Saturday, August 04, 2007
Natalie is 19 months!
This is a week late but last week was just a little crazy. Natalie turned 19 months on July 27th. There's lots going on with her these days and lots of things she's doing now. She's a very active and energetic little toddler these days. She climbs on EVERYTHING. She loves to climb in my office chair and sit in front of the computer (thanks to her dad) while playing with my mouse. She even managed to turn off my computer a couple of times until I learned to disable the sleep button. She tries to climb up the back of my office chair too. She enjoys getting into all of the things I have on my desk (one of the huge pitfalls to not having a three bedroom apartment, no place for my stuff) and in the set of drawers next to my desk. She gets into things in the kitchen by pulling the chair over to one of the counters and climbing on the chair. I expect her to be climbing counters soon so we're trying to get money together to get a gate for the kitchen. I have knives and things like that on the counters and her getting into that would not be good. She hasn't figured out how to climb in the crib fortunately. She can climb up the ladder to the slide and go down the slide (lots of fun for her and one way to get her climbing urges dealt with).Her favorite play things are anything but toys at times. She does play with her toys here and there but she loves things that are not toys. Right now, it's business and membership cards from her dad's wallet that he's not using anymore. She's almost obsessive about them, carrying them around everywhere and putting them down and picking them up constantly. She will also sit and "read" her books for minutes at a time. I think she does it because she sees me reading all the time. We're also working on letting her color on paper and in coloring books. That's taking a little more work since she doesn't always want to sit down to do that. She still has her favorite toys though and that consists mainly of her push toys and any toys that make noise. When she gets a little older, I want to start getting her a train set. For now, she has a little train set that she plays with but maybe when she's closer to three we'll get her more.
She's still REALLY shy. She opens up more to people if they don't push themselves on her. If someone's not looking at her, she'll say "hi" but if that person starts to talk to her, she ducks her head and becomes very shy. It drives my family nuts because they all want to be able to hug her and stuff but she doesn't want to go near anyone. Unfortunately, because of that and because of how overprotective John gets when she's around other people, I'm getting all kinds of comments as to how John is causing her to be shy and that it could lead her to have autistic-like behavior which really bugs me. Yes, she is shy because she's not around certain people on a constant basis but she does usually warm up eventually. That doesn't mean she's not going to be friendly ever. I'm not the most outgoing person myself and I too find myself very overwhelmed in large groups. I don't think John's much different so it should be no surprise to anyone that she's shy compared to her cousin who comes from at least one outgoing parent. My little sister is VERY outgoing and has always been. She's been known as a "social butterfly" since she was little. So naturally, the cousins are going to be very much different too. And if Natalie is anything like me, she'll end up feeling mostly at home on a computer. lol Not that I don't like to be around people because I do but I do much better in one to one situations than I ever do in a group. Even large families make me nervous which is why family gatherings tend to make me a little uncomfortable.
She's working on more words. She says momma now and she says it consistently, especially if I'm not around. I heard her say Q,R,S pretty clearly yesterday while she was going over the ABCs. We also heard her say 3 and she now says WHY. Uh-oh, wasn't ready for that one yet! She'll say OH! in this really cute, frustrated way when something doesn't go the way she wanted it to. She also says moon, something that sounds like stars, boom (during a thunderstorm), and balloon whenever she sees a balloon. Her big thing she really says is baby which she says every time she sees a baby whether that baby is her or not. She can say a few French words too including merci, boucou (I don't know how to spell it), and au revoir. She's getting better with head, shoulders, knees and toes and today she was working on saying nose and mouth while pointing to them.
She loves singing. She sings wa, wah, wa, wa, wah for her favorite CD which has the song Waltzing with Bears. She also sings along with most of the songs on the CD. She sings the ABC song (as best as she can) as well as other songs. She likes ABBA. lol We played Dancing Queen the other day and when we looked at her in the back, she had her finger pointed out like she was doing a disco dance. It was too funny. Her mom wasn't even alive during the disco era! lol As much as she like ABBA though, it's no match for Waltzing with Bears. It's kind of funny though because the only reason why I looked for that CD was because of Waltzing with Bears which was a song I learned in music class in second grade. We sang it for our spring concert that year. I had forgotten some of the words to it and went looking for the lyrics which lead me to finding the CD that the song is played on. If anyone is interested, the CD is called Stardreamer: Nightsongs & Lullabies by Priscilla Herdman. We've been having Natalie listen to it since she was four months old at least, maybe sooner than that. It's our car CD and has gotten us through MANY a long car ride. If she starts fussing while we're on the road, usually all it takes is to put this CD in and she settles down.
