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Ah, naked time

We’ve been giving Natalie naked time between diaper changes for awhile now. It started off when she got her first diaper rashes and I had read about naked air time being something to help…and so, as habit, we let her run around naked for a little bit after a diaper change. Normally it’s just 5 minutes or so…but it’s been upwards of half an hour at times and, for at least over a year now, it’s been without accident…….until today. Totally my fault. Naked time not only went on for way too long but it was after she woke up from her nap which was the nap after her lunch yaddah yaddah. She was playing on OUR bed and I was folding laundry when suddenly I heard her grunt and she was on her knees. I just looked at her and said “Natalie? potty?” She replied “yeah” pretty care free as if not much happened. I walked over and saw a huge pile on the sheets and screamed in horror (“no-o-o-o-o-o!”), picking her up and running her to her room/changing table. In the process of doing that, I freaked her out and she started crying/screaming. It was all very funny in hindsight.

Guess potty training is still quite distant (they say signs include your child telling you they need to go). And no more naked time sitting on the bed.

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By Audrey
March 11, 2012

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21 months

Holy cow, Natalie is 21 months. I’ve been saying she’s "around 19-20 months" for awhile now. I think that after 18 months or so, you start losing track of months and then you just think of your child’s age in 6-month chunks (i.e. "she’s a year a half, she’s almost 2, etc…") Anyway, I’m still totally floored by her language skills right now. She’s really picking up on so much stuff. Here are some of her new skills: Since December, she’s been able to count to 10 and recite her ABCs. Here’s a video I took a month ago. She’s much more precise now, can actually pronounce "seven" and no longer groups "LMN" together.

Here’s a video of her counting to 10 in Cantonese which she’s also been able to do since December. Right now, she’s able to pretty much count to 20 in Cantonese although she tends to skip 11, 12, 13 and 14 and just say 15 over and over…but some days, she can do them all. I think due to the nature of how the teens are recited, it’s much easier for her to learn it in Chinese than in English. For example, to say 12, she just has to say the equivalent of "10, 2" which she already knows in Chinese. In English, it’s a completely different word. Honestly, once she really gets the pattern, she should easily be able to count all the way to 99 in Chinese because it’s quite simple…even for every 10 numbers which is the equivalent of saying "2, 10" (20), "3, 10" (30) and so forth. In English, again, it’s a completely different word.

She’s gotten better at verbalizing things and starting to connect words together.  For awhile now, she always says “bless you mommy!” whenever I sneeze but that was really the only phrase she had.  She used to bring a book over and just whine until we picked it up.  Now she goes ‘”read it daddy, please”.  She also loves trying to complete the sentences in books.  For example:

[Me]: Brown Bear Brown Bear…

[Natalie]: What do you see!

[Me]: I see a…

[Natalie]: red bird!

[Me]: looking at me…

It certainly helps that Mauer, her counterpart in the nanny share, has really incredible verbal skills.  This is so fun now as her brain is connecting everything together and she’s really able to verbalize what she wants or needs much better.

We also started doing timeouts with her around 18 months based on advice from our pediatrician for little things like dropping food and throwing things or hitting our face for fun. It’s amazing but it does work. The rule of thumb supposedly is the timeout should not last any longer than their age–so 18 months = 1.5 minutes. 2 years old = 2 minutes. You can of course make it shorter I guess…and I suppose at some age, time outs don’t matter anymore. Anyway, after we give her a timeout, she listens and stops whatever bad behavior she was doing so it works well. She’s also been pretty pleasant with timeouts — she just knows that it’s quiet time where mommy and daddy won’t speak to her. Sometimes she gets upset but for the most part, she’s just quiet. Timeouts even work well when she’s having a crazy tantrum over something as it gives her time to just regroup herself and calm down. At the end, we always ask her to say "sorry" and she does. Time out over.

Our initial timeouts mainly revolved around bad habits with eating, so she was always in a high chair. Thus, it was quite easy to give her a timeout — we’d just turn her chair around or move her to face a wall. She’d already be strapped in so we didn’t need to worry about her running off….but then one morning, while she was hanging out with me, she started hitting my face for fun. I said "no Natalie, don’t hit mommy, it’s not nice". She did it again, I gave her a warning. She did it again, okay–timeout. Since we were in my bedroom, I didn’t have anywhere to put her….so just for kicks, I literally made her sit down and face the wall. To my surprise, she just sat there! After about a minute, I asked her to say sorry and she did. She then got up. Amazing!  She’s pretty good about staying still for timeouts and not moving now if we need her to.

