Birthday Wishes

It was my hope that Natalie would start crawling this past Sunday, my birthday. No such luck. Truth be told, she’s probably not that close. She’s good at flipping herself over and getting up on all fours, but that is usually followed by a lot of flailing around and some verbal frustration. Either way she is starting to like to be on her activity mat more and more.

My birthday weekend did mark the beginning of Natalie sleeping in her crib at night in the nursery. On Saturday night, she even slept through the night which is getting a little more rare now that she seems to be eating more. She’s also started on solid foods, first some rice cereal and now we are mixing in some fruit. Sunday night, Tiffany’s mom was feeding her when we were all done dinner. As you can see here some visual coaching appears to help.

She’s also eating from her high chair now. I got the pleasure of putting that together on Friday or Saturday. It’s a high chair, booster seat, child seat and chair. It’s a 4-in-1 setup, not sure if I got the name of all four parts right though. Anyway, all the pieces do not get used so it made putting it together a little more complicated. It also continued a theme that I’m noticing in instructions lately. 

It seems as though some companies in a move to save time and money have stopped printing written instructions at all and have decided to just use pictures with symbols which is always a fun adventure. I suppose this saves them from writing instructions in four languages which I’ve seen, 50 pages of instructions, 8 of which are in english. I guess it’s crazy to think that if you buy a product in the United States, the instructions should be in english and english alone. Likewise, if you live in France or Mexico, the directions should be in french or spanish respectively. I know, crazy. I knew things were going down a bad path when the circulars here started having coupons that were both in english and spanish. I guess I should be thanking these companies, it’s pretty easy to learn Spanish when you have the English translation right next to it. That’s probably why they print them in both so hispanic folks can work on their english while putting together their bookcase from IKEA. Some might say that if you don’t offer the spanish option, folks might actually have to learn english and become better assimilated...Another crazy thought...But i digress.

Tiffany’s aunt headed to the airport today, but her grandparents remain in town for now. As retirees they have no set time to return to Virginia so hopefully they will spend another week or two. Her aunt seemed to have a good time. She got to use our guest level (the second floor) and seemed comfortable. Chase enjoyed her company as well. 

A sad development is that today appears to be the last day afloat for the “It’s a Girl” giant foot balloon I got at the hospital gift shop the day after Natalie was born. It was purchased on January 12, it appears it will be laid to rest on May 25, that’s 132 days for those keeping score.  A pretty good life span as far as a mylar balloon is concerned.