A New Tooth!

Congrats to Natalie - she has a new tooth! She cut her 2nd top canine a few days ago. Now it would appear that the bottom two are working overtime to come in. I'll be so glad when they make their tiny appearance. We've been dealing with mood swings and tantrums that I really feel are connected to some pain in her mouth. I gave her some Tylenol a little bit ago, and she seems to be a lot more herself already. I can't believe she still has all 4 second year molars to come - but then I *think* we are done with teething - for Natalie, anyway. I hope Mollie deals a little differently with hers!

So Natalie has been playing with blocks and just came up and wanted me to go play with her. I asked her if she wanted to sit on my lap while I finished something, and she did. She then plastered me with kisses, including some Eskimo kisses. Yeah, I think she's feeling better. YAY! Off to build something with Miss Nat . . .

The Big Girl Bed

I have to say, Natalie has done amazingly well with her new bed! Brad took down the crib and put the full-sized bed from our guest room/soon-to-be-new-nursery on Friday, and attached the bed rail to the side. Natalie LOVES to get up on her big bed, and she LOVES to sleep in it! It's hilarious how excited she gets about the thing. I thought that might be bad and she might not want to actually sleep in it, but she does! The first night went 100% perfectly, and so did naptime the following day. When I heard her on the monitor in the morning, I went to her room, opened her door, and she was just climbing off the bed, saying "down!" That's actually one of the only times she's even gotten out of it though! Usually, we go in and she's happily rolling around or sitting up in it. It almost makes me feel like she was crowded in the crib, but I know she had plenty of room. We did have one weird naptime on Monday, but all in all, it wasn't so bad, and I think it had more to do with her teeth bothering her than anything else.

By the way, she is seriously working hard on her 1st year molars. One of the top ones has a few cusps poking through, and all 3 others are thisclose to poking through as well. Honestly, I probably shouldn't say this, but it's been much easier than I ever expected cutting molars to be, since the other 8 teeth she has were such a bear. Praise Jesus! Hopefully it doesn't get too much worse before they are all the way through. It makes me not dread the 2nd year ones nearly as much!

My allergies have actually been better lately - Praise the Lord!!! - so maybe Natalie and I will venture out to the park tomorrow and take some pictures outside. We have some other errands to run, too, so we'll see. I know I've been bad about not taking enough pictures of her lately!

Another Long Overdue Update

Well, I've done it again and it's been too long since I posted anything. Christmas is just crazy. I just did 2 posts with lots of pics from Christmas, though, and I'll try to do my best to get down what Natalie's been doing lately in this post.

Natalie cut her 8th tooth today. It seems like it's all the way through, but she was awfully fussy this evening, so maybe there's still a little bit left. She does seem to get through it more quickly now, but she's still got SO many teeth to go, I dread all the teething yet to come!

Natalie has added a few animal sounds to her repertoire! She knows:

• cow
• sheep
• horse
• snake
• rooster (although she says "hoooo hoo," but she is trying to say "doodle doo")
• kitty
• doggie (but only sometimes)

Here's a quick list of cute stuff she's been doing lately:

• Brad taught her how to tell a secret, so she gets a kick out of leaning into your ear and making "whispering" noises.
• She's so prone to runny noses that we seem to be constantly using saline in her nose. She'll find bottles of it lying around and put the bottle (lid on) into her nostril.
• On a related note, she's on some eye drops right now, and she will find other kinds of bottles (the eye drops are definitely not within her reach), and act like she's putting them in her eyes or in a baby doll's eyes.
• She got lots of baby dolls for Christmas, and I think her favorite part about them is feeding them their bottles. It's so cute! She knows just what to do! (see pictures below)
• She fairly consistently says "nose" when she points to her nose and "mouth" when she points to her mouth. She also knows these body parts, just by pointing: eyes, ears, head, hair, teeth, tongue, hands, feet, and belly button.
• She loves her Brown Bear book, and I think it's because she gets to point out the eyes on every single animal each time we turn the page. She definitely has a fascination with eyes.

We have a walker!

Well I think we can officially say that we have a walker on our hands! Natalie still crawls a little bit, but she walks at least 85-90% of the time! We got some video of her last night, and it's so cute! I'm going to see if Brad can maybe upload a video so I can post that! It's really neat to see her walking around just for no reason - or walking with a specific destination!

I feel like I haven't posted much in a while about what Natalie's doing. She is still pretty consistent with the animal sounds that she knows - snake, cow, and sometimes sheep. I tried to teach her "owl" on Halloween because she had an owl on her shirt, but I figured out after a while that she just thought I was saying "cow" and "moo" instead of "owl" and "hoot." We're trying to teach her that a pig says "oink," but that one hasn't caught on.

I am constantly surprised at how open Natalie is! Brad and I are both reserved people and pretty quiet in general, so we figured our children would probably be that way since that's the example that they'll see. Well, I don't know if it's just a stage with her, but I'm not sure that Natalie is going to be a shy girl! She is very shy when she first meets someone, but she warms up pretty quickly, and then she is not self-conscious at all. She also makes me laugh at how LOUD she is when we're outside. Saturday, Brad was putting up a swingset that we got for her and she was walking all over the back yard. She walked over to the patio where I was sitting, and she saw a basket of plastic baseballs and softballs, and yelled, "OH! MAH BAH!!!!!!" over and over. We couldn't figure out what she was talking about, but I think she was saying something like "Oh my! Balls!" She had never seen those particular balls before, but she does like to play with the other balls she has. :) Anyway, I just thought it was hilarious how loud and determined she was about it. We gave her the balls, and she had a blast with them. Brad also took the plastic bat and helped her hit them across the yard, which she also thought was a lot of fun.

