A little piece of heaven

Happy 8 month birthday my sweet Belle!

This month you saw the snow for the first time. You loved it!

In your usual laid back fashion you took it all in stride and enjoyed it. You went to Chicago and got to meet mommy and daddy’s friends. You even got to see Wrigley Field!

You continued torturing Lucas and learned to call him. CUCA! That’s your favorite word right now.

You also started enjoying stuffed animals and you fell in love with a Minnie. We couldn’t get it out of your hands! So of course we had to buy it for you. And the spoiling, begins!

You finally slowed down in your mad dash towards development. This month we saw consolidation. We saw you become more confident in your crawling. We saw you master new sounds. We saw you master climbing up the stairs..and anything climbable!

Just tonight we saw you stand up off the floor, let go, and balance yourself for a few seconds! I didn’t get to see you, but there was a whole room full of people that watched and cheered you on.

You are such a happy girl.

You had some rough moments this month with your first stomach bug, but even while you were sick and vomiting, you were still happy and playful.

You went to your first Christmas party and had a blast!

You are a great eater, and are now eating pretty much regular food. You still love nursing, and I saw breastmilk is still hands down your favorite food. But you will eat anything I give you, including mandarins, noodles, cheerios, and pretty much anything I put in front of you.

You continue to amaze us with your strength and joy and you continue to bring so much happiness to our family!

Here are more pictures:

EUGENE WATSON!!!! Come on down and get your price!!!! (figuratively 🙂

Congratulations Eugene, I will contact you by email to get your address so I can send you the video. I would love to see a video of you using the Xbox with Kinect to share on the blog!

If you logged on to see our livecam feed, I am so sorry, it was a total failure!

I decided to use an app since Nathan is so good at activating the ipad, and I figured it would be easier for him to activate an app than to pick a piece of paper. Plus I got held up speaking with lawyers so I didn’t have time to write them all out on paper. I got an app called iraffle, wrote in all 200+ entries (I wrote the person’s name multiple time for people who had multiple entries), and had it all ready to go.

If you were watching us online, you probably saw Belle come up to the ipad (she loves it) and start banging on the keyboard. By the time I tried to draw a name, all of the names had been erased!

So I re-added them all in and had Nathan activate the app and pick the winner.

Thank you so much to everyone that participated. By the end of the week I will clean out the list to delete duplicates and I will publish it here so it can be used for other children.

I can’t thank all of you enough for participating.

We sponsored this contest, but it was so much fun that I am going to seek out corporate sponsors so we can continue to have more contests/giveaways.

Thanks to everyone and happy holidays!!!!

Today is the day! We will pick the winner for our XBOX with Kinect! We are so excited! You can submit entries all the way up until 5pm PST, when we will be doing the live stream. If anyone wants to watch as we pick a winner LIVE online here’s what you do:

Go to this URL:

http://98.151.195.48:50198/

UN: guest
PW: guest

IMPORTANT: Use Internet Explorer to log in. I can’t get the audio to work on Firefox.

Where it says “Stream Profile” on the top left, change it to Mpeg 4. This will allow you to hear the sound.

If you can’t hear the audio, scroll down, and you will see that it asks you to download a component. Download it (sometimes you have to download 2 different things), and once they’re both installed (it’ll do it automatically) you should be able to hear the sound.

I have all of the entries catalogued and I have to say this contest/giveaway has been a fabulous success for us. We got SO MANY amazing ideas! I’ve already added in a few pages and Nathan’s been having so much fun.

I have so much hope now! Hearing everyone’s suggestions and how other people have used their communication devices makes me feel confident that we can use this tool to give Nathan a voice.

So although there will only be one XBOX winner, I want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart who participaetd. You are all winners – you have helped Nathan, and other children, gain a voice! THANK YOU!