Katie at 6 weeks

Having been inspired by Mark Hamm, Heather's younger brother, we have decided to start using a blog set up a long time ago for posting updates and photos of Katie. As you see, she is so completely adorable that we just can't keep up the continual emails required to share her milestones with her enquiring fans everywhere.

Kate is growing up so quickly that we can hardly believe it. We don't know how it is that each successive child seems to grow up faster than the previous one. Kate is no exception. In fact, a few days ago Heather was overheard telling Katie in no uncertain terms that she is not to grow up any more.

Recently we went to the Raspberry Farm in Redu, Belgium which is about 1 hour from home (which is about as far as we drive with the four kids (-:). We had the greatest day. The weather was wonderful and we had so much fun. Of course the kids just love picking the berries and eating as much as they want. Well that, and squishing the berries on their arms and pretending they are bleeding. Redu is world famous for selling old and rare French books and today was their annual street fair where they sell lots of these books - and sell lots of beer. For the event the city had set up several tents with great wooden toys underneath for kids to play with. What a great idea. We came home and made raspberry jam. Later we had two families over for dinner and made two batches of raspberry ice cream. Ymmm!

The weather during our raspberry picking was so warm that we had to put Kate under an umbrella for shade. The temperature was probably around 90 degrees. We can probably count on one hand the days when the sweat drips down the back.

Kate is starting to have much more awake time. We have found out a curious thing about much of our baby furniture. When baby lays on it needles come out of the fabric and stab into the back making it almost impossible to bear. Fortunately the pain entirely disappears when being picked up by Mom or Dad.

Just to give you an idea of how much Katie has grown in the last 5 weeks since she was born we put together this comparison photo. She is wearing the exact same onesie in each picture. Notice how she fills it out completely now and how she's all chubby. So cute. Katie is so so close to smiling. I hope she does it soon. We had her weighed yesterday and she is about 10.5 lbs now.