Weekly Natalie - Week 72

Dear Plaza de Luna Park: I love you. Thank you for being a source of water that doesn't freak my child out. You provide such a nice relief from Florida's miserable heat and humidity. You know how you'd be even MORE awesome? If you had soap mixed in with your fountains, so that I'd never have to bathe my child in the bathtub again. Look into that why don't you.

I mean really. Does it get any cuter than that face?

Reading with Nana

My two loves. Couldn't ask for anything more!

Bullseye! Smack dab in the kisser!

Chillbumps!

Blurry, but nonetheless way funny

Giving the fountain a hug

Baby bidet!

Natalie and Daddy are soooooo big!

Ha!

Smiley baby

Daddy led her right into a fountain :)

Holding Daddy's fingers. Nothing sweeter on Earth.

She couldn't contain her excitement when she saw a dog at the park

Silly face

And for your listening enjoyment:

Weekly Natalie - Week 71

My fantastic husband bought me a fancy-pants camera for Mother's Day. I've been wanting one for a while, and definitely since Nat's been born. My point-and-shoot works fine, but Nat is so fast now that it's almost impossible to capture a decent picture of her. So after church on Sunday, he took me on our Super Fun Errand to pick out a camera. I love it. I'm sure I only know 1% of what it's capable of, and I'm sure I'm doing that 1% completely wrong, but I still love this camera. I want to take a photography class sometime this summer. You know, in all the spare time I have in between eating bonbons and watching Days of Our Lives.

This camera came with a special "uber dork" setting. It's nice.

Me and my love

I asked Natalie where her nose was ...
she toddles over to me and grabs my nose.

Cheeks!

Was it wrong to put a pair of pants on her arms and on her head?

Her accessories didn't appear to slow her down

This kid and her silly faces

Showing off her lack of teeth
Cutest goofball ever
Bustin' a move doing the Crayon Dance

Prettying up the carpet

Crayoned Scruncher Bear!

Throwing crayons out of the bucket and then jamming them
back in the bucket is way more fun than actually coloring

Showing us which crayon she planned to put in her mouth

We ran into some poodles at the park - Nat fell in love with them

Um, a little help please?

Still hasn't figured out the whole teetering/tottering thing

The funniest little goofball known to man

She loved this frog!

(Oh, and she does a killer impression of a frog.
You should ask her about it.)

Swinging Scruncher Bear

Showing a little attitude while chowing down on some bread

When left to her own bread-eating devices, this is what happens.

I am NOT the Next Food Network Star

Natalie is neck-deep into Picky Toddler-dom. She has a few things that I'm about 99% sure she'll eat.

• Turkey sandwiches
• Peanut butter sandwiches
• String cheese
• Pineapple
• Banana
• Pear
• Sweet potato
  
• Milk

And then there are those things that I think she SHOULD eat, namely because they're delicious (oh, and because I spent the time MAKING them.). She doesn't like trying new foods, which I hear is very common for toddlers. It doesn't make it any less frustrating, but at least it's normal.

So dinnertime is always a crapshoot. Will she spit out the food? Will she drop it on the floor? Or will she actually eat it? Unless it's one of the aforementioned foods, I'm usually sure she'll spit it out.

Except tonight. Wanna know what she's eating for dinner as I type? A scrambled egg mixed with cheese, turkey, and waaaaaaay too much garlic powder (it came shooting out of the container at lightning speed). And peas. PEAS. Eggs and peas don't go together, I get that. But she's too young to know that her mom makes weird concoctions for dinner in the hopes that it'll be toddler-approved while still getting in most of the food groups.

So I knew she'd hate it (because, frankly, I tasted it - and it was pretty gross). But boy was I wrong. She's eating this as if Jesus himself presented it to her on a gold platter. It's like she was thinking "Way too garlicky eggs? With PEAS? Are you KIDDING me?! Where have you been hiding this culinary masterpiece all my life?!"

I seriously can't figure this kid out.

Coupon High

I've started getting really into couponing. I know, I know. It sounds so lame. But as a stay-at-home mom, I feel like one of my jobs is to save my family money. And coupons are a great way that I can do that.

I don't spend my Sunday afternoon clipping coupons and trying to line up coupons with what I want to cook for dinner that week. I just file the (unclipped) Sunday coupons by date and leave them alone. Then, when I'm ready to shop, I just go to www.coupon-chix.com and the work is done for me! She lets you know what coupons you need and in which Sunday's paper they can be found. So I find the coupons I need (and she always matches them up with what's already on sale) and go shopping.

And the best part? I rarely go to Walmart anymore. I save more money by shopping at Winn-Dixie and (hallelujah!) Publix!!

Today at Publix I bought 6 big bottles of Nivea body washes [3 for me, 3 for Lee], 1lb lunchmeat, 2 blocks of cheese, 2 packages of coffee, 1 package of daily facials and 2 boxes of Cheerios. For a grand total of $17.70. And I saved $46.74. And all I did was to combine coupons with things at Publix that were already on sale.

For instance, they had BOGO 8 O'Clock Coffee. So I get 2 packages of coffee for a total of $5.36 (which is a good deal by itself). But then I had a coupon that was $2 off of two packages of 8 O'Clock Coffee (that coupon-chix linked to that I could print from the internet). So I got 2 packages of coffee for $3.36 total. Walmart can't touch that. Sa-WEET.

I love saving money.

Weekly Natalie - Week 70

Because of the success with the water fountain at Destin Commons, I (mistakenly) assumed that Natalie would get a kick out of a fun Nemo sprinkler. Oh my. When will I learn?

Dear Self: Natalie is wildly unpredictable. It's part of her charm. [At least, keep telling yourself that]. Don't try to figure this child out; your brain might explode. Love, Me.

You can see how cute the sprinkler is ...
thankfully you can't see that Natalie is having a hissy-fit.

At dinner one night ...
trying not to laugh at the silly faces I make ...

Can't ... hold .... it ... in ... much ... longer ...

Whew. Feels much better to let that out.

One of Natalie's favorite books is Mirror Me. I've been reading it
to her for a long time, and she just recently picked up on making
the right faces.

Earlier this week, she was really grumpy during dinner so I decided
to read Mirror Me to her while she ate. Here are the faces she makes:

"Baby MacDonald puffs her cheeks full of air. Puff- and blow!"

"Natalie puffs her cheeks full of air. Puff- and blow!"
(She gets more of a kick out of blowing than puffing)

"Look at Frog stick out his long, pink tongue. Blah!"

"Look at Natalie stick out her long, pink tongue. Blah!"

"Jane makes a supersilly face. Hello, little monkey!"

"Natalie makes a supersilly face. Hello, little monkey!"
For the record, I didn't teach her that Scruncher Bear was, indeed,
a supersilly face. She did that on her own. Awesome.

Admiring the tower of blocks that I built for her
(Gnatzilla tore it down a nanosecond later)

Apparently my little ar-teest doesn't want to be disturbed

Her first piece of art!