One interesting side effect is that sometimes she even gives herself a time out!  I usually like to give her warnings to give her a chance to correct her behavior and so she can correlate why she is getting a timeout…but sometimes, just by saying “please don’t do this action or I will give you a timeout”, she thinks “okay! time out time!”  Or, she’ll just do something a little naughty (but not time out worthy) and I’ll just give her a head shake and she’ll go “time out!”.  Before I know it, she’ll march over to the nearest wall and just sit down and stare at it!  It’s quite comical…but also, I don’t want her to think that time out is fun time either.  Either way, it’s been fascinating to see how this works.

Another funny behavior pattern we’ve noticed with her is her coping mechanism when she’s around people she’s scared of, typically due to stranger anxiety.  She closes her eyes, literally.  For example, last month, the cleaners were at the house and, although they come by every month, she was scared of them that day.  They happened to come into the kitchen during her snack time and because she was in the high chair and couldn’t walk away, she just closed her eyes and kept eating!  A few days ago, we had a small Super Bowl gathering..and there were some people she’d never seen before.  Matt picked her up and, once again, she just closed her eyes and didn’t want to open them.  Shortly after, she was in the playroom where she was comfortable but then she spotted one of our friends outside the playroom that she didn’t know so she just stood in the middle of the playroom with her eyes closed.  I wish I had a picture of her doing this – it’s funny and strangely creepy at the same time.

Lastly, she increasingly loves being independent and having choice.  She started to want to walk up and down the stairs “like an adult” and learned to hold onto the wall or the stairwell while holding our hand with her other hand…but then last month, she got very stubborn about doing it completely on her own without holding our hand.  She really wants to assert that she could do it.  Ironically, in the last couple weeks, she’s reverted and decided to go up/down the stairs on her stomach and knees again (probably cuz it’s a lot faster).  She also LOVES picking out what diaper and pajamas she wears..as well as clothes.  She likes to look and go “how about…” (pause pause) “…this one!”  When I point, she’ll go “no, no, no” until I arrive at one she likes.

Kids seriously grow so fast.  I know it’s only been 20 months.  It really amazes me.  I know there’s more to come and I can’t wait.

Posted in parenting.

By Audrey
February 7, 2012

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2012 updates so far

It’s been one month of 2012 so far and it’s been interesting.  In this last month, we’ve:

Dealt with toddler jetlag from a 16 hr time difference, oh joy.  As you saw in an earlier post, the first week was just terrible.  She was pretty much awake from 2 or 3am onwards..and then would struggle to stay awake in the early evening, usually passing out by 5 or 6pm.  After about 2 weeks, she finally got to a rather normal schedule although she was regularly waking up around 6am.  Now—for many toddlers, this is a normal wakeup time regardless….but for Natalie, she was averaging around 8am before Hong Kong.  I just figured that the time re-jiggered her internal clock an this was the new norm….but after a week of that, she started waking up later (now it’s back to 8-9am).  So all in all, it was a good 3 weeks before her jetlag coming back went away.  Going to Hong Kong was a breeze, but coming back to Seattle sucked.  Here’s a funny video of us at Whole Foods at 5pm with Natalie completely asleep sitting in the grocery cart.  She was THAT tired.

Experienced Seattle Snowmageddon that basically shut down the city for one week.  I think this is the worst one in the 12-13 years I’ve been here.  The whole week went like this:

Sunday – zomg, snow! It was substantial and we got Natalie in a snowsuit and headed down to Bryant Park to watch all the sledding.  Some kind neighbors let us borrow an extra sled and we sled down the hill with her for the first time (I think we enjoyed it more than she did)

Monday – most of the snow just slush but it’s still patchy in places.  Katherine (the nanny) cancels at 7:30am.  Miraculously, the Microsoft Backup Care is able to find a backup nanny last minute and she’s standing in our kitchen by 9:15am (she totally rocked by the way).  We both go to work, all is normal.

Tuesday – Katherine comes in so we both go to work.  All is normal until Matt gets a note from his entire that they all went home around 1pm (it started snowing heavily in Redmond then)  I head home about an hour later.  Roads are honestly fine, figured it was a false alarm

Wednesday – we get at least 4-5 inches of snow first thing. We all stay home.  Snow day!

