18-19 Weeks

On Friday night, we went over to my Dad and Sally’s house for dinner. Elaine came along with us while Andrew stayed behind at his office since he’s been busy working around the clock during high tax season. Everyone had fun playing with Natalie and we're all looking forward to our upcoming family trip to the lake in July! While shopping at Target this week, we picked out an adorable swimsuit for the trip- it has flamingos!! I just love it!

Then we had dinner with Mom & Patrick at their house on Sunday night. Eric’s mom had offered a while ago to take Natalie for a day a week when I return to work- she’s been working at Children’s Hospital so long that she has more vacation time than she knows what to do with (what a nice problem to have)! She said that she would be overjoyed to take the baby off our hands and spend some special time with her every week. So we thought about it, decided it would be a good idea, and then we had the chance to work out the details over dinner that night. With Eric’s crazy split-day off schedule, we figured that Grandma could babysit for one weekday every other week (I felt kind of bad that she’d be using all of her vacation time watching her every week, so every other week was a good compromise). Grandma said she’s excited to start taking Natalie out for walks and enjoy some good one-on-one time with her first grandbaby. Luckily she's learning how to tolerate the bottle- and even hold it all by herself- so people other than Mommy can finally feed her, as seen here with Daddy.


So, as the schedule is set for now, I’ll be working every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. On one of those days each week, Eric has a rotating day off and then Grandma takes her one day every other week. So that only leaves one (and sometimes two) days each week that Eric and I will have to work opposite schedules in order to watch the baby. I think it will turn out alright... but I’m still heartbroken that I have to return to work. Obviously my preference is to stay at home full-time. Hopefully we’ll get to that point soon...

In more exciting news, Natalie officially rolled over! On the 21st, during our morning playtime routine in her room, I quickly turned her over onto her tummy as I try to do each day. She usually tolerates tummy time for just a few minutes before she starts screaming to be turned over, but this time, she did it all by herself! And she seemed rather shocked, as if she had done it accidentally. I was completely caught off guard! I’ve been noticing that she has become more agile while on her tummy lately, but I didn’t think she’d officially roll for another couple weeks. So that was really exciting for us. I called Eric at work right away to share the good news and he was excited to hear it, but kind of sad that he missed it. Hopefully she’ll do it again soon!


I had to order a new highchair to use with our dining set. Unfortunately our Fisher Price Space Saver chair (that I loved!) didn't fit well on our enormous, awkward chairs and ended up taking up way more space than I envisioned in our tiny dining room... so I did some research and found this great clip-on, rotating chair from Chicco. The great thing about it is that it doesn't occupy one of our chairs, it's compact and portable, and it matches the print of her carseat that I love! The only negative that I can think of about it is if we had a less than sturdy dining table to attach it to- luckily our beast of a table is at least 75 pounds, so I'm not worried at all about her tipping over! And as you can see, she seems to like it too :)


On Friday night, we went out to dinner with Jenny and some of her family and friends for her birthday. We ate at this Japanese restaurant, similar to Hana Japan where the chef cooks on a table right in front of you. The restaurant was super loud and really busy that night, which bothered Natalie a little. Luckily she napped long enough for us to eat dinner though!