Photo Shoot

We are all going on a vacation this fall. So with the new regulations TBM needs a passport... *rolls eyes*. So we ended up at Sears. While we were there we got talked into getting some portraits taken of TBM. It sounded like fun so we went for it.
Even though she was totally not dressed for a photo shoot - the pics turned out pretty well. TBM was super cooperative. Anyway - enough talk, on to the pictures.

Happy Times.

We go to DH's parent's house (OMG - am I supposed to use both apostrophies? I don't remember anything from elementary...) almost every week. We were over there this week and TBM had a great time eating Cheerios while we had supper.

Eating Cheerios in the exersaucer:


Eating banana at the table (at some point she realises that she isn't in fact eating the same thing we are the same way - and then we have to include her, but until then the exersaucer or high chair is great):
She also loves to ride on DH's shoulders. You can catch a glimps of what she's going to look like in this pic I think:

Smiling for the camera:

Finally - it's outside time :)

So the weather finally got nice enough and the grass finally got dry enough to start going outside. We put down an old sheet and TBM loves to crawl off of it. Her grandparents were over helping us plant out little garden and Grandad snaped some nice ones of her playing. My fingers are still crossed that she won't notice the hat... :) She also loves the sand at the park. I have to remember to take the camera with me next time we go.

Pulling up...

DH and I were doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen while TBM was happily playing in the living room. We hear the music for the exersaucer turn on. Figuring that she had managed to crawl over to it I peaked around the corner to take a look. I never expected what I saw. Andrew ran and grabbed the camera while I hid in the kitchen hoping she hadn't noticed me and wouldn't let go. Now I just want to point out that she is basically 6 months old in these pics... :)

This is what we first saw:

And here she is wondering what all the fuss is about.

OMG - She's standing!!

Andrew and I were cleaning the kitchen. TBM was playing happily

Food Fun

TBM had been bugging us for weeks about our food. For a while we were able to placate her with small plastic bowls and spoons to play with. But eventually she wore us down. Here she is enjoying rice cerial for the first time. She really liked it. Although it was basically impossible to get the spoon back to refill it.

April Showers bring cute dresses?

We got this dress from DH's uncle as a birth present. I worried that it wouldn't fit in weather warm enough for her to wear. But as it turns out our little peanut fit it just fine as spring came. And with our lovely nice weather she wore it a bunch.

Sitting so nicely.

All done - please pick me up :)

Computer Monster

At first TBM was happy to sit on the computer room floor and play with toys. She would give me 20 minutes or so to check my e-mails and so on. But around 4 months she started to get really interested in what I was doing. I have an optical mouse and she was facinated by the red light. And then she got interested in keyboard. I guess there was something in the buffer and she managed to press 'Ctrl' and 'V' at the same time.

"Thhhhhhhhh"

I know this is going to be out of order - but it's too cute and I don't want to forget about it.

All weekend TBM has been sticking her toungue out and making this "Thhhhhhhh" noise while spraying spit everywhere. It's really cute. DH's been encouraging her and she's doing it more and more.

But more importantly I think it's the first thing she's 'parroted'. We make the noise and then look at her and she does it. It's really cool. Our little tiny baby is growing up :( J/K :)

Testing Facebook

Just seeing what happens...

Easter (and the never ending photoshoots...)

So Easter was a pretty cool time. We dressed TBM up in a fancy dress for the first time... (no I didn't buy a fancy dress - I borrowed one from my lovely sister) :) For the whole 10 minutes she lasted in it each time she looked adorable. Luckily we took lots of pictures so there's proof that we do occasionally put clothes on her.

The frist two were taken by my dad. She is just beautiful if I do say so myself.





Then DH's parents came over and we repeated the process. She lasted a bit longer because we don't keep out house at 1000 degrees... :P

Here she is getting ready - she has no idea what's in store, but she likes the large black thing and all the attention.

"Can we take this thing off???" she ask as she pulls on the skirt.

Showing her adorable smile.

Something was funny. She can finally push up a little bit.

All done.

Our little tiny baby is growing up :)

We were at my parents house for supper one night. When it came time to eat my dad suggested that we put TBM in a highchair... We looked at him sceptically. She was WAY too young/little/our baby to sit in a high chair. But he persisted (those of you who know my dad will understand this). So we decided to humor him. It couldn't hurt, we figured, to put her in, prove she wasn't nearly big enough to sit in it, and then take her out.

