Natalie's friends

Natalie of course has friends at school, and she talks about them when she comes home for the day. We can't always understand it all, but she usually tells us all about her day and the explanation tends to include a lot of her classmates' names.

Natalie has a lot of "friends" at home as well. The little bench in our study is stacked full of her little stuffed animal friends. She knows all of their names and plays with some more than others, but Natalie refers to them all as her "friends."

One friend she's been playing with a lot lately is her little purple Care Bear that sings and does a little exercise routine. This was actually one of aunt Emily's old toys (thanks Emily!). When Natalie is in the mood she enjoys talking to her friend and dancing and jumping around as the bear sings. We'll try to get one of these sessions on video and post it at some point. It's pretty cute!

Everybody jump

Natalie has always enjoyed jumping around, but she's never really been able to actually get off the ground when she jumps. But within the last few weeks she has started to actually jump into the air! Here are a couple of pictures of her running around and jumping for real. Enjoy!

Snow Snow Snow

We had a pretty big snowstorm over the weekend, which gave us a great chance to get outside and have some fun. Natalie wasn't exactly diving around in the snow, but as you can see she still had plenty of fun. She enjoyed playing with snowballs and (very cautiously) walking around in it. She's also still fascinated by simply pushing the snow around and then trying to brush it all off of her mittens.

As we were out playing in the 10-12" of snow, it occurred to me that just the week before we were all out in the nice spring weather swinging on our playground in the backyard. Welcome to Cincinnati!

Website update

Just a quick note to let you know that our main website has been updated with a few months of extra photos. Go check it out when you get a chance: http://www.andyandjulie.tzo.com/Natalie_photoalbums.htm

I also thought you'd enjoy this picture of Natalie enjoying one of her horsey rides on her dad's shoulders. She just keeps going until Dad's back can't take it anymore!

Natalie's New Room

When Natalie turned two, she graduated to a big girl bed in her big girl room! She was already very familiar with the "purple room" from when we were decorating it. As you can see, the Purple Room is appropriately named.

Natalie has done very well in her new room. She seems to enjoy sleeping in her new bed (with purple sheets, of course). We have a new bedtime routine now that no longer involves a rocker in her bedroom, but instead includes reading books in bed with mom or dad. She also reads a couple to herself after we leave the room, especially at naptime. She also still won't get out of bed before we come into the room. I guess we should enjoy that while it lasts... it won't be long until we wake up to her standing right beside us in our own bedroom.

The successful transition happened at a great time. Hopefully she won't mind when her little brother sleeps in her old bed. I guess we'll find out :-)