Thursday – Seattle Freeze. Snow day again.  The snow had turned to slush and then it iced over..  Roads really aren’t drivable

Friday – Roads a bit better, temperatures climbing but most every body stays home from work.

A lot of people on my team were out all week so the whole week was pretty lost in terms of productivity.  I know it seems so silly to completely miss an entire week of work for less than 5 inches of snow when there are some parts of the country that get three times that in 24 hours and still move on.  Here’s a great article that talks about why snow in the Seattle area sucks.

Gained a Kindle, Lost a Kindle
I caved in and finally got myself a Kindle Touch and I’m in love.  It’s small, simple and I can tuck it into my purse.  I got a cutesy skin and case for it and ‘I’m happy.  I’m already finding myself reading more.  Oh, and Matt unfortunately lost his new Kindle Fire after leaving it on a plane when he went to Park City for Kutta’s bachelor weekend.  Doh.  We did everything as instructed by Delta to try to recover it…but we gave up.  Delta employees probably distribute Kindles to one another all the time.

Driving Less.  On Dec 29th, the 520 bridge became a toll…and an expensive one.  It’s a variable toll rate depending on time of day, but based on an average 9 to 5 job, it will average around $7/day roundtrip.  Yowzers.  For us, Matt has to drive and he doesn’t get reimbursed … and we certainly didn’t want to be spending $70/week as a family just for the toll….so I’ve been trying harder to take the Connector everyday.  It’s great, I love it…and as mentioned, now that I have my Kindle, I read more on the Connector.  (I’ve used my laptop before which is so-so…and it’s usually bumpy enough that I get a tinge of motion sickness)

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By Audrey
February 5, 2012

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A toddler in Hong Kong

Bringing Natalie to Hong Kong was an awesome experience. Not only did she get to meet a ton of relatives who just ooo’d and aaaah’d all over her, but she got to eat really great food (can we say fresh steamed fish everyday?). Her usual diet of chicken nuggets or fish sticks from home was no where to be found the whole time we were there.

I had only read a little bit about having a toddler in Hong Kong before visiting. It was overall a really pleasant experience and I think it’s a lot of fun to bring a toddler to Hong Kong. Here are some of my notes/tips/advice/observations:

1. It’s not as stroller friendly but it’s possible

Before going to Hong Kong, I perused a bunch of expat websites and tripadvisor about tips for bringing a toddler to Hong Kong…and there was one theme: use a baby carrier instead of a stroller.  Hong Kong is not stroller friendly.  Yikes – we LOVE our stroller.  We are fortunate enough to have a child that somehow gets all zen when in the stroller and naps easily in one.  I figured it was a sign when *gasp* on our way to the airport I realized we completely forgot our stroller and left it in our garage.  Argh!  It’s okay, I said, we have the Ergo.  The websites told me that that’s the way to go anyway!  On our first day, we strapped Natalie into the Ergo onto Matt’s back and, miraculously, she fell asleep in it (she’s fallen asleep in it before but not since, like, before she was 1…and certainly never on the back).  Success!  The Ergo will do! How wonderful and convenient it is as we manage the narrow crowded streets of Hong Kong.  However, at the end of the day, we were tired.  See, when we go to Hong Kong, we walk A LOT and we walk a lot of stairs and escalators and what not.  Sure, Natalie can walk on her own but it’s tough carrying a 27lb toddler on your back all day. 

The next morning, the buckle on the Ergo broke.  It was a sign.

We found ourselves at the Harbour City shopping mall on Canton Rd in the chidren’s section looking for a stroller (the same mall where Gucci Kids and Burberry Children was located, I kid you not).  After surviving the mad rush of Toys R Us, we walked into a pretty big chain in Hong Kong called Mothercare and came out with a nice Maclaren Volo.  We wanted a light umbrella stroller that we could probably resell easily in Seattle…and Maclarens are hugely popular in Seattle (we ended up reselling it for $80 when we got back, not bad!)

We loved the stroller.  Not only did Natalie nap in it every day but it held my hugely heavy diaper bag plus all the shopping bags we would acquire during the day.  It was so light and easy to fold and collapse, which proved very handy when jumping onto a bus and carrying her down stairs to the MTR station.

