Crawling towards...everything

As promised, here's a video of Natalie crawling. She's gotten MUCH better at it over the past 2 weeks (yes, I understand that's how it works, but it's still amazing to see the progress). This video is from last night, when she made a bee-line across the living room:


Also, she's in love with her jumper. We moved it from the basement (where it was used VERY occasionally) up to the living room, so she can use it every day. Her swing, which she used to love, is now relegated to basement until she gets big enough to use the swing part of it as a rocking chair (thanks to my aunt Jacki for the convertible swing-to-rocker!). So, here's a video of her rocking out in the jumper:

Sunset Beach, NC

As I said a few days ago, we spent a week at Sunset Beach, NC. Evan and I hadn't been there before, and after a week I would definitely be willing to go back! The actual town is only about 30 min north of North Myrtle Beach, SC, so is just over the NC/SC border. However, where everyone stays is a VERY small island with just a one-lane bridge to get to it. It's so quaint! The island itself is almost entirely houses, with just a small store and rental office at the main road.

Our group stayed in two houses about 1 mile apart. We only had about a block walk to the beach road, then a short walk up the boardwalk to the beach. One of the things I really liked about Sunset Beach is that there are no houses right on the beach; instead, there are extensive dunes and sea grass up to the beach. The beach itself is beautiful - very large sandy beach, and once you go in the water it stays fairly shallow, so even when the waves were more rough, you could still go in if just up to your waist!

We did go to North Myrtle Beach one day for some mini golf, and another day to do some shopping at Barefoot Landing (amazing how much cheesier the whole place is when you're not in college!). We also had dinner out one night, but otherwise took turns cooking. We hung out at the house, played some video games, had fun on the beach, relaxed, played board games, etc. Just a relaxing week!

Of course there are a lot of pictures, and some great videos. So, here comes the onslaught!
First, some pictures of Natalie (and Zabby, too!) being super cute:

Second, pictures of Natalie with various people, as well as some pictures of the adults:

Now, the videos!
The first one is Evan tickling Natalie's feet using the stubble on his face.


This one is me helping Natalie play drums (not real drums, but the ones that go with Rock Band):


And here is Natalie having tons of fun playing with a curtain:

An explanation, and news!

I apologize for the lack of posts over the past 10 days or so. I forgot to mention in the last post that we would be leaving to go to the beach for a week on August 15. We were invited to Sunset Beach, NC by our friend Cody, Natalie's late godmother Jess's husband. His father owns two rental properties, and Cody and Jess had invited a few of us down for the week a few months ago. Despite of, or perhaps because of, Jess's untimely passing, Cody still wanted us all to get together, which everyone was more than happy to do. We had a great time, and were able to honor Jess together, which is very important to all of us, as well as have a relaxing and laid back vacation. We were there from August 16-23, and got back today.

The trip was great. We had 6-7 people in a house, plus two little ones (Natalie and our friend's daughter Zabby, who's almost 3). We were able to spend about 4 days on the beach (not more than that, unfortunately, as we got remnants from Tropical Storm Faye at the end of the week), as well as miniature golf one day, a trip to North Myrtle Beach for shopping, and dinner out once. We had a really good time.

In Natalie-related news, the most exciting thing that happened was...
Natalie started crawling! We got to the beach house, I set her on the ground, and she just started. She's been getting more and more stable all week; it's remarkable to watch. Now, it's time to start baby-proofing our house!

I plan on doing a longer post about the week, including some of the 200+ pictures I took last week, and some great videos. I promise to post a video of Natalie crawling! For now, here are a sampling of pics to show you the fun we had:

The beach and ocean we visited every day:

Evan and Natalie asleep on the beach:

Natalie playing in the baby pool at our house:

The 3 of us on the beach on the last night:

Natalie is on the move!

It finally happened. No, not crawling yet, but tonight...

Natalie sat up all on her own!!

It took me a moment to realize what I had just seen. I said to Evan: "Natalie just pulled herself up to sit!". So, of course he came running and I had to get her to do it again. And again. So, finally we just took a video so everyone can see:


As I said, Natalie isn't crawling yet. But she is inching her way around the floor. Here's a video we took last night of her "inchworming" her way to the remote, one of her favorites:


And finally, here I am showing Natalie how to nicely pet Calla, and telling Calla that Natalie isn't going to hurt her!

