Archive for January, 2008
Shameless Bragging…
Forgive me…but I am so proud of my girl! Let’s face it, parents like to brag about their kids, and I think coping through all the trials of parenting gives us the right. And what’s a baby blog without a little bragging?
Natalie is really getting the hand of sign language and knows the following signs:
more
eat
milk
done
book
sleep (it’s actually the sign for “bed” but we use it to mean “night-night”)
change
bath
help (she does a modified “help me”)
good
AND, she can do all the following animal sounds:
Cat (actually she says “mao” rather than “meow”—so cute!)
Dog (“bow wow wow”)
Cow (“mmmmmmmm”)
Sheep (“baa baa”)
Elephant (she puckers her lips and blows air thru her nose)
Fish (she makes fish lips)
Monkey (“ooo! ooo! ooo!”)
Gorilla (she pounds her chest and says “ah ah ah”!)
Horse (“neigh neigh”)
Wolf (“ooooohhhh”)
Lion
Tiger
Bear (okay, lions, tigers, and bears all say “roar” but she knows that all three of them make that sound)
Visiting the sheep at Terhune Orchards:
Lucky Thirteen
[This entry is written by Chris]
Natalie turned 13 months-old this past Monday. Over the past few weeks she’s been practicing walking a lot, taking a few unassisted steps every day, but usually while clutching one of our fingers or pushing her walker. Before Monday, she’d been very reluctant to walk on her own.
When I got home from work on Monday night, it was like a whole month had gone by. She was walking all over, very deliberately and with much more skill. She toddled over to me with a book and held it out for me to read.
When I asked, “do you want to sit in my lap?”, she climbed right into my lap. She’s always liked sitting in my lap, but I usually have to pick her up and place her there. Then she practically read Moo, Baa, La La La to me, pointing at the animals and making all the right noises. It was surreal to witness such an enormous developmental leap in that short a period of time.
Here’s a video Amy and I put together showing her walking progress over the last few months:
Since we made this video her walking skills have been accelerating exponentially. She’s now much more independent and pushes us away when we try to hold her hand while walking.
Warm Days of Winter
I was worried about Natalie and I going stir-crazy this winter because it would be too cold to go outside and Natalie is getting to the age where she’s mobile and wants to explore outside. Some days it has been cold—the whole week Natalie was sick temperatures were in the 20′s. Every day of that week, Natalie went to the front door and said, “bye byeeeee.” And every day I explained, “it’s too coooooold. You’re too sick to go outside!” Not that she really understood that.
So I’m grateful for days like today (66 degrees!) even though it makes me scared abut global warming and the terrible state of the planet that Natalie will inherit. Nonetheless, we enjoyed visiting ducks, chickens, bunnies, dogs, and cats at Terhune Orchards and climbing on the Princeton tigers:
We had another warm day (50 degrees) the day before Natalie got sick (December 30). We had fun visiting the playground around the corner from our house:
