10 - 11 Months

I haven't written many posts in the last few months since we've been busy-busy-busy with work and life and all things Natalie. Despite my lack of posts, she's been growing up dramatically and reaching all kinds of milestones. She now walks while holding on to our fingers, and this has seemed to be all she's wanted to do for the last week or so. Most of the time there's no goal in sight - no object that she's trying to get to - she just wants to move. Jeremy "runs" with her and she gets so cracked up that she eventually collapses onto the floor before picking herself back up for more.

On October 8th while we were in Blue Ridge, GA for the weekend, she said the word "dog". Jeremy and I both heard it and looked at each other in disbelief, but then she said it again: "dog". She was looking at Jim and Chris's dog, Lucy. Apparently she doesn't think of Milly as a dog ;-). About a week went by before we heard her say it again. I had bought a painting of four dogs and hung it in our bedroom, and later when I was walking by the room with Natalie, she craned her neck trying to see the painting. I stopped and went into the room so she could see it, and she unmistakably said "dog!" with a big grin! She said it over and over again while trying to get close enough to touch the painting. Today she added "duck" to her vocabulary. We've had a lot of rubber duckies around the house lately, so she's been hearing us talk about the ducks. This afternoon Natalie and I were in Bath and Body Works and we came to a shelf with a bunch of rubber duckies on it, and Natalie said "duck!" (Really it sounds more like "duh", which is exactly how she says "dog", but I know she was referring to the ducks this time!). So of course I bought her one of the ducks :-).

And the biggest news of the day is.............. SHE HAS A TOOTH! Here at 11.5 months old, a tooth has finally sprouted, squashing my fears of baby dentures being on our shopping list in 2012. The first tooth to arrive is on the bottom left (from Natalie's point of view).

The past couple of weeks were spent nursing her first ear infection and a case of Hand, Foot, and Mouth virus. This wasn't a very good time for any of us, and we now know that she was teething on top of all this illness. Initially when she was sent home from daycare with a low-grade fever, we thought it was just from teething, so we gave her some Tylenol and sent her back to school. The next week she was sent home with a rash on her legs and we thought it must be allergies. Took her to the doctor and she was diagnosed with the awful HFMD (I hate it that they call it a "disease"... I prefer "virus") AND an ear infection. By the time she woke up the next morning, the rash covered her chest, arms, hands, booty, legs and feet. She was so uncomfortable and fussed quite a bit, but all in all, I'd say she handled it like a trooper. Jeremy stayed home with her all week (since I don't have any days off yet at my new job) and took care of her like a pro. She started getting much, much better after just three days, thankfully.

We've been busy planning her first birthday party. It'll be a circus party (without any clowns, thankyouverymuch), to be held at our house on the big day. I'm excited!!

Raspberries

Today Natalie and I had a raspberry blowing contest in front of the mirror in the bathroom. My baby loves to blow raspberries! I ran to get the camera, and then of course she took it down a notch, but I got this cute video out of it:

9 Months Old

Natalie is 9 months old today! She masterfully crawls around now, moving deftly on all-fours with her belly off of the ground. She had her 9-month doctor visit yesterday and weighed in at 18 lbs 6 oz (50th percentile for weight) and was measured at 28 inches (70th percentile for height). She's a perfectly healthy, beautiful baby girl who is growing and learning every day.

Despite her lack of teeth (she has not a single one yet!), Natalie's doctor advised us to start feeding her table foods, so today she ate some pulled pork and beef brisket (sans sauce) and she loved it! She also ate some green peas, which of course she's previously eaten in pureed form, but this time she just picked up peas and ate them. She also loves "puffs" - the cheerio-type snacks that melt in the mouth. We tried giving her lasagna cut up into tiny little bits, but that just ended up smeared all over her face, arms, legs, etc. It was a mess! But with a name like Lizza, she'll be loving lasagna in no time ;-).

We've had *huge* improvements at daycare! She's once again one of the happiest babies in her class and she doesn't cry anymore when we drop her off. Legacy opened a third baby class last week, so Natalie moved to a different classroom. Instead of being in a class with babies aged 6 weeks to 12 months, she's now in a class for 8-12 month babies. We were worried that the transition to a new room would set her back, but she managed the change fabulously. Luckily some of the babies that were in her last class moved to the new class with her, so I think that helped. One of her teachers is Hispanic, and I told her in my best Spanish that if she wanted to speak Spanish with Natalie all the time, that was just fine with me. She replied with a simple "perfecto", which made me really happy! I'd love for Natalie to get exposure to the Spanish language from a native speaker, instead of just hearing my broken Spanish in my American accent.

Nat has been super talkative for the last few days, constantly babbling combinations of "ba ba ba ba", "da da da da", and "ma ma ma ma". Jeremy swears that tonight she said "ma ma" with purpose, since she was looking at me when she said it. I have my doubts, but you never know!

She's started doing something quite funny but also disruptive to her naps - she tries to sleep sitting up! We saw it for the first time last weekend. I laid her in her crib for a nap and then checked in on her via the video monitor about 10 minutes later. She was sitting up in her crib, sucking her thumb and trying to hold her head up while it bobbled around under the weight of her exhaustion. It was so funny at first and then we realized that she wasn't going to give in, so we had to intervene by going in to lay her down. Her teacher told me that she did this at daycare this week and then I caught her doing it again in her crib at home today. Hopefully she'll figure out that she can't sleep sitting up and she'll go back to sleeping horizontally!

