17 Months

Natalie is 17 months old and has finally started walking more often than she crawls. I'm so happy about this because its too hot to make her wear pants to protect her little knees. She is very proud of her new-found ability and likes to wander all over practicing. For the first time in months, we went to a store as a family (a sports store looking for new shoes for the three oldest kids) and Natalie was determined to walk all over the place. She got very frustrated when Austin or I picked her up because she kept wandering where she wasn't supposed to be.
Natalie still loves to color (can you spot the pink marker on her nightgown?) and climb up onto tables whenever possible. She has become quite the little chatterbox; although many of her words are still gibberish, she does say some understandable words including "I-want-it" and "I-want-you" which she says as one long word rather than as sentences. She loves to point at pictures in books and I was quite proud of her the other day when she was able to pick out pictures of her brothers and sister on a notebook I have. One of her newest tricks is to shut herself in the master bathroom and turn the hot water on in the bathtub (the handles are very easily accessible and the hot one seems to be the most convenient for her). Sometimes I just turn the cold water on too so she won't burn herself, sometimes I put her in the tub with the water running slowly to keep her entertained, but often I have to take her out of the bathroom and distract her until she forgets about the water. We sure love this girl and are so glad she's part of our family. She's a sweet little doll and still the favorite of everyone in the family.