They're getting along pretty well, but I feel bad when Natalie does start crawling; poor Calla is just never going to get any rest!

Happy 8 months!

Yesterday, Natalie turned 8 months old. I know I say this every month, but I just can't believe that she's this old already. And so much has happened over the past month! The biggest two things are definitely 1) the appearance of teeth; and 2) almost crawling. We think that there are more teeth on the way, as she's been chewing on ANYTHING she can get ahold of, but no others have come through the gums yet. Natalie is getting closer than ever to crawling, and can definitely shove herself forward now, but no actual continuous crawling movement forward yet!

I do have a bunch of pictures from this weekend, as I hadn't taken any in a while and went a little overboard. :) Here are some of my favorites:

First, my parents visited briefly on Thurs-Sat, as they had a show in DC that they went to Thursday night. Here are my two favorites from that visit.

First, Natalie watching Grandpa Rich sleeping:

Second, Natalie trying to get to Rizzo and the rawhide she was chewing on:

Not to worry, she never actually got there, and we wouldn't have let her. Dogs can be quite protective of their bones - we don't want any accidental biting!

Then on Saturday, we spent a while outside in the backyard. The weather has been so unbelievably beautiful here - we've had the house open since Thursday! So, Saturday after I got home from work we took Natalie and Calla outside to play. Here are a few of my favorites:

Natalie has gotten even better at eating, and really seems to like just about anything we give her! We're very lucky that (so far) she's not picky. Lately, she's started "helping" me feed her. Here's the result:

These are Natalie's "8 month" pictures. The first was from Saturday, the second from Sunday:

Finally, here are just some super cute pics of her from over the past week.

Almost crawling!

I don't know how many of you saw my poll, and didn't really care, so you chose not to vote. Or, many of you may have missed the poll. I put a poll up on Monday to ask what people thought about me putting a video up where Natalie is naked. I was a little mixed about it, as I'm a big proponent of "whatever is on the internet never really goes away!" So, do I want this to potentially be out there forever? Well, I looked at the video, and even though you can't really see much except for her butt, I'm not sure I'm ok with it. So, no naked video on the blog. If you really want to see it, then just email me and let me know.

Instead, I managed to get a pretty good video of Natalie clothed up on her hands and knees the other night. She still isn't quite crawling yet, but she has figured out how to lunge forward while on hands and knees towards whatever she wants. She can only do it once, and then ends up on her belly, and has to start all over again. But, it's one step closer to actual crawling!

Busy busy Macbeths

Let's see...it's been a busy week. Let me give you all an update on each of us!

Abbe: has been working. A lot. I had to go into work last weekend, and will be in all of this weekend as well. That means that out of 13 days, I'll have worked 12! But I'm getting lots of good research done, which should translate into papers (I've currently got two submitted, am working on a review paper with others in my lab, and am starting on two more of my own). Hopefully this will all make a university want to hire me next year! When not working, I'm just trying to spend as much time with Natalie as possible.

Evan: has been great about taking care of Natalie while I've been working. This weekend is definitely a "Daddy weekend". Evan took Natalie with him while doing some canvassing for the Obama campaign - Natalie slept in her stroller through it all! Otherwise, Evan has been busy at work as well, and will be going away for an overnight trip to NYC for work this week (Mon-Tues), so he's enjoying the time with Natalie now before he leaves.

Natalie: is closer than ever to crawling! She can now get her knees up under her very well, and hold herself up on hands and knees for a few seconds, as you can sort of see here:

She's then able to throw herself forward a little bit onto her tummy, but not actually crawl. We're thinking within a couple of weeks! Hopefully we'll be able to get good video to show everyone.

Natalie is sitting up better than ever; so well that we let her sit in the big bath tub all by herself. We were right there with her the whole time, obviously, but only had to catch her a couple of times. She's discovered the fun of playing with toys, and splashing in the water:

And finally, here's just a picture of her looking adorable today:

I think that's about it for the Macbeths this week. Hopefully I'll have more to report on crawling soon, and I'll be doing something other than just working!