15 weeks - 11/22/11 HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Natalie had a lot of things going on this week.  We went up to visit our friends Greg and Shauna and their son Henry.  Of course we have no photos to show you.  They live up in Morrisville, VT which is near Stowe, VT.  They have a really nice place that is really private.  They were having some friends over for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner.  It was yummy!! That was Natalie's first Thanksgiving experience, although I think she was sleeping for most of the dinner part of it.  She did really well in the 3+ hour car ride up and back. 

She also turned 15 weeks this week.  I can't believe that the time is going by soo fast.  I think I say this every week but it is true.  Chris and I were looking at photos of Natalie a few weeks ago in this same chair and her head was at the base of the lambs ears and her feet definitely did not flop over the end.  Some of her 3 month clothing is starting to get a bit tight on her.  She is still talking and smiling up a storm. 

Thursday, we went up to Alton to see the Baker grandparents for our 2nd Thanksgiving.  They got snow in the storm we had on Tuesday night.  We didn't get anything.  There was a line around exit 13 in Rochester where it all of a sudden had snow.  I guess there was a 1 degree difference where the snow occurred and didn't.  Apparently, cousin Kellan loves snow.  He went out to play in it and as soon as he saw his dad throw a snow ball at his mom, he was hooked.  This is actually the 2nd time he has seen snow but the first time was in South Carolina and it melted by noon.  There wasn't a whole lot there either.  This is a whole new experience for him.

Grandma Jean wanted to have a picture of Kellan and Natalie for her Christmas card so here are some attempts.

Kellan seems not so sure about this.  Natalie for some reason stuck her hand out in all the ones on the couch. 

Then we switched to the leather chair.  I love Kellan's face.

What a pair of cuties!!

He was doing so well helping her sit up.

And we got it!

"I am done!" he says.  Meanwhile Natalie is slumping over in the background.

Natalie and Auntie Christina

Natalie would rather watch TV then look at the camera.

Friday evening, we headed over to Westmoreland to visit Natalie's Rancourt grandparents for our 3rd and final Thanksgiving.  Since Uncle Chad had to work Friday, this worked out perfect.  Chad actually held Natalie by force.  Mom and I were getting ready to go to the Keene High School Craft Fair and Chad was sitting down.  I plunked Natalie on him and he held her up.  I do not have photographic evidence, but Mom did get to see him hold her.  At Christmas we will have to get good photos of all of them to put in her baby book.  Here is Natalie with Grandpa Bill.

   

Grandpa with his 2 grandbabies.

Uncle Chad got mom and dad a new computer so that they could Skype with us.  They have a webcam and everything.  We tried it out this afternoon and it worked great.  So exciting that we will be able to skype with them now. 
When we got home this afternoon, the streets were blocked off because of a holiday parade.  It started down the street, so we headed out to see it.  It was Natalie's first parade.  We walked down with her in our new hiking backpack.  It worked great, she seemed to like it a lot.  We got to see bands, lots of kids groups, fire trucks, floats and Santa.  It was a really cute parade.

Natalie with her first encounter with Santa

Chris, Rocky and I are doing well.  Hopefully this week will be a little less crazy.  Now we have to get ready for Christmas.  We have moved all of her stuff up stairs to make room for the tree.  We haven't gotten it yet but soon.  Very exciting.  Hope all had a great Thanksgiving.  Talk to you soon!

14 weeks 11/15/11

Natalie turned 14 weeks this week.  She is a teenager in weeks.  She is getting pretty big.  I don't know exactly what she weighs but I would guess around 14 pounds by now.  She is still smiling like crazy and making lots of noises.  She loves to put her hand in her mouth too.  I will put her in the vibrating seat and do something in the kitchen and all of a sudden you will hear this really loud sucking sound and she's got that hand in her mouth.  She only takes the pacifier for short periods now every once in a while.  I think she likes her hand better. 

