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.

Active Duty

Our little one is becoming quite the active body (inside Tiffany’s body). Tiffany feels her all the time now, but I’m not that lucky. I’ll put my hand on her stomach and I do feel something, it’s just not what I expected. 

To be honest I’m not really sure what i expected, a kick, a push of my hand, something  more than what I’ve felt so far. What I’m feeling now seems to be a grapefruit rolling around in Tiffany’s lower abdomen. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have felt that before she was pregnant and the sensation I feel is usually followed by a “Did you feel that,” from Tiffany so I’m assuming it’s our little girl doing summersaults.

Our crib and dresser/changer is in, six weeks ahead of schedule. Right now it’s sitting in the warehouse. We’re not sure where we should get it delivered or if we should pick it up. Do we deliver to the new house after we close at the end of next month? Do we deliver to Tiffany’s parents house? Do we pick it up and and bring it to our current house  because we will most likely be hiring movers anyway? For now, it’s in the warehouse. They say they only want to hold it for up to two weeks, but what are they going to do? If they sell it to someone else they would have to give us another set or a refund so I’m not concerned. 

Tiffany heads to Dallas tomorrow to visit the branch there. That will be her last trip for work, I hope. She’s driving too and it’s a 4 hour drive so I’m not thrilled about it, but at this stage in the pregnancy there shouldn’t be any problems. She’ll be back on Friday and there are talks that we will register this weekend. She’s getting pretty anxious. It looks like now we may be having an open house so if we have Chase with us, that’s not really an option but I’m sure it will happen sooner than later.

Tiffany has spent a lot of time doing research for items for the registry. To the untrained eye, like mine, maybe too much time. I think wars were started with less preparation. Anyway, I guess I’m operating under the assumption that we will almost certainly leave something off we could use and even more likely, register for 20 items we find no use for once the baby arrives.

I do think we need to have a solid stroller and car seat, those are two items that we will use every day and that need to be safe. I’m not sure there’s a huge difference from one bouncer or highchair to another, but I’m sure I’ll find out.

I Felt it Move

We’re home again after seeing some friends and family in the northeast, in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It was the little one’s third trip in utero and the first since we found out that we were having a girl. We did buy some baby girl clothes while on vacation and our friends Matt and Andrea got us a nice girl outfit with a Phillies theme as well as a onesy. We bought some dresses for 6-9 months old since they were on clearance now in Philadelphia, but will be nice to have in May and beyond in Texas next year. 

During the past week Tiffany has really started to feel our baby girl move around. One night at Matt and Andrea’s I actually felt it when I put my hand on her stomach during a particularly active sequence. I’m sure it will get easier for me to feel her over the next few weeks. She is most active when Tiffany is laying still because movement supposedly calms babies down in the womb.

We also saw a sonogram of Matt and Andrea’s little boy and a 3-D version of the face, amazing. We are just a few weeks from that. Their due date is about four weeks before ours so if Andrea is two weeks late and Tiffany is two weeks early, we could both have Christmas babies.

We also got to see Bob and Melissa and their two young daughters who were born about 15 months apart. They are very cute and really love Bob and it was interesting to see their different personalities. Emma and Abigail were born less than two years apart and from the same parents yet seem to be almost two completely different people. Both very sweet, but very different mannerisms. This time next year I’ll be dealing with a 7-month old baby girl with her own quirks and mannerisms. 

This weekend we will be celebrating Cameron’s first birthday (Britney and Brian’s son two doors down). It seems like last week that they were bringing him home from the hospital. It’s been fun to watch him grow over the next year and I look forward to doing the same with ours (and seeing more!).

In name news, we’re 95% percent sure on what we will be calling our daughter, but we’re stealing an idea from Matt and Andrea who are not telling anyone their son’s name until he is born. We will be doing the same. My mother was not a fan of that plan at first...her response on the phone when I told her our plan...”WHAAAAAAAAAAAT!!!” Plus, she almost seemed angry until we pointed out that we didn’t need a bunch of monogramed clothes and/or gear and that she did know it’s a girl. I will say that it’s NOT going to be Madison or Addison. We’ll see if our girl starts “answering” to our name in the next few weeks and hopefully I’ll be able to feel her move again soon.