Frustratingly Close

Natalie’s inching ever so closer to crawling, but has yet to put the final pieces together. She’ll get up on all fours and start to sway back and forth and she’ll even climb up my chest if I’m up holding her and she’s facing me, but she can’t seem to put that together on the floor.

Meanwhile, she’ll still try. After a few minutes of effort she’ll get pretty frustrated that she’s not going anywhere and begin to whine. Mind you, this doesn’t keep her from moving across the room. She’ll roll  and roll and slide and can cover ground pretty quickly. She’ll be next to the far wall in the office and a minute later be next to me at the desk, laying like she had been there the whole time. That’s probably 10-12 feet.

I’m looking forward to her beginning to crawl, but at the same time I’m sure she’ll just be motoring all over the house. Her knees are likely going to show some wear from the hardwood floors. 

On the eating front, she’s enjoying rice cereal and fruit twice a day now. We’re using the Gerber First Stage “meals”. So far Natalie is pretty partial to sweet potatoes with green beans and squash in second. She’ll eat almost any of the choices, but doesn’t like carrots at all and will be happy to tell you that if you try to give them to her. She doesn’t even complain about prunes, though we have found that giving her prunes is akin to setting a bomb off in her intestinal tract. It creates some extra special diapers the next day. 

We weighed her a few days ago and she was 16 pounds on the nose so that puts her right on track for 6 months. I believe a child is supposed to be close to twice their birth weight at 6 months or so I’ve heard. We’re 2 weeks away from that appointment, perhaps she’ll be crawling by then. 

Prunes, I knew I was in Trouble

Last night prunes made their debut on Natalie’s dinner menu. We were eating dinner and Tiffany asked me what I thought she was feeding her. It actually looked like chocolate pudding so that was my answer even though I knew we wouldn’t be giving her chocolate pudding . Tiffany started to laugh, barely able to say prunes out loud.

Immediately my mind wandered to when the last time Natalie pooped. It was overnight so not since the early morning. She rarely goes twice in a day now so I knew I would be in for a treat today. Sure enough I pick her up to put her on my lap this morning after eating breakfast and before my feet have even found a permanent spot on the ottoman, I heard a grunt and then felt a pop, a new record.

Turns out it was also a minor blowout so those jammies are heading straight to the wash. I was fortunate that Natalie was not just in a onesy because I surely would have been victimized if she was. I in fact had not intention of changing her out of her pajamas until after she did her deed. So in that respect I made out pretty good. 

Now that she’s eating solid food I work quite fast during a diaper change. The sooner that odor is down in the diaper genie the better so I don’t mess around. A couple diapers have put me on the brink of gagging, which I have never done before and I’ve been in houses that had dead dogs and cat urine all over the carpet so there you go. 

Natalie’s playing on the floor as I type. We put her on her activity mat but it’s not long until she’s rolled her way halfway across the room. She prefers sleeping on her stomach or side now and pretty much tries to flip right over anytime you put her down on her back. It will be interesting to see how far she gets when she starts crawling.

In other news, we removed the safety net from her bathtub as you can see here. She sits at one end while Tiffany washes her now and enjoys splashing around though she doesn’t enjoy getting water in her face when she does. The other picture was taken exactly at five months this past Saturday. She is growing, that’s for sure. Her current diapers say they are for 16-28 pounds, but I find that hard to believe as our friend’s child is almost 2 and still not 28 pounds. We had been told before that the weights on the diapers were pretty much useless, I would tend to agree.

Now it’s nearly time for a bottle and hopefully a nap, and one can only hope I’ve seen the last of the prunes today.

Expanding Waistline

We had a weigh-in last night and Natalie is just a hair shy of 15 pounds. We think she’s gone through a bit of a growth spurt here in the last week or so because she went from not being able to touch the bottom of her exersaucer to where now her feet are pretty much flat. The guidelines suggest that their toes should be touching. We have it on the lowest setting so I’ll be jumping that up a notch over the weekend probably. 

She’s on a steady diet of cereal and baby food now so that might be fueling her growth. As you can see here she enjoys sitting in her high chair, at least most of the time. She can get pretty vocal if you’re not shoveling in the food fast enough. It just depends how hungry she is. She rarely cries, she just has this complaining whine on occasion that lets us know she’s not pleased with what’s going on. She’ll do this sometimes while she’s eating which makes it a fun challenge to keep the cereal or fruit in her mouth.

Of course the introduction of solid foods has taken the diapers to another level. She seems to be having less wet diapers, but while the frequency of the dirty diapers hasn’t increased per say, let’s just the intensity has. On occasion I’ve been close to gagging from the smell. It’s also a lot like a paste that seems to stick to her . Cleaning her up can be all kinds of fun when she feels like rolling around while you’re doing it. Yesterday, I went through six wipes and one diaper pad while changing her though I was pleased none got on her onesy. 

On the crawling front, she seems to be making progress. Natalie has devised a system of movement that predates modern times that is not crawling. She will roll on her side and push her legs into the ground and and slide on her side a few inches at a time. She can do this several times and  when combined with rolling around, she can move a couple of feet. She still gets frustrated when she’s up on all fours and can’t crawl. She is just not supporting her midsection enough with her arms. It does appear that she’s starting to figure it out however.  Maybe she’ll be ready by father’s day.

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.