19 months

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. ;)

After a few months hiatus, she is now crawling through the tunnel at the library again!

What's the Fourth of July without a Slurpee?

Some pre-parade entertainment.

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.

Ready for an adventure.

Cathedral of Learning

Study areas inside the Cathedral of Learning

The Swiss classroom

The Swiss classroom

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.

We touched that alligator.

Natalie loved when his little, blue tongue would pop out.

Terrible lighting, but we touched that snake!

This is how she gave hugs to her favorite caterpillar friend.

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...

Hahaha! Natalie put her sippy cup in our ginger soda holder, and I thought it was really funny.

She loves playing in our laundry hamper, and this is the best picture I have of the blisters around Natalie's mouth.

Yeah, you totally fit in there!

Nuzzling the eye of her new minion toy.

She kept calling this empty pudding box a shoe and putting it on her foot. Silly girl.

She loves listening to her headphones.

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.)

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.

I posted a picture of our garden just after planting, and this is what it looked like in its prime.

Look at those curls!!! I don't want them to go away. :(

Sick, little crabster, listening to music in her favorite space pjs with her favorite hair accessory.

She kept trying to wear this basket as a backpack...

...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!

18 months

We can't believe this girl is 18 months old! She is so much fun, as illustrated by the linguine walrus above. Her vocabulary has really taken off this month, and we love hearing her use her voice...most of the time. ;) She did not enjoy her doctor's appointment any more this month than at 15 months, but she's done with shots until she's four, so hopefully she'll start feeling better about it! Now onto the stats, tidbits, and pictures.

STATS
Height: 35" (99%)
Weight: 26 lbs. 7 oz. (88%)
Head: 47.5" (80%)

She peed on the potty for the first time! Don't get too excited. We've still got a lot of progress to make on the potty training front, but this was a nice success to have along the way.

She was loving Despicable Me this month. If you ask her what Vector says, she says, "Oh, yeah!" and does his hip motions. So cute! She loves the minions, which she now calls "mini", which is way better than calling them onion. She spots them everywhere because of the advertising for the new Minions movie; she sees them on banana stickers, balloons at the grocery store, Little Debbie packaging. It's made grocery shopping a lot more exciting for her!

Whenever we ask her to boogie she picks her nose.

She held a potato bug for the first time and let it crawl on her arm. She really enjoyed that experience.

She likes to point out nearly every ant she sees on our walks, which is usually a lot. It takes a long time to get to the swings now.

I'd say her favorite foods right now are grapes and chips, which she calls "papu" or "pergles" (Pringles). She also discovered a love for honey this month; honey toast is a new breakfast hit.

We were really proud of her for sleeping with her baby doll instead of her bunny one night this month without any upset. She peed on bunny during her nap, so we had to wash it and set it out to dry. It wasn't going to be dry by bedtime, so we told her that bunny had to take a bath that night, and she would be sleeping with her baby instead. She asked about her bunny a few times, but she never got upset when we reminded her about the situation. Then she slept all night just fine. We were so worried it wouldn't go over well, but she did great!

She knows a bunch of shapes! She can say when she sees a circle, star, heart, plus, oval, and octagon. And she can point out squares, rectangles, and diamonds.

We're still working on learning colors. Sometimes she gets them right and sometimes she doesn't. I'm not sure we've made it past just guessing, but she is aware of colors and can say or sign all the basic colors.

She has been learning new words like crazy this month! Her vocabulary has really taken off. I don't think I could even count the number of words she can say now. She also improved her pronunciation of quite a few words this month, particularly grandma. Her pronunciation used to be indiscernible to outsiders and sounded like pkkk, but now she's saying, "Gamma."