Here's a family picture we took this week:

Do the Inch Worm

Natalie is crawling! Well, she's inch worming. This has been a long time in the making, since her teachers at FIO were telling us back in April that she'd be crawling any day. But now at 8 months she's finally realized how to get where she wants to go, and it is very cute indeed! Here's a video I took of her tonight as she went after my camera case:



Now it's time to baby proof the house!!

Change is good. Life is good!

It's been a while since my last blog post, and a LOT has happened! Natalie's daycare (FIO) announced on June 9th that they would be closing..... on June 30th. We had three measly weeks to find a new daycare for our babe. Our top two daycare centers in-town had impossibly long waiting lists - one had 100 people on the list, and the other had a three year waiting list. Finding a daycare we liked that was also convenient just wasn't going to happen, so we decided that I would quit my job to stay home with Natalie until we figured things out. I started looking for jobs OTP (outside the perimeter, for you non-Atlantians) near Jeremy's office and where there are plenty of daycare centers with immediate openings. I posted my resume on dice.com and got a call the next day (on a Tuesday) from a recruiter about a job in Norcross, then had a phone interview with the company on Thursday, then was called for an in-person interview the following Monday. Ultimately, I had the interview on my first day off of work and I was offered the job the very same day! And they wanted me to start ASAP! I told them I'd need two weeks since we were faced with finding a house to rent in the 'burbs and most importantly, a new daycare for NatNat.

I spent the next few days driving around to look at houses and tour daycare centers. I was less than impressed with the first three centers I toured and was starting to get a little nervous. Then I found Legacy Academy at Berkeley Lake. It reminded me of FIO in that it really felt like a learning center, not just a daycare. Luckily, we also found a great house to rent just 1.5 miles from Legacy! The next several days were spent packing up our house in Midtown, and then we moved to the 'burbs that Friday. Then I started work and Natalie started daycare the following Monday.

WHEW! Now you understand why the blog posts have been few and far between ;-).

I wish I could say that Natalie transitioned to her new daycare seamlessly, but sadly that would be far from the truth. She has developed separation anxiety, which is perfectly normal and expected at her age, but no easier for mom and dad to take. Each morning last week, she started wailing when I got ready to leave her classroom. The first day was the absolute worst. She cried and reached for me until I started crying too and then showed up for my first day of work with puffy eyes and a heavy heart. The rest of the week she did a little better - she sat with the other babies and played while I filled out her journal and put her things away, but the tears came whenever I started to leave. We're hoping and praying that she'll adjust to her new surroundings this week and we can have our happy-at-daycare baby back!

We haven't taken many pictures lately, but here's a cutie from a few weeks ago when she had her first baby pool experience:

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Dear Natalie,

Six months ago today, you came into this world in what turned out to be a surprisingly laid-back childbirth. Maybe the tranquility in the room where you took your first breath influenced your relaxed attitude. Or maybe it's just your fine, fabulous genes that created your calm disposition. Either way, you are truly a sweet and easygoing baby girl, and that has made our job as your parents a very, very enjoyable one.

You are beginning to sit up on your own, and though you still require quite a bit of assistance, we can tell that you are close to sitting independently. You're able to balance when you move front to back, but it's when you teeter off to the side that you end up falling over. It frustrates you a little bit because you want to sit up and play with your toys, so we pick you back up and help you keep your balance.

You tried rice cereal a couple of weeks ago. We had planned on making it from scratch, but since your daycare uses Earth's Best rice cereal, we decided it would be a good idea to use that at home, too. You don't seem to care for it much. You usually "blow raspberries" and spray us with the cereal! But you open your mouth when the spoon gets near and you eat a little bit of the cereal. Today your Dad made a green pea puree for you and we fed you some of that. You weren't all too excited about it, but you didn't spray us with it either. We'll try again tomorrow! We're so excited about making veggies and fruits for you to eat and experiment with, and we hope that eventually you'll enjoy them as much as we enjoy feeding them to you.

We took you to the doctor today for your six-month checkup. You weigh 14 lbs 8 oz, which puts you in the 25th percentile for weight. This is great because you had fallen to the 5th - 10th percentile at your last visits, so it's wonderful to see that you're gaining weight and growing as a healthy baby should be. You also had to get some vaccinations today and you cried just a little bit, but overall you did a fantastic job.

Your daycare teachers still gush about you every day. They love you and treat you as if you were their own child, and that makes your Mom and Dad very happy! We have our first parent/teacher conference next week, and as I was adding your name to the signup sheet, your teacher Natalyn told me, "You already know everything Natalie does is perfection." That's love, my dear!

My first Mother's Day is two days away and I'm so proud to be your mama. You were fearfully and wonderfully made, and I love you very much!

Love,
Tu Mama

Here's a picture from your doctor appointment today:


Here's a picture of you with your teachers Reenita and Natalyn:



This is your first time eating green peas:




And this is you and your mama at Easter:

Fun Saturday!

We've had a beautiful Saturday here in Atlanta! We spent some time in the yard this morning, then came in to try feeding Natalie some rice cereal. We've done this before - the first two attempts were quite unsuccessful and she showed improvement the third time, meaning that she might have possibly swallowed a teeny, tiny bit of the cereal. This time was no different, but even though she's not exactly "eating" the cereal, we're still having a fun time trying to feed it to her :-). Here's a video I took at today's feeding:



We also enjoyed the day by taking a walk around our neighborhood, and we made a stop at Knight Park which is just down the street from our house. Natalie was strapped to Jeremy in the Baby Bjorn, which she just absolutely loves, and they sat on a swing at the playground. Our baby girl sure did look happy!