Nate's on the Move

Nate is crawling! For the last couple of weeks we had been expecting him to take off at any moment and last night he did. Even though we had been expecting it, it was quite a surprise. All of a sudden he just started crawling like he'd been doing it for weeks. Life is going to be a lot busier in our neck of the woods. :)

More Spring Pictures

We have really been enjoying the warm weather and all of the pretty spring flowers (and a few weeds) that are in bloom right now. Here are a few pictures from this past week. The ones in the clover are my favorites.

Nate is 9 Months

Today is Nate's nine month birthday. He is doing great. He weighs 20 pounds, 3 ounces and is 28 3/4 inches. He has turned into such a wiggle worm the last few days. He wants to go all the time and his favorite thing to do is stand up. He is "talking" more and more each day. He is saying lot's of ba-ba-ba-ba, pa-pa-pa-pa, and da-da-da-da sounds. He loves being outside, so the warm weather has been great. We spend almost every afternoon outside. This afternoon we went to the park near our house. Here are a few pictures.

This is what Daddy and Nate did while Mommy got some exercise. I think they were having more fun!

When we were leaving the park we saw a couple of cocoons in one of the trees. I've never seen an actual cocoon (except at the butterfly house at Callaway Gardens), so I thought it was kind of interesting.

It's official...

I will not be returning to work next year. I put my letter of resignation in the mail today. I really enjoyed being a media specialist and was very blessed to get to work with a veteran media specialist that was a great mentor and friend. However, NOTHING - not even my enjoyable job and salary - is better than getting to be with Nate each and every day. I am sure I will return to the classroom/media center one day, but right now I am going to enjoy being a wife and mother.

High Five Nate!

I have been wondering lately just how much information Nate is absorbing since he's not communicating with words yet. I am always saying the shapes/colors/names of objects, talking to him, singing to him (thank goodness he doesn't know how bad my singing is yet), reading to him, etc. On Wednesday of this week when Nate finished his fruit I said "It's all gone Nate. Good Job!" I say this every time he eats. A few days prior to this I started adding a "High Five Nate!" I would touch my hand to his and he got a big kick out of it, so I continued to do it. Well Wednesday I said "High Five Nate" and before I could get my hand up, he had his hand up. I thought it was a coincidence, so I said it again and sure enough he put his little hand up to give me a high five. This silly little thing was so exciting to me. It just reaffirms that he is learning and all of my "teaching" is beneficial. Of course, now Darren and I get the biggest kick out of doing this with him. I know this is just the beginning of all kinds of fun things he is going to surprise us with.

Happy Birthday Pops!

Thanks for being a great dad and granddad!

Easter Weekend

We had the most wonderful Easter weekend. Saturday morning Nate and I went to our church Easter egg hunt. It was held at a farm and even though Nate couldn't hunt eggs, he enjoyed seeing the animals and smiling at everyone. He is so inquisitive so anytime there is a lot going on he is happy. He also went on his first hayride Saturday morning.
Sunday was also a great day. We had a great stress-free morning, which is not the norm for us on Sundays. Our worship time Sunday morning was awesome (as usual). We are so blessed to be part of a wonderful church family. Sunday evening we had dinner at my parent's. We had a lot of fun. Nate loves going to Nan & Pops and getting to play in his walker. He discovered that he could open the cabinets. I had to get a picture. This is what I have to look forward to when he starts crawling/walking. Speaking of crawling, I was beginning to think that he was going to be a child that skipped crawling (and he may be), but the last few days he as been spending a lot of time on his tummy and making efforts to get up in the crawl position. We'll see what happens.