Natalie’s Blog

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!

As Natalie gets older, we will periodically put new pictures in the blog header. From left to right, the new pictures are of Natalie at 6 months, almost 13 months, and almost 21 months. Also, the whole title is now a link, which enables you to easily navigate back to the home page.

Here are the images sans cropping:

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!”

…Hello, Melissa!

Starting tomorrow, Natalie will be going to a new daycare—an in-home daycare. We’ve realized that big daycare is not the right setting for Natalie or for us. Although she got comfortable with her teachers, wasn’t crying at drop-off, and napped well at school, Natalie was not thriving at Goddard. Most people we talked to about daycare told us that Natalie would learn more things faster being in a daycare environment. But after going to school 3 days per week for 5 months, Natalie still wasn’t talking while she was there. Her teachers reported that if they ever heard her babbling to herself while playing, as soon as they tried to engage her, she shut down and wouldn’t respond. Although this concerned us, Natalie has been thriving in general, so we didn’t start looking for other options until Natalie started transitioning to the toddler room.

When we toured the school last February, they stressed how slowly they transitioned the children from one room to the next. I had expressed my concerns to the school director about Natalie adjusting to the toddler room (the toddler room starts at 18 months) a month or so before Natalie was scheduled to start, given how long it took Natalie to adjust to school in the first place. Again, I was assured that the transition would happen very slowly, with the children visiting their new classroom with a familiar teacher for increasing lengths of time. We received a packet of information about the transition and the toddler room that stated that the transition could take 1-4 weeks depending on the child. Her transition was scheduled to start on June 30.

When I got to school on June 30, the head teacher in the infant room looked surprised to see us and told me that Natalie was to be dropped off in the toddler room. I was flabbergasted. I assumed that the start of the transition would be the start of the visits to the new room. Then I noticed that every room seemed to have crying children, which is normally not the case. Jennifer, the head infant room teacher, explained that there would be lots of crying today because a number of children were starting in new rooms. This was not transitioning, it was making kids change their routines cold-turkey.

I told Jennifer that there was no way I was leaving Natalie in the new room. After leaving her in the infant room, I spoke with the school owners and the director, who were surprised that I didn’t realize that that day was the day Natalie would be in the toddler room. They also couldn’t tell me if Natalie had ever visited the toddler room before. We felt that despite our best efforts to tell the school our concerns, they were not communicating with us. They apologized and said they would do better.

The next day, I went with Natalie to visit the toddler room. When Natalie and I left, I had a horrible feeling in the pit in my stomach. I knew there was no way I could ever leave Natalie alone there. There was nothing abusive, neglectful, or incompetent happening. The three teachers in the toddler room were doing all the things they were supposed to do: singing songs, reading books, giving out snacks, etc., but in my opinion they may as well have been robots. None of them seems to display any enthusiasm for the children. None of them seemed engaged or appeared to enjoy their jobs. Those factors, combined with a higher student to teacher ratio in the toddler room, plus difficulty communicating with the school management led us to the decision to find another child care arrangement for Natalie.

When we first started looking at daycares, a friend recommended we look at Monday Morning, Inc. For some reason at the time, I pooh-poohed the idea. On one hand I regret not looking into it before, and on the other hand, I realize that we couldn’t have known that daycare wouldn’t work for Natalie until we tried it. Anyway, Monday Morning does all the vetting for the clients, and does ongoing inspections and support for the providers. They led us to Melissa, who will start watching Natalie 3 days per week tomorrow. Melissa worked at a daycare for years before having her own children, comes highly recommended, and has a sweet, down-to-earth personality. It may be another hard transition for Natalie, but we’re hoping she’ll adjust to the smaller, homey setting a little easier and quicker than she took to daycare. Two of her teachers at Goddard told us that they also believed that Natalie would be better off in a smaller setting with fewer children.

Melissa has two of her own kids, ages 6 and 4. The 6-year-old goes to school, and Melissa also watches a 2.5-year-old and will have a 5-month-old starting in October. So for most of the day, it’s a 4:1 child to “teacher” ratio. We’ve visited Melissa every week since we decided to make the switch, and taken and looked at pictures and videos of Natalie with Melissa and the other kids. From the first time we went to her house, Natalie appeared to be comfortable. When I asked Natalie to recall our last visit to Melissa’s, she exclaimed, “Fun!” Fingers crossed that Melissa’s will still be fun when Mommy leaves her there and goes to work!

Are you still reading?? Man, I can be long-winded! To balance my wordiness, here are some of the latest pictures of Natalie.

I put her hair in pigtails for the first time a couple of weeks ago…although she likes having “2 ponytails!” she screams and wiggles through the process of hair dressing, so I doubt it’s a look that will be repeated anytime soon.

Natalie loves to color and eat at her new just-her-size table. I love that I bought it from Craig’s List for a mere $15!!

Natalie enjoying an afternoon dip in her kiddie pool:

Natalie mad that I won’t let her hold the camera:

Lots of communication firsts today!!

Natalie woke up fussing this morning and when I asked her what was wrong, she replied, “I wet.” Sure enough she was soaking, but the exciting part is that it’s the first time she’s used the word “I”! Then I put her on the changing table and she told me that she was “cold.” Natalie’s talked about objects being hot or cold, but today was the first time she’s ever expressed feeling a certain temperature herself. This evening, we were sitting at an outdoor pizza place and witnessed a man yelling at his kids. Natalie came over to me (she had been running around with some of her play group friends) and said, “scared.” While I wasn’t happy that Natalie felt afraid, I was ecstatic that she was able to communicate what she was feeling.

It’s amazing to watch the wheels turn as Natalie learns new words or figures out new concepts. It’s equally incredible to witness these leaps that seem to happen overnight.

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.