Natalie’s Blog

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.

Lately Natalie has been saying “silly Natalie” whenever she does something kooky. Only when she says it, it sounds like “siddy Nannie!”

Like when she wears her duck slippers and turns upside-down:

Or takes a carrot peal and makes herself a mustache:

Our little artist concentrates very hard while painting! We keep the mess to a minimum using this hack. Washable water colors helps, too. Natalie, of course, still likes to paint her hands, make hand prints, and paint herself Hitler mustaches!!

A week or so ago, Natalie and I were in the car listening to the Laurie Berkner version of the song “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain.” During the verse where Laurie sings “We will all have cake and ice cream when she comes, yum yum…” Natalie started urgently saying, “No! No! No!”

I turned the volume down and said, “What’s the matter, Natalie? You don’t like this song?”

Natalie, “No! No cake! No cake…Nah!”

Mommy (who took a few minutes to realize Natalie’s meaning) said, “Oh! That’s right, Natalie doesn’t like cake!”

Natalie, very pleased that she was understood, replied, “Yeah! No cake…Nah!”

A few minutes later, Natalie smiled and exclaimed, “Mommy, cake!”

Mommy, ruefully replied, “Yes, you’re right. Mommy does like cake.”

Natalie gets a kick out of repeating this conversation each time we listen to “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain.”

That’s a lyric to a Barney song about oral hygiene. I can’t help but sing it every time Natalie brushes her teeth.

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:

Any doubts I had about changing Natalie’s day care have been completely alleviated. On the first day at Melissa’s, Natalie didn’t cry at all when I left. The second day she asked to go there. On the third day, she didn’t want to go home when I picked her up! We get far more information from Melissa about Natalie’s mood and her activities than we got at the Goddard School. In addition to the details we get about Natalie’s day through conversation, Melissa sends home a daily sheet where she logs all Natalie’s diapering, sleeping, and eating activities.

Of course the transition hasn’t been completely without challenges. While Natalie hasn’t been crying for her parents, last week Melissa reported that Natalie gets quite upset when Melissa would stray too far (like more than 2 feet) away. Today, Melissa told us that she explained to Natalie that if she wanted to stay with Melissa, she could follow her, but she didn’t need to cry. That seemed to do the trick! Melissa said the rest of the day was tear-free.

Another positive change has been with the artwork Natalie brings home. Goddard would always send home these elaborate art projects (like a construction paper Isreali flag or a hanging jelly fish) that may have looked impressive, but left us wondering what part Natalie actually did herself. At Melissa’s, Natalie has brought home art projects involving markers, finger paints, and chalk, all of which look like pictures she created herself.

Natalie sums it up by saying, “Missa’s…FUN!”

We took pictures of Natalie on her first day and on her last day of Goddard, as well as pictures of her at Melissa’s—her expressions say it all…

Looking happy and innocent because she doesn’t know what’s happening:

Looking scared and sad because she knows what school is all about (she didn’t look this way every morning, or we would have taken her out of there much sooner!):

Here are some pictures of Natalie playing at Melissa’s. Look how comfortable she is!

A week or so ago, I gave Natalie a bowl of cheese crackers or “teese datters” as Natalie calls them.

Natalie looked at the bowl and longingly said, “share?”
I asked, “who would you like to share your crackers with, honey?”
Natalie declared, “Clara!”

I think that makes them BFFs, don’t you think? Of course when Clara visited over the weekend, there were plenty of things Natalie wasn’t too happy about sharing with her friend Clara.

Check out how intensely they are concentrating in these pictures—it’s like parallel play in action:

While most people in the area stayed indoors during Tropical Storm Hanna, we went to visit friends in Brooklyn. The drive there and back was fine, but we naively decided to walk three blocks to a coffee shop when the rain didn’t seem too heavy. We forgot that walking anywhere with Natalie means stopping every few feet to examine cracks in the sidewalk, manhole covers, leaves, or anything else that makes her stop and say, “Yook a Dis!!!!” (look at this). We also forgot that Natalie wouldn’t want to be carried, but would rather walk and hold her “own” umbrella. Lately that’s what Natalie says whenever I decline to give her something she wants by explaining that “it’s mommy’s.” She looks very inquisitive, then points to herself and knowingly says, “own” as if she’s very proud of herself for solving the problem.

Needless to say, we got soaked from head to toe:

Natalie loves to talk about what color things are—she labels the cars and trucks we pass on the road, the crayons she’s using, and what color shirts we wear. Every morning when she sees us, she announces what color our shirts are with great enthusiasm. Yesterday she was super excited because we were all wearing brown shirts. She kept exclaiming, “Mommy, Daddy, Nah—BROWN!!”

At our last visit to the pediatrician, Natalie yelled, “Black!” as soon as Dr. Stephen walked in the examining room. Dr. Stephen is of south-Asian decent, so naturally she looked rather aghast at Natalie’s statement. I felt equally aghast and rather horrified that it seemed like Natalie was labeling the color of her skin. All was well after I frantically explained, “Your shirt is black! Natalie’s talking about your shirt!”