15 Months

I'm behind on blog posts again, but I'm on a mission to catch up! 

It's still May after all, so this girl is still 15 months. 

At 15 months, Natalie is so good at imitating. She imitates getting soap and rubbing her hands together to wash in the bathtub. She imitates filling up a cup at the water dispenser on her play kitchen refrigerator. She grabs a tube of diaper cream and imitates putting it on her bottom as you change her diaper.

There's that cute smile in this pic. And, you'll notice, with warmer weather comes skinned knees from playing outside. In fact, the first day Luke wore shorts to preschool this spring, he came home with a giant band-aid covering a huge knee scrape from falling on the concrete during outside playtime. Natalie must not have wanted to be left out, so she scraped up her knee while running on the concrete.  

May also brought Luke's first time playing on a soccer team. He scored 2 goals in his first game and was so excited. He also could not understand why their soccer league didn't have goalies (they are too young, so it's just 3 vs 3). His solution was to run down the field and stand in front of the goal to kick it away anytime the other team got the ball close to the goal. 

We got out Luke's water table and Natalie loved it! 

Everyone loves a baby in a cute bucket hat 

Natalie LOVES her baby dolls. She almost always has one tucked under her arm, and she's often pushing them in her toy stroller, wrapping them in blankets, taking clothes off or trying to put clothes on them, feeding them with a bottle, washing them, and loving on them. At night she always hugs her Cabbage Patch baby close and has it tucked into her arm as she sleeps on her stomach.

May also brought tee-ball. This is Luke's 2nd season playing tee-ball, and we notice a big difference in his ability to catch, throw, and hit. 

Looking like such a big guy!

Natalie loves going to Luke's games, because she gets to wander around the exterior of the fields (with an adult following, obviously) and play with the other little kids waiting on their siblings to finish playing. 

One tee-ball teammate brings a huge bucket of double bubble gum pieces to share after the games. Luke saw it, and exclaimed, "I'm five, I can have gum now!" You see, I hate gum chewing-the smell, the sound, the sticky mess. So, when he was little and asked me for gum, I told him he couldn't have it until he was five. And, he remembers every word we say. His first time chewing gum...

Like most kids, these two love being outside. 

Natalie is an aspiring artist, like her brother. I bough her some big egg shaped crayons, but she really prefers to use brother's makers. Especially after she realized she can pull the cap off of them herself. Yikes, time to keep the markers out of the baby's reach! 

More on our baby girl at 15 months: 

Natalie still gives the best open mouth kisses, arms around hugs, and she throws kisses sweetly. If prompted, she will give pats on the back during a hug.

Natalie's favorite thing to do is take things out of drawers or out of containers and put them in other places in the house. As you can imagine, this could drive a sane person crazy. This means it it difficult to find anything. Her favorite things to move around are socks, little balls from Luke's room, goggles from Luke's swim bag, tubes of anything (toothpaste, diaper cream), bath toys, cups, hats, and shoes.

This month Natalie started saying a new word..."Uh oh!" When she (or anyone) drops something, she'll exclaim, "Uh oh!" She says "Mama" and "Dada" very clearly and intently now. She says brother as "Duh-duh." She still say's "Nana" for banana, but recently we think she also says it to mean she wants food. Natalie also imitates singing and syllables in words. Since she mimics syllables, it sounds like she's trying to say words like baby and cracker. She has also gotten very good at nodding yes and no. Sometimes she will give the cutest definitive yes nod with one big up and down motion that involves her using her whole upper body. She still signs: please, thank you, milk, help, and eat.

She can kick and throw a ball. She can go up and down a stair easily. She loves to climb. She can point to her body parts when you name them.

Favorite books: "First Words," "Green Hat, Blue Hat," and "Moo Baa La La La"

Natalie knows what she wants and she can straight up throw a 2 year old fit if she does not get her way. Like, she throws herself face down on the floor and screams. 

Stats:

Height: 31 inches, 66th percentile

Weight: 21 lbs, 14 oz, 60th percentile

Head: 47.7 cm, 93rd percentile

Heath wise, this was a rough month. Natalie was sick for about 2 weeks straight. It started Easter weekend when she had a runny nose and bloodshot eyes. She didn't sleep well at all. Then, that following Tuesday her sitter told me that even though Natalie didn't have a fever, something just seemed off. So, I took her to urgent care that evening, and she had a double ear infection. Poor girl! We started Amoxicillin, but she continued to be fussy all throughout that next weekend. Then, Monday, she broke out in another fever. So, back to the doctor she went. She still had one infected ear, so they switched her to a different antibiotic-Cefdinir. Two nights on that, and she woke up with a rash ALL over her body. I called the doctor, and they told me to give her Benadryl and just monitor her. The next morning she woke up and looked SCARY-the rash was out of control. So, back to the doctor again. Although we couldn't be positive, it seemed to be a reaction to the Cefdinir. Luckily her ears were clear at the point, so we stopped the antibiotic and waited for the rash to clear. It took a good five days for it to clear up completely. Finally, we could tell Natalie was feeling better as she was in a MUCH better mood after all that. 

I would describe Natalie as friendly, social, determined, affectionate, persistent, and she has major FOMO (fear of missing out) so you better include her in all the fun that our crazy lives have to offer.