Putting Natalie to work

Now that she's over 2 years old, it's time that she start earning her keep around here, right?



Turns out that she absolutely LOVES dusting! She gets her own dusting wand, and loved moving things and running the duster over everything. I was actually searching for more things for her to dust, and she wasn't very happy when we had gone over everything in the house. I think it'll be time again to dust at the end of the week, so I'll have her help me again. It actually makes it somewhat more fun for me as well to be showing her how to do it!

Putting Natalie to bed

One of the things I love the most about Natalie being in a big girl bed is that I can snuggle up next to her for her bedtime story, then turn out the light and stroke her hair and talk to her before she falls asleep. Evan took these pictures of me reading "Brown bear, Brown bear" to her last week.

This was a somewhat unique night in two ways. 1) I was all dressed up, as I had just gotten home from a seminar I went to in DC, and I only just managed to get home before bed time. 2) Calla being on the bed. She is very rarely in the room when we do bedtime, but she was excited because I had just gotten home and so she hopped up on the bed with us. It was actually sweet to have both of my girls there with me, and I love how comfortable Natalie is to have Calla curled up on her!

Easter Egg Hunt

Today, we took Natalie to the Leesburg Easter Egg Hunt. We hadn't done it before, but we'll definitely be taking her back next year! They had a huge field area filled with inflatable play areas, a little ferris wheel, balloon animals, face painting; typical carnival type stuff. And 6 different areas roped off for the egg hunt by age. The eggs were just laid out in each area for the kids to run in and pick up as many as they could. You can see the big roped off area behind Natalie (it went all the way to that fence, and off to the right for a while), filled with eggs!

Before her egg hunt though (started at 1:20pm), we went and let her play on the inflatable play areas.

This video is Natalie jumping on her favorite one (I think there were 4 different inflatable play areas), as it was aimed at her age and younger.

We ran into her friend Gemma from daycare, and they had fun playing on the inflatable together.

Right after, Natalie wanted to go on an inflatable with a circus theme. It had a "ladder" to climb up, and three slide options to come down. Here she is climbing the ladder

She did great, but when she got to the top and couldn't see either of us, she freaked out and came back down the ladder. Maybe next year when she's older she'll do better!

I think Natalie had fun on the egg hunt! It took her a few minutes to figure out what was going on, and as you'll see in the video she wanted to stay near me at first, but then she started grabbing eggs. I think we ended up with about 10 of them; fewer than a lot of other kids, but who really cares - you can see by the smile that she had fun!

Then we dumped the eggs out to open them up, as each one had candy or a prize inside.

Then, it was definitely nap time

After her nap, this is how she came downstairs. Nothing like socks on your hands!

And time for more fun with her easter eggs

38 weeks pregnant!

I had my 38 week checkup today. Very exciting: things seem to be progressing! I'm a full 1cm dilated, still about 60% effaced (100% effaced means the cervix is completely thin for the baby to pass through, so I'm more than halfway there). My midwife could feel the baby's head starting to push down on the cervix (I've definitely been feeling that lately), and all of the uncomfortableness I've been feeling (pelvic pain, some light cramping, heavier Braxton-Hicks contractions) are good signs of labor.

Of course there's no way of knowing when the baby boy will actually decide to enter the world, but she seems to think that it'll happen by my due date, which is only 13 days from now! Frankly, I'd be ready for him to come this weekend, but I realize I may have almost 2 more weeks. I'm just happy that I'm already more progressed towards labor than I ever was with Natalie (which is why I had to be induced). Hopefully that means things will continue to progress, and I won't have to be induced.

Don't you love the drool marks in the middle of my stomach? That's from where Natalie was "kissing" her baby brother.

I am going to work tomorrow, as I have a few more things to finish up. However, next week will probably be day-to-day: if I feel good, i'll head in, but if not, I'll be staying home and avoiding the drive.

First weekend of Spring

The first day of spring was absolutely beautiful here! We spent TONS of time outside enjoying the weather this weekend. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures and a few videos from all of the stuff we did this weekend. You can look through the entire album here; I've posted some of my favorites below.

At daycare last week, Essie kept the kids outside as much as possible. I hadn't yet washed Natalie's spring clothes (everything still had tags on it!), so we had to put her in long sleeves and pants on Friday. When we picked her up, she was wearing the dress you see below. It looked adorable with her red polka dot mary janes! We had lots of fun playing inside when we got back home; this is one of my favorite pics, and a new video.