What's Going On

Just thought I'd post a little update on the things that Natalie's been doing lately!

• I've been singing/saying the ABC song to her lately, and she loves the letter "s." Once I get to "s," she goes, "sssssss" and keeps on doing it. Katie heard her just playing and making "s" sounds, so she asked her what sound a snake makes. Now when you ask her what a snake says, she says "ssssss."
• She loves to dig in the laundry (clean or dirty, ugh!) and find something small like a sock or baby washcloth and just carry it around with her while she does other things. This will be her favorite item for a whole day.
• A couple days ago, Brad saw her playing with one of her dolls and a washcloth (see above! ;)) and he asked her if she wanted to give her baby a bath. He took the washcloth and washed the baby's hair, and now she'll do it if you ask her to.
• She's been doing this a LONG time, but she loves to get a plastic ring and crawl around with it in her mouth. It looks so silly!
• She immediately pulls on her ear if you ask her where her ear is.
• If I ask her to stand up, she'll stop what she's doing and stand up! It still is a big effort for her, but she usually works at it until she gets it!
• She likes to "brush" her hair with her hairbrush while I'm changing her diaper.
• The reason I gave her the brush mentioned above is that she now can totally take her diaper off by herself. Fun, fun! She only messes with it while she's on the changing table, but it's annoying to get her all fastened up, then reach for her pants, only to have the diaper completely unfastened again!
• She's enjoying walks outside in the stroller instead of napping when we go out, which is great! Sometimes she'll get a little fidgety, so we take her out and we figured out that she likes to push the stroller! She's just the right height to use the basket as a handle. It's pretty cute, but we're not too fond of it for very long. She doesn't really walk quite fast enough! ;)
• Her baby toothpaste must taste really good, because she enjoys having her teeth brushed! Hopefully this habit will stick, but I'm kind of doubtful . . .
• She calls shoes and socks "shuussss."
• She's not too fond of shoes and socks or hats - well, at least not while they are on her body. She'd much rather take them off and play with them. I'm getting a little frustrated with that with the weather getting colder!

I'm probably leaving some stuff out, but that seems like a pretty good list, so I'll leave it at that for now. :)

Steps - Part 3

Well, I can't say that Natalie is officially a walker yet, but she is doing lots of practicing! She is definitely getting better and more confident, but she won't do it all the time. It's so cute to see her working on it! She's also been practicing going from sitting to standing on her own, which is really fun too. Here are some walking pics from the park today.

Steps - Part 2

Well, Miss Natalie has really started to take off! She took 5-8 steps a few times throughout the day today, then tonight she took about 12 at one point! I'm just amazed at how quickly she's progessed with this! I took some pictures during the 12-step venture - they are not great pics, but you get a bit of an idea. She was really fussy and ended up going to bed almost an hour early tonight, so I guess this walking thing is really taking it out of her!


Oh, and you'll notice her birthday present - the pink polka-dot chair - is upside down on the couch. It spends 50% of its time like this because Natalie won't obey when she's told to SIT in it! Hopefully someday she'll decide to listen!

Steps!

Miss Natalie took her very first two steps on Sunday! Yesterday, she did the same thing a few times. She's definitely getting more brave, which is good I think. She's getting much braver in standing on her own, too, and she can do it for 30-40 seconds at least. She doesn't usually fall down, either, she just really carefully sits herself down. It's kinda funny. :) She will even start to sit down and then stand up again, too. I know once she's walking it'll be even more work for us, but it's so amazing to see her making this big milestone. It will probably still be a little while before we officially have a true walker on our hands, and that's fine by us! It would be fun if she were walking by Halloween, but I know she'll do it in her own time. I've been so caught up lately with realizing how big she's getting, and I was shocked at how little she looked again when I saw her taking steps on her own!

Sweet Prayers

No pics to add to this post, but today and yesterday, I realized that Natalie is doing two kind of related things that made my heart melt!

After reading her a few bedtime stories, we always sit forward in the chair in her bedroom, and I say a very short little prayer. I have always held her little hands in mine while I pray. Last night, she took hold of my thumbs when we sat forward, and I looked at her and saw her sitting with her eyes closed, waiting!! How sweet is that?!

We always says a prayer before we eat, and we hold hands. This morning at breakfast, Natalie was getting really fussy and fidgety, wanting her food. I said, "Natalie, just a minute, you know we're going to pray first," and I took her hand. Brad wasn't sitting down yet, and she held her other hand out to him and looked in the direction he was coming from! She did the same thing at lunch too!

I know she's not able to understand the meaning of prayer, but it's definitely a huge step in the right direction that it's becoming part of her daily routine! I'm just blown away every day by seeing her do things that show me she understands so much more than I thought she did at this point!

Being a Big Girl

Tonight, Natalie was not being a very good eater at dinner - which is really odd for her. She kept asking for more, but there was some of everything on her tray already. Finally, Brad got her a spoon. That seemed to pacify her for a little bit. She would poke at a piece of food with the spoon, then pick it up with her other hand and eat it. :) She still wasn't totally happy, and she kept asking for more. We finally figured out that she wanted to eat off of a plate like us! Guess we'll have to pick up some plastic plates for her since she wants to be a big girl! :)