Lots to say . . . .

Natalie is definitely becoming more verbal! And she's moving on sentences, too. She cracks us up a million different ways a million times a day.

The picture above was taken at our local sushi restaurant (don't worry, that's sake - not soda - in the cup!). I ordered a fancy roll, and it came out with all the very colorful pieces separated and on a nicely decorated plate (think something sort of like a tea cake). Her first response? "I eat cupcake!" When that didn't work, she stared intently at my plate and then quickly switched to "I eat sushi"; I did end up giving her a piece, but she didn't much care for it.

In addition to being a chatterbox during the day, Natalie keeps it up at night - both with some sleep-talking and with a pretty good wake-up call. Regarding the first, the other day at 3am, she started singing "Happy Birthday" (or "Hah-pee berfday") in her sleep. This went on for a few minutes, and then she fell back into a deeper sleep.

Also, on Sunday morning, we were awakened by something a bit like this over the baby monitor:
Raspberry / fart noise (made with her mouth)
Hilarious peals of laughter
Raspberry / fart noise (made with her mouth)
Hilarious peals of laughter
Raspberry / fart noise (made with her mouth)
“It’s funny, ha, ha, ha, ha”
Hilarious peals of laughter

It was 6:30 in the morning, but it was pretty funny.

Her vocabulary is really expanding, too. She's been asking for kleenex for weeks ("Nani need tissue") for all sort of reasons, real and imagined. We never stressed to her what a tissue was. Likewise, we may have pointed out a grasshopper and helicopter, but I never expected her to remember them. But she did! Randomly, over the past few weeks, she's pointed those items out to me, unprompted.

We went to a TCU women's club soccer game this weekend. It was a totally perfect scene - TCU won, the weather was finally nice enough to be outside during the day for a sustained amount of time, and the scene was just chill enough that no one minded a little girl running around on the sidelines. As an aside, I didn't know that there was a mercy rule in college club sports. There is.

In baseball news, Mike and Alex went to game one of the Tigers - Rangers series. There was some rain. Runs were scored. And I suppose there is sort of a mercy rule in professional baseball, too. It's called game six.

Here, look, don't be mad, Detroit people, just focus on this Natalie picture! (An astute observer will note that she's doubled down on the bubble containers. That's the only way to go, folks.)

I also made some pumpkin bread this weekend. A few months ago I got this great cookbook: Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains. The recipes all seem good, but some take more advance planning than I'm really to able to do (Barley flour? Who has that on hand?). Anyway, the pumpkin bread recipe just relied on whole wheat flour, which we do have around, and so my sous-chef and  I went to work.

(As a side note, she's a very enthusiastic and committed whisk-er. So much so that the part where you add the whisked items to the other items almost didn't happen.)

And, voila: Whole wheat walnut chocolate chip pumpkin bread. A total keeper of a recipe!

(Online version of the recipe - not my blog, or one I read, but, hey, seems worth checking out.)


So this morning, Mike was cutting up some pumpkin bread for Natalie and she was barely keeping it together as she waited. Her narrative was something like this: "Nani want pumpkin bread. Okay, okay, Nani want pumpkin bread." And then - more plaintively - "Nani be patient . . . Nani be patient."

In other tales of deliciousness, Natalie's school sent her home with little ziplock bag of snacks for a post Yom Kippur treat.

There were several things we didn't realize about this snack mix:
1. How excited Natalie would be about pretzels.
2. That the Cheerios were Honey Nut Cheerios.
3. That there were chocolate chips in the bag.
Regarding the last point, she actually brought the chocolate chips to Mike, in a very excited way, saying "Candy, candy." She obligingly handed the chocolate chips to Mike for inspection, but she definitely needed them back.

Natalie still loves her baby.

 Natalie's fine motor skills are also improving. Here are two Cheerios she's managed to insert into the back of the baby monitor. Points for creativity! (And we wonder why the ants seem to like us so much . . . Actually, we don't wonder at all.)

Also, I got a little make-over. What do you think?

Let me know if you'd like Natalie to come over and stick stickers on your face, or if you are just gorgeous all on your own!

Snuggles to all!