23 Months Old!
Eek! In just 1 month, Natalie will be two whole years old…
Natalie is growing and learning at such a tremendous rate now that more and more I’m feeling like I can’t convey how amazing she is. Even with a lengthy monthly update, I feel like I’m not capturing Natalie’s ever changing developments. I suppose that’s the problem with kids—it’s impossible to express their essence, let alone capture it. So, if you haven’t spent time with Natalie lately, you’re missing out on an incredibly fun, silly, loving, smart little girl.
The best news this month is that Natalie’s sleep is improving! Although it still takes her a long time to actually fall asleep, she’s started falling asleep without nursing and sleeping in 5-6 hour stretches!!!! And a major milestone happened at daycare last week: Natalie fell asleep for her nap completely on her own—no bottle, back-rubbing or anything!!
Natalie has been exploring new forms of artistic expression this month. She loves painting pumpkins and using glue sticks:
After going through a short phase where she wasn’t as interested as usual in reading, this last month we’ve been reading her at least 10 books a day. As we read books that she’s heard many times, Natalie’s reciting a lot of words as we read. Brown Brown Bear What do You Hear? she can recite completely from memory and many of her books she can pick up and recite the words on the page by looking at the picture.
This month Natalie learned to climb the ladder at the park all by herself:
We had a wonderful Halloween! Natalie really enjoyed wearing her costume and even wanted to keep wearing it the day after Halloween. Here she is helping prepare the pumpkins for carving:
As a way of explaining why Natalie couldn’t have pasta the minute she requested it, Grandma had Natalie help her cook it. Natalie enjoyed the process so much (she actually sat and waited for the water to boil!) that we started to find more things for her to do in the kitchen. I was hoping that getting Natalie involved with preparing the food that she would be more likely to eat it, but so far that hasn’t been the case. We’ve found that it takes introducing a new food a number of times before Natalie will eat it. This month she finally ate grilled cheese and pierogies for the first time. Here she is helping “paint” the marinade on tofu. She actually likes tofu a lot, but not with sauce on it.
Helping prep the cauliflower (and then refused to try it!):
A couple of final tidbits:
Natalie loves to wear hats and as you can see if several of the photos in this post, she is especially attached to the beautiful red and yellow one knit by her Auntie Bethany.
Natalie learned to give kisses by smacking her lips, rather that just saying “mmmmmaaaaaah!”
One morning, Natalie woke up and asked, “Where Daddy go?” Then she picked up the covers, peeked under them and said, “Nope!”