Now, it’s not easy but it’s do-able.  Hong Kong is full of escalators and stairs.  There are elevators but they’re either jam packed or out of the way typically.  We frequently pushed the stroller onto the escalator (*gasp*) out of convenience and usually had to lift her over the turnstile at the MTR station (if you’re lucky, you’ll come across a wider turnstile that accommodates strollers)….but it was all worth it.  If your child loves napping in strollers, stick with a stroller.

2. Most high chairs are just boosters

Surprisingly, most restaurants in Hong Kong have high chairs; however, their version of a high chair is what look like a booster seat that (sometimes) is strapped onto the chair.  More often than not, there are absolutely no straps to hold down the child…which, when you have a squirmy toddler, spells trouble.  Fortunately, I had read about this and got a Totseat in anticipation.  Thank goodness – that thing came in sooo handy.

3. It’s culturally normal for people to take photos of your child

I had also read about this ahead of time and mentally prepared for it.  We would often be taking a photo of Natalie and then some stranger would pass by, whip out their phone, snap a picture too and say “cute!” and carry on.  There wasn’t any “mind if I take a picture of your child?”.  It was just perfectly normal for them to take a picture!  Even stranger was that people would come up and want to hold her and take a picture with her.  When we were on Victoria’s Peak, a line even formed of others that wanted to also take a picture with her!  Odd.

4. Children’s menu? Hah

Restaurants don’t have children’s menus, unless it’s a really Westernized restaurant.  If you go there expecting mac’n’cheese and chicken nuggets as options next to your Beef and Broccoli, you’re out of luck.  Fortunately for us, Natalie LOVED eating steamed fish which we often ate.  Otherwise, I did keep a healthy supply of vegetable pouches in my diaper bag for the times that she refused any of the food.

5. They love kids, whether they’re happy or having a tantrum

This one is hard to describe—it’s not like Americans don’t love kids…but there’s this unspoken “your kids are really cute until they start crying in which case they are invading my personal space so please remove your chid until they are a cute, smiling kid again”.  As a result, when your child is having a tantrum, you just get these “poor you” looks from others.  In Hong Kong, it’s the opposite – when Natalie would cry, the waitress, people at the table next to us would jump at the chance to talk to her and help calm her down.  It was really reassuring feeling like it was okay if she cried in a public spot.

6. Babycare centers — a palace for diaper changes

It’s pretty standard in the US to walk into the ladies restroom and find the Koala changing table attached to the wall somewhere to change your baby’s diaper.  Well, in Hong Kong, they sometimes have those…but more often than not, they have “babycare centers”.  This is usually in a mall (and malls are everywhere in Hong Kong)…and range from being a small room for one family to a large facility designed for several families.  What’s inside is usually a soft, rubberized changing table, a separate small room with a comfy chair for mom to nurse or pump and a bottle warmer.  In some, there would be a small potty for the newly potty trained. It’s really amazing.  The one in the Harbour City mall is ridiculous and contains like 8 changing stations.  It really is a palace for diaper changes.

7. Need milk?  Go to 7 Eleven

Milk is not a normal drink for most Chinese in Hong Kong…as a result, it’s usually not anywhere on the menu in any restaurant (again, unless it’s a more westernized restaurant).  So what do you do?  Pick up milk at the 7 Eleven.  They sell them in small containers that are just the right size for a sippy cup…and don’t worry, there’s a 7 Eleven every few blocks and in every MTR station.

Posted in parenting, travel. Tagged with .

By Audrey
January 26, 2012

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Jetlag: 1 Sousas: 0

We are back in Seattle now and the jetlag is absolutely killing us.   Going to Hong Kong was a breeze, as if time never changed…but coming back has been a completely different story.  We got back at 2:30pm on Thursday and so far, this is Natalie’s sleep schedule:

Thurs (traveling most of the day)
12pm – 2pm: nap on plane
3-4pm: nap in car
7pm: asleep for the night
10pm-1am: waking up every hour
1:30am: up for the day

Friday
11:30am – 4:45pm: nap
7pm: down for the night
11:30pm: waking up every hour
3:30am: up for the day

Saturday
1:30pm – 7:30pm: nap (we overslept ourselves and fell asleep too!)
12:30am: asleep for the night
5:30am: woke up for the day (but at least no wakeups!)

