Natalie's silly little habits (A BIG long post)

I know I haven't written enough stuff about Natalie! And she's seriously the silliest little thing ever. So I'm compiling a bunch of "Natalie-isms" here to make up for several posts. Hopefully this gives a good sampling of the broad spectrum that is Natalie at the wonderful age of 3.

One of her silly habits is that she falls asleep in the middle of the hallway at night. Gets out of her bed, drags her ladybug pillow and blankie out and plops herself right there above the stairs. I've moved her back into bed several times only to get a report from Jason, "did you know Natalie was asleep in the hallway when I got up?" Now I just let her sleep there undisturbed.

night #1

night #2

night #3

And of course this is how it really looks as I'm walking up the stairs trying not to step on her.

She kind of does whatever she wants at night which means that she's often up playing in her room for at least an hour or two after "bedtime". And obviously she sleeps wherever she wants. I mostly go with the flow on this unless she's bothering the other two.

In kitchen news, Natalie loves to cook.

She makes "tookies" out of playdoh...and then sticks them in the fridge.

So I find bags and tupperware with multi-colored "tookies" tucked all over the fridge that I'm not supposed to touch. "Because they're cooking." And they're for Noah's party. See the pink tupperware down there?

Tookies.

In the lunchmeat drawer. Tookies.

And down deep in the produce drawer. More Tookies.
Don't take them out! They're cooking.


I really should do a whole post on Natalie's wonderful Bie. That Bie is so important to her and such a part of her that I will be sad if/when she decides she doesn't need it anymore! Her Bie is her precious pink blanket that she carries with her all over the place and sleeps with and still sucks on like she's a breastfeeding baby. And she delicately pinch, pinch, pinches the pink fabric up and down one of the folds, just like "twiddling" nursing behavior. She holds it up to her face and I see her big brown eyes always peering over and I just know I will always hold that picture of her in my mind as a sweet toddler girl. (And notice how every single sleeping picture I posted with her in the hallway has her Bie in it.)

Where Natalie goes, the bie goes.

Even in Brother and Sissy's first day of school picture 

A picture from May 2011. You can see her "twiddling" the fabric.


Another picture from May 2011. