30-31 Weeks

Now that the weather has finally started to show signs of something other than rain, I’ve been able to dress Natalie in many of her cute little dresses! Here she is in one of my absolute favorites- it’s a little big on her, but I just love it. And her big pink flower headband matches perfectly!

We’ve had a very busy week, as usual. Eric had this past weekend off and we had quite a bit going on. My Dad invited Eric out fishing on Saturday, while I attended an impromptu birthday lunch for Aunt Kit (Eric’s Aunt on his mom’s side). The rest of our time was spent focusing on our portrait session scheduled for Thursday- there was still a lot to do to get ready for them!

My Dad and Eric took the boat out to the delta and Eric managed to catch a little striper! My Dad caught three. Here they are proudly posing with their catches. However, Eric came home that evening with a radiating sunburn on his neck, face, and hands... even though I sent him off with spray sunscreen in his tackle box and strict instructions to use it. I was a little irritated since I knew from one look at him that it was a bad burn and it wouldn’t go away in time for our portraits! I guess I’ll have to start spraying him down before he leaves the house.

While Eric was busy getting sunburned and catching his fish, Natalie and I went to the Hopyard restaurant in San Ramon for Aunt Kit’s birthday. There were quite a few people there for such a last-minute get together and many of which I hadn’t seen since Christmas! Of course everyone was very excited to see Natalie and she even let a few people hold her. Eric’s cousin’s baby, Amare, was there with his grandma. It was really nice to see him especially, since I also hadn’t seen him since the holidays, which was just shortly after he was born!




He and Natalie are only about a month apart in age, but he’s obviously much bigger than our tiny little girl!! Grandma Kathy said he’s up to 20 pounds already and wearing 12-month size clothes at just 6 months! But he was just adorable. He looks a lot like both of his parents- he has beautiful light greenish eyes like his mom and has the cutest little patch of curly hair on top of his head. He and Natalie had fun sitting in their high chairs while everyone ate lunch. This was the first time I sat Natalie in a high chair at a restaurant (with our new cart/high chair cover that I found on clearance at Marshalls) and she did great!

After lunch, we all headed over to Cold Stone for ice-cream. I fed Natalie while I ate dessert and then we passed her around again. I was so surprised by how well she did that day- usually she doesn’t like many people to hold her.

Then Eric, Natalie and I attended grandma JoEllen’s dance performance at St. Mary’s college. She takes a few dance studio classes and participates in a performance every year. So we along with Patrick and his parents went to watch and support her. I had to hold Natalie in my lap since we were assigned seats right in the middle of a long, narrow row, but she didn’t fuss a bit! I think she liked to watch the dancers on stage, especially the ones with sparkly outfits. Afterward, we headed over to the Cheesecake factory for lunch and she had fun sitting in a high chair again.

On Monday and Tuesday, I was busy doing some last minute shopping for our photo shoot on Thursday. I had to find a nice shirt and a new pair of shoes for Eric to wear. Plus, I had to finish altering a dress that I had picked out to wear- I needed to add sleeves since I was having a very hard time finding the perfect green, sleeved dress that I envisioned. Luckily Elaine offered to come over and help, since sewing clothes is not my forte (I prefer to sew curtains, pillows, and other household type things that I can easily work through without a pattern). Elaine, on the other hand, is a great seamstress and showed me exactly what we needed to do.

Thursday was our photo shoot and I think it went well- but it was so stressful!! I had to make sure Natalie was fed, dressed and ready to go right at 5:30pm, and unfortunately not only Danielle (our photographer) was running late, but Elaine, Andrew, and Stacie were as well. I didn’t want to loose our precious daylight hours, so I was a big anxious. We were able to get all the shots I had wanted, even a few with the cousins together, despite Natalie acting rather fussy throughout most of the shoot. Luckily I thought to bring Bailey (her bumble bee pull toy) and that really saved us when we wanted the babies to look at the camera or give a smile. I should receive our photo CD from the session in about 3 weeks and we’re super excited to see how they turned out!

Natalie’s new food for this past week was peaches. Unfortunately we were so busy that I didn’t have a chance to make carrots for her as well, as I had planned. But so far, she seems to like most everything I make for her! I’ve also started giving her little sips of water here and there, since she’s always grabbing for our cups and glasses. She took right to it too- she holds the cup with both hands and takes tiny sips when I tip it into her mouth.

In other exciting news, Natalie’s little flower plant is growing taller and has been successfully transplanted to a new, bigger pot, courtesy of Daddy. I still have no idea what kind of flower it is, but I’m just happy it’s growing!