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!

Feet are the new hands

I caught Natali playing with her toys with her feet. It amazes me how they have to figure out what their feet are and what they are supposed to do with them. Neato!!!!

Look at me!!

Here is Natali's latest trick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hurray for Natali!!

Update

So here is the update on our baby girl. She is always using her hands - reaching for things with both hands - her bottle sometimes or something you put in front of her. She is also using her feet. :) She likes to stick them up straight in the air and move them all around. She is even using them to bat at her toys that are hanging above her. The other day she touched her feet and her knee with her hand!!! I don't know if that was really on purpose or not yet but she still did it. We are still amazed at how fast she changes and her personality seems to show through. Natali loves to laugh and giggle. I can start laughing and then she starts - kind of like the one video I put up a while ago but all the time now. I love making her laugh and so does daddy.

Stuff

These are just some pictures I haven't gotten the time to post yet - just some things that have gone on in the last couple weeks. Enjoy!!!

Fun

Well, I sure am having fun videoing Natali. Here is another good one of her giggling/laughing. It makes me happy.

Check up

Natali's 4 month check up was yesterday. She is 14 pounds even and 24 3/4 inches long. The doctor said Natali looks great! She said that the "thunder thighs" are okay - that they hope to see that because that means the baby is healthy. :) Natali got 3 more injections and 1 oral vaccine. She cried for the shots but not too bad. I looked at her and held her pacifier in while the shots were given. Daddy came with us to the visit - he is good support for me. So thank the Lord for a healthy baby so far!!

Big girl now

Well, Natali slept for the first time last night in her crib. She has been in her bassinet so far and she started to be too big for it. She did good - slept her normal 7 hours and now is napping in the crib. I will try to take a picture soon of this new experience. We have also gone up to the next diaper size- she is now in size 2. Also, she is reaching for things with her hands!!!!! Yes, on purpose. It is amazing watching the process of her learning about what her hands can do. I was changing her today on her changing table and she reached out and grabbed my shirt! Wow. Times flies and our little baby is changing so fast it is hard to believe. She is 4 months today!! Happy Birthday to Natali. :) Hope everyone is having a good week so far.

So Natali is getting louder with her noises that she makes and they are so cute!

the video

Well, I wasn't sure how to add text to the posting of the video. Natali has rolled over a couple times before from her tummy to back, but I haven't been able to catch it. So here is the best I have done so far - I wasn't even expecting her to do it! I was just videoing her for fun. And you can't laugh at me (Rebecca) for the way I talk. :) Have fun! I am so happy I figured out how to add videos.

The latest

So this is Natali's latest thing she is doing - holding her hands in front of her and "playing" with them. She just moves her fingers around and I suppose she is feeling her hands and figuring them out? Whatever this is, she just started doing it a few days ago and it is pretty cute. I don't think she knows what she is doing but that is okay. (Sorry I couldn't get the red eye out) ;)