Nursing is still going strong. I gave up trying to have any kind of a schedule; it just didn't work for me. Some days she doesn't nurse as much though, especially when John is home or we're out. The day we went to La Crosse for the funeral, she only nursed that morning for 10 or 15 minutes on one side and she didn't nurse again until we were on the way home and that was because the side she didn't nurse on was starting to hurt from going more than 24 hours without a nursing session. Other than that, we fed her food and gave her water in her sippy cup. She does get raw milk here and there but mostly in the morning and it depends on who feeds her breakfast. John will give her milk in a sippy cup. I won't. I prefer to give her a little milk in a plastic glass because milk is hard to wash out of a sippy cup. I will also give her cereal with milk. She likes that! And she's really good with using a fork and spoon so giving her cereal with milk is not a problem at all. We still need to work on veggies though but the blame for that rests mostly on me because I'm the one who cooks dinner for us while John works and I'm the one who usually does not make any veggies other than corn. But, she eats all kinds of fruits including berries, grapes, apples, oranges, pineapple, etc. She's not real big on melons though.
Potty training she's nowhere near ready for and I don't try to push it. She will sometimes take off her diaper when it's wet if she's able to but other than that, that's about it. She does say pee-pee though and poop too. lol I'm not worried; I can always work with her on that next summer by getting some fitted cloth diapers. That's my plan anyway unless we get a washer and dryer at some point before that and I can put her back into cloth diapers. Meanwhile, we get the Parent's Choice diapers. They work well and they're CHEAP. I got tired of spending almost $20 for diapers that have less stuffing than the generic ones did.
I don't know if she's grown since the last time I measured her or not; it's been about a month now so I'll check her height again soon. I'm not sure about weight either but she seems to thriving so I don't worry too much about it. She wears a size 12 for pants but is getting a little tall for them so I'm now looking for 18 month pants for her. Otherwise, she wears 18 month clothes. She wears between a size 4 and 5 in shoes. I picked up 3 pairs of shoes for her yesterday at Target (if you are a shoes horse for little girl shoes, go to TARGET!). Two of the pairs of shoes were on clearance and were very cheap (under $4). I got her a pair of size 5 dress shoes in pink to match her pink dress and a pair of size 6 white dress shoes with pink sparkles. The third pair of shoes were a little more expensive. They're a softer shoe and the pair I picked up were more like sandals. The two pairs of jelly shoes no longer work: one pair is now too small and the other pair had the velcro for the snap come loose. I wanted to get her something a little softer for her to wear too but they also had tennis shoes that I may look into getting her the next time we're in Madison. Those and a pair of boots for winter will hopefully be all I need but who knows. Target also carries Robeez type shoes for $13 which is half what you will pay for a pair of Robeez. I wasn't sure what size to put her in so I didn't get any this time but may look into next time. They had lots of clothes I wanted to get her too but we didn't have the money to go nuts. Their toy selection though is AWESOME! They had all kinds of things I would definitely consider getting her including a wooden kitchen set. They had a kiddie keyboard too for age 2 and up and I might look into that since the one she's got now is for older kids, I think. Unfortunately, we only really get to Madison for this kind of stuff about once a month which makes it hard sometimes and yesterday was our one day a month. We happened to be there yesterday for a free portrait session. I will be posting those pictures later.
Whew! A big update for such a little girl! But it helps doing it this way because then when it comes time to send my mom a letter, I just copy and paste some of what I put on here. lol Later today, I'll probably post those pictures. They turned out really well and what's really great is that the photographer releases the photos for printing and emailing. She has a release statement on the CD and everything. I'm planning to go there for Natalie's 2 year old pictures because she doesn't try to pose Natalie at all. Other than to make sure she's in the area with the light, she just lets her do whatever and takes pictures while she does that. It's far less traumatic to her than trying to get her to sit still for pictures. I like that A LOT.
| posted by Janeen at 2:24 PM