Sunday
10:30am – 3pm: nap
5pm: fell back asleep
3am: woke up
4am: up for the day

Monday
1pm – 4pm: nap
8:40pm: night night

And this is where we are now. She will sleep for as long as we let her when we put her down for the afternoon nap because as far as her body is concerned, it is “night night” and she is OUT. Just yesterday, we went to Whole Foods around 5pm and she completely fell asleep after we put her in the grocery cart. I’d never seen anything like it. She was flopping around like a bunny and could not for the life of her stay awake.

Anyway, her waking up very early has not made it easy for me or Matt to really catch up on our jetlag…I’m hoping she’ll adjust soon!

Hong Kong was wonderful. I have much to say about the trip, in a future post. For now, I’m off to wake Natalie up. She will NOT be happy.


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By Audrey
January 2, 2012

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Made it to Hong Kong in one piece!

I’m writing this from Hong Kong right now and am happy to report that our trip over was a lot easier than we expected. At first, I thought it was going to be hellish as Natalie would NOT sleep and had this sudden burst of night-time-owl energy. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise and made her transition to Hong Kong time a cinch.
Our flight left Seattle at 11pm to go to Vancouver. We thought for sure that she’d fall asleep on the way to the airport as it was past her bedtime and she sleeps in the car easily….but nope. Then on the airplane, she was hyperactive. In Vancouver, we had a 2 hour layover from midnight – 2am. Well, unfortunately, our first mistake was completely forgetting to bring the stroller which she sleeps easily in. Without that, she was bouncing around the airport. Yes, she was literally up til 2am and wasn’t cranky at all. We boarded our plane at 2am and at that point, it hit her that she was super tired. For the next 15-20 minutes, Miss Crankypants came out and she was soooo upset, but by 2:40am, she fell asleep, sprawled out on our laps. She then slept for the next 7-8 hours. Upon waking, she ate, watched and played with the iPad and was generally pleasant. Then, 2 hours before landing, she fell back asleep until we landed. Sweet! I mean, it was soooo much easier than we expected. Matt and I each got to nap and even each watch 3 movies on our own!
We arrived in Hong Kong at 7:30am…and with that 2 hour nap at the end of the flight, Natalie was feeling great…and practically rolled right into her regular routine, but on Hong Kong time! Her afternoon nap was longer than usual (12-3:30pm) but then she woke to go out, have dinner, meet her great grandmother for the first time, and then was back in bed by 9pm…waking up at 7am the next day. Ever since, her routine has been completely normal, amazing.
PS — after one day of using only the Ergo and walking blocks and blocks, we decide to get a stroller here. We had to choose between super cheap with a brand no one’s heard of, and a bit more $$ with a more well known brand. Due simply to weight (which is a huge factor when folding strollers constantly for getting into taxis or lifting to go up many flights of stairs), we chose the Maclaren Volo. It’s pretty awesome although I wish there was a recline but that would’ve been more expensive. Natalie naps really well in it and we’ve been using it a lot. We will try to resell it when we get back to Seattle

Natalie meeting her great grandmother for the first time

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By Audrey
December 15, 2011

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Travel travel travel

The last few weeks has been a crazy amount of travel for me–

Oct 29 — Los Angeles

Nov 3 — San Francisco

Nov 10 — San Diego

Nov 13 — Boston

I got a really great opportunity to attend a number of events that are part of the Windows Phone Inner Circle night events, helping to demo new phones with Windows Phone 7.5 running on it. These are typically PR/Marketing events but they reached out to the engineering team to see if anyone wanted to participate. I jumped at the opportunity and am so happy that I got the chance to experience these events. We’ve gotten some great feedback — positive and negative — and it’s just interesting seeing what life is like for PR guys at Microsoft.

Of course, each city has been an amazing experience, even though for the most part, I was in the city for barely 24 hours:

Los Angeles — stayed in the ultra retro-cool Standard Hotel with its amazing rooftop bar/pool and waterbed pods (yes, waterbed). Also got to have brunch with Betina and fam, which was a treat.

San Francisco — soaked in the sun in this amazing Bay Area city. Got drinks with college bud Sab and had some much needed girl time with her catching up on our lives

San Diego — first time here! love this city, gotta return. Lunch with my uncle too…and had the most amazing sushi at Nobu.

