A little back tracking..

Here is Natali in her dress for the Sunday before Christmas.

More Christmas

Now it was time to have Christmas with my family.
Natali was worn out from all the excitment and fell asleep in Grandpa's arms.
Uncle Michael
Natali got this jumper thing from my mom and dad. She loves it - she goes to town jumping. We love to watch her!

Christmas 2007

Well, I can't believe Christmas was last week already. I have lots of pictures to put on here of Natali's first Christmas. :) We had a good one! Natali especially liked ripping the wrapping paper - she didn't really care about the gifts. She did like any of the tags attached to the gifts though. :) We got Natali a sleeper that says Baby's First Christmas on it which you will see in the pictures. We enjoyed time with both families, Josh's sister and husband and other extended family. Hope everyone had a good and safe holiday.

Good morning daddy!

Natali and her present stash

Natali's first Christmas present! She was concentrating so hard on it!

These are the socks from Aunt Becky. One of the pairs says Little Cowgirl on it! They are really cute.

And no - she didn't get a candy bar for Christmas, but she was really interested in Daddy's candy bar!!!

Uncle Mike

Uncle Michael and the Natali !

I just had to...

put these pictures on here. #1 - Natali is only in her diaper (what baby isn't cute like that?) #2 - she is up thinking about crawling in two of the pictures. Natali gets up on "all fours" and rocks or she might pull up a knee but then fall forwards. She gets a funny face sometimes - it looks like she is really concentrating on going somewhere. (Notice the nice new carpet!!)

Reaching

Natali now either puts her arms out to the side of her or reaches up to me when she wants me to pick her up. :) It is so cute. I am sure it will be not so cute later when thats all she wants is for me to hold her. But for now, I like it. When I come home from work she gets excited and leans forward to me. I love our little girl. Here is a picture of her reaching for me I tried to get.

Playing

Oh how Natali likes to play with things. She wants to touch every thing she sees. This is kind of fun because it is all new to her and interesting. We can give her any old thing like a wrapper from something, a remote control, etc. and she enjoys touching and feeling it. She for sure knows what her bottle is because if she sees it, she reaches for it.

She loves tennis shoes!

This is the pacifier strap. So very interesting.

Of course she always wants to touch the camera if you get close enough.

Time flies...

when life is filled with a 7 month old, working, and the holidays. I can't believe it has been like 2 1/2 weeks since I have blogged. Sorry to those of you who check this page frequently. Please keep checking and don't give up on me! Natali has been more fussy this last week with the tooth/teeth coming in. She isn't sleeping near as well at night. It is like old times when you have to take turns getting up with her at night and rocking her, giving her paci back, or just talk to her - whatever will help her calm down. Tylenol is a big help too. :) I think her other front tooth is just about to pop through - I can see it under her gums.

We are still doing well with the baby food. She eats so much. We have moved up to the stage 2 foods and thank goodness they come in bigger jars. Natali also likes oatmeal and apple juice.

I started going to work 3 days a week instead of just 1 1/2 days. This was the first week for that and it is a lot different. Good though I think. I called around to day care places because we may have to put Natali in one in the next few months. Most waiting lists are until next summer!! Wow! I am going to continue looking into this new territory.

Well, here is a picture of Natali sitting on the floor watching TV. She is so cute when she sits on the floor and plays. She just looks so grown up. :)

A tooth .. a tooth!!!

Yes, ladies and gents, we have a tooth coming in!!! We noticed Natali's gums looked bigger than usual the last few days or so. I felt of her gums this morning and I can feel a tooth!! And you can see it too. I suppose the other front one will be coming soon. This is the bottom left tooth. I am so excited! Josh and I were talking about how much different she will look when her smile has teeth in it. :) Happy Birthday Natali! 7 months!!

Open wide!! She is so funny - she has figured out what the baby food jar means and she get excited. Then, when the spoon comes out, she starts opening her mouth really big. We are having fun with this new phase of her life. One thing I have learned - carrots stain everything!!!!! The spoon, the bib, some of her clothes. Yuck!

Gotta love it!! So messy is this feeding business.

Feeding rice cereal

She is so cute - she opens her mouth in anticipation.

Daddy's turn!

This was her first try at apple juice. She didn't like it at all. She made the funniest face and pulled the bottle out of her mouth. I thought all babies liked apple juice.

So we are feeding Natali some cereal a couple times a day and we will add baby food shortly. Just have to get to the store to buy it.

Sitting up!!!!!

We are very excited to report that Natali is sitting on her own very well now. She cannot get herself in the sitting position, but will stay there if she is helped. It is so neat to see her sit on the floor and play - she looks so much more like a little person!! :) I captured this really cute picture a few days ago. And now just yesterday she started this rocking thing while she is sitting on the floor or in someone's lap. She moves like from the waist and up back and forth - it's pretty cute.

Doctor visit

Natali's doctor visit went pretty good. I had to wait a long time in the room before the doctor got in there. The doctor said Natali looks great and we should start her on some baby food. So I suppose next week will be the week of the first baby food. Anybody have any tricks on getting them from nursing to solid food? :) Actually, I really don't think Natali will have a hard time. She loves to watch us when we are using utensils to eat our food. And we have put spoons in her mouth already and she tried to figure it out. I put a piece of an apple in her mouth the other day and she gummed it for a little while. We'll see.
6 month numbers:
17 lbs 11 ounces
25 1/2 inches long
17 1/2 inches head circumference
We are excited she is growing. She feels like she weighs 20 pounds though!! I will hopefully get some new pictures on here this weekend of her sitting on the floor by herself. It is really cute.
Aunt Rebecca just came in last night from Ohio. She will be staying until Tuesday. We are excited to get to spend time with her.

Pictures

Natali had her pictures taken professionally today. I was really nervous about how she would do because she was really sleepy at home right before it was time to go to the studio. But she did great - smiled all the time for the lady taking the pictures. :) They turned out SO good! Well, at least on the computer they did. It will take about 2 1/2 weeks to get the actual prints back. Hopefully I will be able to scan them and post them on here. I don't know if you can scan professional pictures or not. But anyways. We had a great experience - no screaming or spitting up. Just fun.

Baby babble

So this is Natali in one of her babbling moods. And she is wearing her Halloween outfit.

Happy Halloween!

What is this thing on me anyways?

I love the back of it.

Mom always has to surprise me when she takes my picture.

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.