Another month, another year

First of all, a few days ago, on December 29, Natalie turned 15 months old. See what a big girl she's getting to be!

 

Second, it was our turn to spend Christmas this year with Sarah's family, and so we went to Iowa, where we were hosted by Sarah's parents. Here is our immediate family on Christmas Eve:

Sarah's sister, Miriam, spent Christmas with us in Iowa as well and came with her husband, Andy, and two daughters, Olivia and Nora. The cousins had a great time playing with each other, since they are close in age.

Nora, Olivia, Lexi and Natalie

 One night we made krum kake, a traditional Norwegian Christmas cookie.

Where does the time go?

I have been super busy at work - no time for personal things - and our weekends and evening seem pretty full, too.  Natalie lately seems really clinging and wants to be held for no reason that we can figure out.  You can tell she is learning things by leaps and bounds though she still doesn't articulate/say any words, except Dad.

Here's some of the things Natalie is doing now.

-Natalie knows to put her arms in her coat sleeves when her coat comes out.
-Natalie seems to be shaking her head no at times
-She blows kisses, waves and gives high fives goodbye.
-She says "more" in sign language.
-Natalie understands when I tell her it is time to go upstairs to brush her teeth - she starts heading for the stairs.
-She is learning how to color (per her sister) - she definitely seems to be holding a crayon in the right grip. :)
-I saw her back down 3 steps - this has only happened once, but maybe she has got it.
-She walked up stairs holding mom's hand and was able to lift her foot high enough to get it onto the next step.
-When we are leaving, she knows to get her socks and shoes and bring them to mom or dad for help.
-When we come home, Natalie knows to take her coat off.

Lexi is learning to read. She read "food market" all by herself and she didn't even have to sound it out.  She knows lots of what her school calls "sight words" and she reads a book each night from school.  She does a really good job of reading though sometimes she does get frustrated.

A million miles an hour

Natalie is definitely a walker now and hardly bothers to crawl.  She falls down frequently but immediately gets herself back up on her feet.  She handily crawls up stairs and just today managed to crawl down 3 stairs all by herself.  We have been trying to show her but she hadn't really seemed to get it.  Maybe she finally does.

Natalie zooms all over the place and can happily walk back and forth for what seems like hours.  She also likes to take things out of boxes, off shelves, etc.  She grips a crayon like she wants to draw but doesn't quite know how to push down consistently to actually get color on the paper.  But she happily tries - and then walks around with the crayon until something grabs her attention and it gets dropped right there.  We are finding things all over the place that aren't in the place that they belong.

It is so much fun to see her moving around and exploring.  You can picture the wheels in her brain turning.  Wherever we go out in public, people are admiring her and seem to love watching her toddle around. Children can so easily bring joy to others - regardless of whether they have children themselves or not.

Natalie did manage to fall today and somehow cut the inside of her gum.  I didn't notice until I pulled her head away from my shoulder after she had mostly settled down and Lexi exclaimed that there was something on my shirt. She also cut her finger in a separate incident and didn't like having the bandaid on it so that was rather traumatic,too.

At snack time, I was getting things out of the fridge when Natalie saw the clear small container of leftover over macaroni and peas.   It was at her level so she grabbed it and then took it to the table by her highchair.  She knew she needed to get up there to be able to eat. It's amazing how kids learn these things.  Of course, once she seemed to be done eating and I took the container and spoon away from her (she was playing with it), she had a major tantrum and just would not calm down. I finally just put her in her bed and left her for a while.  

Reaching new milestones

We are pleased to report that Natalie is walking - well, maybe 80 percent of the time. She is still a little wobbly, and her walking is often interrupted by tumbling forward or just deciding to bend down and crawl.

This is a shift in body for her and a shift in mindset for me. For a long time, I've been used to sitting at the computer at the desk in our dining room or being in the kitchen working on something and Natalie being in the other room and knowing that she wasn't going to be moving anywhere quickly (so we didn't have to watch her like a hawk). But now she suddenly appears - and then is suddenly gone again. Now she goes from me knowing she is somewhere else to me being surprised that she is suddenly next to me. She is quick on her feet.

Walking has also come with a new eagerness to climb stairs. She can go up them (crawling) fairly well, but we she doesn't want to be taught how to descend stairs, so we're still watching her carefully around them.

We are also pleased to see that Natalie has gotten her first molar in. She has all of her front teeth on the top and bottom, and so this is the first tooth for the back of her mouth. She still occasionally bites Sarah (for reasons we still can't figure out), so this new tooth is "the better to bite you with, my dear."

We are on the second and final day - hopefully - of "snow days" - all of us being home from work, school and day care, shut up in the house because of Hurricane Sandy. The city and federal government have basically shut down the city, and because of that, Sarah's and my workplace have been shut down. A shutdown of the D.C. public schools means that Lexi's school closes and Natalie's daycare closes.

We all woke up shortly after our usual wake-up time of 6:00 a.m. yesterday morning. By about 9:15, the kids already had a mild case of cabin fever. We're sure Natalie's new mobility has a lot to do with it. We ventured out to lunch to the Subway over near the Metro stop near our house. It's a walk of only a couple of blocks. We had a coupon to use, and it was just an excuse to get out of the house for a short time. As we were finishing up our lunch, they announced that they were closing for the day. On the way back, the wind caught Lexi's umbrella and knocked her over. We got a little wet, but it was a good change of scenery, if only briefly.

This morning Lexi has friend Lily over to play. Natalie is still going a bit stir-crazy, so we're all hopeful that we can go back to the routine tomorrow. We're sure Natalie enjoys daycare more than staying home with the rest of the family all day.

Lexi Explains her Drawing

No school and transitioning

Friday was a teacher inservice day for Lexi so Natalie went to day care as usual and I worked from home while Lexi entertained herself.  She set up her bedroom to be like school: the pupils (the bears, the cow, the monkey) at desks with their names written on a sticky note and their tables names after a book - just like at her school.  She goes through the whole morning routine: reading the day of the week, assigning the helpers, etc.  At the end of the day, I even got to play school with her and was one of the students while Lexi was the teacher. When she went outside to play on the swingset, I heard her recite the playground rules which they do every time they have recess at school.  Pretty amusing.

I even got Lexi to take a nap yesterday which is more and more unusual.  She slept for over 2 hours which seemed like a good thing at the time as I was able to get my work done without interruption but that meant she had a hard time going to sleep and she woke up early this morning. Since I also had a hard time going to sleep and was woken up early by Lexi, I should have had a nap yesterday as well.

I am transitioning Natalie off formula by mixing milk with the formula.  That seems to be going well.  What isn't going well is getting her to take the milk from her sippy cup.  She drinks her water just fine from the sippy cup but doesn't seem interested in getting her milk that way.  She also fell at the day care on Friday and bruised her cheek.  She didn't seem bothered by it at all when we went to pick her up. 

Playing games with Lexi

Lexi and I played games this evening.  We hid objects and gave clues where they were hidden: but I think she peeked most of the time.  We played bean bags on the letter cards and named something that started with them.  We played "heads-up, seven-up".  Just the two of us.  I tried to explain that it really wouldn't work with just two of us, but she wanted to play anyway.  We each took a turn being it before that game was done - probably lasted a whole minute. :)

Natalie just watched most of it and laughed when we laughed while playing with her stuff.  She did interfere in the one game by "finding" the object that I had hid.  I don't think she felt left out in any way.