I put her in and OMG - it worked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She sat there for nearly all of supper looking really pleased with herself and playing with some toys.

Here she is watching the strange pen with lights and a fan thing my parents got my nephew...


"What the 'F' is that thing" she wonders in her baby brain....

The awesome playmat

DH's parent's neighbor made this awesome playmat for TBM. It's too stiff to be a quilt - but it is beautiful and bright. TBM spent many minutes in a row staring at it when we got it. Months later she still loves to sit on it and touch the pieces of colored material.

Here's her being very cute on the playmat.

The mystery was solved

So I'm going through my photos trying to remember stuff from what seems like forever ago. TBM would start to get fussy in the evenings. She would cry and whine. Nothing seemed to help. One evening in frustration we decided to 'start again'. The theory being to take all her clothes off and choose a new diaper, new clothes, and maybe life would be good.

We got as far as taking all her clothes off. Once she was nakked - she smiled at us... Now it's pretty universal. If she doesn't want to nurse, she isn't sleepy but she's fussy - then we 'nekked her'....

Here are some of my favorites taken right after we discovered this fact.

She grabbed it :)

DH and I were working on our computers. We had the play mat set up for her and to this point she really hadn't shown much interest in it. Well that night she was playing really happily and we got a little absorbed in our online lives. I turned around at one point and was stunned. She had finally gotten the monkey. She'd been grabbing at and succeding at batting it for what seemed like weeks. (Looking back I'm sure it had only been a few days). And there it was - in her hand. As far as we know it was the first time she'd actually grabbed anything.


Here's a close up for those of you looking at the first picture.

I'm not going to post the other 40 similar pictures I took :) Can we tell I'm a first time mom?

Somce cute pictures.

I can't really think of a story to encompass these - so I'm just going to post them.


This was a smile we saw alot of for the first couple months.


Here she is wearing a really cute denim jumper she got from one of DH's aunts. I believe the awesome smile was going to her Oma.

Andrew took this one. It makes we laugh.

Going Swimming :)

So we took TBM swimming for the first time at about 2 months. It was a blast. She lasted about 40 minutes before she got cold :(

I found this amazingly cute swimsuit/swimdiaper thing at a local boutique. It's been really cool. I tried to find those disposable swim diapers - but they didn't sell them small enough for her at the time.

It was quite the adventure to figure out how to get changed and get the baby changed. But it worked out well. She loved the water. And other people in the pool loved her.

Her First Christmas

I know that a couple weeks past my last post. But truthfully - I don't remember much about those few weeks. They were a blur of trying to do Christmas shopping with a 2 week old baby. Figuring out breastfeeding and changing diapers. Learning all about this new person that we were going to share our lives with.
Christmas was fun. We spent Christmas Eve with DH's parents for his dad's birthday. We then spent Christmas morning with them, Christmas day with my extended family, and then Boxing day morning with my sisters, BILs, neices and nephews.

In her Christmas outfit... Sleeping (she still did this all the time)


Look what Santa brought us :) Would you believe me if I told you she crawled in there all by herself?

Our first family Christmas photo.

The frist week.

TBM (The Baby Monster) was an amazing baby (still is actually) for the first couple weeks. She slept alot and didn't cry very much.

Most of the pictures taken of her (besides the obvious ones with me and Andrew and other family) were taken trying to catch her with her eyes open.

Here she is sleeping in her dad's arms.

One of my favorites. Sticking her little toungue out.

Sleeping so peacfully. No matter where we put her - she would just sleep.

Haning out with dad. Or maybe it's the other way around :)

The Baby Monster's Birth

The Baby Monster's (who will be refered to as TBM) birth was one of the most interesting moments of my life. I was completely different from what I expected, and really bore very little resemblence to anything I had imaginged before hand.

Her due date was November 28. I stoped working on November 10 in order to rest up and get ready. That was enough time and I was happy as the date grew near. Somehow in my mind I thought that 10am on the 27th would be an awesome time to go into labour. I wanted to go into labour in the morning so that I would have lots of energy. 10am came and went and no surprise - no baby...

