Loving Life

By Tiffany George

Pete and I have been having an absolute blast with our cute little kiddos lately. Natalie is the smiliest baby ever and Andrew couldn't adore her more.

Natalie has gotten through her fussy stage and is now loving life. She is growing like a weed and is already in 6-9 month clothes. She will pretty much always give Mommy nice big smiles whenever she is spoken to. Andrew was always a happy, content baby, but getting smiles from him was more of a challenge. Natalie gives the sweetest big open-mouthed smiles that just melt your heart. She is also discovering her voice and Grammy swears that she is trying to say "hi Grammy".

Nowadays Natalie loves to hang out on the floor with her diaper off, airing out on these hot days, much as Andrew used to. She also likes to look at books, toys, and of course Andrew. She always wants to face out so that she can see the world when she is being carried. She loves to put her fingers in her mouth and suck on them too! She also spends a lot of time admiring her fists...who knows, maybe she'll be a boxer.

As far as milestones go, Natalie rolled from her back to her belly for the first time when we first got to Perkin's Pond. She was only 2 months 9 days old!!! What a strong little girl. She prefers to roll up on her side and hang out, but she is getting better with being content on her belly too. Her neck muscles have gotten much stronger and she can lift her head up quite well now.

Once the little Nat Nat started rolling we had to move her into her crib to sleep. This was sad, as the days of sleeping in our bedroom in the bassinet are now a thing of the past. She seems to like her crib just fine, and she slept the whole night through for the first time on July 3rd. She nursed and went to bed around 9:30pm and didn't even wake up until 8:30am. Geesh!

Andrew is doing wonderful too. He has learned to speak in 2 to 3 and sometimes 4-word phrases which is too adorable. His absolute favorite phrase is "snack please". This kid honestly must have a hollow leg because he is always hungry. He understands that he must say please to get something, but he doesn't quite get the concept that just because he says please it doesn't mean he'll always get it. His favorite snack right now is rice cakes, mini mint chocolate rice cakes...what could be better?

Andrew's favorite number has always been two. If you asked him how many of something he wanted, he'd always answer "2". Now, he understands that sometimes he wants more than two of something. If he is going to have some cookies, for instance, I'll ask him "how many do you want?" His first response is always "two moree", but as he thinks better of it he'll start cheering "yot more yot more" meaning a LOT more. It is pricelessly cute.

He is quite the smarty pants too. He loves to come up in the driver's seat of the van to drive the car, which we let him do if we need to pull over so that I can nurse Natalie. On a long trip to Nashua the other day Andrew kept saying "drive car, An drive car". I explained to him that he gets to drive when I feed Natalie, not every time we are in the car. Sure enough, on the way home, and again the next day, when we were driving down the road, he started to say "feed Nat feed Nat". Upon initial consideration, you may think that he was being a kind brother (which is ALWAYS IS). However, at this point Natalie was SLEEPING, not hungry in the least. He just knew that I needed to feed Nat in order him to get to drive. What a complex thought process for a two-year old. Too cute!

You may notice the lack of Andrew pictures in this post. It certainly is not that he isn't just as adorable as ever, it's that he doesn't want his picture taken lately. Whenever he sees the lens pointed in his direction he says "no nat no nat" because he wants us to take her picture instead...so we do!