Archive for the “Monthiversarys” Category
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!”
22 Months Old!
Just look how grown up Natalie is becoming:
In the last month Natalie has accomplished some pretty cool developmental tasks. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she’s made all these connections since moving to a daycare where she feels comfortable and happy. She can identify almost the whole alphabet and sing the ABCs (of course L M N O P are a little mumbly). Natalie can count to 20. After a couple of months of saying sentences here and there, I think we can officially say that Natalie is “speaking in sentences.” Sometimes her grammar needs work; for example, she says, “I turn it on, light!” This morning, after I accidentally stepped on her foot, Natalie said to me, “I sorry, Mommy!” She can put some of her shoes on all by herself. And after months and months of trying, Natalie learned to jump!
After seeing how much Natalie likes playing with dolls at Melissa’s house, we bought Natalie her first official baby doll. She is doing a lot of pretend play with dolls—feeding them, putting them to sleep, etc. But she still sometimes prefers to read to her troll, or give it (her? him?) a bottle:
She can’t yet modulate pitch, but she can recite the words from lots of songs: Happy Birthday, Rubber Ducky, I’m a Little Teapot, Ring Around the Rosie, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Five Little Monkeys, and We are the Dinosaurs. In the car, Natalie requests the songs she wants to hear by name. She also often requests that the music be “loud!”
Sleep continues to be challenging (we really could write several posts, but it’s too depressing to write and to read about). We’re making some progress in terms of implementing and sticking to a bedtime routine (bath, bottle & books, nurse to sleep) but it still takes a long time (averaging 45 minutes) for Natalie to fall asleep. And she still wakes up at least a few times a night. For about two weeks, Natalie was sleeping for a 4 hour stretch at the beginning of the night. We considered that a great improvement, which should indicate how bad things have been.
Overall, Natalie has been much happier in the last month (again, since we made the daycare switch). She’s communicating better, is less clingy, and playing more independently. She’s like a little monkey, just bursting with energy and love and hugs.
Here is Natalie showing off her skills with letters and numbers:
Letters and Numbers from nataliecaroline on Vimeo.
21 Months!
Natalie is getting closer and closer to turning 2 years old and it’s freaking me out a little.
Lately it seems like Natalie learns so much in one day it’s hard to keep track of it all. She’s using more and more 3-word pseudo sentences. These phrases tend to contain nouns and sometimes adjectives, but she often leaves out verbs and connecting words. For example, this morning when I offered her toast, Natalie replied, “no…toast…Nah.” (“Nah” is what Natalie calls herself, although lately she sometimes says “Nanny.”) The pauses between the words let me know that she’s aware that more is needed to make a full sentence. Either way she gets her meaning across. A few more examples:
“Mommy, Daddy…home”
“Mommy…blue shirt”
“Tillman…mess…rug”
“no, no, Tillman…Nah’s” (Tillman often tries to eat Natalie’s food)
“Nah…shoes…off”
“No…cream…butt!” (Natalie has developed a strong aversion to diaper cream)
One of our recent conversations illustrates her ever increasing ability to communicate her thoughts and wishes:
In the car, Natalie asked, “animal crackers?”
Mommy, who has never bought animal crackers, replied, “We don’t have any, honey. We have pretzels or raisins. Do you eat animal crackers at Melissa’s house?”
Natalie answers, “Yeah!….Animal crackers…Nah’s…house?”
Another “big girl” milestone—drinking out of a regular cup! She has been able to do this for a while, but we just started letting her have a non-sippy cup more often.
Natalie has been doing a lot of pretend play lately. One of her favorite games is to take a bag, and say, “bye-bye” as she leaves the room. Then she comes back and very grandly says, “HI!” When asked where she went, Natalie says “Shopping!” We usually say, “Oh! What did you buy?” Natalie usually reports, “crackers!” or sometimes, “Banas!” (bananas) or “boo-bayees” (blueberries) or “bed” (bread). Then she goes around to each person in the room and pretend feeds us whatever food she’s bought.
