heat wave

It's been pretty majorly hot around these parts for the past week or so, which Natalie has handled quite well so far. She's been spending lots of time in just a diaper or a onesie, hanging out in our one air-conditioned room.

Despite being so brutally hot that we hardly want to leave the house, we've managed to have some fun. Natalie is continuing to become much more social and playful, and seems to be doing new things every day. She now loves to explore everything around her with her hands, from playing with Mikey's hair (as seen below), to crinkling toys & paper, stroking my shirt while she nurses, and passing objects from hand to hand while she plays. It feels quite amazing to watch her discover so many new things and become more dextrous.

We've also continued working on our many home improvement projects, slowly but surely. It's amazing how challenging it can be to simply get showered and dressed every day now that we have a baby taking up all of our attention, but every so often we manage to get something even more productive done. Natalie's Nana came down for a day to help us do some gardening in the backyard, which I will post pictures of soon (and, yes, I know, I know, I still haven't posted pictures of our new front steps... but they're coming!). All of that hard work digging in the dirt earned my mom some major snuggle time with her little grandbaby, who was her usual funny-faced self:



Natalie's social calendar has also been quite packed lately, as she's helped us host some out of town guests. For the 4th of July she put on her "Miss Independent" dress and her cutest face to entertain our NY visitors, Jon and Harper.

We've been pretty impressed at Natalie's ability to adjust to changes in her routine lately, she just seems to roll with whatever crazy shenanigans we rope her into. She never looks particularly pleased about it, but, then again, she never looks particularly pleased about anything.

We spent the holiday weekend eating good food, drinking good (well, cheap) wine, strolling on the beach, and ultimately taking a nice long sail in Rockland harbor. Here's another one of our usual family portraits, where Mike and I look happy, and Natalie looks oblivious:

I love this next picture of us aboard "The Morning in Maine," because it shows how much our lives have changed in the past year since discovering I was pregnant. Harper is enjoying a glass of wine, Jon is playing on his iphone, and Mikey is on daddy-duty giving the budgie a bottle. We also mastered diaper changing while on the water, which was no easy feat. Lucky for us, the other passengers didn't seem to mind that we'd chosen to bring a tempermental 3 month old out for an evening sail--in fact, most of them spent a good portion of the trip cooing at Natalie and trying to make her smile. The only people to elicit a grin were two young boys who spent probably 45 minutes making monkey faces at her and tickling her feet. It was pretty cute.

We found out that children were welcome to steer the boat, and figured Natalie had best jump at the opportunity. She seemed only mildly interested, but we (read: I) found it hilarious:

We're continuing our summer adventures with another round of hosting good friends; Amanda, George, Colleen, and John are here for a couple of days to enjoy the coast of Maine with us. I'm hoping more beach time & plenty of rounds of Apples to Apples are on the agenda. Hopefully Natalie will continue to be in good spirits while we drag her all around the midcoast...