Essie had told me about this great playground/park in Ashburn. We decided to take advantage of the lovely weather on Saturday and take Natalie to go play. The park is GREAT! It's designed for 2-5 year olds, so there aren't a lot of really big kids running around. There are about 8 different jungle gym areas to climb on (the orange and blue one below is the biggest), plus a fake fire truck to "drive", swings, picnic tables, and a walking trail that went over a stream where we were able to see fish and ducks. Natalie had SO much fun! You can see in the album all the great pics I took. I've put a couple of my favorites of Natalie below.

Going down the slide

Fun on the swings, with cool glasses!

Sitting on the fire truck, waiting her turn to "drive" it

Riding on a dinosaur

Unfortunately, with running a couple of errands on the way, and not being able to find the place at first (seriously, there are NO signs), we only had about an hour for her to play before she was practically falling over from being so tired. She did take a 2.5 hour nap, which is WAY longer than she normally takes! After getting up from her nap, she kept asking to go back and play at the park. So, we went back again Sunday afternoon for about 2 hours. I could post a ton of those pics here too, but they're all in the album link above. This picture is probably my favorite.

Crawling through a tunnel

Random pics and video

I found a few pics and video from this month that don't really fit into a themed post, so I thought I'd throw them all into one post together.

Natalie on the floor (the hair is crazy because she had pony tails, but had pulled them down)

This is from a couple of nights ago: snuggling on the couch in her towel after a bath

And here she is on her bike from the other night (the same night as the video in the previous post)

Finally, a video of her from a couple of weeks ago. This is an issue we've been having: she's so excited at the idea of pictures and video that she tries to get behind the camera to "see" what I'm videoing. Of course, since I'm videoing her, it makes getting videos of her difficult! But this one turned out kind of funny.

Finally, good weather!

The weather here in Va is finally starting to feel like spring! The sun has been out this week, and it's reached up into the 60s. At daycare, Essie has been taking the kids outside to play for hours every day. Natalie is loving it. She keeps posting pics of them on facebook having fun on the playground; when I see that at work it makes me wish I was home having fun with Natalie, and not in my windowless lab. So, to make up for my lack of daylight and time with Natalie during the day, Evan and I spent some time outside with Natalie and Calla last night after dinner.

We decided since the weather has gotten nice (even if it starts to rain again, the snow and ice should be over), it was time to take Natalie's big girl bike (that she got for Christmas) outside! So, for the first time last night Natalie got to ride her bike outside. She's still too little to pedal it herself; her feet only just reach the pedals. So, we took turns pushing her up down the sidewalk. At the end of the walk, Natalie took a turn pushing the empty bike.



The reason the bike is veering from side to side is that Natalie is actually the one doing the steering; all we can do is push. So, we're working on getting her to keep the bike pointed straight, and not turning from side to side. It's taking a little while, but she was getting the hang of it by the end!

36 weeks pregnant!

So I'm a little late on this update, as I'm technically 36 weeks and 5 days as of today. Sorry, the rainy weekend made me not want to do much of anything, include get on a computer. So, here's a quick pregnancy update.

I had my 36 week checkup last wednesday. Things look good; I'm up 15 pounds total, and I can hardly believe that's all I've gained. I was so much bigger than this with Natalie. Maybe it's a boy/girl difference? Who knows. But I'll take it either way. I got a bunch of info from the midwives about early labor signs, procedures to follow, etc. I now visit them every week, and we can check to see if things are progressing as they should be.

On Thursday my coworkers threw me a baby shower at work. Evan and Natalie came, which was a lot of fun. I got to show her off! She was such a good kid; very shy for the first 40 minutes or so, but after helping mommy open up presents and eating a little cake, she opened right up to everyone. She looked adorable too (there are pics, but I haven't gotten them from my boss yet).

Since I gave a talk at work that morning, I dressed up for both events too. Here I am after getting home:

And having fun with my big girl:

My baby shower

On Feb 27, my sister and mom threw me a baby shower for our little boy! It was really wonderful of them, particularly Carrie. She did so much work on everything; she got all of the decorations, was in charge of the invites, and organized all of the games. She's definitely excited to have a nephew on the way!

My mom was mostly in charge of the food, which we decided to do as a brunch: bagels, coffee cake, fruit, etc.

A close-up of the adorable monkey cake! Mom did a great job with the icing.

While our guests ended up being very few (only 5 of my friends were able to make it), everyone was amazingly generous. I had friends & family send presents, and the people that came just gave amazing gifts. This was from my friend Kathy: a baby bathtub (we had borrowed one for Natalie, so didn't have one) filled with washcloths & towels!

