazing cake based on it. See the picture below.

She told me she wasn’t sure how it would turn out because she’s not good at this kind of thing. Boy, I’d really like to see what she could do if she only had some talent. Nice work, Laurel!

We’re Having a Boy!

admin — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 03:16:08 +0000

Some of you may know Laurel is pregnant. Well, today we found out she’s going to have a boy. He looks healthy on the ultrasound, so that’s a great thing. The due date is January 17th. So if this pregnancy goes at all like the first one, he’ll probably come in early January. We don’t have many ideas for names yet. Any suggestions?

Our Experience with Shriner’s Hospital in Salt Lake City

admin — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 02:17:00 +0000

As I have posted recently, we took Kate to a specialist at Primary Children’s Medical Center to get her checked out. It turned out she was OK, but as a precaution some x-rays were taken of her hips and we were sent to meet with another specialist at Shriner’s Hospital in Salt Lake. I had heard of Shriner’s but wasn’t really familiar with them. Well, it turns out the hospital is really nice, offers completely free care, and focuses on pediatric orthopedics. When we took Kate, they reassured us that it would not cost anything (even though fortunately we do have health insurance).

If I understand correctly, Shriner’s (at least in Salt Lake) is supported by private donations and volunteers. In particular we saw lots of volunteers from the Elk’s lodge. They were extremely friendly to us and had great customer service. The doctors were extremely competent, too, it seemed.

While this hospital can only serve a small proportion of the health care needs in this state, it was encouraging to see that such an enterprise exists and can function financially. Maybe the U.S. health care system in general can learn some lessons from how they do things.

Lots of Kate Videos

admin — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:44:36 +0000

We posted a bunch of Kate videos. You should be able to get them here. If I said anything embarrassing or used a baby voice in any of the videos (which is very likely), please ignore me.

New Pictures of Kate, Family, and Friends

admin — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:59:21 +0000

I finally got around to putting up the recent pictures of Kate (with Laurel’s help). You can see them by clicking below. She is a photogenic baby if I do say so myself.

BabyKate

Who Does Kate Look Like?

admin — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:12:33 +0000

Laurel put together some baby pictures of us and Kate. Who do you think she looks like??

Kate Is Healthy and Happy

admin — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:36:51 +0000

Some of you know that we had some concerns about Kate’s health recently. Laurel had noticed that one of her legs seemed bigger than the other, so she measured it, and it was about an inch larger. She called the doctor to ask if it was any cause for concern, and they said to bring her in soon. When the doctor saw Kate, he wasn’t alarmed but said asymmetry can indicate a serious problem, so they had her go through some tests to see what they could find or rule out. Well, after meeting with some specialists and having her checked out thoroughly, she is pretty much cleared of any concern. They will still monitor her over the next 6 months to make sure, but things are looking great for her. From what they can tell, she is perfectly healthy.

I’m grateful that Laurel was so perceptive of this and willing to get it checked out, even though it didn’t turn out to be a concern. I vote her for Mother of the Year.

I also wanted to mention something really fun that happened yesterday…Kate has always moved her hands and stuff but never figured out that she can use them for anything (which is normal at this age). Well, yesterday for the first time she reached out and grabbed a toy. I wasn’t home when she did this, but when I got home, she reached out and touched the patch on my shirt. It might not sound like much, but it’s the coolest thing to see her figure that out!

She’s also making lots of noises. She went on for like two minutes yesterday making noises at me.

As you can tell, we’re having a fun time with Kate.

Our Little Blue Light Special

admin — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:55:00 +0000

Our sweet little baby is doing well. We came home from the hospital on Sunday. She has had some minor troubles the past couple days. She is still learning the whole idea of eating, so that’s been a bit of a process.

She also has tested positive for jaundice, which is where a baby’s skin turns a bit yellow due to too much bilirubin in her system. To remedy this, we have to give her phototherapy. This is where she has to lay on a little device with blue lights that “magically” makes the jaundice go away.