Routine

The semester is a month old, meaning that Natalie's been going to school for a month and we've been in our new routine for a month. So far, things are going great!

Well, there is that small matter of being at work ultra-early in the morning just so I can leave to make a 1pm pick-up. I've learned that I am not a morning person. I desperately want to be, but, alas...I just can't wake up as happy as Natalie! Note that while she is happy to see me in the pics below, what she really wants here is her Daddy. Her basic rule seems to be to demand the other parent, no matter who shows up. It's like she just wants, sheepdog-style, to keep us all together. That does not actually make for weekend mornings where we can take meaningful turns sleeping in.

That's three (count 'em!) tote bags!

She's gotten sooooo much more verbal. She loves to hear Mike's lullaby about the events of the day, and she loves to recount events to herself. Her sentences are short, but she definitely gets the point across! The other day when I wasn't departing fast enough, she started telling me: "Mommy get sweater, Mommy get baby bag, Mommy get shoes, Mommy get magazine, Mommy go car." Two year-olds: rigid and demanding? Nah.

She's also learned the power of the words "too tight" and "too hot" in terms of getting us to react. So we often hear that the bathwater is "too hot" (before she's even touched it) or that her shoes / pants / hat / shirt are "too tight", even though said items were fine yesterday and will be fine in five minutes.

She still confuses "how" and "why", so if you ask her why she's crying, she'll give you a demonstration of what crying sounds like, sometimes complete with the phrase "Nani cahwhying, Nani cahwhying". Her other big point of confusion (which is also totally adorable, and I gather totally normal) is pronoun confusion. So she'll ask to be picked up by saying "Mommy hold you."

Here she is coloring - possibly on Daddy's syllabus! But, hey, at least it's not the chair! So far (knock on wood!), we've been able to confine the crayons to the kitchen and we haven't had too much malfeasance with them. For other forms of repeated mischief, we have resorted to the time out - which just involves Natalie standing in a corner for a minute. Fine, right? Except kid has really embraced the concept - she'll, like, play the "time out game" with herself and give herself time-outs. So, yeah.

School fashion (the hat, actually, didn't make the final cut, but she loved running around with it in the morning before we left).

It's only cooling down a little, but we are trying to go to the park more. Here are some park pics. She LOVES the park. One of her favorite games is to get a woodchip from the ground, pretend that it's a key, and use it in conjunction with the toy steering wheel on the play structure.

 And here, for my grandmother, are some pictures in which I appear!

In this picture, Natalie is trying to "feed" me my necklace. She's definitely got pretend play down: earlier today she was playing with Mike in her toy kitchen and decided she was making pasta, Mike asked for a bib, and she totally got that he was pretending to be the baby. She then gave him two helpings of pasta and some apple (her dinner the previous night), gave him a bath - complete with "washing" his hair, and then gave him "giraffe" to snuggle. Hilariously, the giraffe was actually toy bacon from her kitchen!

Smooches, friends!