Sunday, July 29, 2012

Radio Silence?

Six months.  Plus or minus.  Ack!!!  All I can say is that life is busy with two little ones, a full time job, and graduate school!  Instead of trying to go back and fill in all of the lovely things I've missed (sorry Nadine!) I'll try to just update on what is happening now, a week-ish before our littlest is turning ONE!

Nadine is now walking, and getting less wobbly every day.  She is so proud of herself as she gets from one point to the next, and it's so fun to watch.  She is very chirpy and chatty most of the time, although it's still hard to identify specific words.  She uses "uh-oh" correctly and says it in a very adorable way.  She says "Da-da" to Justin, but also uses a variation of it when she's waving goodbye (sounds slightly more like "di-di").  She says "mama," but usually in a whiny voice when she wants to nurse.  Sigh.  She seems to have a greeting for our cat BooBoo, and they have a love/hate relationship.  As in, Nadine loves BooBoo and BooBoo mostly hates Nadine.  They have had a few spats, but Nadine doesn't seem to mind the scratches much.  She is, as Justin calls her, "a good sport."  She gets knocked around quite a bit by all of the older kids, and she really takes most of it in stride.  She wants to be right in there with them, and loves to laugh at their silly antics, and only cries when she gets a toy taken away, or gets genuinely hurt.  She is such a sweet, lovely little thing.  She has her two bottom front teeth, and her top left one is now mostly coming through.  I'm thinking the top left will follow shortly.

We'll be celebrating Nadine's birthday at our neighborhood pool next weekend.  Just a nice low key get-together, but it means so much to us.  We had to struggle to get our little Nadine, and I couldn't be more thankful to have her.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Six Month Check-up

So Nadine turned 6 months on February 7, but she just had her check-up last week. She's doing great! She's over 18 pounds now, but she's still 75th percentile for weight and 80th for height. It's hard to believe that she's not higher, since Roxanne was always over 90th, and Nadine seems equally huge. Comparatively, Nadine is just a little peanut. She's continuing to baby talk, and says "blah bah," "ma ma" and some other sounds pretty often. She is giggling more and more now, too. Her favorite things to giggle at are always completely unexpected and random, like a poster for diabetes at the Publix Pharmacy yesterday... She has a quirky sense of humor already! She sits up really well and loves sitting on the floor and playing with toys. Her favorite toys include her Sofie giraffe teething toy (easily the best teether I've ever seen, and I highly recommend) and a Melissa and Doug wooden caterpillar. She also likes plastic rings, and enjoys waving them around her head. She absolutely loves Roxanne, and even when she's fussy, Roxanne can get her to smile. Nadine loves grabbing her hair and yanking it, but Roxanne is very sweet about it. They are such nice little sisters at this point. Here's hoping they stay that way! Justin has incorporated Nadine into their storytime most nights, and Roxanne is very giving about it and always seems to pick at least one "baby story" that she thinks Nadine will like. For her part, Nadine seems to really love story time. Hopefully we'll have two readers!









Thursday, January 26, 2012

Bedtimes

Justin is such a sweet Daddy. He puts Roxanne to bed every night, and now Nadine joins in for story time. She doesn't always make it through both stories, but she definitely loves it most of the time. Roxanne is very sweet and shares his lap without complaining. And she giggles when Nadine tries to eat the book. Which always happens.
As you can see, her eyes are still blue!
She loves grabbing her toes. She gets frustrated with these footy jammies because she can't get her toes.
These are her Alice in Wonderland jammies. So cute.
She sits up really well, but only for short amounts of time. She's staring up at Roxanne's chandelier.

She's getting so big...
Sisterly empathy. Nadine is mid-scream here.
Nadine thinks Roxanne is hilarious.
Sisters.
They're both such beautiful and sweet ladies.
Blurry, but I couldn't resist.
She's doing great with tummy time. But she has figured out how to roll from her tummy back to her back or side, so it's hard to keep her up without some kind of toy, etc.
I can't believe she might crawl soon... Ack!
Again, blurry, but her face when she is watching Roxanne is just wonderful.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Where to start?!

I know, I missed blogging Roxanne's 4th birthday, Justin's 30th birthday, Christmas, and New Year. I won't try to catch up with all of that. I'll just say that all of it was wonderful. Roxanne had her party at Little Shop of Stories in Decatur (where we had her 1st birthday party) and she wanted a Christmas theme. Most of her little school buddies came, and it was perfect. Lots of fun was had by all. :) For Justin, I threw a surprise party and some of his co-workers and friends came. We celebrated Justin's big 3-0 here at home in a fairly tame way, but he WAS very surprised and everyone had a nice time showing Justin how awesome we think he is. Christmas was the usual whirlwind of visiting, gift-wrap, and happy family moments. It was beautiful to share the holiday with baby Nadine. Santa brought her some goodies, probably because Roxanne was sure to tell Santa what Nadine wanted. Always looking out for her sister! In current news, Roxanne is doing wonderfully in school, and is quite the artist. She is learning to write some letters and recognize the sounds that they make. She love love loves to sing now, too. She still sings Christmas songs constantly, but she often substitutes the words for whatever is convenient (and silly). Nadine is grabbing everything she can get her hands on, and wants to put all of it into her mouth. She is sitting on her own for short periods (like 4 seconds...) before toppling over. She wants to be in the exersaucer as much as possible. We have started her on rice cereal and some apple mixed in. We had planned to wait until 6 months, but the doctor said we could start at 4 months, and she won't really take a bottle, so we opted to start her on cereal so Justin could feed her while I'm in class Monday and Tuesday nights. She doesn't eat that much of it, but she does very well with it! She's up to 17 pounds 5 ounces now, and she is so so long! Our littlest baby is getting not so little.
Nadine in her high chair!
On the floor gym at work.
Who needs toys when you have chub toes?
Nadine eating her first cereal with Roxanne's help.
Christmas morning!
Hot chocolate on the trolley at Callaway (light show!).
We had to...
Roxanne's real birthday night cupcake.
The night before Christmas; literally.
Decorating Santa's cupcake.

Roxanne was an angel in her school's Christmas chapel.
At her birthday party.
Yet another birthday party at which she cried at cake time. She thought she had been skipped for a juice box. Sigh.