So catching up. It's been a busy few months, and I'm finally finding some time to go through the pictures and put some posts together. So back to...eek!...July.
This month our family went through the unfortunate experience that is hand, foot, and mouth disease, which is a really common childhood illness that had never heard of until a couple of years ago. It is awful! Natalie had a fever (which gave her hives, although that has nothing to do with the illness) and then got blisters around her mouth, on her hands, feet, and bum. We were very fortunate that she didn't seem to get the blisters very bad inside her mouth and throat, which a lot of kids do, and then they won't eat. Her bum was really bad though, so diaper changes were hard, and she would not sit because her bum hurt. We had to let her eat standing up with her plate on the coffee table. Her hands and feet weren't too bad; most of the blisters were on her fingers and toes, rather than her palms or the bottoms of her feet. Anyway, the blisters last 7-10 days, then they scab over and fall off, no big deal. Except all of the there were blisters under three or four of her fingernails and toenails, which also fell off! Ugh! On top of all this, there are tons of stories online of doctors telling people that adults very rarely get this, but in every case I've read or heard about at least one parent got it. Jake was that unlucky parent. It was terrible timing too because all of this happened in the two weeks leading up to his candidacy at school, and the poor guy had to work non-stop even though he felt awful. Anyway, we made it through, and Jake passed his candidacy! He is now an official candidate for his Ph.D., and he has his master's degree!
Whenever I give Natalie graham crackers or chips, she takes a bite out of every one before proceeding to eat a whole piece. It's super funny...until she tells me she's all done and I'm left with two crackers that each have a bite out of them.
She's in this weird phase where she claims she has a poop in her diaper every time I try to put her in the high chair to eat. She clenches her legs together so I can't get her into chair. She almost never has a dirty diaper at meal time. Little trickster.
We were prepping Natalie for a visit back home by showing her pictures of family members and helping her learn names. For some reason, every time I would show her a picture of my sister-in-law, Katie, she would say, "Awesome!"
Her color recognition is improving. She is definitely doing better than just guessing. although she gets blue, pink, and green the most often.
She has almost completely abandoned signing at this point. She only uses them once in a while for emphasis, like if she really wants something and isn't getting it.
She is learning new words everyday and improving her pronunciation on words she already knows.
She knows the difference between hot and cold.
She really likes flags, and she's been spotting them everywhere since learning about them on the Fourth of July. We took her to a parade for the holiday, and she had a lot of fun. She saw a police motorcycle with its siren on, and now every time she sees a motorcycle, she says, "Wee-oo wee-oo!" Funny girl.
Here are some pictures we took this month, in no particular order. It's a sore subject. Don't ask. ;)
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| After a few months hiatus, she is now crawling through the tunnel at the library again! |
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| What's the Fourth of July without a Slurpee? |
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| Some pre-parade entertainment. |
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| A fun super-hero troop in the parade. |
We took a whirlwind, 2 1/2-day trip to Pittsburgh this month. Jake had to attend a conference, and was planning to go alone, but at the last minute we realized that since no one else from his department was going, Natalie and I could join him for the low, low price of buying our own food. So we all loaded into the car and made the 5-hour journey, which takes way longer with a toddler, as I'm sure many of you are aware. Anyway, after calling ahead to request a crib for our hotel room, we arrived way past Natalie's bedtime at around 10p, and of course, there was still no crib in our room. So we had to wait for it. Ugh! Sleeping in the same room next to a toddler is also pretty hard. Oh, well. We survived, and we got to do a few fun things!
Jake was at the conference both days until about 5p, so Natalie and I entertained ourselves during the day. I was originally planning to drive Natalie to the Pittsburgh Zoo, but once I saw the streets in Pittsburgh I was not absolutely not comfortable driving there. So I opted to find something we could do near our hotel. Luckily, the hotel for the conference was located near a lot of fun stuff. The first day, I had planned to take us somewhere (I don't even remember where), but we stumbled upon the Cathedral of Learning. It is a campus building that has a set of rooms decorated in the style of traditional classrooms from different countries. We decided to venture in and take a little self-guided tour. It was a really beautiful building, and it had a great view from the top floor. Here are a few pictures from the Cathedral of Learning.
