Updates on Natalie

An earlier post on this blog mentioned that Natalie can now sit up on her own. Here is a photo showing her new skill:


She is doing well with eating solid foods. So far we have fed her food from small baby food jars - carrots and sweet potatoes. We have also given her rice cereal. She got the hang of eating in a way other than a bottle or breast feeding quite quickly. She quickly learned that if there's a spoon in front of her face, she should open her mouth. We remember how foreign this concept to Lexi was the first few times we fed her solid foods. Lexi had this look on her face like, "What? You mean I have to get my food this way now? It's not going to be as easy as getting milk delivered directly into my mouth?"

We also discovered in the last couple of days that Natalie's first tooth is coming in! Sarah felt it on her lower gum, and when we look closely at it, we can see a tooth poking through.

Phases of favorite foods

We’re not quite sure how our 2-year-old operates or what goes on in her mind, but we understand all parents of children her age are as baffled by these creatures in our homes as we are.

One thing that has struck us is Lexi’s phases, specifically the ones she has moved through for specific foods. In the last several months, she has moved rapidly through new favorite foods every several weeks.

First it was animal crackers. She needed to eat these all the time, from her first waking minute of the day (saying she “needed” them for breakfast) to her afternoon snack. We quickly learned that we needed to have the next new box on hand when she ran out of one box. Whenever we visited someone’s house for more than a few hours, we told them they should have animal crackers on hand lest they wanted to see a very angry toddler.

Then, suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, she was all about granola bars, which she called “’nola bars.” At every opportunity to eat – breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, snack at church, snack in the car, etc. – she said, “I want ‘nola bar.” And she got her ‘nola bar. As with the animal crackers, we learned quickly to have many boxes of these in the cupboard at all times – and a certain brand of them.

After a couple months of this, it was as if ‘nola bars had never existed because she never mentions them anymore, but now it’s gorging on yogurt. She really liked yogurt as a baby while in Kenya, but then she didn’t like it for a while. Now she can’t get enough of it. When she comes home from daycare with Sarah, she will often down a whole container of yogurt in a few minutes. She's getting better at feeding herself, although some incomplete spoonfuls of yogurt make it to her mouth.

We're not sure what her next favorite food will be, but we'll keep you informed.

Just how smart is a 2-year-old anyway?

Yesterday I had an afternoon appointment to be shown the latest in trade show displays at the place that sells them way out in the suburbs. I dragged Sarah and Lexi along with me in the car so they could have an outing. I was done by 4:00, and while I had gotten my usual afternoon coffee at the place, I wasn't able to eat my usual afternoon snack while there. So we stopped at Wendy's for a Frosty before we got on the highway for home. As we slowed down on the street to turn around and go into the Wendy's, Lexi exclaimed, "Ceam!" (her way of saying "ice cream"). How does this little girl know that Wendy's is where one goes for ice cream? We have gone there two or three times before for this purpose, but it's amazing how quickly she's picked up on identifying the place and purpose. Sarah says she's done the same thing near the place where we like to go get ice cream in our neighborhood. (Why are we getting ice cream so often, you may ask. It's summer, isn't it? Who doesn't enjoy a regular treat of ice cream when it's hot?)

On the other hand, there's this story that shows she still has some work to do with other foods:

The other day at work we had a meeting that we had a catered lunch for. I brought home some of the pita sandwiches for Sarah, and one was roast beef. Sarah was eating it for dinner that night. Lexi saw it and pointed that she wanted it, but we weren't quite sure what exactly she wanted. She finally said "chocolate" when we pointed to the roast beef on the sandwich (because of the color).

Is it the Swiss blood that she has in her from birth, or have we conditioned her on chocolate so much already? Recall that Lexi also thought there was chocolate in one of the lunar landers at the Air and Space Museum because it was wrapped in shiny foil - like a chocolate bar.

Lexi and Jane enjoying freshly baked bread

Developments in walking (and eating)

It was only at the beginning of this month that Lexi took her first steps and started walking on her own. In just a few short weeks, she has practiced a lot and is becoming more confident on her feet.

She is still pulling herself up on things like the couch or another stationary object to get started, although we’ve seen her stand up a few times on her own from a crawling or sitting position.

She is also having fun carrying things around in her hands while she walks, so we are finding things scattered and moved around the house more. Plus she has access to a lot more things from her feet, so we are having to watch her more carefully and what she gets into.

We are also letting her walk around more when we go out, and it’s fun to hold her hand and walk with her and to not have to carry her so much anymore. But of course she’s a much slower walker than us, and the disadvantage is that she’s into things when we’re out, such as touching everything or pulling things off the shelf at the grocery store. I think we as the parents are learning as much about a baby walking and what we need to watch and be careful of as she is about this new skill. Last night it was fun to take her on an escalator as a walking person for the first time and see her try to figure it out. Of course they are stairs – just moving ones – and she didn’t quite understand that she needed to stand still and not to try to climb the stairs.

On a different topic, the one of food, a few times in the past several months when we’ve eaten out, at a couple of buffet places, we’ve fed Lexi a few bites of fish. Sarah and I detest all forms of seafood, but Lexi has not objected to the tastes she’s had of it. We would be delighted if we could get her to like seafood early on. So at the grocery store, we bought her some popcorn fish (breaded fish balls) that we can easily cook for her in the toaster oven and that she can eat with her fingers. She eats them like any other food she likes. So far, so good!