Michigan

I'm going to cover our Michigan trip in two parts. First, everything but Natalie's birthday.

The first picture is from Mike and Natalie's flight up - Natalie is definitely getting easier to entertain on the plane. The second picture is from the flight Jacob and I took a few days later.

Here is a picture is from our early morning return flight. You know, we're all about keeping it real here on the blog.

Once in Michigan, Natalie got some "fancy clothes" from Bubbe. She put these to good use hanging out with Aunt Jenny.

Jacob was not to be outdone. Everyone loves Aunt Jenny!

Playtime with Bubbe.

Creativity!

Because of the heat, our sloped driveway, and the lack of neighborhood friends, Natalie's never really had the experience of playing outside in our neighborhood with friends. That all changed when Natalie met the little girls who live next door to Bubbe and Grrr.

Bring on the extended family!

Here's Natalie dancing in her "ballet costume" with cousin Lindsey.


(Video is also available by clicking here)

As you can see in the end of that video, we also got to meet Baby Lainey, born three months after Jacob. Here's another shot of her - she's so sweet!

Here's Lainey's big brother:

We also had some super-large family suppers.

There was also some time to just kick back. And, you know, read about stomach ailments.

After a weekend with family, it's clear Jacob has some big shoes to fill.

Speaking of shoes and feet, on our last day in Michigan, all the ladies headed out for a pedicure. We took Natalie and she loved it. And they even cut her toenails. I loved that; we'll be back in three weeks. And three weeks after that. 

Natalie's pedicure finished up with some non-toxic light purple glitter nail polish. The color was called "Do the Mermaid." Natalie also persuaded everyone else to go purple, too. 

I'll leave you with a teaser for the next post (Aunt Jenny made the tiara; the goat was just the model).

Six months old!

Jacob actually turned six months old a few weeks ago, but we just had his six-month appointment today, so, well, all's cool that ends in a timely manner, right?

Here's the big boy!

Jacob is doing great! I mean, we think so, but the doctor confirmed this today, too. New stats are in the sidebar, but, as I suspected, Jacob's slightly smaller than Natalie at this age: 15lbs, 4oz to her 16lbs, and 27 inches to her 27.5 inches. I'm totally aware that those differences are likely measurement errors.

Jacob now sleeps in his own room - at least at night. Naps are still a mixed bag / work in progress. 

He eats cereal and purees, and so far he seems to eat everything. No teefs yet, but they are reportedly on their way (as they have been for the last two months, sigh).

He laughs, he smiles, and he even makes his weird growl (which we call the dinosaur noise). He can also say "dada," but this doesn't yet seem to mean Mike. In fact, Natalie is still his rockstar; I totally expect that some version of her name will be his first word.

Jacob loves to laugh and smile. He'll gladly play peek-a-boo with you. He'll also try to charm strangers. In fact, when we flew to Detroit last week, we had an early morning flight. Jacob was a gem, but the cutest part was that he passed a good portion of the flight just trying out his smiles on the sleeping passengers. It was like he was sure that if he only tried hard enough, they'd smile back. 

Here's a video of Jacob laughing in response to some heavy literary content.

(click to see the video on its own website)

He isn't yet sitting stably. I mean, he sits, but then he sort of tripods forward in slow-motion. Likewise, he can roll from his front to his back, but he still rarely does it. On the plus side, he's getting more adjusted to being on his stomach . . . .
 

Next up: our trip to Detroit and Natalie's 4th(!) birthday!

Video Rodeo

Here are a few videos from the last month or so.

First, for our email readers, a link to the Father's Day video. I think I've done better linking the videos throughout this email (just click on the topic of the video to access the video).

I know some members of our family have been in Hawaii recently. We've been here. Which is pretty much like Hawaii, minus the beaches, scenery, and pleasant temperatures. But at least we have hula!

Here's Natalie pretending to be a teacher. She's studied hard for role, as she explains.

Last, here's a Jacob video. He's really finding his voice lately - the video is of last week's sound, sort of a growl. This week, he's more into roars....

Playing Catch-up

I'm behind again. My goal in this post is to get the "I'm five months old" pictures up before next week's six-month milestone.

Things have been going well here. The siblings continue to do reasonably well together. I expect this to last exactly one more nanosecond.

In other news, motherhood remains exhausting:

But awesome:

 

Here's Natalie helping Mike make naan:

And here's Jacob up on campus for his liquid lunch.

It's been so long on the blog that we need to back up to Natalie's end-of-year party in her classroom. I wasn't there, but Mike took these pics.

It looks like a good time was had by all!


Also, here are some very belated pics of a dinner party that Mike and Natalie attended while I was in San Francisco with Jacob. Natalie initiated the group hug!

Mike and Jacob, just kicking back on the couch:

Our Fourth was very sweet and low-key. We had a few friends over, grilled, let the kids do their thing, etc. I'm not exactly sure what "their thing" was, but it seemed to involve ride-sharing and parading.

The other families left to go downtown for the fireworks; we put the kids to bed and watched Top Chef from five months ago. We're party animals, I tell you.

We've also been engaged in (what feels like) a massive room-shuffling project. Natalie's room became our new office / guest bedroom, the old office became Natalie's new room, and the guest room became Jacob's new room. We're only, uh, six months late on all of this! Anyway, more detailed pictures to follow once we put the finishing touches on each room, but here is a nice picture of Natalie and my friend Jen Em hanging the butterfly decals on Natalie's wall, plus a shot of Natalie's butterfly sheets. Any guesses as to the theme of Natalie's room? Hah. Major thanks to Jen for helping out with this (and to Meh for helping assemble the Big Girl Bed when she was in town in May).

When Jen was in town, we also went to see the cows. Our tax dollars at work! (We've been having a cool spell here, so it was considerably cooler than the last time I was at the cattle drive.)

And then we went to the farmer's market. And I bought some eggplant. And then I came home and took an arty picture of the eggplant. You're welcome.

Here are some slightly less arty pictures of blackberries and tomatoes from my garden.

Speaking of arty pursuits, I recently finished sewing Natalie a pool robe. I cut the pattern pieces from towels - this was kind of a fun project. It was also my first time working with bias tape. A little tricky for one's third sewing project ever. 'Tis far from good, but from far away, it's good!

And here's Natalie doing her thing at swim class:

In other milestones, Jacob's been trying a little food: cereal, sweet potatoes, bananas, and applesauce. His general reaction is to look something between angry and puzzled when you put the food in his mouth, and then to quickly express his displeasure that more isn't forthcoming quickly enough. Babies!

Natalie will be four (FOUR!!!) later this month, but sometimes she looks, like, seven to me:

The princess butterfly fairy, she is not pleased:

Although snack can fix many woes:

Natalie loves to play! Here she is playing music show, restaurant ( be she may actually be nursing her baby there - way to multitask, girlfriend!), and teacher.

Here's the cat - complete with ears and whiskers - that Natalie drew the other day:

Here are a few Jacob pictures. Jacob is such a sweet baby.

And here are the promised five-months pictures. Note the outfit change mid-photo shoot. We're keepin' it real.

Next post - all the videos from this last month. Coming soon!