Since she had been using an exersaucer at daycare, I decided to go to my new favorite place to see if they had one.  The Children's Orchard in Portsmouth is a used clothing/toy store for kids.  They have all kinds of stuff.  The first time I went there, I bought Natalie and pink poofy snowsuit for winter that was $8 and still had the tags on it.  This time I found a "My First Christmas" feety pajama outfit, a bulldog with santa hat feety pajama outfit and an exersaucer.  They had so many clothes that I really wanted to buy but held myself back.  Couldn't resist the bulldog with santa hats though.  I decided to put it on her early.  I have been complaining that retailers and the like start with Christmasy things waaaay to early but I couldn't resist.

Here she is...

There is the hand I was talking about. 

If only we could get Rocky to keep the Santa hat on. 

I finally got a little smile but she looked to the side.  Oh well.

Here is her new toy.  We haven't really used it that much so hopefully she grows into it.

Not much else happened this week.  Mom and Natalie had a whole day together while Dad went up to Maine. The weekend was pretty uneventful.  She did sleep 7-8 hours a night from Thurs to Sun.  Mon night was a short one and then last night she did 7 + hours.  We are getting better but may be going through a growth spurt in the next couple of weeks so that might be out the window. 
This weekend we are going up to visit our friends, Greg, Shauna and little Henry, for the weekend.  They live up near Stowe so should be fun to visit.  Will tell you all about it next week. 
Have a good weekend.  Hope this finds everyone well.

3 months 11/9/11

Natalie turned 3 months this past week.  I can't believe that the time has flown by soooo fast.  It has been a whirlwind.  She is smiling so much now.  I know I am jinxing myself by saying this but she doesn't cry as much as she used to which is really nice.  She is sleeping a bit more at night.  In fact the last two nights we have gotten a total of 15 hours of sleep together.  Yahoo!!!  Keep it up Ms. Natalie.  She has been doing really well at daycare.  This past week, Shannon (daycare provider) noticed she was holding herself up really well and decided to put her in her exersaucer.  She loved it.  Mostly because the boys at the daycare are right at her level so that she can see them better. 

She has also been going crazy on the floor mat that she has.  We have one as well that we put her under a lot.  She has been batting at things and really checking stuff out.  She has started to notice that her hands might be attached to her body.  She was checking out my hand today while I was opening and closing and she was touching it.  She also is starting to grip things.  Not quite to the point where she grabs on to things herself but if you put something in her hand she will hold it for a while.  Don't think she knows she is doing it though. 

This is a photo from daycare.  I don't think it is recent but this is her favorite chair at daycare.

The next few photos are from times spent with Dad on Fridays.  I know the one below is like violating everything baby related but we were in the room obviously since we took the picture.  She just loves to sleep with those arms up as far as possible. This is a blanket made by Maw Maw (Natalie's great grandmother.)

Love this photo.  She is just soooo cute!!!

Thankfully she is not really into the pacifier anymore.  She likes her fist or the ears on the bears.

Playing some disc golf with dad.  Her favorite thing to do. 

My parents came up to visit this past Saturday.  They needed their grandparent fix.  We still have to get them hooked up with Skype so they can see her more often.  We went to the Dover High School craft fair and another one at a local church.  We got this hat/scarf set for her. It is a little big but it was cheap and really pretty.  She just looked so adorable when we put them on her.  Those little wispies were getting in her eyes but I think she liked it. 

This is a hat I bought myself.  I thought since we were embarrasing her with her hat we might as well put mine on her.   Can't wait until she is older, like with her first BF, and we can bring these pics out to show him.   See how adorable my baby was when she was little.

It sticks up a little much on the head.  When she gets a little bigger it should fit well.

Sunday we went up to visit the other grandparents.  Great Aunt Ruthie and 1st cousin once removed Amanda were up to visit.  We had to look that one up.  Ruthie is Grandma Jean's sister.  They hadn't seen Natalie yet, so we had to go visit.  Ms. Natalie was not very cooperative with her mommy that day.  She nursed at 6:30 and a little bit at about 8:45 and then didn't eat again until 4 that day.  She didn't really sleep much either during that time.  Not sure if daylight savings time ending had anything to do it.  Maybe it was a growth spurt.  Who nows, but both Natalie and mom were not very happy.  Every time I tried to nurse her she would start melting down.  Once she was back with everyone she was fine.  It was a long day for both of us but we made it and she was fine the rest of the week.

bad lighting with my phone.  Notice she is holding on to a lego that her cuz gave her. 
She is gripping things like a champ.

