Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas to all! I know it's a little belated, but with being away for the holidays last week getting a post up was difficult. I apologize for it being so long in between posts! But I think everyone has been as busy as we have, so you've probably not even had time to check.

For Christmas, we went up to NJ to celebrate with Evan's family. Everyone had a great holiday! We hung out during the day on Christmas Eve, and then went to mass in the afternoon. We then headed back to the house for drinks/appetizers, and then went to a cute Italian restaurant for dinner.

Natalie dressed up:

Pat, Kristin, and Ken Massimine with Natalie:

The Macbeths:

Natalie was not interested in going to sleep on Christmas eve, and instead had fun crawling around the living room, looking at the tree, laughing, and playing with everyone.

Evan then read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" to Natalie. He felt very honored, as it's tradition for his dad to read the story every Christmas Eve!

On Christmas Day, we had breakfast and then fun opening presents. Natalie wasn't very into opening the gifs, but she did have fun looking at everything, playing with toys once they were opened, and mostly ripping up wrapping paper & bows.

Natalie's Uncle Scott decided it was his mission to get as many bows stuck on Natalie as possible. I think at one point we had about 10 of them on there!

The weather was nicer on Christmas Day (although VERY cold), so we bundled Natalie up and took her and Calla for a walk.

During our time there, Natalie got much better at walking! She has even started to lose her fear of going downstairs, much earlier than I would've wished. We tried to get her to practice going down the one stair into her grandparents' family room, but she was hesitant to do it by herself. She did spend a lot of time standing and staring at the step though!

Natalie Walks - With Video!

After a week of trying, we got video of Natalie walking today.



So there we go. Our baby girl taking four or five steps, on her own.

Christmas is going to be fun!

Upright Natalie Videos

Natalie has discovered the joys of being upright. Tonight she took four or five steps on her own. Still, catching it on video has proven elusive, so until we get a really good video, these will have to do.

Here's Natalie cruising around my ottoman.



And trying to walk between mommy and daddy. This would've worked if we'd done it earlier in the day, but by the time we shot this video, she was tired.



And, just a video of me, Natalie and Calla on the couch that I just love.



We promise to keep trying to get a good walking video.

Natalie is walking!

Today Natalie took her first real steps!

This is the first "new thing" that Natalie has done that Evan saw first. He picked her up at daycare today, and she walked towards him! Then when I got home, she walked towards me! She can only take 3-4 steps before toppling over, but it'll come along. I'm just excited that she'll be toddling around for Christmas!

Happy Birthday to Natalie!

Today Natalie turns one year old. I can't believe she's a year already. Last night Evan and I were remembering heading to the hospital at that time last year, to spend the night before being induced on Dec 10. And at 2:30pm, there was Natalie.

Since Natalie's birthday fell on a Wednesday, we celebrated this past Saturday with family & friends.

We had a small party: us, my parents, Kathy & Eric (Natalie's godfather), Peter & Alison (friends) and their son Liam, and Natalie's babysitter Essie and her 3 kids.

Evan made a lasagna, and Essie offered to make the cake. She used to do that semi-professionally - here is the big cake for us, and Natalie's small cake just for her

The cake not only looked beautiful, it was delicious! Essie did an amazing job.

Natalie received lovely presents:
- books (including "Goodnight Moon", a classic!)
- a few toys (mostly involving animals that spin and move!)
- some clothing (adorable!)
- a puzzle (still a little young, but she likes to play with the pieces):

- probably other things that I'm not remembering.
Thanks to all who sent/gave her something - it was so sweet of you all!

Do you like the "bear" outfit above? It was really cold on Sunday so we put her in that to go run some errands. Natalie was great all day while we were out shopping! And she stayed nice and warm. Here are she and I in our hoodies when we got home:

I didn't get to see Natalie until about 3:30 today, but Evan was able to give her happy birthday wishes from both of us this morning (and I did over the phone). We both came home early today, and had a small party at daycare, eating the left-over cake from Saturday at Essie's house with all of the kids. Natalie had a great afternoon nap, then a yummy birthday dinner, playtime with Mommy and Daddy, and a nice bath. She went to bed exhausted. I think that's the sign of a good day. :)

First Christmas Lights

Near my parents' house on the Outer Banks is a house which, two years ago, was named as having the best Christmas light display in the country by the Today Show. We found out the day after Thanksgiving that he already had his lights up. So, Friday night we all headed over to see the lights!

Luckily, since it was so early in the holiday season, it wasn't overly crowded (but we still had to park and walk some). The guy lives almost at the end of a dirt road, so his house is very well placed for the display. I took a ton of pictures; some didn't come out well because of the lighting, but here are some:

It's hard to describe the sheer magnitude of decorations, and I didn't even show here his entire garage, which looks like 50 department store windows exploded inside of it. He must leave much of this stuff up all year; I can't imagine decorating this much each and every year. But it was very cool.

Thanksgiving fun

I hope everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving! We had a great time at the Outer Banks. We celebrated the holiday with my parents, my sister Carrie, and my aunt Linda. And Natalie of course!

Natalie had a great few days. She got to eat a TON of new foods, including mini waffles that were fun to shove in her mouth:


And on thanksgiving:

Natalie ate a ton of foods! Sweet potatoes, macaroni & cheese, turkey, cranberry sauce, corn, mashed potatoes. She liked it all, except for the turkey, and she really liked her Aunt Carrie's home made mac & cheese. Oh, and her first taste of cheesecake went over VERY well. :)

As always, we have lots of pictures of family:

One fun thing we did was take the dogs to a big field near the high school. It's fenced, so they could run around and play ball without risk of running away. They had great fun! And it was an excuse to be outside, and take lots of pictures!

On Friday, we took Natalie to a different park where there were baby swings. She LOVED swinging!

A family update

Sorry about the long time in between posts! I had a HUGE conference (30,000+ people) in Washington DC from Nov 15-19, and that has kept me quite busy (as well as exhausted at night!). Evan came as a guest on Sunday to see my poster, and brought Natalie with him. She met a lot of our friends from New York, as well as former advisors of mine from graduate school. Natalie was very well behaved, and everyone loved meeting her! Monday and Tuesday were VERY long days for me, so Evan was on solo dad duty. On Wednesday, I took Natalie with me to the conference; she was even better behaved than on Sunday and got to meet even more people! The conference itself was very good; I saw a lot of interesting posters, and had some excellent talks with fellow scientists.

Natalie picked up a virus last week, and spiked a fever Wednesday night. She still had one Thursday, so Friday Evan took her to the doctor. Tylenol and lots of rest were the diagnosis; Tylenol took care of the fevers, which stopped Friday, and she slept a TON over the weekend. By Tuesday (two days ago), she was totally back to her old self. We got our happy baby back!

The biggest thing lately is that Natalie is saying real words! They are:
1. "Mama" She says this mostly towards bedtime when she gets a little fussier and wants to be held.
2. "Ca" This is her way of saying Calla. She says it when she sees Calla, or other dark four-footed animals!
3. "Apple" She started saying this at daycare last week, and now says it for lots of stuff, not just apples. But she can identify the flavor - when I gave her apples & blueberries tonight, she looked at me and said apple! What a smart girl!
4. "Up" This started just today. I always say "up" when I pick her up, and it seems Natalie has made the association. So now when you pick her up from the floor, she says up. It's very cute!

When we saw our friends from NYC on Sunday for brunch, my friend Shari gave Natalie a couple of presents, including Leap Frog learning maracas. Here she is playing with one tonight!

Happy Eleven Months!

Natalie turned 11 months old today!

Here are some of her "stats".
Weight: 18 1/2 pounds
Movement: Crawling and climbing everywhere; standing on her own; not walking yet, but very close!
Favorite toys: Fisher Price building blocks, musical octopus

A picture from Saturday (sitting in her chair):

A picture from Sunday (her fall dress and tights):

New explorations

Natalie is really starting to explore, more and more every day. She can now stand on her own for a few seconds, and when she starts to fall and/or sit down, she can catch herself and stand back up. One of her new favorite games is to stand in front of me, smile, and start to fall forward so I have to catch her. What a trusting baby!

Natalie has also figured out how to climb the stairs, and does it whenever she can. We have to keep an eye out, because before we know it she'll be up the first 3! She then turns and looks for us, with a big smile, as if to say "look what I can do!" {Note: I have a video of this, but photobucket won't upload it tonight. I'll try again soon.]

I have another great video I wanted to put up here of Evan playing a fun game with Natalie, but again photobucket isn't working. So, instead here are pictures of Natalie from the past few nights.

And Calla looking cute in her new fall kerchief (thanks Mom!):

Halloween 2008

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope all had a great time. It's nice when a fun holiday like Halloween falls on a weekend!

When Evan and I picked up Natalie on Friday afternoon, Essie had dressed her in one of her kids Halloween outfits from when she was a baby:

This little leopard outfit was too cute! I was happy that she had this to be in during the day. Essie even drew little whiskers on her face!

Here's her during Halloween dinner:

Apparently she was exhibiting her "jazz hands". :)

Then, we got Natalie ready for Halloween night by putting her in the costume I got for her:

I thought since I call her Nattie-bug, this was perfectly appropriate!

Our friends Kathy & Eric came over for the night, so we all headed to the Leesburg Halloween Parade. We missed the first 15 minutes or so, but the rest was pretty good. There were TONS of people there, which made for a lot to look at. Natalie had a ton of fun looking at all of the lights and sounds.We also brought the dogs along (Calla and Ike), and they had fun sniffing each other and the many other dogs there too.
Here are a bunch of pictures from that night:

All in all, a really fun holiday! I can't wait for next Halloween when Natalie can walk around, and maybe go to a few houses!

Natalie Update

Just a quick update on new things with Natalie:
1. She's getting two new teeth! Her front upper teeth are coming in to match the bottom two.
2. Natalie enjoys helping feed herself at meal time, and has started trying more "adult" foods. Over the weekend she had pancake, pieces of rotisserie chicken, a little bit of fried rice mixed with her veggies, and just a teeny bit of ice cream. She also likes to hold her own bottles now, which is super cute.
Favorite foods: Cheerios, Gerber puffs, chicken, any fruits.

3. Natalie is walking with her car more than ever! She has even started learning how to turn corners with it. Natalie has also started to walk with us holding her hands, but she doesn't like that as much.
Favorite toys of the moment: her car walker, her octopus (plays music and says colors in 3 languages), and her blocks.
4. Natalie and Calla are getting along a lot better. Calla lets Natalie grab her collar, and her back, and pull herself up using Calla as balance. And Natalie is learning not to grab Calla's ears or nose. Natalie also really likes to try and get Calla's ball when we play fetch - it wears out both dog and baby!