Archive for June, 2009
Natalie’s First Nightmare
Natalie had her first (noticeable to us) nightmare(s) last night. First she woke up at 3 am crying and saying something about monsters. I told her it was just a dream and she went back to sleep (in our bed) easily. Then at 4 am she woke us up with a loud, BLOOD-CURDLING scream. For some reason I wasn’t all that startled, but Chris screamed, too. When I asked Natalie if she had a bad dream, she giggled and said that I tried to take her pillow. Go figure. This time she and I tossed and turned for about an hour before getting back to sleep.
30 Months Old!
Natalie turned 2 ½ today!! She continues to amaze us with her wit, sweetness, imagination, and determination.
Her communication skills are quite remarkable. She absorbs new vocabulary faster than we can keep track of and sometimes comes out with a (correctly used but often mispronounced) word that astounds us. For example a few weeks ago, she said to Chris, “I have sunglasses and you have ‘perstiption’ glasses.” Yesterday we were teaching her the word ferocious and giving examples of all the things that can be ferocious, like lions, dinosaurs, and bears. Natalie caught on right away and exclaimed, “yeah, and monsters are ferocious, too!”
She picks up on phrases that adults use and turns them around on us, much to our amusement. Some of our favorite quotes from the past three months:
“Mommy, whad’I tell you about the ketchup?!?”
“Daddy, finish your food and then talk!”
Having Natalie in a daycare setting with a mixed aged group of kids continues to work beautifully. Natalie is learning things that I doubt she would have the opportunity to learn if she were with children all her own age. Many of the things that Melissa teaches the kids during circle time are for the benefit of her 4-year-old son, Mikey, to prepare him for kindergarten. Natalie has been keeping up with him quite a lot. For example, Natalie has her complete address memorized, minus the zip code. She’s been spelling her name for a while now. And because she wants to learn to do all the things that Mikey does, she started writing her name, too:
Natalie’s sleeping habits are getting better and better. Since our last quarterly report, Natalie sleeps most nights from bedtime (which varies greatly depending on whether she’s napped, how active the day/evening is, etc) until early morning, when she comes into our bed around 6 am. Then she sleeps another couple of hours and we often have to wake her up for the day. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, it’s so jarring that I find myself thanking my lucky stars that nightwakings seem to be the exception rather than the rule. There are even days where she sleeps the entire night in her own bed and we have to go into her room to wake her up. I’m not sure how, but we managed to survive having a child that did not consistently sleep through the night until just before she turned 2 ½!
As wonderful as Natalie is, the challenges she presents us with this quarter are trying our patience. The main challenges are her dilly-dallying and whining. We haven’t figured out a way to motivate Natalie to do things quickly. There are plenty of things that she is capable of doing pretty fast (and of course insists on doing herself) that she takes her sweet time doing. Getting into the car is a daily battle. She likes to climb into the car and her car-seat herself, and while I’m glad for her to have this bit of autonomy, we got places on time more often when I just plopped her in the seat. This morning I lost my patience and snapped at Natalie to hurry up and go upstairs to get something (something that she insisted that she needed before we could leave). Of course this did not result in getting the task accomplished any faster. The result was that I felt guilty and irritated with myself and that Natalie sat on the bottom step of the stairs and whined, “Daaaaaady, Mommmmmmy yeeeeeellllled at me!!”
The whining. Oh, the horrible whining. Half the time I suspect that she does it simply because she enjoys modulating her voice, because she knows full well that she will be ignored until she uses her “sweet” voice. And yet I have a sinking suspicion that we’re inadvertently reinforcing the behavior, because it’s not stopping!
Of course all 2 ½-year-olds try their parents’ patience, and I feel lucky that (knock on wood) Natalie has not presented us with any true behavior problems, like biting or the like. Even considering the issues I mentioned, we find Natalie to be a pleasure to know and are so proud to see what a wonderful little girl she is growing up to be.
Chris took this picture of Natalie jumping at the Philly Zoo yesterday. I think it captures her growing adventurousness and the incredible excitement she experiences over the simple joys in life:
