Shady Maple

We went to breakfast at Shady Maple with my family and my sister-in-laws family yesterday morning. Amazing breakfast if you have never been there. Unfortunately Gary was at work so we had to take a picture showing him what he was missing. Natalie certainly loved seeing her cousins and enjoyed her breakfast as well.

Goose for dinner

Uncle Chad had a successful morning and Poppop let Nat explore. Only at Mommom & Poppop's.

First Christmas in Hershey

This year Gary and I really wanted to do Christmas morning with just "our family."  It was our first time staying in Hershey (he was on-call the Christmas Eve) so it worked out perfectly.  It is so nice to be establishing our own family traditions as our family just keeps growing.  My parents came out late morning after we had opened up all our gifts from one another and Santa which made the day even more special.  All in all it was a wonderful, relaxing Christmas and Natalie had a blast.  She loved all of her toys and can't decided which one she wants to play with still.  She just keeps running from one to the other.  Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas spent with family and friends and hope that despite all the hype and presents we can still remember the true meaning of Christmas!!!

Here are just a few pictures from Christmas morning

Natalie's art table

Getting ready to "unwrap" 

At first she thought it was a jungle gym (and yes my belly is getting huge- as only your little brother can get away with telling you on Christmas!!)

Stopping to read with Daddy

Daddy was a little tired

Reading on her new potty chair

Amazing!! (It's a potty training chair for those without little ones)

Kisses and bubbles with Mommom

Typical late Christmas morning scene- toys everywhere and Daddy putting things together

New kitchen for Nat- my lifesaver!!  Now I can make dinner and not be running around the house checking on her or trying to find her

We hope you and your family had as blessed of a holiday as ours.  Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night

This Mrs. Claus is headed to bed!! I am like a little kid, just so excited for our first Christmas here in Hershey tomorrow. Natalie is going to be such a joy and so excited- I can't wait.
Say a few extra prayers that Gary gets off call (a nice 26+ hour shift) at a decent time tomorrow morning cause I am not sure how I am going to keep Natalie from opening all the gifts. I am so grateful to have such an amazing husband who after working a ridiculous amount of hours will come home excited and ready to go tomorrow on no sleep all for his little girl. He truly is the best.

Hope you and your family have a blessed Christmas!!

Confession

I said (I might have even swore- forgive me God) that I would never buy my daughter a doll. Gary agreed - he once saw her pushing a doll around when we were out of town and wanted to take it from her and give her a Tonka truck (no worries he didn't). We were/are in no way prepared to handle a "girly girl." Thankfully God knew what he was doing in giving us Natalie. She is the opposite of a girly girl- loves to be messy, runs and climbs everything and is more interested in being outside than anything else. But, she does have a love for babies!! Particularly real ones, but also baby dolls. So this mom has caved and Santa will be bringing Nat Calin. I never thought I would see this day. Hopefully she arrives in time, I finally convinced myself just this morning it was ok and I can handle it.

Messy Girl

Natalie likes to pull out anything I put in her hair, even if it's right after she got messy eating dinner. Nat's motto- the messier the better. Good thing she's cute and can get away with it.

Trying this again

I am feeling guilty that baby #2 did not get the blog attention that Miss Natalie got. Everyone told me that would happen (I was in denial)!! I am going to try to get in the habit of blogging again before their arrival though it may only be a picture and a word or two. It is hard to believe we only have seven weeks (give or take) till our little one is "scheduled" to arrive. We truly are extremely excited. For now, I will leave you with Natalie's picture with Santa.

Natalie's First Time Baking

I have recently realized that Natalie is understanding what we are saying A LOT more.  It doesn't mean she always listens, but she certainly knows what we are asking her to do.  It is quite adorable.  When we get home now, I ask her to go let Sasha out, and she practically runs (she is REALLY fast) to Gary's office where Sasha's crate is.  By the time I get there she is working on the lock already.  Fortunately she hasn't fully figured out how to undo the lock which is a good thing cause Sasha come barreling out of her crate and knocks Nat over every time.  

So I thought it might be a good time to start baking with Nat.  It is something I would like to try to do more often with her.  It forces me to bake and it is a great learning experience for her.  Today we made zucchini bread -with the three large zucchini's curtesy of Chad & Nic.  I let Nat stand on the kitchen chair (bad mistake but she loved it) by the mixer.  She saw me adding ingredients and promptly tried to throw in a spatula and measuring spoon into the mixer.  I quickly learned to put the splash guard on which saved my utensils and served as a guard for Natalie's tiny hands as well.  She loved it, so much that she threw a tantrum (I thought two year olds did that- not 14 month olds) when we were all done.  I can't wait for her to wake up from her nap so she can try the bread!!

