Well, the 6 month update never appeared, and now it is March, and Natalie turns 7 months today.

Natalie Updates

Natalie is a fully crawling baby and has become increasingly interested in all of the stuff around her in the house that isn’t her toys. Cat food and water bowls are a big hit along with paper from the recycling and the puzzles stacked up under the TV. She pretty quickly moved on from sitting and crawling to pulling herself up to stand on almost everything.

It seems that she is rarely sitting these days, and much prefers to be standing at a box with some toys on top for her to play with. She has gotten much better at getting up and then back down with out falling, and loves to bend down and try to pick things up to put them back on top of the box when they fall.

She continues to be a not very good sleeper. She moved up to her room at the advice of the pediatrician, but it doesn’t seem to have made her more comfortable. After 2-3 hours of sleep, she wakes up and needs to be comforted back to sleep. Marissa usually sleeps up in her room to be closer when she wakes so that she doesn’t get so wound up and falls back asleep easier. Naps are short unless she is being held. We long for the day that she’ll sleep for two hour naps, and be more consistent in the night, but I think we’ve also accepted that Natalie might not be that baby.

Other things Natalie is getting up to:

• Eating solids continues to go well. Lots of new foods and allergens are being worked through and no problems yet
• Fitz has decided to become friends with her, but he still doesn’t know how to play with a baby, so we’re keeping an eye on that.
• We added a third stroller to the collection. This one is compact so it doesn’t take up as much space in the car and for future plane trips.
• She has two bottom teeth coming through!

There’s probably more, but when you don’t write it down for two months, you tend to forget.

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Other Things Going On

Last weekend, we took a little anniversary trip out to New Paltz, NY to get away a bit, while still staying close enough to CT that we didn’t need to quarantine on the way back. New Paltz is home to the Mohonk Preserve and our favorite climbing area, but it also has lots of trails and a nice town to walk around in.

We, of course, have been staying pretty close to home lately, so we really didn’t know how Natalie would take to a 2.5 hour car ride, hotel room, new surroundings and all that stuff. Its probably fair to say that she didn’t take well to it, but it did seem to start off okay. She slept the whole way there in the evening, but once we got to the hotel, she woke up and was pretty reluctant to go back to sleep. She pretty much refused to sleep in the pack and play, even though she had only stopped sleeping in it a few weeks earlier. Not sure exactly what was going on there, but I guess she knew it was a different environment and wasn’t having anything to do with it.

The morning was a bit better and she seemed to enjoy exploring in the hotel room. We took her out for a walk around the Gunks and had a pretty nice stroll. She slept for a bit in the stroller, and then she woke up and enjoyed the scenery a bit. It turned out to be a beautiful day as it warmed up more than forecast, and the sun was out and strong. We were a bit limited where we could take the stroller as some of the trails were still icy, but we walked along and looked at the climbers for a bit, and started to plan for how Natalie would fit into a climbing trip.

We headed back to the hotel in the afternoon and everyone took a good nap to make up from the night before. We then had to navigate the difficulty of finding a place to get take out for dinner from while not knowing exactly who was doing take out, and which places were still good choices for food. We managed it eventually, but by the time the food was picked up, Natalie was getting ready for bed.

It always seems to be the case that Natalie is getting ready for bed right when dinner is ready. Its always the case when we cook at home, and usually results in things getting cold while she nurses and falls asleep. Sometimes, you can stop the final preperations, or hold off on cooking something until she is asleep, but its a rare day when things are ready early enough to eat while she is still up.

Back to dinner in New Paltz… Of course as soon as the food arrived, Natalie was on her way to bed, but she was also not having it with the pack and play. I guess it took an hour and a half before she finally settled down in the pack and play in the bathroom while holding Marissa’s shirt, but we were eventually able to eat our dinner and have a few anniversary moments to ourselves.

Happy 6 year, Iron, anniversary to us!. We are still looking for iron gifts that aren’t weird, so if there are any suggestions let me know.

Sunday morning was daylight savings day, and I think all of the other travel stuff helped to make that less of a big deal for Natalie. Maybe we’ll try that in the future again! We got some bagels from the New Paltz Bagel Cafe and then we tried to decide if we should do something, or just head home. We drove around a bit until Natalie woke up, then she nursed a bit, and then we checked out the climbing store for a bit to see what’s new.

Then we decided to go home, so off we went, Natalie did pretty good in the car, and was happy to be home.

Other things in our lives:

• Marissa is fully vaccinated. The second shot came with some good side effects for a day, but she’s okay now. CT has accelerated the vaccine timeline, so I will be eligible on April 5th.
• Spring is coming, and we are ready! (Although winter wasn’t that bad)