The Yost Family Blog: Newest Natalie-isms

Since it's been a while, I thought I'd give you a few updated Natalie-isms. Every day she amazes us with the new big girl stuff she picks up. Here are a few examples...

She no longer crawls up the stairs like a baby. She now walks up the stairs (with the assistance of the railing of course). She'll still occasionally get distracted and either sit down or change directions all together but she loves the journey (too bad that darn gate is usually in the way!)
Her absolute favorite word right now is "hot" although when she says it the 't' is very soft so it's more like "hoh". She knows what it means and will correctly say it when she sees a stove, the microwave, fireplace or other. But she loves saying "hoh" so much that she'll say it when she takes a bite of a room temperature banana, or when she touches a book. We have no idea why. I think she likes the arguments it provokes from her parents. (i.e. "No, that banana is not hot!")
Now that she can run, she loves playing games with daddy where he runs and hides and she runs to find him. He'll jump out to scare her and she'll shriek with delight and run in the opposite direction only to find her daddy jumping around the corner in the dining room. Her 15-month old energy waaaay outlasts that of her 31-year-old father. But they have a blast running around the house surprising each other.
She's learning to maneuver the spoon and fork much better. The outcome is usually a disastrous mess, but she loves feeding herself like a big girl.
She is getting more and more into books! I'll ask her to bring me a book to read. She'll run to her toy chest and pull out a big stack of books and sit in my lap. Tonight we read through 5 entire picture books in one sitting. She'll turn the pages, point out things and kiss the characters. Just a month ago, she barely had the attention span to get through one book so I'm thrilled at her newfound literary interests. Every night she picks the same book for bedtime. "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" is her favorite. We read it backwards and forward and she loves to put her tiny fingers through the holes and kiss the butterfly at the end of the story. It's very sweet...
She's using more words like mik (milk), dow (as in down, it has nothing to do with the struggling stock market) and mo (more).

I'm sure there are other Natalie-isms that I'm forgetting. It's hard to keep track! Here are some fall pics we took last weekend...