Jake and Brenna: 17 Months

Natalie is 17 months! I can't believe how fast she is growing and learning! She's going to be old enough to go to nursery at church next month. So weird. I'm currently serving in the nursery in our ward, so we'll see how that goes. I haven't decided if I want to try to switch out of her class (we have two or three nurseries, and I work with the youngest class). Jake brings her in while I'm there a lot, and she usually runs around and does her own thing. She doesn't cling to us, and I'm only in the nursery third hour, so she would still get some time on her own in there. We'll see what happens.

We had Natalie's six-week weigh in since she had lost weight at her 15 month doctor appointment. She weighs exactly the same, so her weight has stabilized, and our pediatrician says not to worry about it. So we're not.

New words: hippo, toe, doll, boat, bubble, rice, air conditioner, lawn mower, pull, watermelon, library (bah-bay-bee), raspberry, tomato, potato, burrito, knee, pretty, Elvis, swing (wee), onion, chip, minion, cookie, and probably a bunch more that I can't think of. I'll probably stop keeping track at this point.

We went to the Toledo Zoo at the beginning of the month. It's supposed to be one of the best zoos in America, and it's only an hour away. So we got a membership with a coupon we got in the mail, so we'll be going at least two more times to get our money's worth. I don't think that will be a problem. We had a great time! I think all of us enjoyed the hippo the most. It decided to take a swim right when we got there, and it came right up to the glass in front of Natalie's face. Natalie also really enjoyed the elephants. The baby elephant kept chasing a duck and trumpeting at it, so she loved that. And she really liked the monkeys, especially a little baby monkey that was chasing its mom. Jake and I really liked the parakeet house. We thought it would be lame and almost skipped it. We bought a feed stick, not really knowing what that was all about, but when we went inside the birds were just free in the room, and they would land on your feed stick to eat. It was awesome! I got to hold a bird while it ate! We were all wiped out by the time we left, and Jake and I almost couldn't find where we parked the car. Oops. We found it, and Natalie slept on the way home.

I think Natalie's favorite food right now is grapes. I have never seen a natural end to her grape-eating. She always finishes every last one on her plate and asks for more. Eventually I cut her off. She's eaten at least 35 grapes before (in addition to the rest of her meal) and still asked for more. She also loves pickles. They were her first food, and she has eaten a lot of pickles since then. We finally found one she doesn't like: bread and butter pickles. She cringes as soon as they touch her tongue. But surprisingly, she loves pickled red onions; she'll eat tons of them until her breath is so bad! Ha! She also loves chips. We usually have some Pringles in the cupboard for Jake's lunches, and she asks for them all the time. If we say no, she asks to SEE the chips, like getting one step closer to the chips increases her chances of getting to eat one. She also really likes watermelon, raspberries, and cookie cereal.

She has gained some interest in Cookie Monster. Elmo is still her favorite, but she really likes when Cookie Monster does his thing, where he says cookie a bunch of times and then smashes a bunch of cookies in his face while saying, "Om nom nom." She thinks it's so funny, even when we do it. And at the end of Furchester Hotel episodes, she now says goodbye to Elmo AND Cookie Monster.

She's really been enjoying Despicable Me this month. She loves the minions, and she asks to watch it by trying to say minions, although it sounds just like when she says onion. Haha!! She really likes the first 15-20 minutes of the movie. She likes "Sweet Home Alabama," Gru's car (she thinks it's a train because of its loud honk), the part when the minions are gathering, and the elephant that they test the shrink ray on. She watches all of that straight through until Vector steals the shrink ray, then she loses interest completely.

She really likes listening to Elvis, particularly Bossa Nova Baby. (If you need a refresher, have a listen on YouTube.) We have a couple videos of her dancing to the music, and it is adorable! She also likes to look at that album cover on our phones when we play the song. She points at his picture and says, "Alfwah." (That's how she says Elvis. Hehe!)

She thinks it's funny to "share" her snacks with her stuffed animals, especially the big sock monkey, by holding cereal or goldfish up to their mouths.

Natalie had been growing accustomed to having a pacifier during diaper changes and sometimes while just playing upstairs, so we decided to nip that in the bud and cut back to just at nap time and bed time again. It took a couple of days for her to readjust so she would ask for her pacifier whenever we were upstairs and we would always tell her, "Not right now, only for bed time." One day she kept asking for one, and I kept saying no, so she got down on the floor and started looking under furniture for dropped pacifiers! She looked under her bed and her dresser, that clever girl, and she spotted one! Luckily she couldn't reach it, so I was able to just put it away. So funny!

A squirrel finally figured out how to get in our bird feeder that is suction cupped to the window, so Jake and I have been banging on the window to scare it away. It takes a surprisingly great amount of hard pounding on the window to get him to leave. At first it would scare Natalie, but now she thinks that's how we greet squirrels. She used to wave and say hi through the window, but now she bangs her hand on the glass at them. Oops.

She is obsessed with horsey rides. We have given her rides on our backs, and she loves it. But now when either of us lays on the floor, she climbs right on our backs and says nay. She also does this to her stuffed animals. She will position one on the floor and squat over it saying nay. Silly girl!

Another recent obsession is hair accessories. I haven't been putting headbands on her since she got enough hair that it is difficult to make it lay nice underneath, and we have some of those clips that you bend to open and close, but I didn't think she had enough hair for that yet. I have since discovered they stay in surprisingly well even with very fine hair. Anyway, whenever Natalie sees a little girl with a hair accessory, she points at it, and I usually say how pretty it is. "Oh, does she have a bow in her hair? Yeah, that is so pretty." So she started calling all hair accessories pretty like that's what they are called. One day she noticed her hair accessories displayed on the wall in her room, and pointed to them saying pretty and signing help. She wanted me to put one in her hair, and now she asks for them almost every day. So cute!

Now for the pictures!

In the aquarium Natalie just wanted me to sing the little chant from the initiation ceremony in Finding Nemo. "Shark bait oo-ha-ha."

The tortoise was pretty boring. Sorry, Tortoise.

Parakeet house! That's my hand. I got to hold that little guy while he snacked on my stick. He did quite the acrobatics to get the seeds off the underside.

So many parakeets.

Having a little rester.

Hippo!

HIPPO!!!

The otters were playing chase and swam right in front of Natalie a few times.

Natalie wouldn't take her eyes off the elephants to look at me for even a second.

Flamingos

Bald Eagles

Polar bear, in howling position.

Arctic Wolf

Natalie loves picking dandelions. She loves them when they've gone to seed even more.

Enjoying a blast from the air conditioner.

Beautiful blossoms

Natalie is less than enthused after a session of gardening.

Eating corn from the can with Dad makes it better.

"Come sit by me, Mom! We'll be the potty twins!"

This was unexpected. I got out my phone to take a picture because she was being cute, and she just burst into tears. I took the picture anyway. :)

Sharing a graham cracker with her ball. It has a face, so it's not weird. ;)

The library has an eggplant riding toy. So weird. And Natalie has a little ride every time we go.

She still falls asleep on me every once in a while. These moments have to be documented now that they are so seldom.

She wanted a bow as soon as she woke up. :)

Best Friends

This is the face I see anytime Natalie catches me taking a picture of her, and she knows even if it is my phone. She wants to see the picture, and she whines and shakes her hands until I show her. Usually those pictures turn out blurry, but somehow this one didn't, so here it is in all its glory.