15 Months

This little mess-maker is now 15 months old. She's growing so much and becoming more fun each day. She insists on feeding herself most of the time. I try to avoid it by just giving her a spoonful at a time, but somehow she often ends up with the whole bowl or plate in front of her. She still hasn't taken a real step, but recently she's tried a few little "fake" steps: she picks her foot up and sets it back down about 1/2 inch from where it started or she drags her back leg along an inch or so. Her babbling is increasing daily and she says a few more recognizable words. She definitely says "more", "Heidi" and "Asher", but I haven't heard "Trevor" or "Leif" yet (Trevor swears he has ;), she also consistently makes some sounds, but I haven't figured out what words she's going for yet. She understands so much and is so proud to do what I tell her to. She stands up, gives kisses, and plays peek-a-boo when we tell her to. Today she was in the laundry room with my while I folded laundry. She was handing me articles to fold when she pulled out some socks that have been sitting at the bottom of the basket without matches for a few weeks. I told her to throw them in the laundry basket, figuring that she'd just throw them back where she got them from, but instead she crawled out into the hall where the kids' dirty laundry basket is and threw them in there. When she saw how funny I thought she was, she kept going for more socks until I stopped her- but I'd say her language is coming along very nicely.  Natalie is magnetically attracted to the stairs- she loves to go up and down them, and while she's pretty good at knowing she needs to go down backward, she still tries to go down face-first occasionally and we are constantly chasing her up and down the stairs or trying to keep her away from them (its so nice to have so many siblings to help with this!) My favorite things about Natalie right now (or maybe just my favorite thing period) is when I'm putting her down for her nap or bedtime. I sing a song to her while I hold her against my chest and she snuggles her little head onto my shoulder (she is so snuggly!) sometimes she pulls her head back to have her face right infront of mine and "talks" to me, but mostly she just snuggles there. Then I lay her in her crib and she lies there happily while I give her her stuffed animals and put her blankie on her. She's pretty happy to go down to sleep so I don't get much fussing from her. This wasn't true of her morning nap for several weeks (she would stand in there and cry off and on for about an hour before I finally just got her out) so a couple weeks ago we started skipping her morning nap. Most mornings she gets grumpy, but by the time afternoon nap comes around (I like to keep her on the same schedule as Trevor so I can get some homeschool time without interruptions) she is happy to go to sleep. We love this little doll and are so happy to have her

Here she is playing "Little Piggy" with Heidi's toes.