Boston — this city will always have a special place in my heart. I spent the most time here since it’s on the right coast. Flew in early, hung out with the little brother for the day, outfitting his apartment. Oh–and totally random — we had lunch with Stephen Tobolowsky, his wife and David Chen (the co-host of the Tobolowsky Files) Also had lunch with the youger cousin (who paid for lunch! awww–love it when the younger in the generation pays for the first time….it’s like they’re growing up for realz) and then learned way more about mixology than I ever thought I knew over drinks with Aaron and coworker Greg. Took a morning jog along the Charles. Breathtaking.

Of course, now I’m home, you’d think I’d have some time to breathe…but I leave in a few days to fly solo with Natalie to visit the parents for Thanksgiving (Matt is joining us later)…and then when we return, we have 1.5 weeks before we brave a 17+ hour journey to Hong Kong with Natalie as a lap child. Lord have mercy on us.

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By Audrey
November 16, 2011

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Constant surprises

I swear Natalie keeps surprising me all the freakin’ time. Apologies as I take the time to gloat…but well, I just have to gloat. This age is so much fun — she is learning so much and soaking everything up like a sponge. It’s incredible.

Just tonight alone, a few firsts (at least for me)—

  • She looked at me and said “sorry” after I gave her a timeout for throwing some food
  • After giving her a bath, she looked at me and then counted from 1 to 10 without me prompting her for the next number.  I about fell over.
  • While reading her bedtime story, I described what humming was.  While re-reading the book, when we got to the part about humming, she started to hum.  It was adorable — she was smiling and so proud of herself.

    • It’s truly fascinating seeing her language develop.  Lately, she speaks in sentences all the time — at this point, it’s still random toddler babble with a real word here and there…but it’s several words with the inflection of a sentence.  Seriously amazing.

    Anyway, we had her 18 month check up recently — 24 lbs 9 oz and 33″ long.  Have to admit she’s lighter than I thought…she just feels so heavy in that left arm lately!

    Posted in parenting.

    By Audrey
    November 16, 2011

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    My parent’s visit

    I’ve been meaning to write a post about my parent’s visit a month and a half ago. They were here for a good week when the weather was amazing and fabulous. There’s so much we did but I wanted to highlight two things: our Labor Day and a day trip we took to Whidbey Island.

    On Labor Day, we headed out early over to Golden Gardens Beach Park. I had read that they just opened up a brand new playground so I was eager to see it. Our timing was perfect as there was plenty of parking–within 2 hours of our arrival, there was no parking anywhere close so that was a good call! The playground was nice but really full of other families with the same idea as us. I personally found it to be geared more towards older kids but fun nonetheless. Here’s a video of Natalie on the swings:

    After hanging out in the playground, we headed over to the beach, lay down some towels and just soaked in the sun and view. Surprisingly, Natalie was enjoying just sitting in the sand, snacking, playing, etc..

    But of course, we eventually changed her into the proper baby-UV-fighting outfit and let her walk around.

    I was surprised to learn that after living in Seattle for 12 years, I had never taken my parents to Golden Gardens! It was nice to show them the “beach” side of Seattle. We got a nice lunch at Anthony’s afterwards, headed home briefly then Chinese food in the ID.

    Over the course of the week, I also realized that I’d never taken them on any ferry in Seattle. I didn’t want to do any overnight trips, so I planned a day trip to Whidbey Island with them. It was a VERY short ferry ride — 15 minutes I think? We still got some fun pictures out on the deck during that short ride:




    After arriving, we immediately went into the town of Langley for some lunch. I wanted to check out the Prima Bistro from the reviews I had read–all in all, charming, nice deck, food was decent but maybe a little bit pricey. We walked around the town for a little bit afterwards–Natalie loved having her grandparents walk her around!

    We then drove over for some more beach time — this time to Double Bluff Beach. It is of course famous for its Double Bluff but also for having a great high and low tide. When at low tide, the water is of course quite shallow for quite awhile. It’s a really popular beach for locals, children, pets. Again, we lay down some towels and just soaked in the gorgeous view and the smell of the salty sea air. It was low tide…and it was moving so fast that we found ourselves having to relocate our towels within 45 minutes of arriving.

    Natalie changed into her swimsuit and we started to explore around.




