Talking videos

Natalie's Uncle Todd recently asked Evan for me to put up more videos of Natalie talking, as she's "just too cute!" when she does it. We happen to agree. So, tonight I took videos of her, some long, some short. I've put two below. To view them, just click on the video; it will take you to the Picasa website where the video is saved. I'm trying to figure out the best way to post videos on here; this seems to work ok.

This video is from dinner; it has Natalie talking and acting adorably cute. Backstory: I had already taken 3 videos of her, and was watching them on playback on the camera. Natalie wanted to see them, so I let her watch too. That's why she's asking for "more Natalie" at the beginning.

From 09_11_23

And this one is her enjoying her dessert. Can you tell what it is?

From 09_11_23

Great Sunday

We had such an awesome day today!!! This morning, we spent a bunch of time getting housework done - Evan was awesome, and took care of a bunch of the cleaning while I folded laundry and took care of Natalie. The weather was beautiful, so after naptime we took Natalie to the small playground in our development. Here we are walking over to the park (she had to carry the giant leave with her, of course!)

Then we had fun on the playground:

Then this evening we got a little dressed up and went to the Loudoun County Democrats Fall Harvest Dinner. Natalie got to wear her new winter coat, and insisted on bringing her purse. Super cute!

 It was a potluck (we brought brownies by request), and quite yummy! I ate WAY more than I expected, particularly of the desserts. :) Natalie got a little bored, but luckily the dinner was in a meeting room at the Ashburn Fire House, so there were fire trucks to look at! She saw them driving in & out, and got very excited. The firemen even let her and some of the other kids climb around in them. She loved "driving" the truck!

The downside was that while Natalie and I were in the firehouse, Evan was winning an award! He won Volunteer of the Year for the district of Leesburg! I was really happy for him, but so sad that I missed it! We had no idea, or I would've been there for sure. I'm so proud of him, and all the work he has done, as he loves it so much.

Pretty Purple Panda Pajamas

Also: Natalie is doing much better, and getting over her flu slowly but surely. I'm hopeful she'll be fully back to normal by the weekend! The only real issue now is her voice; it's very hoarse, and makes her sound sicker than she is. Except for that and still being more tired than normal, she's almost back to her old self!

Poor sick kid

So, we spent our weekend taking care of super-sick Natalie. The poor kid came down with a sudden high fever (102 F) on Friday morning around 10am (while at daycare). Evan picked her up, I came home, and we took her to the doctor. Obviously we were concerned about H1N1 flu, and since she's in one of the high-risk categories, they did the culture for it. It came up negative, but our doctor let us know that the specificity of the test is pretty poor, so that doesn't absolutely mean she didn't have it, particularly as she had every symptom mentioned. So, we don't know for sure what strain of flu she had, just that it was a nasty one.

She had the high fever the rest of the day Friday, and all through Friday night. She basically just wanted to be held by me, so she slept on me for most of the night. We were in my bed for a while, and on the couch for a while; she was just clinging to me, burning up. I felt so bad for her. She would sleep for anywhere from 45-75 minutes at a time, and then wake up crying until she fell asleep again. I managed to doze on & off, but didn't get much until we put her in her bed around 5am, and then Evan got up with her after that and I was able to sleep until about 9.

Yesterday (saturday), her fever broke about 7am. Finally! She had a pattern of sleep for an hour, wake for an hour, for most of the day. She started doing a bit better last night, and slept in her own bed. She was up a bit at first, but slept through from 11-4am, and then til about 7am, which was good for all of us. Today was a better day; she had a normal nap, we ran an errand to get her out of the house, went on a couple of walks, and she played quite a bit. No more sign of fever; now she's mostly just congested, but even that's starting to drain and she's breathing better. Hopefully we're on the upswing, and over the next 48 hours or so she'll get back to 100%.

Here's a couple of pics of her from the past couple of days. The first is after a bath, when she was pretty happy (and right before she threw the towel off and had some naked time), and the second is playing with her drum today.

Pregnancy Week 19

Let's do the fun part of this first! I had my second trimester ultrasound today, and we found out....

IT'S A BOY!

That's right, Natalie is getting a baby brother. I'm excited - we'll have one of each! And now I get to shop in both sides of the kids' clothing section. Baby boy stuff is pretty cute, and I was always jealous of boys getting to wear all of the cute safari animals. Now my baby boy gets to wear them!

He's nice & healthy - measuring up exactly as he should (11oz), all the parts are there and in working order! The due date is still dead on for April 7. It's very unlikely to change at this point.

The ultrasound technician was wonderful, and we got an entire CD of pictures! So, I'm showing some of them to you. First off are the "normal" black & white ultrasound pics. First is a profile of the head (facing up).

He had his arms up by his face for a lot of the photos - nearly looks like he's sucking his thumb!

Here's a cool shot of his leg and foot

And here's the evidence that he's a boy (the middle part sticking out are his parts, with legs on either side

 As great as the black-and-white shots are, they also showed us some 4D photos! Technology is so cool. It's amazing to me that at 19 weeks (not even half way to birth) the fetus already looks so much like a baby. In the first one you can see his face, and it's obvious to me that he has the same nose as Natalie! I can already tell they have that same feature! So cool. In the second you can't see his face, but the whole body shot is super cool.

Sorry about the white

If you've checked the blog in the past few days, you probably noticed that the background wasn't coming up, so everything was just boring white. I had only been checking the blog at work, and so I thought it was just a Mac problem (as I'd been having problems with my work computer and a couple of other websites). Since I'm home today, I finally went to the website (hotbliggityblog) where I got the fancier backgrounds. Turns out that it was a problem with them, and I had to re-enter my html code. Decided since I was doing that anyway, why not get a new background?!

I do like getting backgrounds from this website, as they have seasonal ones as well. It's not quite close enough to winter to do a winter background yet, but I will be shortly! For now, enjoy the blue/green. :)

Job applications

Today I finished applying for the last of 4 faculty positions for next Fall (2010). I don't really want to say here exactly which schools they are, in case this website gets found on a Google Search, but I can tell people privately if you'd like. I'm excited about all 4 (although two are definitely my top choices), and hope that the job search turns out better this year than last year (when I interviewed but didn't get hired).

Two of the deadlines have already past (one late October, one Nov 1), one deadline is Nov 15, and the last Nov 30. So, I'm hopeful to hear something regarding phone interviews from the early two before Christmas, and it might be after the new year before I hear something from the others (or even from any of them; academia is SLOOOOOOOW). I'll keep everyone updated!

Speaking of updates, there will be a pregnancy update tomorrow, so tune in...

And, this is my 201st post! That's averaging me about 100/year since I started this thing, which is about 1 every 3-4 days (ish). Not bad! I obviously have some high posting and low posting times, but I try for at least 1-2/week,  and I seem to be meeting that. Hooray!

Happy Halloween!

Natalie was a mouse this year for Halloween. I have tons of great pictures of her. The first ones are from the Halloween party at My Gym last Wednesday.

This last photo are my friends Nancy with her son Will (left) and Stephanie with her son Owen (right).

We spent Halloween weekend at my parents' house. Natalie had two halloween outfits: a daytime non-costume, and then her mouse costume for trick-or-treating.

(both Natalie and Grandpa had fun putting the pumpkin bucket on their heads)

But taking it off is fun too!

Now for trick-or-treating! Here is Mommy the Scientist and her little mouse

My mom got Natalie two different buckets for Halloween, as she liked them both. Natalie likes to have something on both arms, so she went out trick-or-treating with both. A few people commented; they thought it was funny!