Christmas season

We're really enjoying the Christmas season with Nathan. We had a great time celebrating with extended family a bit early. Nathan and his cousin Max were coincidentally wearing matching sweaters- it was quite fun. Nathan opened his first Christmas present and has been enjoying his animal train every day.

Below are some of our attempts at taking a Christmas picture of Nathan. You can see how well this is going- Nathan is more interested in the tree, ornaments, toys, or us than smiling and sitting still for a picture. I guess that's normal :)

Nathan's First Christmas Tree

We bought our Christmas tree last weekend at a farmstand near our house, and finally finished decorating it yesterday.



Here's some video from yesterday. We have a lot to learn about editing video, so it's pretty long:

As you can See, Nathan is very excited about the tree. And he's got a few new tricks under his belt, including clapping his hands. He's getting really close to crawling too (although we've been saying this for a while...).

Thanksgiving Turkey and other wonders

Nathan had a great time on his first Thanksgiving. He loved eating turkey for the first time. He loved eating squash, he loved eating a tiny taste of mashed potatoes, he did not love eating broccoli, but did anyway. Notice a theme? Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

8 months and change

Somehow Nathan keeps growing up... He enjoyed a visit with Grandma recently, and charmed her with his personality. He loves the toys she brought him! Nathan is not crawling yet, but he's close and very interested in pulling up although he can't quite do it. (Our camera is really on its last legs! The quality of the pictures is terrible, but the content is not)

Happy Halloween!

We're all enjoying Halloween together. Nathan loves the pumpkins. More than that, he loves his tongue!!! It's sticking out all the time now. No crawling, but lots of movement. He rolls like a champ, scoots backwards, and rocks back and forth on all fours. Only a matter of time now before it'll be a race to keep him out of trouble. Perhaps he'll lose some of his baby chub when he's more mobile. Right now he's quite pleasingly plump as you can see. (Was it mean to take a picture while he was backed into a corner? I couldn't resist...)

Special visitors

We've been lucky to have several special visits this fall and we're behind in sharing the photos. My college roommate, Kelly, and her husband, Craig, spent a day with us back in September. It was great to reconnect and catch up. As usual, Nathan enjoyed being the center of attention!

In early October, Nathan's cousins Jasper and Suzy came for a visit with Julie and Tim. We had a great time with the kids. Suzy gave Nathan ideas about getting around- she really is on the go. (Nathan is not, but getting closer every day.) Jasper showed both babies what big kids can do- he is really quite capable and a wonderful, playful big brother and cousin.

One year blogiversary

I was writing the date on something and remembered (because I'm insanely nostalgic) that one year ago today we went in for our "big" ultrasound and learned that Nathan was healthy and a little boy. We started the blog and in some ways, our journey with him. The time flies. Every day it seems that Nathan is doing something new from playing with his tongue to asserting his personhood at the dinner table. Life is good. (Yes, we let our baby play with balloons... But hey, he loved it and we were watching the whole time.)

Busy days and new milestones

(courtesy Ajay)

It's been a hectic few weeks. Nathan is doing very well these days. Drumroll please, he's sleeping amazingly well after we intervened a few weeks ago with a sleep-training program. He responded well and quickly! A typical night has him in his crib from 7:30pm until about 4-5am, then he'll be back down until 6-6:30. He's even slept through three complete nights. It makes a big difference to all three of us. In other news, Nathan is officially sitting! He still tips and falls, but can sit for several minutes at a time and even play with a toy or better yet, try to eat his socks. We're all enjoying fall weather when it is seasonally cool, and are looking forward to Halloween (thanks Josh).

Nathan's first apple-picking adventure

We had a great afternoon picking apples with several of Nathan's cousins. He really seemed to enjoy it, grabbing at apples and leaves and watching people. We coordinated his outfit for the occasion (thanks Jennie!). Poor guy tired out by the end. You can see that Daddy enjoyed the fruits of Nathan's labor...

Wow, hard to go back to work after a nice day like this one!

Six months (and a few days)

Unbelievable how time does fly. We're enjoying Nathan, he's enjoying food and hopefully us. The six-month stats are in: 28 in and 18lbs,10 oz. Our boy is nearly 90th percentile in height and weight, growing nicely. Sleeping is still a problem with small signs of improvement here and there. Nathan is on the move- rolling that is to grab at toys or anything in sight. He's almost sitting. He loves to grab hair, ears, noses, you name it. Can't believe it's been a half year with our baby!

Little Rocky

We took a series of pictures of Nathan modeling his bathrobe. We had a lot of fun with it as you can see. He could be a movie star, no?

In other news, Nathan is eating solid foods! The list is growing: rice cereal, carrots, peas, prune juice, steak. Just kidding on that last one. He loves to eat, but won't drink from a cup. The juice was needed, you guessed why, and he got it from a medicine dropper. He liked it! And it worked!!! The only thing Nathan won't touch is soy formula. We don't blame him, it smells really bad. (Since daycare has started, he needs a little formula. His skin has had some flairs of eczema- his pediatrician suspects a mild milk allergy is causing it, so we tried soy but he refuses to drink it... We're letting ourselves think the skin problem might not be an allergy since that's the easy way out.)