    By the time we were done, it was high tide again and much of the beach was no longer visible. We had to walk through the water just to even get to the stair entrance. We cleaned up (thank goodness for remembering a tip to bring a baggie of cornstarch — it does wonders for removing sand off of the body!) and headed out for a leisurely drive through the rest of Whidbey Island so Natalie could take a nap.

    In the northern part of the island, we took an obligatory stop at Deception Pass to walk along the narrow bridge and take in the views. The sun was setting so it was beautiful.

    We crossed the bridge and were back “on the mainland”. It was close to dinnertime and we were hungry–so we decided to swing down to the historic waterfront town of La Conner to eat dinner on our way home. I’d never been but had always been curious. It’s such a cute little quaint town and there are a number of waterfront restaurants. We just randomly picked one and were lucky enough to score a nice table right on their deck so that we could watch the sun set. We had some delicious seafood too!


    We still had an hour drive after dinner and it was well past Natalie’s normal bedtime, but she fell asleep in the car and miraculous remained asleep after we got home…even after bringing her in, taking off her clothes, changing her diaper and putting on her pjs. We just easily picked her up and put her down in the crib! What a great ending to a nice day!

    So anyway, the rest of my parent’s visit was just full of good food and lots of taking Natalie out to parks and such. Good times.

    Posted in Uncategorized.

    By Audrey
    October 15, 2011

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    In this last month…

    Argh, been delaying blog posting again because I wanted to write about some of the cool day trips I did with my parents when they visited…..a month ago.  But so many fun things have happened over this last month and I better write them down before I forget:

    • This isn’t new but Natalie loves saying bye bye all the time now.  As part of our bedtime routine, we change her, then mommy brushes her teeth, mommy gives her a kiss and leaves the room, daddy reads her the book, rocks her and puts her to sleep.  Lately though, after mommy brushes teeth, Natalie will just look at me and give me a dismissive “buh bye”.  Like, “okay you’re done, be gone”. Ha Ha.
    • This morning, after she woke up, she just lay there babbling.  At one point, she started saying “bye bye” and waved at an invisible person over and over.  It was hilarious.  I caught it on video–forward to start around 45 seconds to see her start her bye byes.

    • She’s getting better at going up and down the stairs via walking.  As long as she’s holding onto a railing, she can balance herself better now that she can do it.
    • She’s really picking up on comprehension. We can open a book of animals and ask her to point at the cow and she’ll point at it.  Or, we’ll say “where’s the thing that says moo?” and she’ll also point at it.
    • She’s slowly getting better at utensils.  I recently gave her a bowl of yogurt and a spoon and she fed herself the whole bowl!  It was messy but she did it.  We also gave her some eggs and a fork and she did pretty well with that.
    • She’s tried actual sipping from a cup which she finds fun.  She’s also gotten better about drinking from the default plastic cups with straws that you typically get in restaurants for children.  She would previous just squeeze it or tilt it back like a sippy cup so it didn’t work.
    • Signing manners — she can sign please and thank you now.
    • At the playground, she’s really good about climbing up to the slide and then going down by herself.  It’s incredible.  Natalie is really a little climber.

    • She can really pick up on words now — her current vocabulary includes: mama, dada, nat, katherine, mauer, please, more, no, bath, potty, yucky, peepee, wa wa (water), ba ba (dog), moo, apple, nana (banana), bunny, all done (she says this a lot), bye bye, hi, socks, shoes, baby…..I’m sure there’s more but you can see, it’s really incredible how many words she’s picked up recently!
    • We’ve gotten her used to sitting on the potty now.  She doesn’t go at all — it’s too early for potty training but for now, we just want her to feel comfortable sitting on the potty.  We got her a Potty book and read it to her.  When she sees us go, she says “potty!” and “pee pee!”.  So she understands what’s going on.  Crossing fingers that this may lead to early potty training!
    • Her sleep was really crazy in most of September….waking up 1-2 times a night, inconsolable and often sleeping in bed with us.  It was miserable.  This lasted for weeks…then suddenly, a few days ago, it stopped and she started to sleep through the night again…if not for longer! I’m talking 12-13 hours…even 14 hours one night (she slept in til 10am this last weekend!)  I swear there is a tooth there that I just can’t see that must’ve been causing her pain all this last month.

    Anyway, that’s all I can think of for now — hopefully I’ll have time to write about recent day trips.

    Posted in parenting.

    By Audrey
    October 10, 2011

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