catching up

I haven't blogged lately on just our day to day life. Miss Natalee is growing, growing, growing. She's starving all the time. We started her on rice cereal, then introduced fruit, and then veggies. After only a couple of weeks, she's up to eating 3 meals a day! She still drinks all the milk she's supposed to get but she's just a hungry monkey!!

Currently she eats sweet taters (mmmm, good!), pears (yummy), avocados (good now that she's used to them), green beans (not so wild about), and tonight she started bananas mixed with pear juice (yum!). The first thing I tried with her was applesauce...remember all the applesauce I made this past fall? Oct 2008

Yeah, well, apples give her a bellyache. I'm hoping once she develops her digestive system a bit more that we can at least mix apples in with other foods...although, I admit that they did make her a bit red in the face also, so perhaps it's more than just an intolerance. Oh, well...somebody's baby will need some homemade applesauce if mine can't eat it!

Our little Jellybean is "talking" so much now. Favorite sounds are oooooo and aaaah. Once in a great while she'll put the M sound on an aaah and we get something that resembles mama. I know she doesn't know what it means exactly but it's still fun to hear. She has the sweetest little voice.

So she could be rolling over but it seems that she's a smidgen lazy. She rolls to her side, we get the camera out, we cheer for her, and she tosses herself back onto her back. What a monkey!

As always, she's sucking and chewing on her fingers. She's "that" kind of kid who has to wear a bib to avoid having soaked clothes and chapped skin all the time. We love her for it!

In the world of naughty, she's becoming somewhat of a bear to put to sleep unless she's sooo tired that she just collapses. That semi-tired stage is a very hard time for her. We're working on it. I'm trying to think of a gentle way to teach a 4 month old that if you continually arch your back and kick yourself backwards with your feet that eventually someone might drop you. She goes down well at night but naps are harder, especially if, like I said, she's not dead tired.
She was dead tired this night. She fell asleep leaned up against her Daddy's legs!
Also in the world of ornery, no matter what time she goes to bed or how we change her nighttime routine the little squirt gets up every morning at 5:30. Funny thing is she's not really "up." She's still tired, mostly asleep, not hungry, etc. Since we get up at 6 we've been letting her snuggle in bed with us at this time...I know, I know...hold your warnings...but dang she's cute and she zonks right back out the minute we lay her in there. When we've tried to leave her in her bed & just retuck her in and give her a paci she can't settle back into dreamland. Must just be her way of saying she needs some cuddle time. I'll take it...I need me some cuddle time, too!

She's reverted full time back to her cradle. That has helped some...she quit sleeping through the night altogether in the bigger bed. I may have a 12 year old in a cradle if we don't think of a plan. I'm hoping that the bigger she gets the smaller the 'big' bed will look to her.

There's just so much...so many fun things that she does everyday. Yesterday was exactly 1 year ago that I found out I was pregnant. I knew I'd love my little bambino, but never imagined that I would or could love her this much. I look into her baby blues and just want to hold her and never let her go.