The day had finally come!  Nathan rolled over again this morning!!

When we get up in the mornings, I always take Nathan in the kitchen with me as I make my breakfast and set him down on his tummy.  So I was puttering around the kitchen, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him roll over!!  Hooray!  I ran over to celebrate with him, however I was disappointed that once again I wasn't paying complete attention when he did it.  But from what I did see, it didn't look like he had too much difficulty.  He just kind of leaned his head over and the rest of his body followed.  So I decided to turn him back over onto his tummy, hoping for a repeat performance - and he did it!!  Two more times, in fact!!  I was so excited, I rushed over to the computer to text-page the exciting news to Brian.  He called and I told him the details.

Fast forward to after Nathan's first nap.  I decided to attempt the impossible: record Nathan rolling over.  So I set him on his tummy in his room and started recording.  I actually only had to film for about 5 minutes before AGAIN he rolled over!!  So, for your viewing pleasure, here is Nathan's 5th time he ever rolled over.  As you can tell from the end of the video, this is already yesterday's news to Nathan, as he acts so nonchalant about the whole thing. 

Monday night was another BAD night, with Nathan up like 6-8 times during the night. UGH!! Luckily he took a good nap Tuesday morning (and I slept too), but then he napped poorly and was fussy for the rest of the day. I made the mistake of letting him take a 4th nap of the day at like 5:30 or 6:00, and he only slept for 30 minutes and then was wide awake at his normal bedtime of 8:00. So we let him stay up, I nursed him to sleep, but he woke up as Brian put him into the crib. Brian tried to rock him to sleep, but he ended up crying (sobbing!) for a long time (maybe 20 minutes?) and he refused to be comforted by Brian. So Mom to the rescue - he settled down for me but it was after 9:30 before the stinker was asleep.
With that bad start to the night, I thought I was in for another rough one. Pleasantly surprised, I woke up at 2:00 to feed him, had to rock him back to sleep at 4:30 and then he hungry at 6:45 and was up at 7:20ish. He took a great nap in the morning (me too, again), then was an angel while we were out running errands (in the snow!!). He fussed on the ride home, falling asleep in the car and ended up taking an hour nap. He was in a great mood this afternoon, and as you can see from the top picture, even cooperating with me as we tried cloth diapers for the first time!! He took another nap in the afternoon. This one was short (30 minutes), but I think he woke up and couldn't go back to sleep because his diaper was wet. At least this afternoon, this kid pee'd like it was going out of style!! He started getting tired again around 6:00, but I learned my lesson from the night before and we pushed through and made it until 7:00, when I nursed him down for the night. He woke up a few times between 7 and 8, but Brian and I were able to rock him back to sleep. I'm loving this 7:00 bedtime, maybe that won't be a one-night thing.

This past Saturday was Brian's first day off in two weeks, and only his second day off in the past month.  He's had a rough couple of weeks!  But in the little spare time he's had, he has been looking for a new car for me.  The Millenia was getting old, we had gotten our money out of it, and it would potentially need some costly repair work in the next year or two.  Plus it was somewhat difficult to get the carseat in and out the backseat, and it took up so much room that the seat in front of it had to be scooted all the way forward. 

We began talking a few months back about how much of an upgrade we wanted to make.  We discussed getting a new and slightly larger sedan, but were worried about storage room for trips and how long it would last us when we decided to have another child (yes "when" not "if", but don't hold your breaths!).  We talked about a minivan briefly, but I wasn't ready for one and Brian was only excited about some 1990s supercharged Dodge minivan, or something like that (typical!).  So it looked like that left us with SUVs.  We test drove a couple of different models, but really liked the Pilot the best (it also happened to be the most expensive, but doesn't that almost always happen?).  By last week, we were pretty sure we wanted to buy a Pilot, we just had to wait for the right one to come along.

Friday night Brian was looking at the used car ads and found a Pilot in Charlotte that was almost perfect: 2003 with low mileage, silver with gray leather interior, for a good price.  He also found a good looking Toyota Highlander (which we had not previously test driven) also for sale in Charlotte.  So we decided to hit the road Saturday morning and come back with a new car!

We were off before 10:00 with Nathan sleeping in the backseat.  When we arrived at the dealership, we found out that they had only received the car the night before, so it had not yet been cleaned or serviced.  We took it on a test drive, and were very happy with it, so it was on to negotiations.  Luckily I missed most of the "fun" feeding Nathan, but Brian made pretty good strides talking the salesman into taking a couple hundred dollars off the original number for the Pilot minus the trade in for the Millenia.  Unfortunately, the sales manager came in and said there was a lot of other interest in the Pilot and couldn't go that low, but still gave us a few hundred dollars off the original number.  So after a valiant negotiation effort by Brian, we had a deal!
We were worried that because nothing had been done yet to the car by the dealer, that we might not be able to drive it home that day.  But they said that they would get working on it right away and would have it ready later that day.  It took a while to complete all the paperwork, but got done around two and had a few hours to kill before the car would be ready.  We got a loaner Jeep and headed over to IKEA - hooray!!  Since we were already big spenders that day, we decided to just keep up the trend!  We bought a dresser for our guest room, two big pieces of artwork and some stuff for the kitchen. 

