Natalie’s Blog

We had a great time visiting the Bronx Zoo with the Wilkes! Lots of pictures to share…

Natalie and Josie looking at the birds:

Colorful bird:

Natalie waving to the fish:

Josie walking:

Grizzly Bear:

Wort Hog:

Gorilla & admirers:

Snow Leopard with its tail in its mouth:

Josie looking content:

Natalie enjoying a cookie Josie shared with her:

Natalie with her cheeks full of cookie:

Natalie is a waving maniac these days. She first waved about a month ago as a way of greeting me when I came home from work. It was quite a welcome home! Chris was holding her at the time—it was so wonderful that we both were there to witness her first wave. The next day Natalie waved good-bye to Grandma with such vigor that I thought she would wiggle right out of my arms. Since then her waving obsession has grown to the point where she waves excitedly anytime she arrives or leaves someplace, she sees someone new enter a room, she hears the words “hi” or “bye” or if we go up or down the stairs. One time she waved after hearing a dog bark outside. Occasionally if she’s really happy to see someone, she does a double wave with both arms. Sometimes she adds sound effects—ranging from eager ah-ah-ah-ahs to full-on squealing with delight. Every time she waves, she couldn’t look more proud of herself.

Here she is with Auntie Jodi waving to me from the top of a slide. The photo was taken at the municipal playground in Hillsborough. The whole town, including Chris, Jodi, and me helped build it 15 or so years ago.

Thursday night, Natalie slept from 10 pm to 7 am without waking up—her longest stretch yet. What a tease!

Friday night started off fine. I went out to dinner with my mom’s group and Chris had Natalie bathed, read to, and asleep by 9. When I got home around 11:30, we decided to be indulgent and watch an episode of Deadwood, since I had to pump before going to bed anyway. That’s when things started going downhill…

We had barely gotten through the opening credits when Natalie started whimpering. We’ve been trying to use nursing as a last resort to get her back to sleep, at least for the first night-waking, so Chris dashed upstairs. Sometimes he can walk her back to sleep and sometimes she won’t go back to sleep without nursing. This time she fell asleep in his arms, then woke up screaming. So much for that.

We decided to give her some ibuprofen since she’s been teething and figured maybe that’s why she woke up. She’s pretty good about taking medicine during the day, but at night she protests quite loudly. It takes two of us to accomplish the task—one to hold her down, one to shove the medicine in her mouth. After that, I nurse her, and she went back to sleep pretty easily. When I snuck back downstairs, it was 12:30. I guess some people would just go to bed at this point. But Chris and I were determined to have some quality veg time watching TV. Stupid, in retrospect.

This picture doesn’t relate to the story whatsoever, but isn’t she cute? Natalie concentrated very hard on nesting these blocks:

So anyway, no sooner than we got the show back up and running did Natalie start whimpering again. Ugh. Then we heard a THUD. Chris goes flying up the stairs, while I disconnect myself from the pump. I can hear Natalie crying, but not that hard, so I determine even before I get upstairs that she must have fallen out of bed, but was unharmed (our mattress is on the floor). Nevertheless, I hurry in the dark, and stub my toe really hard. I yelped, probably cursed, and generally made a lot of dramatic noise as I tend to do when I’m hurt. I also knocked a fan over, which made quite a crash.

All this noise scared poor Natalie, who became hysterical, even though she already had been starting to calm down after her fall. She was actually shrieking! I held her and trying to comfort her, but my toe was still throbbing and every time I winced Natalie cried more.

We decided that since there was probably no way Natalie was going to sleep after all that trauma and excitement, we might as well take her downstairs and watch Deadwood. Natalie perked up as we went down the stairs and stayed happy and calm while we watched. I was nursing her and a couple of times she almost fell asleep, but resisted.

When the three of us went upstairs for the night, it was around 2 am. Natalie could not fall asleep nursing, so Chris had to walk her until she gave in. For some reason when I walk her, she doesn’t get relaxed. The first time he put her down, she woke up. So he had to walk her, again. It was probably between 2:30 or 3 by the time we all got to sleep.

The next morning, despite missing a significant chunk of sleep, Natalie was happily crawling around at 8:30 am as we dragged ourselves out of bed. Chris looked at Natalie adoringly, turned to me and said, sincerely, “she’s such an angel.” He couldn’t be more right.

Here’s Natalie’s other favorite game with these blocks:

When Natalie falls or gets hurt, she usually only wants Amy. Try as I might to comfort her, there’s nothing like Mommy-love.

But a surprising thing happened this morning after Natalie fell and bumped her head. Amy picked her up, but she reached for me instead! And I got her to stop crying!

Score one for Dad!

(This picture was taken on Father’s Day.)

Natalie saw the pediatrician this morning for a well-baby visit. This is the third doctor we’ve tried from Princeton Nassau Pediatrics. Dr. Hemrajani seemed a little young, but her bedside manner was phenomenal, especially after the last doctor who was curt and didn’t try to engage with Natalie at all.

Here are Natalie’s nine-month growth statistics (which the doctor wrote down in surprisingly neat penmanship!):
Weight: 20 lbs., 4 oz.: 80%
Height: 30 inches: >97% (The doc actually used the term “off the charts”!)

The only negative part of the visit was that Natalie had to get 4 shots! She cried and did her head-jerk thing she does when she’s really hysterical as a result of getting hurt or scared (even after giving her prophylactic ibuprofen). I realized that Natalie isn’t an infant anymore when nursing didn’t comfort her completely. I felt kinda sad about that. Thank goodness for Cheerios, which lived up to their name and cheered her up right away. She fell asleep in the car on the way home and napped for 2 whole hours!

Here she is with band-aids on her legs. I’m not sure why they use band-aids—pulling them off just adds to the pain of the shots and makes her cry all over again. Next time we’ll tell the nurse “no, thanks.”

Natalie turned nine-months-old—she’s now been in the outside world as long as she was in the womb!

Here’s Natalie in utero, at her 20-week ultrasound:

And Natalie now, at nine-months-old (notice her 4 top teeth!):

The Wisniewski’s were in town for a wedding this weekend, so Natalie and Marla had a playdate. Try as we might, we couldn’t get a picture with both babies smiling and looking at the camera.

While Natalie was happy to have her friend visit, we discovered that she has a bit of a competitive streak! She was okay with sharing most of her toys, but she was very possessive of her new tunnel. Here’s the play-by-play:

Marla is innocently trying to go through the tunnel (with Natalie looking rather innocent herself):

Uh oh, now Natalie’s looking desperate:

And she pulls ahead of Marla, making sure she’s the first one through (doesn’t she look proud of herself?):

Later in the afternoon, there was another race through the tunnel…

Here’s Marla trying again to get through the tunnel in peace:

Then I think Natalie tried to pull Marla out by her foot:

Natalie still trying to pull Marla out by her feet, while the three adults in the room watch and take pictures:

Now Natalie’s trying to elbow her way through:

Yikes, it’s getting crazy!:

And both kids tumble out unharmed. Phew!: