She's mobile! Natalie hit a bunch of physical milestones this month in quick succession. Jake and I are reeling just trying to keep up with her. She's all but walking, and once she figures that out, heaven help us! The monthly photos are becoming exponentially more difficult now that she's too busy to lay still on her back for a picture. It took both Jake and I to get her attention, make her smile, and snap pictures this month, but I just love that we caught her mid-wave in this photo. What a cutie!
Natalie started crawling just one week after she turned seven months. She started slow but quickly gained speed! There's a video below.
At first she didn't like crawling on the wood, so she would do a half crawl/half bear walk, which gave her a blister on her toe. Poor thing. She doesn't discriminate between our flooring anymore.
She can get into a stand on just about anything within reach: stairs, bookcases, tables, my legs, even just leaning against our flat cabinet doors. She can also "cruise," or walk along pieces of furniture, and she can transfer to a prop behind her. Between this and the crawling, nothing is sacred. She can (and DOES) get into just about anything below our waist level.
Sometimes I lay on the floor to corral play with her, and she'll stand up holding onto me, then let go. She stands up really straight, gets a proud look on her face, and lifts her hands up like, "Look, no hands! I'm an adult!" Sometimes she can stay up for about five seconds before falling down.
We lowered her crib mattress at the beginning of the month after she started standing up in her crib. Yikes!
She has learned to put her hand out and slowly squat down to the floor from standing, which I greatly prefer to her old method of just pushing off and falling hard on her bum. Phew! Sometimes the momentum would make her fall back and hit her head too. :(
Similarly, she can squat down to pick up a toy and stand back up.
She really likes attention and loves making us do tricks. We like to think we're making her do tricks, but I'm pretty sure it's the opposite.
Our first trick is So Big. Typically, the trick goes that you say, "So big!" Then she raises her arms above her head. But Natalie puts her arms up at random times and then looks at us to make us say, "So big!"
There are a bunch of other things that we used to do and Natalie would mimic us, but now she starts the tricks. So she can clap her hands, click her tongue, and shake her head no. Then she looks at us to make sure we are going to follow her lead.
She can wave, and I think her wave is different for hi and bye bye. It's so cute when she waves night night to Jake!
She learned to drink from a straw. We tried a sippy cup, but she just kept trying to drink from it like a bottle. We had a straw cup, so I decided to try that instead, and she caught on pretty quick.
She has tried a ton of new foods, including cereal puffs and chunks of banana and avocado. I think her favorite food is still peaches or maybe strawberry banana.
Most of the time, she will quiet down when I read her a story. She points at things on the pages and tries to turn the pages.
Her favorite book is one full of pictures of smiling baby faces. She will look at the babies and smile and giggle and poke their faces. Sometimes she'll even give the babies kisses. It is adorable.
Speaking of adorable kisses, Natalie loves her "mirror friend," and will sometimes give her kisses and wave at her. It is hands down the cutest thing I've seen in my life. See video below.
She has developed a love for music this month. She has always loved when we sing to her, but she didn't seem to care when we would play recorded music. Now she has started bopping up and down when her favorite songs come on, and she will stop and crawl across the house to watch a commercial on TV if she likes the song on it.
I think her favorite songs are Gold by Sir Sly (this is the song on that Cadillac commercial with the dancing robotic arms and light show - her favorite commercial) and Happy by Pharrell Williams (you may know this song from Despicable Me 2).
Her favorite songs that we sing are Old McDonald and Pop! Goes the Weasel.
I finally refilled the bird feeder, and she is very interested in all the birds that come to the window. She also loves to watch the lawn mowers and weed whackers in the back yard on Tuesdays.
She has started to hate diaper changes, although I think it has a lot to do with boredom. I try to give her something to play with or sing to her, and that usually helps.
Her distaste for public bathroom changing tables continues as her fear of loud noises extends to echoing toilet flushes. They just sound different than home toilets. Then she starts crying, which also echoes and scares her more. We end up changing her in the back of the car a lot, and she likes that much better. So much exploring to do back there!
She switched to a stiffer pacifier for babies with teeth. It used to just shoot out of her mouth when she would try to suck on it.
We also switched to fast flow bottle nipples, which I love! Natalie was collapsing the medium flow nipples and taking forever to eat her bottles because of it. Now that we've switched, she can down a six ounce bottle in five minutes!
She can hardly resist a game of peek-a-boo. Sometimes if she's crawling out of my sight to get something I don't want her to have, I can just call out, "Where's Natalie?" in a playful voice, and she'll crawl back into sight and peek at me with a big smile on her face.
For some reason she loves shoes. I keep telling Jake we will be in trouble when she is a teenager. :) She is always trying to get our shoes where we leave them by the door and upstairs in our closet. She puts them in her mouth, though, so I try not to let her play with them. She also likes to play with the laces.
She also loves riding on Jake's shoulders. It always gets big smiles. His shoulder rides can fix almost anything.
Onto the pictures and videos! There are way too many because I just couldn't choose!
A common view from the couch
Peek-a-boo with the curtain
It's like a fort under the coffee table
She loves to read!
Look at those blue eyes!
Her favorite toy is this Baby Banana. It's a little baby toothbrush. Yay for dental hygiene!
We went to a ward activity and had a picnic here by the lake. Such a pretty view, but too many spiders joined us.
We borrowed the exersaucer below from someone in the ward. It was nearly impossible to keep her away from it while I was cleaning it up. She wanted in it first thing the next morning, hence the pjs. She only tolerates it for about 15 minutes at a time, but that's just long enough for me to get a task done once in a while, like changing the laundry or washing bottles. Sometimes I think she's confused as to why she can't walk forward while she's in it. She loves how it rocks on the domed bottom, especially when she can get it to play Old McDonald.
We had to lower the crib the next day after she learned this trick.
Jake went out to put the grill away, and Natalie thought it was just hilarious to see him through the window. She was being so cute, touching the window and trying to reach him.
"Mom, you got my laptop out for me! Thanks!" Haha!
Sometimes I take Natalie for a walk down to a fountain on campus. It's only a ten minute walk, and it's really close to Jake's office, so sometimes he can come say a quick hello. It's a really nice activity when Natalie is crabby - she really loves being outside.
Just makin' copies on the printer. ;)
This is a video of Natalie's first crawl of more than a "step" or two. Of course, we had to lure her with Jake's phone to get her to do it. Haha! She's a lot faster now!
She loves to clap, but it kind of disintegrates at the end of the video. Sometimes she'll crawl somewhere, sit up, start clapping, and look to me to cheer for her. So funny!
A video of the perfect dismount! She's gotten so good at getting down.
Sometimes she ends up sitting on a toy accidentally, but when it's a squeaky toy, she just rolls with it. She is going to love Grandma Adams' squeaky kid's chair! It squeaks when you stand up.
I will close with the cutest video I've ever seen. She loves her "friend" in the mirror! She waves at her, and when she leans in with her mouth open, she's giving kisses. She doesn't really connect on them because her nose hits the mirror and she gets confused. We just love her!
