Monkey Business

Since getting back from our trip Natalie has become more and more active. Seen here in her “cage” as Tiffany calls it, she could probably crawl the length of our house in a shade under two minutes. She’s becoming quite the little monkey, pulling herself up on things (i.e. the couch, chairs, the cage) and making us wonder how long it will be until she is walking.

It seems really early to think she’s going to be walking soon, but she stands up pretty well and only sits when she’s out of gas. Personally, I wish she would sit still a little more often. If we’re outside the house, she’ll have no problem sitting on our lap for extended periods of time, but at home, forget it. 

Currently, she’s pulled herself up and is standing inside the cage whining despite the fact that she has plenty of toys in there. It’s getting close to a morning snack as well. She woke up last night at about 2. That’s pretty rare but she’ll do that a couple of times a month. I think it might be when she’s going through a growth spurt. 

We recently invested in some padded color squares for Natalie to play on as well. Area rugs don’t provide much cushion for a toddler falling all over themselves and we had heard enough thuds to know we were only going to avoid a somewhat serious injury so long. The issue is that it’s not incased so she’ll crawl right off and go for the baskets under the TV or pretty much anything else we don’t want her to mess with, hence the need for the cage.

She’s also about had it with her activity center in which she stands. She’ll even do leg lifts to avoid being put down in it. It’s pretty impressive actually. She will show some patience in her high chair while Tiffany prepares dinner so that’s nice. I think she knows it’s because she’s about to be fed. We have to be careful there though because she will only wait so long. After about 10 minutes she’ll start “chatting” as if to say, “I’m waiting over here.” Then after dinner she can get a little fussy if we don’t get her in her bath relatively quickly.

I think she’s ready for her morning bottle so that will be all for now.

Leaving On a Jet Plane

We’re getting ready to accompany Natalie on her first trip outside Texas. I feel more like a pack mule than anyone going on a trip himself. Tiffany started to get things together on Saturday for this trip. Typically, we pack the night before, not days ahead, like we do do since we our only our daughter’s entourage. Natalie is probably bringing more than her own weight in food, accessories and clothing. 

Tomorrow I should he carrying my backpack, our camera bag, my suitcase, the car seat and base and potentially the stroller depending who’s holding Natalie, what she’s sitting in and how we’re moving her around. I’m working on growing another arm.Typically we like to fly early in the morning, first flight, less chance for delay. That’s not the case tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will be taking off at 7:15 PM CST or 8:15 EST so it will make for a long day, but we’re hoping that Natalie will sleep most of the flight since she is usually in bed and asleep by 7:30. Of course the later departure opens up the possibility of flight delay, especially since it looks like there is a decent chance of a heavy thunderstorm tomorrow night despite the fact that it’s rained maybe three times in the last 4 months here. I also checked the weather in the northeast for the week this morning and wouldn’t you know it, they’re going to be in the midst of heatwave this week with highs near 100 by the weekend. Just when we think we’re getting out of the Texas heat. 

Natalie must have figured out she hit 6 months last week because she is progressing pretty rapidly now. She sits up by herself all the time and is now pulling herself up on the couch and looked to be figuring out the crib so I lowered that yesterday. Her crawling is progressing as she’s starting to move better with her feet and hands in tandem. 

At her doctor’s appointment on Thursday Natalie weighed in at 16.2 pounds and measured 27 inches. That puts her at the 51st percentile in weight and 89th percentile in length so we may have a tall one on our hands. She goes back at 9 month so we’ll see if she stays on track. I think I read somewhere that a baby is suppose to be twice her body weight at birth by 6 months. That would have put her at 17 pounds so she’s definitely shy of that, but she did lose a lot of weight in the hospital before we left.

Of course with the activity level increasing, she’s starting to explore the house on her own more. I put her on the floor in her room for two minutes the other night while I got her bath ready and I turn around and she had crawled out of her room and into the bathroom. I guess she was ready for her bath. 

She has plenty of toys to play with but her favorites are any electrical chord, shoes, my cell phone and the remote control. I swear you could have 30 toys on the ground and one thing you prefer she not go for and sure enough, she’ll find that and try to stick it in her mouth. She could learn a lot from Chase. She’ll throw things at him that are her toys and he won’t go for them. He’s never bothered one of her toys, but will go crazy when he grabs one of his which we leave out less often now. Maybe she’ll pick that up from him over time. For now I’ll settle for her sleeping on the plane.