Here she is getting her (reusable of course!!) shopping bag ready:
She’s also added a few “jokes” to her repertoire. Not jokes exactly, but things she says that show her sense of humor. A couple examples:
Mommy, pointing to something green, asks, “Natalie, what color is this?”
Natalie, snickering, says, “Blue!”
Mommy replies, “Really? That’s blue?”
Natalie says, as if Mommy is completely absurd, “No! Green!!”
Daddy, pouring himself a cup asks, “Natalie, do you want coffee, too?”
Natalie, looking at Daddy like he’s crazy, replies, “No!”
Daddy says, “Oh, Natalie doesn’t drink coffee?”
Natalie replies, “No! Daddy…Mommy…coffee.”
This morning, Chris took these picture of Natalie trying on some of Daddy’s shirts:
20.5 Months!
I’m late in writing a monthly update for the first time in 20 months…but rather than let it slide, I’ll tell you about Natalie at 20.5 months. She can count to 10. She learned to say “sorry” in the right context. Natalie loves saying the phrases “let’s go!” “come on!” “good job!” and “oh no!” We introduced the book Where the Wild Things Are, and it quickly became a favorite. She imitates the wild things roaring their terrible roars and gnashing their terrible teeth and showing their terrible claws. Natalie always asks to read the book again while we still have 1 page left to read.
On July 22, Natalie said “I woove woo” for the first time.
Now that Natalie has gotten through her bath aversion, we’ve settled into a routine of nightly baths. Natalie insists on washing herself! If we try to do it for her, she fusses—she prefers if we put soap in her hands and she wash each body part herself. Chris usually bathes her, which is a nice way for them have some daddy/daughter time. As much as I hesitate to jinx us by saying this, getting Natalie to sleep has been much easier and more consistent since starting the routine.
I scored a turtle shaped sandbox on Craig’s List for $20! Personally I hate sand, but when I saw how long Natalie was happily occupied at the beach, I knew it would be a good toy for her. She got so engrossed that we couldn’t get her to look up to take a picture.
19 Months Old!
A list of 19 points of interest from the past month:
1. Natalie officially knows all the basic colors: blue, red, purple, orange, green, pink, black, brown, and white. Yellow is still tricky—she mistakes it for orange sometimes.
2. Natalie learned to pick her nose. It’s cute and gross at the same time.
3. She’s beginning to learn letters. She knows B, I, H, and T really well. Starting to get M, D, N, R, G, K & S.
4. Her communication skills continue to flourish. Chris was remarking today that Natalie’s speech has gotten much more conversational. She’s saying more and more two-word phrases and putting adjectives in front of nouns. As in, “big truck!” She also knows to put an “s” on the ends of words to make them plural or possessive.
5. Natalie got her first skinned knees this month after wiping out pushing her stroller on the sidewalk.:
6. She wore her hair in a pony-tail for the first time:
7. She likes to discipline Tillman by wagging her finger at him and saying “no no no” when he tries to drink out of someone’s glass.
8. Since recovering from her illness, Natalie is once again tolerant of bathing, diapering, and dressing.
9. She’s exploring opposites. She likes to shout “up down,” “on off” and “yes no” over and over and over…
10. Natalie became obsessed with bracelets this month. Last week she got upset when she couldn’t fit her hand through the hole of a bagel to wear it around her wrist.
11. She likes to discover new places to admire her reflection:
12. I never thought this would happen with our sweet child, but like a lot of toddlers, she answers almost all questions with a resounding “no!” The other day I offered her a cup of juice…Natalie shouted “no” and then grabbed the cup out of my hand and drank it happily. Go figure.
13. She finally learned to say her Aunt Kary’s name. Sounds like “dah-ree”
14. Natalie played her first card game with Grandma:
15. She went on her first solo carnival ride. Pictures soon.
16. She’s gotten really into playing with puzzles. We got her this new puzzle and she had it figured out in about 2 minutes.
17. Natalie started transitioning into the toddler room at daycare. It’s not going well. We’re investigating other childcare options. More on that later. For now, here’s a picture of her in the new classroom:
18. Natalie is loving the books Mother, Mother, I Want Another, Zoo Clues Animal Alphabet, and Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?
19. Finally, Natalie really likes to make this pucker face:
