Word Explosion

Well, not so much just a word explosion, but an EVERYTHING explosion - that's what Natalie seems to be having. We can't believe all the new things she says and does! Her memory blows my mind - she's always recalling things that we told her in passing or without thinking much of it. She has about a million words (ok maybe not quite that many), and uses lots of simple sentences. As for adapting to life with Mollie, we're all adjusting, but all in all, I think you'd have to say that she's doing the best that an almost 2 year-old really can do!

Here are some cute little things she's done in the past day or two:

• Natalie was eating an apricot for her snack yesterday, and she put one of her many baby dolls on the table next to her. She didn't realize that I was watching her, and she held up a piece of apricot to her doll and said, "Want some? (pause) OK." and pretended to have the doll eat the fruit. :) Then she turned to Mollie, who was in the Baby Papasan chair on the floor and said, "Want some? (pause) No? OK."
• She was supposed to be telling Mollie and I goodnight a couple nights ago. Mollie was in the Baby Papasan again, and Natalie reached down to hug her. Instead, she kind of put her arms around her like she was going to pick her up instead. She said, "Daddy, look!" Brad said, "What is it?" She said, "I got a baby!"
• Earlier today, I was taking pictures of Mollie with my faux-studio setup. I wanted to get a shot from a different angle, so I stood up on a kitchen chair. Natalie was right in the mix of things, and started to stand in a chair also. We have had to tell her a lot lately that she cannot stand on chairs. So she stands up in her chair, Brad tells her she can't do it, and without missing a beat, she says, "Mommy stand?" Ooops!
• She can count to ten all by herself! She just started doing this out of the blue. She's been interested in counting for a while, and we'll say, "One" and she says "two" and then we alternate like that, but now she'll just start counting on her own. Although she does skip the number 4 pretty much every time. I think she thinks 4 and 5 are the same since they both start with "f."
• A couple days ago, she put her pink bear into her baby doll stroller and started loading it up with other random things. She told us she was going to the zoo (her favorite place!). Then she stopped, asked the bear, "Want mik (milk)?" ran back over to her toy shelf, picked up a cell phone, looked across the room at the bear and said, "This? (pause) No? OK." Then she rooted around some more, found a bottle, looked back at the bear and said, "This? (pause) OK!" and ran back over to the bear with the bottle.
• She was watching a video of herself dancing in only her diaper to the music on what we call her Princess Mobile riding toy. When the video was over, she ran over to the toy, started playing the music and dancing, then came over to me and wanted me to help her take her clothes off, I'm assuming because they were off in the video!

Well, I'm sure there are a ton more, but these are ones that I've taken mental note of lately to pass along.

Here's a quick pic of her saying "cheese" and wanting me to take her picture yesterday afternoon.