Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Some news and updates, maybe a few pictures...
I started this entry a month ago and never updated it. At this point, until I have time to sit and type, I'm just going to make this a picture entry for the most part. lol So, this is some of what has been happening with Natalie during the last three months (eek, I can't believe it's been THAT long since I last updated!):July:
Okay, I don't really have any pictures from July to post on here. We saw the fireworks in Seoul and Natalie did pretty well with those. She was a little scared but not as scared as she usually is of them. John found a new job so the month was mostly spent preparing for our large move to the Bundang area. That was pretty exciting. We did that the 19th. We went back to Ilsan for Natalie's friends' birthday party (it was a double birthday party for two girls). That was a lot of fun as it was Natalie's very first birthday party that she had ever attended.
August:
John had a few days off so one of the things we did was go on the Korean express train. It's a high speed train that goes up to 180 mph. That was a lot of fun for all of us and we took the train from Seoul to Deajeon which was where John worked the last time he was here in Korea. August was also Natalie's first hair cut which she wasn't too sure about. It went pretty well though and her hair was left long, just evened out.
Here, she's being prepared for her hair cut.
Mom, I'm scared!
Okay, this isn't too bad.
All done!August ended with a trip to the local water playground which was pretty much our one and only time we were able to go. Fortunately, John had been taking Natalie to the water fountains to play and fortunately, water fountains are acceptable to Natalie (it helps that she REALLY likes water fountains).
One last picture to share for August. I took this one of Natalie one day while we were at the park behind our apartment. It turned out really well:
September:
Another busy month for all of us, especially with the change in John's school hours. He now works from noon to just after five though he doesn't usually get home until around six. We've been spending a lot of weekends (and weekday nights too) out and about and just finding things to do. That's kind of what you do when you have money yet live in an apartment that's roughly the size of a shoebox. Natalie has been healthy for the most part but she did run a temp a couple of weeks ago. Fortunately, that was the worst of it, she was over it after 18 hours of sleeping. She has also had a slight growth spurt this past month as well. She's now up to 38 and 1/4 of an inch, 1/4 of an inch taller than she was two months ago (or even one month ago). There's an article I recently read about treating fevers and illnesses that suggested that strides in physical/mental growth tends to occur shortly after a fever. I have to wonder if part of the reason for her fever was the growth spurt that occurred afterward. I still wonder if her biggest growth spurt is yet to come. So far, she's had a massive one just about every November and I wonder if this year will be the same. We'll have to see.
This month, she's really been getting into art. She LOVES to paint and paints these very beautiful and colorful paintings. I can't tell what they are supposed to be of but they are just absolutely creative and she has a total blast painting. I bought a printer not too long ago so I've also been able to start printing out pages for her to practice her writing again. I'm amazed at how far she's come in the last six months. Her control has improved SO much since March and that's been without even having much in the way of practice. I really am glad that I kept the early writing sheets because it was just amazing to see the difference in her writing in that amount of time. Admittedly, she's still mostly tracing but we've been working on some non-tracing writing too. The only problem we've been having is that she's still wanting to color on things that are NOT paper and has colored a number of walls and furniture in the apartment. While that's frustrating enough, she also lies about WHO has done the coloring. She tends to blame her imaginary friends who are mostly the cast of characters from Super Why (one of her favorite shows). To say the least, I'm not impressed. She's also learning to use scissors and glue (glue sticks) and is having a lot of fun with those as well. So far, she hasn't attempted to cut her hair or anything like that though she knows full well what the consequences will be if she were to ever cut her hair. And since she wants her hair to be down to her butt, I'm hoping that will be enough to keep her out of trouble on that end of things. No pictures to really post for September yet but once I get them all resized and cropped as needed, I'll post them here for you all to see. At least I finally got an entry in before the month ended!
| posted by Janeen at 12:15 AM
