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!