We took Natalie camping for the first time this month. We were really worried about her sleeping well with us and about what to do with her for so long out in the woods, but it went really well! It's funny because I think we were both picturing Rockies style camping, up in the mountains, even though we've been camping in this area and know that it is more like pitching a tent at the park. It's always a little disappointing for us to roll up to our campsite and realize that it's a big field of mowed grass, but I think that was actually nicer for camping with a toddler. There were much fewer tripping hazards (e.g., sticks, pine cones, stumps), we didn't have to worry about her getting into poison ivy or poison oak, and there were vending machines by the (flushing!) toilets, which Natalie was endlessly entertained by...looking at the goodies, checking the doors for goodies and change, etc. Anyway, she wouldn't nap in the tent, but she did play quietly in there for an hour. She went right to sleep at night. I think it helped that she missed her nap, went to bed a little late, and was exhausted from running around so much. She slept great. Jake and I? Not so much. I woke up at one point with her foot on my face. Another time she was sleeping horizontally between us in our tiny, two-man tent. Oh, and did I mention that it rained for about seven hours the day we arrived? Luckily it stopped before we went to bed.

We saved up our date money so we could go to Zingerman's for lunch. Natalie ate so much fruit and hardly touched her mac'n'cheese!

This is a fun story: I took Natalie to a park where the playground is primarily for kids who are older than her. So I followed her around among the hordes of children there, and it was really fun to see her interacting with older kids. Natalie wandered into this little barn where I could hear these three girls talking about evading some other girl and kind of hiding from her, so I thought that they probably wouldn't want anything to do with a toddler. I started trying to get her to come out, but to my surprise the girls said she could stay and started chatting with her. Then Natalie dropped one of the maple seed pods she had collected earlier, and she started saying, "Uh-oh." One of the girls said, "Oh, don't worry. It's okay. I know where to get more." She went out and found a bunch of seed pods and brought them back in to Natalie. They were really sweet with her, and I could tell she was having a great time with the big girls.

Always have to include a monkey picture.

Natalie loves the Tsum Tsum toys (and videos), especially Winnie the Pooh. We're lucky we didn't have to take these home with us!

We went to a fun show at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival this year. The group was called Cirque Mechanics. They had a guy riding a unicycle while lifting a lady above his head, a guy standing on stacks on planks and barrels, and a lady doing acrobatics in a suspended hoop. Natalie really enjoyed herself, and I think other people enjoyed watching her dance to the music and have a good time. We certainly did!

At Ben & Jerry's for a little ice cream before the show.

You can see a lot of the performers in this picture of the finale. It was a fun show!

Natalie loves this crab puppet at the library, and she likes sitting at the puzzle table.

Another silly story: One day I couldn't find my bottle of moisturizer, and I knew I had given it to Natalie to play with for a few minutes the day before, so it had to be upstairs somewhere. I searched and searched with no luck. Our apartment is not very big, so it was hard for me to believe that it could be lost. Then I noticed that one of my lip balms was missing as well, and Natalie often plays with those because the containers look like balls. I enlisted Jake's help, but he couldn't find them either. I also asked Natalie where they were, since she usually remembers where she puts things. Finally, Jake suggested that we give her one of my other lip balms to see what she would do with it. I was doubtful that this would work, but less than a minute after he gave one to her, we noticed she didn't have it anymore. Jake had seen her by the corner of our bed, so we started inspecting closer and found two lip balms, the moisturizer, and a couple of other items tucked inside the top sheet at the foot of our bed. Apparently that's her little squirrel away place. I never would have looked there. I wouldn't have found them until I washed the sheets. Silly girl.

Natalie got to try out a bounce house at a friend's birthday party. She had a lot of fun!

Bedtime stories!

She has started pulling funny faces when I ask her to smile.

I took Natalie to the park, and she found this plastic potato toy. I thought it was such a blah toy, but she carried it around with her until we left. Haha!

Natalie kept walking away with the rope while Jake was working with the other end to tie up a tarp. I asked if she was being a helper, and she called the rope helper for a couple of hours before she figured it out. Haha!

Our camping neighbors. It was close quarters in there.

Playing dominoes under the tarp while it rained. 

Good morning! Natalie still asks me about the tent sometimes.

We found a knotty tree.

Our little girl is all grown up and starting nursery! We'll see how that goes. Jake has brought her in to see me a fair amount, and she doesn't really cling to us at all, although she does get mad if I have to take a kid out to their parent. I'm not sure what to expect, except that I will be sad whether she misses me or doesn't. It will be a good opportunity for her to have some time away from mommy, though, and to interact with other kids. We're excited for her!