Happy 2/3 Birthday, Natalie!

Natalie had an exciting 8th month. She is now crawling, sitting herself up, and trying to pull up on things. She has a whopping total of four teeth as her upper central incisors just broke through a few days ago. Food continues to be entertaining for everyone involved. In the last few weeks she has tried peas, carrots, green beans, and tofu. More misses than hits though, unfortunately.

We've had a pretty steady stream of play dates and events lately, but we had to bail on all of them this week since Natalie woke up with a cold on Monday. Poor girl. But that didn't stop us from having an impromptu photo shoot yesterday for her 2/3 birthday!

Carrots and Raspberries

I know what you're thinking. "Carrots and raspberries? What kinds of crazy food combinations is Sally giving that poor child!?" But what I'm referring to here is our sweet little daughter's new method of communicating to me that she is D.O.N.E. with whatever it is I'm feeding her by blowing raspberries while the food is still in her mouth. In these photos it was carrots, but she's also done it with peas and sweet potatoes. I really need to mop my kitchen floor before it starts looking like a Jackson Pollock painting. The worst part is that I literally have to turn my face away from her so she can't see me laughing. Honestly, look at these pictures and tell me that you could say, "Natalie, we don't spit our food. We eat it," with a straight face.

"Thhhppppptttt!!!"

:-P

Neato! I figured out how to make Mommy laugh!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Snow!

We're getting quite a dusting of snow here in Atlanta. We've already got over an inch of accumulation and the forecast says it will continue until late tonight.

We took Natalie out on the back deck to see how she would react. She was fine with it falling on her, but definitely wasn't a big fan of touching it.

Our Little Crawler!

Natalie has been "on the verge" of crawling for over a week now. She was getting pretty good at getting her legs going, but her hands would remain planted on the floor. It was kind of like pressing the gas when the emergency brake is still on. I guess it just took the right motivation for her to figure out the other half of the equation. And what kind of things would provide such motivation, you ask? The answer is: shiny electronics that are not meant for babies.

Yesterday while Aunt Rachel was visiting, we placed my cell phone out of her reach and there she went, surprising us all! She responded equally well to the DVD player remote control. It is an uncoordinated, clumsy crawl and it kind of reminds me of watching a wounded animal on the National Geographic channel, but I'm putting February 6th in the baby book as her official crawling date!