Our big one-year-old!
Natalie is learning new things so quickly now-a-days!
She now knows the word “ball” and likes to point to anything spherical and say “baaaaaaaawllllllll.” She also learned that sheep say “baa baa.” Natalie likes to emphasize the second baa, so when we ask her “what does a sheep say?” she responds, “baa BAAAAAAAA!” Rounding out the “B” words, she calls a bottle “ba ba.” And she learned to say “wa wa” for water.
Natalie is understanding more and more that people have special names. Although she’s known the words “Dada” and “Mama” for a long time, she’s been using them a lot more lately. Natalie has been extra attached to Chris this week and asks for him very assertively, calling “da DAAA, da DAAAAA.” Yesterday while nursing she paused, looked up at me with her big blue eyes and sweetly said “mama” over and over again. Which for me was hand’s down the best thing in the entire world! While celebrating Winter Solstice with her cousin David, Natalie started calling him “Day Day.”
Here’s a picture of Natalie and David on Christmas day, when Natalie was trying to feed him:
She also learned to say “hi” and “bye” (another B word!). She really emphasizes the diphthong at the end of each word, as in “hiEEEEE” and “byEEEEEE.” The coolest thing is that she really understands the concepts of arriving and departing as they relate to the words hi and bye. Last night, for example, Chris, Grandma Susan, Aunt Katy, Natalie and I were all in Natalie’s room trying to decide how to configure new artwork for her walls. Natalie made the milk sign and pointed to the glider. As I sat in the chair and got prepared to nurse her, she looked up at Grandma and Aunt Katy and said “ba byEEEEE, ba BYEEEEE” until they said goodbye and left the room.
Natalie is also learning body parts and identify her nose, eyes, mouth, teeth, feet, toes, and shoes (don’t worry, I do realize that shoes aren’t really a body part).
Here she is pointing to her nose:
Finally, Grandma Susan is teaching Natalie to color, starting by teaching Natalie not to eat crayons. When I picked Natalie up after work last Friday, she showed me drawings Natalie made! Mostly faint lines and dots, but beautiful. She reported that Natalie made the fish noise until Aunt Katy drew a picture of a fish, which made Natalie very excited and proud of her ability to communicate what she wanted.
Of course there are still times when Natalie clearly wants something and we can’t figure out what that something is. But watching her learn new words and concepts is amazing and when she is able to communicate, it’s really wonderful for all of us.
