Western Day

Last Thursday was Western Day at Nathan's school. Nathan looked so cute dressed up in his chaps, vest, and hat! This is actually his Halloween costume from last year! Luckily it still fit :) As you can see in the first picture, Nathan wasn't wanting to get his picture taken, but then he smiled for me. When he walked up to his teacher, Miss April, he said "Yee Haw Miss April!" Then she picked him up and gave him a big hug, and I was able to get a cute picture of the two of them.

Superman Pajamas

Nathan is going through a phase where he LOVES super heroes! Superman, Spiderman, Batman, The Incredible Hulk, and more...he and his daddy watch the cartoons all the time, and they love to wrestle while pretending to be one of the superheroes. For a while, Nathan was perfectly happy having a hand towel safety pinned around his neck for a cape. Well, while I was at Target the other day, I found these Superman pajamas and knew Nathan would love them, especially because they come with a real cape! We've had them less than a week and so far, he's worn them every night!

Charlotte is Crawling!

Charlotte started crawling two days ago! I knew it was going to be any day now that she started, but I was still so surprised to actually see her first crawl! Nathan, Charlotte, and I were playing upstairs Thursday night waiting for Wayne to get home (he had been out of town on business since Monday night). Nathan got out some blocks and made a huge tower. Well, Charlotte really wanted that tower! She started bouncing on her bottom and then went onto her stomach and all fours...she's done this before though. But this time, she moved her knee and then drug her other foot. She actually went forward! Nathan started cheering for her and yelling, "She's crawling! She's crawling!" She ended up getting herself to the blocks!

When Daddy got home, both Nathan and Charlotte were beyond excited! I told Wayne that she just crawled an hour ago so after giving her some hugs and kisses, we put her on the floor in our room. She was so excited to get to Daddy that she bounced so excitedly on her bottom and then just went forward and crawled all the way across the room to Daddy! He was so proud of his little girl! Here are some pictures...she claps for herself at the end :)








I forgot to write in the last post about Charlotte's other milestones. We can now add crawling to the list. She has also said her first word, "Hi" She started saying it last month every once in a while, but now says it all of the time. When we were at Nathan's baseball practice, she kept saying hi to the mom next to me. Charlotte also claps when you tell her to or when she's excited about something. And Nathan taught her to make the noise where you cover your mouth and move your hand back and forth. She uses the back of her hand :) She also LOVES to pinch skin and run it between her fingers! This is her "loving" thing to do because she only does it when I'm feeding or rocking her. It would be sweet if it didn't hurt! And her favorite game is the "Thank You" game. She loves to hand things to you. When I say "Thank you!" She just smiles and finds something else to give me. It's a great way to have her help me clean up toys!

9 Months Old

Charlotte is 9 months old! We went for her check up at the doctor, and she weighs 18 lbs, 11 oz (50%) and is 27.3 inches tall (50%). She got a great report and is right on track with all of her developmental milestones. Charlotte isn't crawling all the way yet, but she is almost there. I think within the next WEEK, she'll have it! She can get around by scooting on her bottom, but now, she scoots a little and then goes forward onto all fours and moves one knee to push herself forward. Last week, when she got on her stomach, she would just lay flat and push herself backwards. And she can now get herself into a sitting position from laying on her stomach. So I know crawling will happen any day now! Charlotte likes to stand when we hold her hands, but she isn't pulling herself up on her own yet.

Those are the positives, but there are two negatives this month: Not sleeping through the night and wanting Mommy to hold her ALL THE TIME! And these are two very tiring negatives. I'm going to have to get tough with the sleeping. No more feeding her in the middle of the night (even though this is an easy way to get her to go right back to sleep) and I've got to teach her to fall asleep on her own in the beginning (not nursing her to sleep). It's going to be so exhausting to do this though! But I've got to...I'll start it next week :)

Happy Nine Month Birthday!






Happy Valentine's Day!

My Little Picasso

On Tuesday, Kelly came over to play with Nathan for the afternoon. Before Kelly came over, we were talking about what the two of them could do together. Well, Nathan came up with the idea of painting. Great...how messy is this going to be?! I wasn't worried about Kelly painting because she is so nice and neat and is used to painting and doing crafts at home with her mom. Nathan, on the other hand...well, he needs a little more practice with the arts and crafts :) But oh well, I thought we'd try it since he's been wanting to use these paints since he got them at his birthday party almost a year ago!

They had a blast! Kelly painted cute little trees with flowers and grass and hardly got her hands dirty. Nathan mixed ALL of the colors, rinsed his brush ONCE, had it all over his hands, and ran every single color together!

This was the beginning of his painting. When the masterpiece was finished, there wasn't a single spot of white left, and it was filled with beautiful shades of brown, brown, and more brown :)

More Snow!

