Overdue update on Katelyn

Last Updated on September 30, 2010 by Dave Farquhar

I actually saw Katelyn last night. She’s growing. She’s now about six months old. Her brother, Tommy, weighs 15 pounds, 2 ounces. Katie weighs just over 12 pounds. She’s not eating too well though.
I’ve told a couple of people privately that Katelyn has a breathing tube, but I was wrong about that. It’s a feeding tube. When I saw her, she was awake and as aware of her surroundings as you could expect any six-month-old to be. She was the center of attention and seemed to enjoy it.

I’m making a short documentary about her. I’ve got some good footage. I filmed her baptism, about five months ago, and I’ve got that. The camera at church is amazing so it looks good, and the camera was hooked in to the house audio, so the audio is perfect. I’ve got pastor’s tears and his voice quaking as he baptized her.

I’ve also got tape I shot back in January as their small-group was meeting. Mostly it looks like what it was: a room full of adults. But I got some good shots of Karin just being a mom, and the group praying for Katelyn, and I caught some stories on audio that I’ll probably clean up and use. (The acoustics in that room were awful, so I’ll have to clean up the audio).

I’ve been watching John and Karin’s home movies. There are some shots of Katie and Tommy together, some shots of them feeding Katie, lots of shots of them burping or sleeping and/or chomping on pacifiers–the things you’d expect babies to do. I found a little footage where Katie appeared to be having trouble breathing, which illustrates the severity of her situation at the time.

But if you want to talk severity, we’ve got some shots of her in the hospital with more tubes and wires coming out of her than out of most of my computers. I’ll have to do some editing on that shot. I want to convey her being in the hospital, but I don’t want to gross people out and I don’t want to make anything that’ll embarrass her when she’s older.

I’m more concerned on the latter point. I can’t watch ER because it grosses me out, and that footage didn’t bother me.

There were also a few shots of the family dogs. The best stories are about kids and dogs. But I haven’t found an excuse yet to get a dog into it. But trust me. If there’s a way, I’ll find it. If there’s a shot of Katelyn with one of the family dogs, it’s so in there.

The challenge here is that people sitting in front of the camera talking aren’t especially interesting. So you want to find some other video that somehow ties in to what they’re talking about, or, better yet, tells more of the story. But babies don’t tell much of the story, not without considerable help.

My job is to be that help.