6 months

So Natali has reached the 6 month mark in her journey of infanthood. Wow. It is hard to believe. I know I say that every month, but it is. She will be a year old before we know what happened. So the new items on her "can do" list: now she is babbling a lot more. Just all of a sudden - boom - she was babbling. Saying "da da ba ba gee ahh". We can tell the difference now there are more consonant sounds with vowel sounds. This is SO cute to see and listen to. I will try to get a video of it sometime and put it on here. We also think maybe she is teething. (How do you really know?) She is chewing way more on her fingers and hands. There are times she would rather have those fingers than the pacifier. :) We will have her 6 month check up in another week and 1/2 so I will give everyone an update then on her weight, etc. Also, today is Halloween so I will post some pictures later tonight of Natali in her costume. I can't wait to show everyone. That's all for now..... the baby girl requires dinner.

New photos

Just sharing some of the latest cute photos. The #1 cutie outfit is from Aunt Rebecca. Actually, all the outfits in these pics are from her. :) Thanks Aunt Becky!!!!

Rollin, Rollin, Rollin

Natali figured out last night that she can roll around the room. :) She rolled in a complete circle in the living room just like she'd been doing it for her whole life. It was pretty funny to watch - she just kept going. I had to keep moving things out of her way. I think maybe she was sort of going after a toy I had on the floor - you will see it in the picture. It is the "Jessie" doll. She started on the blanket and made it to where she is in the photo, then kept it up back to the blanket. A fun milestone we think.

the tree

So, on Monday a storm came through Longview. Half of one of the neighbor's trees decided it would like to snap and end up on our roof. Oh.. and come through the roof into our house. Yes, in our house. I was in bed taking a nap and Josh was in the hallway when it happened. It was VERY scary!!!! We heard a thud and then a couple more thuds which I suppose were the branches coming through the "layers" of the roof/attic/ceiling. Wow what a sight to see. Thank the Lord we are safe. Josh was standing only about 2 feet away from the branch that came in the hallway and our bed where I was is only about 4 feet or so away from the other branch. Natali was in the living room at the other end of the house in her ExerSaucer and didn't know anything every happened. We are blessed to be safe. The tree is gone now and we have tarps on the roof. An insurance adjuster will be out Monday. According to the tree man and the contractor we had come out, the damage is pretty bad. The roof will need to be replaced along with a few trusses (sp?) and the whole ceiling in our bedroom and part of the hallway ceiling. Here are some pictures of the craziness that happened at our home on Monday. :)

Changes

Natali continues to grow and change. She can hold her own bottle now when getting fed. Josh had the bottle on the table the other day ready to feed Natali and she reached her hands out to it. Sure enough, he put her closer and she reached out with both hands and put it to her mouth!! I thought she knew what the bottle was but now we know for sure. She also held her own bottle a couple weeks ago when my mom was babysitting her. She only gets bottle fed a few times a week but she has it figured out now! Also, if you put her pacifier in front of her she either opens her mouth for it or grabs for it with her hands. She can just about put it her mouth on her own if you hand it to her. It amazes me how little babies start to learn all of these things. Just think - we were all this little at some point!

Birthday and new outfits

It was Josh's birthday on Saturday so we had dinner at the Edinger's home. We had a great meal of spaghetti, salad, deviled eggs, bread, and of course dessert!! It was yummy. Here is the birthday boy with his daughter. :)

A couple days ago, we took a picture of Natali in an outfit from Aunt Jenny and Uncle Christian. It was a nice afternoon, so we decided to take it outside in her chair. She is getting so big!!!

Natali got her first try at the Exersaucer the other day and I got some great pictures. The first couple of times, she didn't really know what to do - she cried after about 5 minutes. Now, she likes to play with all the toys and she will stay in there for anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour. Thank you to Cheri and Brian for this great gift!!!

Ranch, cont'd

So I started putting the pics on here as the small size because I am posting so many. But it just doesn't quite give these pictures justice, so I am going to do the rest as the medium. :) Just FYI.

Natali and Aunt Becky - say cheese!

I am pretty sure this was one of the yaks.

It was so awesome how close they were!!

Some water buffalo.

These 2 donkeys followed us for a while because they were getting some of the left over food off of the back of the wagon. Plus, I gave them some extra. :)

Natali is off in la la land not even looking at the huge donkey 2 feet away from her. :)

Of course there had to be a Texas Longhorn.

This was after the wagon ride. The place had lots of other animals - some you could pet and some just to look at. They had some monkeys, alligator, birds, baby ducks and bunnies, etc. Here is Natali with me looking at this baby duck. She reached her hand out to touch it - so cute!

As you can see, this was a really neat place and we took lots of pictures!! Hope you enjoyed them.

Rolling Ridge Ranch, cont'd.

The driver warned us that this dude likes to take the bucket from you. One of the men on the wagon thought he could handle it. As you can see, the animal won!
Hello, do you have some food???
This was an elk bull. He was huge and had massive antlers.

Rolling Ridge Ranch

This was a wonderful place to go!! Of course I love animals, but even if you don't this place was amazing. You pay like $12 per person to ride the wagon which is drawn by 2 big horses. One of the guides takes you around this huge place and you can feed the animals from the wagon. Each person gets a bucket and when you run out, the guide will refill it for you as many times as you need. Then you don't have to worry about being stingy with you animal food. :) The guide doesn't have some speech that he has memorized, just tells you all about each animal and answers any questions. Natali did okay. She seemed to look at the animals a few times. Unfortunately, we went in the afternoon and it got too hot for her and she got pretty fussy near the end. And she was tired and hungry so we did the best we could on a hot, bumpy wagon. Rebecca and I thought this place was so great - I wish we had something like this around here.
(The baby is waking up, I will post pictures at a later time.)

The Akron Zoo

So we visited the Akron Zoo. Here are some of the animals we saw..
We fed the swan and the geese..

The sheep was very interested in seeing if we had food, but sadly we did not.

The tigers were so big and so beautiful.

This pic was too good to resist!!

Natalit was so worn out, we put her in the stroller after she had been out for a while, and she fell sound asleep.

All in all, we had a great zoo trip. Aunt Becky got a good photo with her neice and I got a good photo with my little girl. (do you know who is whom?) :)

(By the way, I am in the first picture, Rebecca is in the black shirt)

5 months old!!!!

Natali is 5 months old now. I can not believe it!! I have so much to catch everyone up on! I have been out of town for a week and came back and have been working and haven't found the time to get on the computer. So... Natali is now flipping from back to belly. :) Josh went in to her room on Friday morning and she was on her belly in her crib!! We knew she was getting close, but she just couldn't get the arm out of the way to get all the way over. So now she does it a lot but is still trying to figure out that she can flip herself to her back again. Oh well. Also, when she is on her belly, she kind of kicks her feet as though she is considering moving/crawling. Oh what a change that will be when we have to worry about her going places. It is fun watching her do this! Natali is 16 1/2 pounds!! She has lots of fat rolls which are cute. Natali took her first plane ride up to Ohio on the 20th. She did very well I thought for an infant. She cried a little bit a couple times but was okay other than that. She got a little freaked out on take off and couldn't figure out where the people were when they talked over the intercom. That was funny. So I will be putting up pictures from Ohio (I have lots) and will show everyone what all the fun things we did were. Sorry for the lengthy gap of blogging!