Easter

It’s been a busy couple weeks with Tiffany’s aunt and my mom visiting. Natalie has certainly had her fair share of attention. These two pics are from Sunday celebrating Easter with her grandparents. On Monday both Tiffany and I went to work and my mom stayed home with Natalie. That turned out to be pretty uneventful as she took two pretty long naps.

The biggest change lately has been, well, shall we say her digestion. She’s not producing has many diapers as she was, at least the extra dirty kind if you get my drift. We have read that it’s not all that uncommon for breast fed babies to go two or three days between “dirty diapers”. Over the past couple weeks she has skipped a day pretty regularly but yesterday by 6 in the evening she was approaching day 3. Just as I was trying to figure out exactly when the last time she went was, I felt a rumble beneath my hand (she was sitting on my lap on the couch). Well, it wasn’t long before she was playing the butt flute load and proud and for everyone in a three block radius to here. 

Since Tiffany was making dinner, dear old dad got to discover what her musical interlude had produced. Without getting too specific, let’s just say it was extra special and that it looks like we’ve taken a turn to another level of waste production. Of course this happened on my lap so I was sure to check my shirt and shorts to make sure I was not victimized again. I was in the clear, but Natalie enjoyed my reaction as I changed her, laughing and giggling the entire time. 

Natalie’s collection of toys and apparatus is growing. We added the activity mat a few weeks back if you remember and before Grandma left she purchased the exersaucer. I’m not sure if that’s how you spell it but basically the child sits in it and can turn the seat all the way around to play with different things. Anyway, it’s sitting in the corner of our office right now since she is still a little too young for it.  

Of course Mother’s Day is approaching and the questions have started to come in as to what Natalie will be getting her mom. My response is usually that she doesn’t have too much in her piggy bank so probably nothing that spectacular. :)

I have legs!

Natalie has been moving her legs since she was born obviously, but she’s gotten more and more interested in their capabilities in the last week. We actually hold her hands and she can stand up for a few seconds. More interestingly, and worrying, depending on how you look at it is that she’ll stand up in her bouncer. Last night during dinner I look over and her legs are fully extended with her feet pushing off the base of the bouncer. I understand now why you need to strap babies in to these things. 

She’ll also do what I call her crunches where she pulls her feet and hips back to where her foot can almost go in her mouth. This is particularly helpful when changing a diaper and if I didn’t know better I’d say she was doing it on purpose because when I wipe her butt she’ll smile as she pulls her legs up to her face.  She’s also got the leg portion of crawling down very well. Granted she’s not crawling because she hasn’t figured out that her arms need to move too. There’s a lot of kicking and digging into the rug or my chest and she will move a little but only a few inches before her arms give way since they don’t move in conjunction with the legs.

I’ve also found that I’ve grown to use to the “wetness indicator” on the diapers. Our latest box of diapers don’t have them. It’s a stripe that turns from yellow to blue when the diaper is wet. Seems to me the color change would make more sense the other way, but I digress. Anyway, for some reason even though I bought the same exact box and brand, no wetness indicator. It boggles the mind how many variations of the same diaper you can have from the same company. I’m not going to take the time to count them, but take a look the next time you’re at the store. Check to see how many varieties of Pampers there are in a particular size.

I will say this, whoever came up with the rib that goes around the legs is an absolute genius. That has saved us on numerous occasions from having blowouts. Despite the mind numbing number of choices, the actual design of diapers today is pretty amazing. There’s some sort of technology that pulls the wetness away from them to where it’s barely even touching. This can make it hard to tell when they need to be changed though because Natalie can be dirty for a while before making a fuss. This is where the wetness indicator comes in handy even though there are diapers that are clearly dirty just by looking and feeling, or in some very special cases...smelling. At one point Tiffany’s mom had floated the idea of using cloth diapers....what a horrible, horrible mistake that would have been .

Pretty soon she’ll be ready to graduate from her tummy time mat to an exercise mat. We don’t have one yet and I have mixed feelings about getting one. It’s not that I don’t want to spend the money, it’s that I know that a lot of these toys get used for like 2 months and then you are stuck storing them for the next X years.

Natalie’s been down for a nice nap for already well over an hour so my time here is probably running out. She’s got in the habit of going back to sleep after eating breakfast...wouldn’t we like to all do that? So that’s it for now.