Thanksgiving and the Outer Banks (Again)

Hello Everyone Near and Far,

November was a fairly eventful month for our boys and us. As for comings and goings, we enjoyed our second trip to the Outer Banks just before Thanksgiving. We went down to Cape Hatteras and viewed the lighthouse at night and again during the day, visited the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, where we learned about several of many shipwrecks off the coast of Hatteras Island, and rounded off our trip with a visit to the NC Aquarium. We noticed several other sights of interest while we were out there but could not visit due to time constraints. We’ll just have to take a third trip!

For Thanksgiving we enjoyed the company of my brother Sean, his wife Jenny, and their 7-month-old daughter Anne Elyse, down from Connecticut, as well as a childhood neighbor, Ann Corbly, who now lives in nearby Wilson, NC. We celebrated our freedoms with good company over good food. The day after Thanksgiving we took Sean and Jenny to Pullen Park in downtown Raleigh, and later that afternoon and evening we enjoyed the company of my parents and my brother Brenden’s family up from Aiken.

David has taken to playing—and defeating—games on the computer. He beat one in two tries that I’d been working on for almost an hour with no luck. He loves to look at digital pictures and videos we have on the computer, too. I’m telling you, he will be a computer whiz. He also likes to draw, more particularly tracing his hand, and he loves hugging and kissing Daniel. One day I was holding Daniel in my lap and David came up, gave him a squeeze, and said, “Dee wuvs him.” Two big firsts here: David said he loved someone, and he used a pronoun (his speech therapist will be ecstatic). Since then he has been prolific in telling Daniel that he’s loved. He tells us occasionally, too. ☺ I also overheard/saw him petting a fuzzy Grandma bear in one of his books one day and saying to himself, “Dee wuvs Ma (grandma). Dee wuvs Ma. Dee wuvs Ma.” My all-time favorite quote for this past month: Daniel was mildly protesting being set down for a few minutes and David went over to him and said, “Baby stop whine!”

Speaking of Daniel, he hit two milestones within a week of each other. He started laughing just before Thanksgiving, and he rolled over right after everyone left. He does lots of ab curls and I’m sure he’ll be sitting up on his own in no time. He’s a darling lad, and he continues to be Daddy’s boy.

Other than that we’re just doing our thing, day in, day out. We bought our Christmas tree this past Monday for family home evening, and David has been very interested in it. Come to think of it, we’ve never had a tree in our apartment since he’s been born. He’s only experienced them at visits to Grandma’s. He usually asks me to turn the lights on if they’re off, and he likes identifying the colors of the ornaments. He also likes picking up needles off the floor and occasionally from the branches. I might be keener on that if the tree was live… but, he’s my little human vacuum. At least he wants to help.

We love you all and wish you a very Merry Christmas!

Love,
The Other Other Nashes
Nathan, Natalie, David, and Daniel