Natalie’s Blog

The Goddard School For Early Childhood Development is very big on nurturing the “whole child.” Each day we get a report where Natalie’s teachers list daily activities meant to teach and encourage skills in the following categories: Language Arts, Motor Skills, Cognitive Development, Social Science, Creative Art, Nature Studies, Music/Movement, and Self-help/Life Skills. When you look at the sample activities, it’s clear that although these things are all important and clearly the Goddard School cares about children and their development, the Goddard “Philosophy” is as much a marketing technique as pedagogy.

Having said that, we obviously agree with the “whole child” philosophy—it’s one of the reasons we chose to send Natalie to The Goddard School. There are a lot of things we like about their program, even though it’s silly to think about a one-year-old needing “curriculum” in order to learn and develop. Here’s an example: one of the activities that falls under the Social Science category is “Hugging our sad friends to show empathy.” It may seem like an insignificant activity, but you know what? I’m glad the Goddard School is teaching kids empathy—it’s an important skill. I’d like to think that children will learn empathy and how to express emotions in healthy ways at home with their families, but I realize that many families are too emotionally stunted or dysfunctional to teach their children those critical things.

Anyway, that’s a long lead-up to explaining that we’ve never really needed to teach Natalie how to empathize. If anything, she has too much empathy. Natalie’s over-developed empathy was a problem when I used to watch Clara on a regular basis. I was often challenged with the difficult task of comforting too little babies at once, because if Clara got hurt or cried for any reason, Natalie would break into a full-on wail—even if she were perfectly content before Clara started crying. If Chris or I so much as say “ouch” or express pain or upset in any way, Natalie cries. We recently learned that Natalie has much empathy for her favorite characters in books, too.

Here’s a video of Natalie listening to one of her new favorites, Bear Snores On.

Untitled from nataliecaroline on Vimeo.

There is always at least one baby crying at any given moment at Natalie’s daycare. Hopefully being around so many kids will help Natalie learn that while a little empathy is good, she needn’t fall apart when one of her friends cries.

Like all toddlers, Natalie goes through stages in terms of what foods she likes and how much she wants to eat. Lucky for us, she’s pretty good about eating her veggies. I’ve always been thankful that even before she was a year, she’d eaten and liked 90% of the fruits and veggies in her book Eating the Alphabet. I caught her making some pretty funny faces today at lunch while eating asparagus, broccoli, tomatoes, and cucumbers (plus pasta and cheddar cheese!).

Natalie likes to share and insisted that I take a bite of my asparagus while she ate hers:

Showing off her tongue:

Tomatoes are a consistent favorite:

Natalie couldn’t get enough cucumbers last summer…now she makes this face every time she eats one:

While her expression led me to believe that she is no longer a cucumber fan, she asked for more and ate a few pieces, making that disgusted face with each bite!

Veggie lover:

The old “see”food joke:

Between Diane and I going back to full-time work and Natalie and Clara both being sick so often this winter, the girls haven’t seen each other for a long time. We finally got together last night, and it was quite a reunion!

Natalie was so happy to see her friend that she gave Clara a big kiss:

We took them out for pizza and then to the playground at dusk. They had a blast running around in the twilight:

Climbing:

And sliding together:

I would wager to guess that this is Natalie’s cutest outfit, EVER!

Lindsay, ask and you shall receive…I’ve been meaning to do a daycare update, and I’ll throw in a croup update as well!

Daycare
Natalie has been slowly and steadily adjusting to daycare. Yesterday was the first day she didn’t cry during the drop-off, which Chris and I were absolutely thrilled about. Even though it was extremely difficult to leave her each day as she cried, we knew from frequent check-ins with her teachers that the drop-off wasn’t a good indicator of how Natalie’s overall day was. Gaging from the pick-ups, I could tell that she’s been getting more and more comfortable. For the first few weeks, when I came to pick her up, she would get hysterical if I put her down—even just to put her coat on. Then she would tolerate holding my hand as we walked to her cubby to get her stuff. And in the last couple of weeks, she continues to play as I gather her things.

A few weeks ago, her teachers reported that she was starting to play with the other kids, rather than hang out with the adults all the time. She takes a nap every time she’s there without any problems. Some days she eats better than others, but since she does that at home too, I don’t think it’s indicative of any daycare adjustment problems. I think Grandma’s brilliant idea to have Natalie look at pictures of her school when she’s not there has helped with the adjustment a lot. The other day she was looking at the pictures and giving kisses to all her teachers. Natalie is still not talking much (if at all) at school, which make me sad since she’s speaking so well (she’s learning new words at a rate of about 1 - 3 per day) at home. But I suspect that she will start talking at school in the next couple of weeks.

