Natalie's 5 months old

Natalie Michelle is 5 months old today and sitting up! What a great week! What a difference in her monthly photos now that she's sitting in it versus before when she was leaning on the chair! Before you know it, she'll be standing on the glider and I won't be able to get her to sit still for the photo.

Natalie's Nana and Grandpa are in town for a long holiday weekend. They got a chance to feed Natalie cereal!

Natalie laughing and having fun with Grandpa and Nana:

Bath time with Mommy and Nana:

Natalie with Nana and Grandpa:

She sat up!

We've been having Natalie practice sitting for a month or so now. Up to this point, she's only been able to sit unassisted for about 30 seconds. On Monday (Oct. 27th), she sat unassisted for about 5-10 minutes! And she would reach for her toys to play with while seated (from me and ones on the ground). A number of times she would wobble a little and recover her posture! She's becoming such a big girl!

She's getting even more into sitting in just a few days. On Tuesday, I got her on video getting pretty into playing with her toys in a seated postion. It's so cute!

First Pumpkin Patch

We took Natalie to her first pumpkin patch and animal farm yesterday. Given we live out in the boonies, it wasn't that far from where we live -- Hills Ridge Farm. It, of course, is more geared for older children but it was still fun to show Natalie all the animals, take her on a hay ride and have her "pick" out a pumpkin. She looked so cute surrounded by all the pumpkins. Not surprisingly she tried to put all the pumpkins in her mouth!

Papa also carved the pumpkin Natalie "picked" out at the pumpkin patch!

More photos from this weekend:

She's started solids!

Based on Natalie's cues, we decided to start giving her solids now instead of waiting till she was 6 months old as originally planned. Her pediatrician stated he was comfortable with her starting anytime we deemed appropriate between her 4 month appointment and 6 months old. Natalie has been nursing more frequently, watching intently as we ate, smacking her lips and grabbing at our food. She seemed ready! So on Friday we decided to give it a try. Although breast fed babies do well starting with bananas because they're sweet like breast milk, we decided to start with rice cereal mixed with breast milk because she's still younger than 6 months. She got her first meal of rice cereal from her Papa. We think it went pretty well. She was, of course, unsure of what was going on and what to do immediately with the food but she didn't push it away or get upset. Yesterday and this morning after her morning nap, we gave her cereal again and she did even better -- this time she was opening her mouth wider as the spoon was coming towards her!

Below is a video we took from Friday night (it's not yet edited).

We, of course, snapped a few photos too!

Mommy and Oma fed her also!

As you've seen above, Oma was in town for the weekend also.

She not only got to share in feeding Natalie but Natalie got to have a bath from her Oma.

NC State Fair

We went to our first function as a family -- the North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh! We showed Natalie all the animals -- rabbits, cows, horses, goats, little chicks. I think she was more interested in looking at all the people and there were a lot of people! This was my first State Fair since I was about 3-4 years old.





Natalie is now grabbing her toes. She's able to put them in her mouth when naked but because her cloth diapers are bulky she's not as successful when clothed!


We love how she likes to hold on to our faces. It's so adorable!



Papa and Natalie chilling together!