It might have been love at first sight. From the moment Katie walked into the crowded room, she and Eric Sitzman were focused on each other.

Katie was a freshman. It was her first weekend at the university, her first frat party. Eric, a member of the frat, rarely went to parties.

(They wonder now, a decade later: What were the odds they'd meet?)

You have the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen, she blurted out.

Thanks, he said, surprised.

It was one of the few times he didn't have anything to say, so he walked away.

He doesn't know what was going through his mind, he says now, sitting on a leather couch in their living room in south Lincoln.

"About an hour later," he says, smiling, "I found her again."

Katie is smiling, too. She sits on the floor beside their red-haired baby, who's lying on her back on a pink fleece blanket spread over an ottoman.

The baby's tummy rises and falls too quickly. She breathes with the help of an oxygen tank.

She has spinal muscular atrophy, a rare and terminal genetic disorder, kind of like a "baby Lou Gehrig's disease," Katie explains.

She's missing a chromosome.

She can't be held upright anymore. She turns blue sometimes. She's just getting over yet another case of pneumonia.

The disease is catching up with her.

But she still smiles a lot.

It definitely was love at first sight when Morgan Sitzman was born Dec. 9, five years into their marriage.

From the ultrasound months before, they knew Morgan would be a girl. Eric bought her a pink baseball cap that says "Girls Rule."

"And they do, don't they?" he says in a high voice, patting Morgan's tummy.

He hangs the pink ballcap near the front door, alongside his San Diego Padres ballcaps.

He's a big Padres fan, he says, from his time as a Marine in San Diego.

"I like to hunt and do outdoor things. So people asked me if I was bummed out we were having a girl. I said, 'Are you kidding me?' I thought, 'It's going to be so neat.' I started lifting weights. I thought, 'I'm going to have a girl, so I'm going to be a big, intimidating guy.'"

She weighed 7 pounds, 10 ounces. She seemed perfectly healthy.

He takes a little hand in his big hand.

She has chubby Popeye arms, chubby legs.

Chubby Bubby, he nicknamed her.

Chubby Bubby Bumblesmorf.

Chubby Bubby Bumblsmorf of Bubbytown.

She's officially a red head, even though neither of them are. What are the odds of that?

She has a hot-pink nursery her mom decorated with lambs.

She has a big golden dog named Dinah who lies down between her ottoman and any visitor, to protect her.

She has a jogging stroller her parents strap her into when they jog around the neighborhood.

"She gets excited when I rub sunblock on her," Katie says. "She knows what that means."

She likes the wind on her face.

She has a noise machine that lulls her to sleep. Her favorite setting is the sound of a thunderstorm.

She has a pacifier. She can't hold it. So Katie props it up to her mouth with a soft pink stuffed horse.

She has dark blue eyes that seem to focus on people more than most babies her age do. SMA babies can't move their limbs, Katie says, so they seem to put their effort into their brains and seem extra bright, with a special light in their eyes.

When he got the news in January, Eric stood at the window and stared out a long time at the snow.

He can't remember what was going through his mind.

Katie recalls breaking down when the doctor told her it might be SMA. She had already suspected it because her brother, a pediatrician, had asked her if they'd screened for SMA. Don't Google it, he'd warned. But she did anyway.

Terminal.

Soon after the shock - without formally saying it to each other - Eric and Katie made a vow: This home will not be a morgue.

What are the odds, they wonder, they'd both be carriers of the gene for spinal muscular atrophy?

About 7.5 million Americans are carriers of the recessive gene (about one in 40 adults). When both parents have it, their babies have a 25 percent chance of having the disorder.

One in 6,000 babies are born with it. About 80 percent don't reach their first birthday.

Eric knows he won't ever take Morgan to a Padres game. Katie won't let her mind imagine the 5-year-old Morgan or the 15-year-old Morgan or the shopping trips.

That's why every day is Christmas, Katie says, every day is Morgan's birthday.

That's why every Friday, Eric comes home with two bouquets for his two girls, and he holds Morgan's up to her eyes.

That's why they try to remember everything, like how Chubby Bubby seems to like the bright flowers the most.

"We both just knew instinctively, 'Hey, let's make the best of this for Morgan,'" Eric says. "No way are we in denial. We know exactly what is going to happen. But at the same time, and this point, people pick up on those vibes and that emotion and I don't want that in this house. We can't do that.

"Especially for her."

A few weeks ago, when Eric was about to turn 30, he told Katie the Padres were playing the Cubs in Chicago and airfare was cheap and the neighbor guy, his good friend Cole Hansen - a big Cubs fan - might go.

Could he go, too?

But Katie told Eric: There's no way I'm letting you go.

Eric is a seed rep for Mycogen Seeds. Not long after that, Cole, who works at the same company, invited him to breakfast.

The national sales leader was in town, Cole told Eric, and wanted to talk soybeans.

Eric wanted to sleep in. But he put on his work clothes and walked to Cole's house.

Go on in, Cole's wife told him.

Cole stood there with and a couple other buddies, all of them in Cubs clothes.

Surprise! We're going to the game!

They told him the deal: Katie had conspired with Cole.

Eric ran home and she handed him the bag she'd already packed.

Happy birthday!

He grabbed his Padres cap and said goodbye to his girls.

"With everything that's happened with her, I think you can go one of two ways," Katie says. "It can be real hard on a marriage, or it can bring you closer.

"I think it's brought us closer. We've really leaned on each other, more so than we ever have. We had always been really independent when we were dating, we've always been kind of autonomous and independent and our own person. But this made us more dependent on each other, because we were the only two people in the world who understood what the other was going through."

Katie keeps a journal online.

"I've gotten so many e-mails from other moms who say things like, 'I have three kids. Your whole story makes me realize that when they get sick at night, it's nothing.'

"When you get those kinds of e-mails, you think, 'Wow, she's touched so many lives.' It's not about us. It's about her."

What are the odds that a sad story about a dying baby could be a happy story, too?

Great, when it's about Morgan Sitzman and her smile and her eyes and her parents.

Happy birthday, Chubby Bubby.

Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.