Croup
As Natalie’s doctor predicted, the croup lasted about 5 days. Thank goodness for me, she’s sleeping better on her own again. Unfortunately, she still has a cough sometimes at night. Last night, in fact, she woke up a couple of hours after she went to sleep and was coughing and gagging on phlegm for a while before she could go back to sleep. Holding her upright seemed to help, so I was rocking her sitting up in the glider, but she (like most people) wants to sleep laying down. Every time she leaned back, even to a 45-degree angle, she started coughing again. Then she’d sit up and start crying, we suspect, because she was so tired and just wanted to go back to sleep. Then Chris remembered that she was coughing a lot in the car on the way home from daycare. The car was really hot, and she stopped coughing when he rolled down the windows. We opened the window in Natalie’s room and sure enough, as soon as the temperature went down a few degrees, the coughing stopped.

She went back to sleep and slept without coughing in her own bed until about 4 am, when the whole thing started again. I brought her into our bed, where she coughed and gagged in her sleep for about an hour until she spit-up all over my arm. Then she fell into a really peaceful sleep and didn’t cough again. The doctor warned us that the cough may hang on for a few weeks, but maybe she also has allergies? If it doesn’t clear up completely soon, I guess we’ll take her back to the doctors.

Here’s a couple of pictures to balance out all the tedious words in this post!
Natalie coloring:

She wrote those letters herself! Just kidding!!

Wearing her too-big-for-her rain boots and rifling around in the cupboards:

Natalie’s favorite thing to do now is get dirty! When we take her to the playground, she shows little interest in the slide or the swings…she just wants to pick up and spread around handfuls of mulch, dirt, and sticks. Her new favorite place on the playground is a little hole near the ground on this rock climbing wall…

First she piles up dirt and sticks on the ledge…

Then she pats the dirt and sweeps it back onto the ground…

She likes to raise her arms and shout “ahhhhhhh!!!!”

Natalie also likes to pick up handfuls of dirt and throw them on the other side of the wall…

Then she hoists herself up on the wall:

And then crawls over the ledge to the other side:

I’m not sure why, but looking at this series of photos, I’m reminded of the quote, “well-behaved women seldom make history,” written by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. While Natalie is well-behaved (in my estimation) I think she is also sure to make history!

I forgot to post Natalie’s updated growth statistics. She saw her pediatrician, Dr. Stephen, last Thursday, who was very impressed with how many words Natalie can say (so many we’ve stopped counting)!

Vital stats at 16 months:
Weight: 22 pounds, 1 ounce (a little below 50%)
Height: 32.5 inches (90%)

The doctor asked how Natalie’s been eating, since her weight used to be in the 80-90%. Natalie is eating just fine, and her weight has probably dropped in percentiles simply because she’s walking and using more energy.

Beautiful pictures of Natalie playing at the park, taken by Aunt Kary.

Our girl is 16 months old!!

Natalie at 16 Months from nataliecaroline on Vimeo.

The blueberry jumper she’s wearing in the last clip is actually a dress she wore around Christmastime. Either the dress shrunk vertically or Natalie has grown a few inches!

I always thought croup was a horrible disease. Turns out most cases of croup are caused by cold viruses that concentrate in the upper airway, causing a loud barking cough and wheezing (which in bad cases can cause difficulty breathing). Natalie’s case of croup came on rather suddenly on Thursday night. One minute she was in a great mood and seemed totally healthy, the next minute we realized she had a fever, and then she was up half the night coughing and barking like a seal. Since then she’s been mostly okay during the day—we’ve been keeping the humidifier on full-blast and occasionally turning our bathroom into a steam room. Motrin is helping keep the inflammation in her throat down.

Yesterday we decided to take her to Terhune’s just to get out of the house and get some fresh air. Despite her illness, she had a great time visiting the animals. On the way home Natalie was happily eating an apple, choked a little and then could. not. stop. coughing. Poor thing ended up throwing up a bunch of phlegm. Yuck. Luckily, she recovered pretty quickly once we got home.

Since she’s been sick, Natalie will not sleep without me holding her. Every time I’ve made sure she’s in a really deep sleep and tried to sneak away, she’s woken up crying within minutes. So I’ve been spending the nights (and nap time) squeezing into Natalie’s tiny bed with her. We have an incline pillow under Natalie’s mattress that keeps her head elevated, plus the humidifier is in her room (otherwise I would’ve just put her in our bed).