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2)Video: In my last post I put video from 12-16 months. Scroll down and now you will see it has 12-24 months. It's not tooooo much longer as I didn't take a whole lot of video this past 8 months...pictures are another thing! It is amazing to watch the first part of the video, taken on her first birthday when we were opening presents after her party, to the last part of the video where we are opening presents after her second birthday party...what an amazing change from our baby to our little girl!
3)Updates: Natalie is talking more and more each day...only what she wants to say and when she wants to say it. As soon as I whip out the camera to get some video, she stops whatever it is she's doing, of course! Her favorite song right now is "The Wheels on the Bus" and it's so cute because she will sing a different verse but it's always the wheels that are doing the action: The wheels go round and round, but the wheels also go up and down (not the people) and the wheels also go beep beep beep (not the horn!) It's very cute to watch her do this song as she gets all the hand motions correct and you can understand everything she is saying, but no matter how many times we sing the correct item (horn goes beep, wipers go swish) she sings the WHEELS do it! I have not been able to get this on tape - yet!
She's very polite and sweet MOST of the time. She says 'thank you' when you give her something she wants, and even when you are doing something for her. She knew Jon was blowing up the new kiddie pool for her so she told him, 'tain tou!' it melts your heart. She always thanks you for ice cream in advance as she just KNOWS you are going to share with her!
She's going to pre-school two days a week and she loves it now. I've only noticed a few new bad habits but one great thing about daycare is that she must stay on her mat during nap time. If she's not sleeping she can have books or quiet toys but she must entertain herself. This has led to a nice, easy transition for our bedtime ritual. She does not scream when I leave now, yay! We read books and then get all of her 'babies' together and her 'bantet' (blanket) and she will snuggle into her bed and go to sleep by herself! After 10-20 minutes of rolling around, kicking her feet, singing to herself...sometimes getting up and jumping in the crib or sticking her leg over because she knows I will come back in when she does that! YES it's time for the toddler bed as she finally fell (almost gracefully!) out of her crib this past week! I guess she did well to make it to two in her crib. One of the final steps out of babyland and fully into to toddlerville...now we just have to start potty training....ugh.
Pictures: I do lots of collages as you know...I just love them! But they are too small here. However, when I click on them here it shows a much larger image...I hope this works for you once I publish them...!
Christmas morning - Natalie was so sleepy that she didn't even realize at first that there were new toys under the tree! I bet that won't happen this Christmas...
Natalie's 1st and 2nd Christmas - my how she's grown!
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Natalie's first Easter egg hunt! We found a small one where they had the 1-4 year olds separate and we found a little hidden path with lots of eggs all to ourselves. Natalie really got into it, running from egg to egg once she realized it was a game. So cute at this age before they are running over each other and breaking their necks for a little candy!
After Party: I don't know what song they were singing, but I was snapping pics after the egg hunt and they turned out so good that I made a collage of them too!
Easter Day...Natalie was so cute with her basket! Her first build-a-bear and lots of other goodies...a bathtub duckie instead of a chocolate one - and she plays with it in the bath every night. And she just loved the jacob's ladder...I had one of those...
Natalie meets Elmo! This was so cute that I had to put it in...we went to a friend's birthday party for her two year old and Elmo was the main attraction. I was not sure how Natalie would react. She loves Elmo on TV but who knew if the life-size version would scare her to death? NOT so! She LOVED Elmo - so much that it was hard to pry her away from him so that other people could take pictures with him! She was so cute that I didn't have the heart to make her leave him alone...so I'm sorry to all the parents who have pictures of their family...Elmo...and Natalie!
Natalie turns TWO! Here we are on her birthday at DQ for her first ice-cream cone! Once she got the hang of it she did not want to share. :-)
Natalie's Birthday Party: We had lots of fun at Natalie's 50's poodle skirt party! She actually had a poodle dress but when I found it last year I decided it was so cute that I had to plan her party around the dress! We had bubbles, sidewalk chalk, a pinata, an ice-cream bar with all the trimmings and a cake made out of cupcakes. Poor Natalie was not feeling 100% as she was sick the day before her party.
I thought we were going to have to cancel (oh no!) but then she bounced right back...and promptly gave it to Daddy two days later...and then I got it...and it was MUCH worse on us than it was on her! So anyway, she was not her usual bubbly smiley self (like at the Elmo party!) but when everyone started singing Happy Birthday she lit up with a huge smile and snuggled into her Daddy's chest like she was shy!
We had been 'practicing' for days for her to blow out the candles. She received a birthday card with a picture of a cupcake and two lit candles on the front. I told her they were 'hot' and she needed to blow on them like she does her food...so she walked around for two days saying, "candees...hot...blow it" and then would blow on the card like she was the wolf trying to take the little pig's house down! However, when it came time to blow out her actual candles...she wanted nothing to do with it!
We had a separate 'present opening party' the day after her party and that was so much fun! She was able to spend time loving on each present as they were opened and didn't have to rush. We did this last year too and I highly recommend this approach to parents of 'less than three' year olds as kids this age do not want to open a present and then open another one without exploring the first one...and the do NOT want to share their new toys with the other kids at the party! This way there was no stress, another photo shoot opportunity (yay!) and about three hours of non-stop present opening and playing - and a HUGE nap!!
OK that's it for now, hope you have enjoyed the journey through our last 8 months...and now it's 2am and I'm going to bed with visions of updating the blog regularly dancing through my head...