Here are her 3 month photos.  This is the best smile we could get out of her.  We keep doing these photo shoots when she is just about to go to bed, so it is sometimes harder to get a smile.  But we got little ones.

This is her with the teddy bear given to us by the Mackey family.  She is finally bigger than it.  It will be cool to see how she grows next to it. 

The blog just wouldn't be complete without Big Bro Rocky in it. He is doing well as you can see.  Sleeping up a storm. 

The rest of us are doing well.  Chris went up to the disc golf course in Maine on Friday to retreive some more discs out of their ponds.  He has been doing this about every other month since March and has found 3000+ discs.  They have given back a big chunk of them which is really cool.  
Chris also bought a new gift for himself.  The iphone has an app called Woot Watch which has some cheap deals.  One of them was a Starwars lunch box.  It also came with sandwich cutters that were shaped like the Millenium Falcon and the Ti(sp?) Fighter.  Here are the pics.

This is the Millenium Falcon sandwich.

He got made fun of at work for this, but he said it was worth it.

   Hope all are well.  Can't believe Thanksgiving is around the corner.  We will be up in Westmoreland area for the weekend so hopefully we can catch up with some folks.

12 Weeks - 11/1/11

We had a busy week.  We went up to Alton on Saturday to help deal with the boat and help Grandpa Dan and Uncle Bob fix the road.  Natalie got some clothes from a neighbor and in it was a Halloween themed feety pajamas.  We put her in it and took some photos with their fall decorations. 

Here's a photo with Grandma. 

Christina did a really great job decorating the house. 

This is the closest thing that we could get to a picture of Grandpa.

It was freezing Satuday because of the storm coming but we got this in quick.

They finally looked at the camera at the same time. 

It was getting late in the day for Natalie so she wasn't much of a smiley girl, but we got some good shots.

We got home in time to weather the Noreaster that came our way.  Luckily we did not lose power.  I know a lot of people did and some do not have it back yet.  We don't have a generator so it was good we didn't lose it.  We also didn't get as much snow as everyone else.  We only got about 6-8 inches.  Because it was warm out today, most of it is gone. So glad because it is waaaayyy too early for snow!

Because of the snow storm, Dover's trick or treating night got to actually be on Halloween.  We definitely didn't have as many kids as last year.  Last year we were totally unprepared for the masses of kids that came.  Trick or treating is from 5-8 and last year we were out of candy by 6:15.  This year we lasted until 7pm.  It was pretty cold to sit out on the front porch giving out candy.  Natalie lasted about 10 minutes in her costume before she basically said I am tired and I want to go to bed. 

Here is my little chili pepper.



My baby turns 12 weeks today.  What a difference.  I was looking at the photos from previous week and she is so much bigger and doing way more stuff now.  She is smiling and making noises a lot.  She is starting to bat at toys that are in front of her.  She really likes being under her gym at home and daycare where she can check stuff out.  I can really see her focusing on certain objects.  She was checking out her hands at daycare today.  Soon she will figure out that those things are attached to her. 

She has only been waking up once a night to nurse, so we decided that she was a big girl and could sleep upstairs.  We started Sunday night.  She was probably really over tired that night but she was not happy when we put her down that first night.  She has been better since.  We still have some things downstairs so when Grandma Jean comes on Mondays it is easier for her.  I just can't believe that she is almost 3 months.  Where has the time gone? 

Rocky, Chris and I are doing well.  Rocky lasted about the same amount of time in his costume that Natalie did.  Oh well.  Next year we will be more into doing Halloween because she will be almost 15 months by then.  Hope this finds everyone well.