16 Month Newsletter

Dear Natalie,

This month has been a busy one for our house. Your sisters start school on Monday and I think you will miss them while they are gone. I will miss the help I get from them, but not the attitudes they have adopted this summer. But this is about you, my sweet girl.

This week I took a night off and went to get my hair cut off. I chopped off 11 inches of hair. I was concerned that you might not "know" me with my hair short, but I walked in the door and you flung yourself from Rhayn's arms and ran to me "mama!" so happy to see me. I squatted down to hug you and your chubby hands went to the back of my head to feel the short hair. You stroked it, looked into my eyes and were fine with it.

When Gwen was 6 months old, I did the same thing, just a little shorter. I'm wondering if I should have done that again. I have a errant curl in the back that bugs me. Oh wait, again, this is a post about NATALIE.

We've all been living our life and the computer hasn't held me as much as it used to. Sure I spend plenty of time on Facebook but I am trying to spend more time with you. I stop what I am doing (usually I finish a sentence first) to see what you want to show me, to take a step outside to tell you to stop standing in the poor dog's water dish.

You get into so much trouble. You fall down all of the time. I try to keep you safe and allow you to do things, but at the same time, I don't like it when you climb into the car because you might fall, and we have a lot of rocks. You are going to be like Rhayn in that way I think, she is brave, she will climb high into trees and loves to jump off of the high dive. Gwen will do those things, she wants to (probably to follow Rhayn) but you can see the fear shimmering off of her while she does it. I think she gets more satisfaction from it though.

This month you discovered dolls. We have an old tandem doll stroller, its been around since Rhayn was wee and was your cousin's before we got it. It was damaged in the move, but a little duck tape and it works quite well. (The locking mechanism snapped in the move. Without the duck tape the stroller folds down while you are pushing it.) You love to put Rhayn's old squish baby in there as well as a doll I made for you. I want to buy you a baby doll and I have one picked out in our Amazon cart (it has brown eyes) but I may wait for Christmas, though that is far away. I know how much you would love her now.



Daddy has made his way to your favorite people now. When you see him you get excited and say "Dada!" or "Daddy!" Your language is exploding now, new words are added every day. But you still remember to say "take oo" (thank you) when we hand you something or take something you have offered.

Love,
mama