Ponies

Well, autumn continues its gradual arrival here - we've had a few cold days and a few mornings where there's frost on the grass, but it's also still warm enough to walk wearing a t-shirt and to need to run the air conditioning occasionally (take that, rest of the country!) My volunteer peach tree is still going strong, so I'm going to try and get it in the ground before the cold comes; I hear our first real cold snap is coming over Thanksgiving weekend.

So how have we been making hay while the sun shone? With the horses, of course! Last weekend, we actually went to a polo match. I know, seriously. Mike had a few students who are on the polo team. It's actually more like the polo club since I don't think that polo is an NCAA sport, but whatever. His students were playing in a weekend tournament just south of us. So, Saturday afternoon, we drove down to see them. Natalie loved the big kih-kahs!Sorry for the photo quality - not being a horse person and not knowing much about horses, I was afraid to use the flash around them. At least you really get the sense of Natalie excitedly kicking her feet here, right?

Alas, neither Mike nor I knew anything about the rules of polo, so watching the matches was a bit like trying to divine the grammar rules of a foreign language. I do know, though, that hats are de rigueur when one takes in the ponies.What else? We clearly have a toddler on our hands now! She'll still crawl a little, but we're definitely seeing more walking than crawling, and her walking is becoming steadier and stronger.Natalie also got her second haircut. Mike took her this time - apparently, there wasn't too much crying, mostly because the live-action cat-dog film Milo and Otis was on the DVD player at the kiddie haircut place. As an aside, we're definitely purchasing that movie and plan to pull it out on our upcoming airplane trips.Natalie remains adorable.Natalie doesn't have that many words, but sometimes we get real glimpses of how much is going on in her little brain. She can now point to her hair and her belly button. Oddly, those aren't things we taught her, but the one body part I have been trying to teach her (nose), she is far less consistent about doing. She'll also go get items that Mike and I mention in conversation with each other (phone, book, etc.) and bring them to us. The other day, Mike mentioned something about the baby gate, and this sent running to it! Last, today we were playing on the floor and she brought me one of my mittens from the basket by the door where we keep our hats, gloves, and scarves. I put the mitten on and started tickling her with it. She then toddled back to the basket, pulled out all the other items looking for the second mitten, found it, and brought it to me. How darling is that?

However, her cuteness is clearly a survival mechanism since she's been waking up earlier and earlier since the time change. Usually, one of us will go and get her and play with her for an hour or so, and then bring down to our bed for a family cuddle. At 6:15am or so. She'll flip and flop in our bed and even lie down and suck her thumb, but there's no going back to sleep, alas.As the polo story above suggested, Natalie still calls all animals "kih-kahs" (kitty cats). She will occasionally say "da" (dog) for a dog, but mostly they get called "kih-kah", too. The other day, though, we found ourselves at Petsmart (no, we don't have a pet; no, we're not getting one) and I got to show her some real kih-kahs. Petsmart was seriously better than the zoo! We could get closer to the animals, they were more active, Natalie could see the animals, and it was way less overwhelming for me!(We also saw the fish, but that made for less compelling pictures)

I've got another post coming soon about the baby shower I hosted this weekend, and then I'm sure we'll have lots of pictures and videos of Natalie and our Thanksgiving guests, the Michigan grandparents and Aunt Jenny.