What I didn't expect is when things would start. That night (or very early the next morning) I woke up having felt my water break. At 12:15 am on November 28 - my water broke. I was really really excited. All the brith stories I had heard from the women in my family contain fast (in the global scheme of things) labours which progress quickly especially if the water breaks first. Andrew and I got up and were really excited. We made sure that everything was ready to go - the gatorade was in the mini fridge, the pool was still fully pumped... Since there were no contractions we put a disposable bed pad on the bed and tried to go back to sleep. I woke up at 2am feeling my first contraction. I wasn't too bad. 15 minutes later I had another one. it was harder to go back to sleep this time. 12 minutes later another one. At this point I got up and started walking around. The contractions vanished... After 30 minutes I gave up and went back to bed.

Maybe 20 minutes later I had another contraction. 10 minutes laster another one. These were strong enough to wake me up - but they weren't too intense. I tried to sleep through a few and gave up. I started walking around the bedroom again. And once more the contractions vanished. We repeated this pattern all night. I would sleep until the contractions were regular and 10 minutes apart. Then I would get up to see if they would get stronger with a bit of movement and they would completely go away.

What an exhausting night. The next morning our housemates (my sister, BIL, and their 3 small children) vacated the house and I tried going for longer walks all around the house. the only which seemed to keep the contractions coming were stairs. But that got tireing very fast. We were in touch with our midwife occationally through this. She kept saying to just wait. But patience isn't my strongest thing - and this labour was going about as differently as possible from what I had been visualising.

At maybe 11am I finally gave up. Andrew and I decided to order some pizza and play video games. And as I settled onto the couch and played FFXII - the contractions slowly increased. As long as I didn't get up and move - they got closer together and more intense. We finally asked our midwife Barb to come at around 4pm. When she arrived I froze. This was probably the most frustrating part of the entire experience. Before she came the contractions were starting to be right on top of each other. There wasn't more than a minute or two between them. And then when she came they went back to being more than 5 minutes apart and completely manageable.

She went to another part of the house to give us some space and I lost it. I felt like a huge failure. Nothing I did was helping my baby come. Nothing I did was making me get any closer to getting to meet my baby. I started to cry. I'd basically been up for a day and a half and I was exhausted. Andrew went and got Barb who was very encouraging and supportive. With my spirits renewed and some birth tincture (I know...) I lay back on the bed and regrouped. The contractions came back (at this point I wasn't conviced they would), and things really started moving around 6pm.

Transition wasn't fun. Barb didn't want me to get into the pool too early - it can hinder labour. So I was straddling a chair looking at the pool trying to get through each contraction - because each one I got through would get me closer to getting in the pool. I remember very clearly the frist push. I had gotten off my chair and suddenly I squatted and everything felt different. The pain of the contractions had lessened. And the feeling was wonderful. I new that this meant the end was near. I remember very clearly looking across the room at Barb who was making some notes on her clipboard and yelling (soory for yelling) "I think I'm pushing". That still makes me smile. No woman who has ever given birth can mistake what a push feels like.

At that point I got in the pool. My husband says it was more of a dive than a graceful entrance :) The relief was wonderful. The weight of my belly was taken off my back and everything relaxed. Each push was getting me closer to holding my baby. I pushed with everything I had. I was done with labor. I was mentally and physically exhausted and I just wanted my baby. I wanted to hold and cuddle the little life who'd been living inside me for 9 months. I could feel the head decend and I remember trying with all my might not to let it rock back up. I remember making very low growl noises because those were the ones that made the pushes feel like they did the most.

When she crowned it was awesome. Unlike the pain of contactions it was the type of pain I handle very well. So I pushed right through it. And then with a mighty push I felt her head come out and then I added a little extra to the end of that push and got the rest of her out too. Barb very quickly unwraped the cord from around her neck as I rolled over (I'd been on hands and knees) and placed my baby on my chest. Hearing her cry for the first time was truly amazing. It was 8:41pm November 28, 2006

It tooke a few minutes before we confirmed what I had felt all along that she was a girl. And Natalie Margaret was born.

20 hours and 26 minutes after my water broke, 18 hours and 40 minutes after the first contraction, I finally held my little tiny baby named Natalie.