All this time, Nathan had been an angel.  He was so good all through the negoations and paperwork at the dealer, and took a nap in his carseat during lunch and part of the IKEA shopping trip, but by the time we were back in the car driving back to the dealership, he had had enough, so he fussed and cried the whole 20 minutes back.

We got back to the dealership around 5:30, and the car wasn't ready.  I went to feed Nathan again, hoping that by the time we finished, the Pilot would be also.  No such luck.  We headed back out in the Jeep for another drive, and Nathan got really worked up.  We ended up parking in a shopping center parking lot and just sat in the car holding and playing with Nathan.  Then we headed back to the dealership and FINALLY around 7:30 they brought the car out to us.  We transferred all our stuff from the Millenia and all our IKEA purchases into the Pilot, but then a guy came out with some touch-up paint to fix a few scrapes on the bumpers.  We finally hit the road right before 8:00 and got home around 9:00.  We were all exhausted from our long and exciting day, but so glad to have the car buying adventure behind us!

Most of the past three and a half months (already!) of Nathan's life, Nathan and the cats have coexisted peacefully in our house.  Nathan was too young to realize what the cats were, and the cats ignored Nathan - unless he was crying and then they would move to another room.  That is all beginning to change.

Well, we had a long but exciting day today, but more on that in a different post.  For this post, I just wanted to make sure I remember one of the adorable things about Nathan at this age.  Tonight, after I fed Nathan for the last time, I was rocking him to sleep in his room.  As he falls asleep, he usually twists his head or jerks his body, but rarely I get a smile.  Well tonight I got a smile, then his body shook a little in a silent laugh, and then I got an adorable chuckle.  Then it happened again a few more times.  So cute!!  Sometimes I get frustrated with Nathan (especially during the night if he wakes up a lot or can't go back to sleep), but sometimes I am amazed at what a sweet and wonderful son I've been blessed with!

We finally have purchased a video camera!! So all the new videos I'll be posting should have better picture and audio quality. I've been playing around with the camera for the past three days, and here are a few random clips for your viewing pleasure.  (I'm not sure why the videos recently look black, but they should work after you push "play".)

So, its been over a week since Nathan rolled over and still no repeat performance.  This leads me to believe that either a) I imagined the whole thing (a daydream maybe) or b) somehow Nathan got all his body parts positioned exactly perfectly and rolled over by accident.  I'm thinking "b" is the correct answer.  However every time we do tummy time now I practice with him how to roll over, and I'm sure within the next few weeks Nathan will get the hang of it!

I also wanted to let everyone know that Nathan has been sleeping much better the past few nights then he did over the weekend.  We're back to one to two wakings per night and I am SO thankful for that!

Here are a few videos that I took over the past week that I never got around to sharing.  This first one is Nathan playing with Duplos in his Bumbo.  He continues to amaze me with his developing motor skills!
This second one is another jumper video.  Nathan is starting to make me dizzy trying to watch him bounce. This video was taken in the middle his time in the jumper one night, and he was jumping and bouncing like this for probably half an hour!  Sometimes I think he looks like a Russian dancer, when he jumps and kicks his feet out.  I don't know where he gets his energy!

This morning, after Nathan and I got up and I had breakfast, we went into his room for some tummy time.  I set him down on the floor and then turned to get some toys for us to play with, when I hear a soft "tha-thunk".  I turn back, and Nathan is staring up at me from his back! 
"What???" I think. "Didn't I put you down on your tummy and now you're on your back.  Did you just ROLL OVER for the first time??  No, it can't be! I missed it!" 
I turned Nathan back over on his tummy.
Me: "Nathan did you just roll over? Show Mommy what you just did!"
Nathan: *grin*
Me: "Show Mommy how you just rolled over!"
Nathan: *bigger grin*
Me: "Nathan, did you just roll over?  How did you do that?  Come on, show Mommy how you did that!"
Nathan: *yawn*
Me: "Please, Nathan, show Mommy!"
Nathan: *lays head down and starts sucking on his hand*
Me: (thinking) "Maybe I was just confused.  Maybe I just imagined that, because I didn't actually SEE him roll over."
Me: "Nathan, show Mommy what you did!"
Nathan: *starts rubbing his eyes*
So I went to feed him 2nd breakfast and put him down for his morning nap.  Maybe we'll get a repeat (as confirmation) later today or this week.  I'll keep everyone posted!