Here are a few pictures from our adventure.  I couldn't leave to go get the camera cause Nat was getting into everything so I just snapped these on my phone.  

Trying to get her smiling- a second to late

A little blurry cause this child doesn't stop moving!!!

End results- Daddy's muffins to take to work for breakfast

Bye Bye June

I love that I open my blog and it tells me my last post was one month ago.  Than I read my last post and it talks about trying to catch up on blogging while Gary was on night float.  HAHA HAHA HAHA!!!!  Well June has come and gone and night float might have been a little more demanding than I remember.  But it is over and what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, right?  Bring on second year ortho, and another 2.5 months of night float!!  Enough about us, you just want pictures of our amazing little girl that we have no idea how she turned out so cute.

These are not great pictures- I just took them on my phone but they cracked me up.  She really enjoyed dinner tonight if you can't tell!!!!

 It was going in by the handful

Yummy pudding

Even she can't believe how big her belly is- 

she kept patting it and hearing a hollow noise!

Night Float Catch Up- First Plane Ride

Now that Gary is starting night float and I will have evenings to myself, I am hoping to get caught up on Natalie's blog.  She has been a busy little girl lately- out to Colorado for vacation and turning one.  Such fun times.

Natalie did wonderful on the plane rides.  One the way out we were able to have her car seat but unfortunately on the ride home they thought the plane was full so we had to gate check it.  As it turned out there were a few extra seats and no one wants to sit with the baby so we were fortunate enough to get an extra seat for her.

Going to Colorado she took a little nap after take off but the rest of the time all she wanted to do was climb around in her car seat since she has never been allowed to do that before.

Coming back to Philadelphia I thought I had it all figured out.  We didn't leave Colorado till after 6pm and therefore were not getting in to Philly till almost midnight.  I held her afternoon bottle thinking if I give it to her at takeoff she should sleep the whole way.  Well this little girl pulled one over on us and didn't sleep at all.  We are walking through the Philly airport at midnight and she is wide awake smiling at everyone.  Lucky for us, she stayed awake and happy- no crying at all!!  I'll take it.

Paramount Party

As I mentioned in the last post, we had our end of the year playgroup party for PIM.  They rented out a local gymnastics center- so much fun.  Lets just say the uneven bars are a lot harder than they look, it is all harder than it looks.  I am going to be sore tomorrow!!!  And by the way- Nat had fun too!!!

 

Playing in the ball pit

 

Watching the big kids

 

Playing with Anabelle in the tunnel

 

Crawling through the tunnel

 

She just kept going from one tunnel to the next- she is going to sleep well tonight

 

 

Louisa- smiling as always 

I want to know if they have parties just for adults- or open gyms.  I would love to go with Gar and try out more of the equipment.  

First spring trip to Zoo America

 Today was a beautiful spring day in Hershey.  Unfortunately Gary was on call so Nat and I headed to Zoo America and then to stopped to visit Gary at work.  We ended the day with a PIM (Partners in Medicine) playgroup party at a local gymnastics center.  We had such a fun day- just wished Gar could have joined us.  Here is post one of our adventures- pics from Zoo America.

 Looking at the big fish in the bear exhibit

 She was so adorable, every animal she saw resulted in an "OOOHHH"

 Love the tongue

 "Mom whats down there?"

 You can see the buffalo behind Nat's head

Watching the wolves

Happy Easter

Natalie was very excited to wake up from her nap and find her Easter basket yesterday.  We are the coolest parents, we gave her diapers for Easter!!!

Looking excited

Ready to read

 Showing off one of her new diapers

 Eating her bear

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!!

Proud Parents

Gary and I were so proud of Natalie last night (not that we aren't every night).  We decided we should get the obligatory Easter Bunny picture taken this year but were convinced that she would scream the second we put her on the bunny's lap.  She shocked us, no screaming and all smiles, giggles and excitement.  She did awesome and we got two great pictures.  These are scanned images so the quality isn't the best- sorry.  

Sunday Naps

It's almost four on Sunday and I am the only one awake.  Poor Gary was on call last night and got no sleep so he decided to take a 2-3 hour nap this afternoon.  Miss Natalie crashed as well and is just passing hour number two.  That means productive afternoon for mom!  Scrapbooking of course, not her cleaning she should be doing!!

Daily Practice

We see a little girl toddling around in our not to distant future.  She has been getting more and more brave by the day.  She now transfers from one piece of furniture to another while standing, she cruises around the coffee table and sofa and the other day we saw her walking across the living room pushing a box (her lion still moves a little too fast for her).  Here she is practicing walking with her mommy.  Give her a month or two and she maybe doing this on her own.