Natalie’s Blog

Natalie comes from long lines of musicians on both sides of the family, so it’s no surprise that she loves listening to music and being sung to. Even in her youth, she has developed distinct favorites. For recorded music, she prefers The Decemberists album “The Crane Wife.” If she’s fussy in the car, as soon as the first track starts playing, she calms down. On the occasion that that doesn’t work, singing “Five Little Ducks” soothes her more than any other song. The next best songs are “Six Little Ducks” and “Old MacDonald had a Farm” (but the farm must contain ducks!). The girl loves to quack!

The other thing Natalie loves is drumming. Already rebelling against Grandpa Charles’ express wishes that there be “no drummers in the family,” Natalie turns nearly all her toys into drums, and one of her favorite toys is an actual drum (well, an actual toy drum). When she finds something new to play with, the first thing she does is stick it in her mouth with one hand and bang on it with the other.

To expand her musical horizons, I’ve been taking Natalie to a Mommy & Me music class every week for a couple of months now. She loves it! The instructor is a lovely woman who plays the guitar, has all the kids and parents marching around and provides instruments for kids to experiment with. She’s very patient and encouraging—all the kids and parents love her. She’s very good at pointing out how each child participates in his or her own way, even if it’s just walking on the beat.

This video is evidence of what Natalie has learned in music class (and perhaps is foreshadowing that she’ll become a singer like Mom, Aunt Katy, Great Grandma Norma & Great Grandma and Grandpa Wachs):

Singing With Grandpa from nataliecaroline and Vimeo.

Ever since Natalie started crawling, she’s having some anxiety about separating from Mom & Dad. I guess now that she has the power to move on her own, she wants to make sure that we’re still there when she wants to come back. Thankfully, she is securely attached to both of her grandmothers and hasn’t had any trouble when I go to work. But our once completely extroverted daughter now takes a little more time to warm up to new people or people she doesn’t see regularly. Totally normal, it’s a phase, no biggie.

What surprised me was discovering that I am also having some separation anxiety. Friday night I went to a Mom’s night out and Chris stayed home with the little one. On the way there I worried about him forgetting to turn on the monitor and not hearing her before she dove out of bed onto the floor. I had to force myself not to call and remind him of things he’s fully aware of. When I returned home, Natalie was, of course, safe and sound.

We did finally buy baby gates and worked on child-proofing the house this weekend, which should curb some of my anxiety. But given that I tended toward worrying before having a child (all right, all right, I’m a complete and total worry-wort) I’m going to have to find more effective ways of managing that. The list of things to worry about is only going to get longer as Natalie gets older.

Here’s a picture of Natalie’s first subway ride. I’m including it in this post because for some reason, we both look really worried even though I’ve ridden the subway plenty of times and Natalie was securely attached to me. Weird.

Notice that none of these pictures show Natalie sleeping in a crib!

Here is proof that our darling baby girl snores!

Natalie Snoring from nataliecaroline and Vimeo.

Oh my! We really need to start child-proofing…

Natalie Crawls from nataliecaroline and Vimeo.

Army Crawl from nataliecaroline and Vimeo.

Ready for a Jump-a-Roo? from nataliecaroline and Vimeo.

Natalie seems to have a new way of expressing her happiness!

At first, she started doing this while we were feeding her her favorite food, avocado. So, we thought maybe this was her sign for “more.”

But later that night, she starting raising her arms when she discovered socks from the laundry basket. She had a big grin on her face, so we figure arms up just means she’s happy!

Parenthacks.com finally published the hack I sent in months ago! Read it here.

Pictures from our jam-packed weekend!

Natalie & Dad visiting a goat at Terhune Orchards (she was very scared of the roosters!):

A visit from Auntie Bethany:

Swimming in the big pool at the Huey’s in CT:

With Great-Aunt Bonnie:

The following activities are not represented with photos: we spent time with Katy, who’s in from California, saw the Wisniewski’s, who were in town for one night from Virginia, and saw Auntie Jodi during our 24-hour trip to Connecticut! Whew…

To celebrate Chris’ 30th birthday, we had a theme dinner with his favorite fruit—a blueberry feast! The whole family wore blue and ate all things blueberry:
Chilled Blueberry Soup
Broiled Portabello Mushrooms with a Blueberry Reduction Sauce
Wild Rice and Blueberry Salad
Blueberry Birthday Pie
Blueberry Sorbet
Blueberry Sauce atop Vanilla Ice Cream

As Chris said, it was blueberry-tastic!

The blue-reffic table:

From our very own hydrangea bush:

Blueberry soup:

Like father, like daughter—Natalie loves blueberries, too:

Natalie (in a blue diaper cover!) with Cora:

Delicious Blueberry pie made by Cora:

Chris loves his new iPhone:

Natalie is having a great time with the swing we (by “we” I mean Chris and Grandpa Smoky) hung from the maple tree in our backyard. Chris swings her too high and too fast for my taste, but Natalie loves the thrill of it!

Chris is very upset that none of these pictures are sharp. I keep telling him that blurry pictures indicate motion, no?