My friend Renee wasn't able to make it, so she sent a gift. It was adorable! A couple of outfits, socks, and a blanket for the baby, all strung out on a clothesline that she had packed into a gift bag. Such a neat idea!

My mother in law wasn't able to come; she sent me the mobile you can see in the pictures of the baby's room. My aunt and her partner couldn't make it because of the weather; they sent a Target gift card that we will put to good use!

My mom made the baby a beautiful green, yellow and white blanket. It's so soft; I can't wait to use it on his bed!

And here's part of my sister's gift: a paw-print bathrobe with matching washcloths! There's also a paw print towel, and she gave a bunch of other little things too. Like I said, she's super excited to meet her nephew!

 

Natalie: the past 3 weeks

My last few posts have really revolved around the changes we've been making to our house, which made me realize that I had been neglecting putting up photos of Natalie! So, here are ones we've taken of her over the past 3 weeks or so.

Here are Natalie and I relaxing in my chair after a bath. I like how I'm holding her, and she's holding her baby!

I was trying to get a shot of Natalie kissing/hugging my belly, but she looked up towards the camera. Still pretty cute; look at those big eyes!

Here she is in her super-cute bunny pajamas that she got from her great aunt Linda for Christmas.

Here are Natalie and Calla on the couch. You can see she's already getting used to the idea of being a big sister!

And this one is from yesterday. Natalie was sitting on my lap, and she said she wanted to hug her baby brother. Evan was able to get a ton of cute pics; this is one of my favorites.

The new nursery!

So in my last post I showed you Natalie's big girl room. Of course, the biggest reason we did that was to redo her old room (the nursery) for our soon-to-be-son.

Here's a couple of shots of "before" shots of the room before we moved Natalie's things out. It's pretty girly, right? This is what you see opposite from the door, then the next two travel around the room counter clockwise. The crib is next to the door.

Now here are a couple of "transition" shots, taken after all of Natalie's things had been moved out of the room, but we hadn't yet decorated. We did move some of the furniture around, to make the room look different for our son. Basically, we switched the two walls. So now the crib is opposite the door, and along the wall next to the door is the dresser, changing table, and a cabinet that used to be in our basement.

My sister had Natalie for the weekend, which gave Evan and I a chance to finish up the room. I washed all of his clothes (through 3 month size at least!), blankets, sheets, towels, washcloths, etc. so everything is ready for his arrival! We also went to BabiesRUs to finish buying the things we really needed for the room (basically, the bedding). So, here's the almost finished product!

And here's a close-up of the crib with his toys, some new and some that Natalie has given to her brother (like the orange giraffe on the right).

As you can see, the walls are still empty. Above the crib I will be doing some sort of big artwork with his name spelled out, but as we aren't picking a name until he's born, I'll do that on maternity leave. And over the changing table I'm going to hang something, I just have to find the right thing!

Natalie's Big Girl Room!

 On Friday, we had Natalie's "big girl room" furniture delivered. As I said last week, doing this required moving all of the furniture out of the guest room first. Here's what the guest room used to look like: basically a bed against the big wall, with small night table next to it.

The above picture is the wall across from the bed (to the right as you enter the room). Below the candle sconces was a small wooden bookshelf.

And...here it is redesigned as Natalie's new room! This is the view as you enter (the wall on the right is where the candle holders above used to be). We still have a little bookshelf on the right; her dresser is straight ahead.

Natalie's bed is on the same wall as the guest bed used to be, just under the window instead of centered. You can see the member of our household who has made herself the most at home!

And next to the night table, on the same wall, is her wardrobe cabinet with all of her stuffed animals on top.

There are still a couple of things to take care of (finishing touches), but it's just about done! In terms of how she's taken to it, I can't believe how easy it's been. Friday night she asked repeatedly for her crib, so we let her sleep in there again. After spending time with her in there Saturday, we did her bedtime routine on her big girl bed. She asked for her crib once, but I told her we were going to sleep in her big girl bed. Evan and I each went in once when she started crying. I explained to her that her bed was just the same as her crib, and I would come to get her in the morning just like always. She didn't make any noise after that, and slept through the night!

Sunday she took a normal length nap in her bed, and slept in there great last night - no crying at all! Evan said this morning he heard her talking/singing to herself (like normal) when he got out of the shower, and when he went to get her she was in her bed talking to her stuffed animals. Tonight, she couldn't wait to lay down in her bed, under the covers, for story time and then some cuddle time with mommy. I'm amazed at how well this transition has gone, and I'm so proud of my little girl!