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| Ready for an adventure. |
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| Cathedral of Learning |
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| Study areas inside the Cathedral of Learning |
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| The Swiss classroom |
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| The Swiss classroom |
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| The view of Pittsburgh from the top floor; we spent some time in that tent for lunch and we met up with Jake there the next day before heading home. |
The next day we had to be out of the hotel by mid-morning, which meant we didn't have anywhere for Natalie to nap. So I decided to take her to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which turned out to also house the Museum of Art. I thought she could ride around in the stroller and would probably fall asleep during nap time if I gave her a pacifier and kept moving. Ha! I even took her to a dark exhibit to walk around at nap time, and she still didn't go to sleep until we were walking to meet Jake around 4 or 5p. Oh, well. We had tons of fun! The museum was huge! They had tons of animal exhibits with taxidermy, tons of art, and a special kids zone where we spent a lot of time.
The animal exhibits were cool, but Natalie wasn't super interested. I thought the art was beautiful. They had pieces spanning the ages. I even got to see some of Monet's Water Lilies. But I think my favorite exhibit by far was the gem and mineral exhibit. Some of you know about Jake's rock hounding hobby, and although I don't enjoy the hounding part quite as much as he does, I do love looking at the finds. There were so many beautiful rocks, gems, and minerals from all over the world. They were in brightly lit cases in dark rooms, and I was in heaven. I only wished Jake could have been there to see them with me. Pictures weren't allowed in that exhibit either. :(
Anyway, Natalie's favorite exhibit was the kids area. They had lots of big containers with specimens the kids could look at and handle, like starfish, antlers, butterflies, bats, and bugs (those last ones were encased in glass). They had rubber snakes, pictures of birds and their eggs, animal skeletons. There was a big, purple caterpillar tunnel, and they had a dark hallway filled with unlit exhibit windows that you shined flashlights in to find the animals. In another kids area, they had an eagle's nest with eagles and fish, a bat cave, a squirrel's nest with big acorns inside a fake tree, a fake frog in a pond that would ribbit. It was pretty fun, and Natalie had a blast with all of that stuff. The coolest part though was the creature encounters. They had three of them throughout the day, and we made sure to hit each one. They would bring out an animal that you could pet. The first was a tiny alligator, the second was a blue tongue skink, and the third was a snake (I don't remember what kind since I'm writing this months after the fact). We touched them all, and I think Natalie really enjoyed herself. She was really gentle, and doesn't understand that this could be scary so it was just fun.
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| We touched that alligator. |
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| Natalie loved when his little, blue tongue would pop out. |
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| Terrible lighting, but we touched that snake! |
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| This is how she gave hugs to her favorite caterpillar friend. |
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| In the eagle's nest |
Natalie fell asleep just before we left the museum, and I let her sleep until after we met up with Jake. Then we all had to walk back to the hotel to get in the car. Unfortunately it started pouring rain while we were waiting for him. We tried to wait it out for a little bit, but we had a long drive ahead of us and it was showing no signs of stopping. So we ventured out in the rain. Our stroller doesn't have a huge canopy, so I had to carry Natalie and the umbrella while Jake pushed the stroller and carried his laptop bag. We were all soaked by the time we made the ten minute walk to the car. Okay, Natalie was mostly dry, but my legs were soaked, Jake and his bag were soaked, and the stroller was SOAKED! It was quite the downpour, and my arms were killing me by the time we got to the car. But we made it, and we survived the drive home. It was a fun trip but very fast.
Back at home...
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| Hahaha! Natalie put her sippy cup in our ginger soda holder, and I thought it was really funny. |
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| She loves playing in our laundry hamper, and this is the best picture I have of the blisters around Natalie's mouth. |
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| Yeah, you totally fit in there! |
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| Nuzzling the eye of her new minion toy. |
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| She kept calling this empty pudding box a shoe and putting it on her foot. Silly girl. |
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| She loves listening to her headphones. |
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| She put this Pull-Up on her head all by herself. It almost looks like some sort of turban. So Derelicte, if you've seen Zoolander. (It was clean, by the way.) |
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| I removed these right after taking the picture, but Natalie suddenly put crayons in her ears. What goes through kids' minds? I know just the place these will fit. |
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| I posted a picture of our garden just after planting, and this is what it looked like in its prime. |
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| Look at those curls!!! I don't want them to go away. :( |
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| Sick, little crabster, listening to music in her favorite space pjs with her favorite hair accessory. |
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| She kept trying to wear this basket as a backpack... |
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| ...then she just decided to climb in. |
I think it's going to be slow going catching up. I don't find myself with tons of free time these days, but I'm working on it. The material is there. I've taken notes on the things Natalie has been up to each month (some months are better than others), and I have the pictures, I just need time to flush out the text and put it together. One day...one day I will be caught up. I hope!