After it iced the first part of the week, it snowed on top of that the 2nd half of the week! Nathan was so cute because he kept wanting to watch the same movies over and over: How to Train Your Dragon and The Polar Express. Since it snowed, he kept telling me that Santa was going to come back again. He kept saying, "Mommy, it's Christmas Eve!" It took me forever to convince him that Santa wasn't coming until next year. After he finally realized it wasn't going to be Christmas again, he didn't want to watch The Polar Express anymore :)

It snowed so much Thursday night that you couldn't even see our steps to the front door. It looked like the road, our yard, and front steps was just one big white blanket! Nathan LOVED playing in it...it was so much better than earlier in the week when it was just ice.




Here he is getting icicles off the bushes. Oh and he's wearing his Superman cape...this is a wardrobe staple right now :)





And here he is with Daddy on Saturday morning. As soon as Nathan woke up, he ran to the window to make sure the snow was still there! He and Daddy went on a walking tour of the neighborhood and then made a snowman in the back yard. He named the snowman Frosty...real original huh? Ha Ha!









This last week was such a crazy week! I honestly can't believe that we spent the whole week at home! It was fun though because all three of us (Wayne actually went into work) stayed in our pajamas every day, and I got a TON done around the house. I cleaned and organized things I've been wanting to do forever! It really was nice to not have to worry about trying to get ready to go somewhere and then rushing to get home. Although I was starting to feel a little isolated. It was strange that the only other adult I saw all week was Wayne!

Snow Ice Cream

Last week, we were home bound ALL week! We first got a huge amount of sleet and freezing rain, and the temperatures drop to single digits! Then we got 5 inches of snow on top of that! I really was crazy that Nathan, Charlotte, and I were inside our house for 1 full week! School was cancelled the whole week (even the big school districts cancelled classes), but we made the week fun. We stayed in our pj's the whole week, watched tons of movies (Nathan's new favorite is How to Train Your Dragon), cleaned the house and organized, and we made snow ice cream! Here are some pictures:

Even though the ground cover was white, it really wasn't snow...it was ice! So Nathan had a little bit of trouble scooping it up. I had to make a hole for him first and chip it away :) What we made was more like snow cones!










The M&Ms were supposed to be Valentine candy for his friends at school. I thought I was doing so good by getting it early! But we decide to use it as a topping, and then Nathan ate about 4 more bags by himself!

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's SUPERMAN!

Wayne has introduced Nathan to all of the super heroes, and this is Nathan's new obsession. He loves Batman, Superman, Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk, and all of the characters that go with them. Wayne has a huge collection of comic books from when he was a kid, and Nathan can sit and look at them with Wayne for the longest time! When he saw that Batman and Superman both had capes, he said he wanted one. Since we didn't have a cape on hand, we improvised and safety pinned a hand towel around his neck. Nathan thought that was the best thing ever! He runs around the house wearing his cape and pretending to fly (I'm just hoping he doesn't try to jump off of something high!). Here are some pictures of Wayne throwing him on the bed while Nathan attempts to "fly"






The funniest thing was when Wayne took Nathan to the park on Saturday. I was at the grocery store with Charlotte, and Wayne called me saying he was going to take Nathan in the jogging stroller to the park and wanted us to meet them there. I was a little embarrassed to go because Charlotte was still in her pajamas (it was 3:00 pm!) but oh well. When Charlotte and I pulled up to the park, I saw that it was really crowded because it was such a pretty day. Pretty soon, I saw Wayne and Nathan jogging up, and Nathan was wearing his towel/cape! I just died laughing because here we were with one baby in pajamas and the other one wearing a hand towel! Wayne said that Nathan really wanted to dress up like Superman at the park and was so excited when Wayne said ok. Then Nathan told Wayne very seriously that the other kids at the park might really think he's the REAL Superman! Nathan was Mr. Popular because the other kids really were impressed by this superhero! One little boy said, "Daddy! That boy has on a cape!" And Nathan yelled, "Thank you!" So funny!

Baseball!

Nathan finished 2 sessions of soccer and is now enrolled in Lil' Sluggers which is baseball for kids. Wayne got him a T-ball set to practice last weekend before his first class. I have to say he's a natural...kind of :) He loves it though! It was so funny to see Wayne teaching him how to hit and how to run to the bases. Half the time, Nathan would just run around the backyard like a wild man and run the opposite way Wayne told him to. He still remembers going to the World Series game with his Daddy and kept telling us to cheer for him like they did at the game.





And here he is at his first class. He wore his Rangers T-shirt that he wore to the World Series. Nathan was so excited! His coach is really great too. He's very energetic and fun for the kids, but also keeps them in line. Nathan kept wanting to come to me for water breaks, but after the third time of leaving the lesson to get some water, the coach said, "Nathan, Mommy is a fan, and we can't talk to the fans until after the game."





And yes, Nathan and this other little boy were the only ones in the class the first week, but the coach said more kids were scheduled to enroll the next week. They didn't mind though because they got to have lots of attention! It might make it a little hard to have a practice game though!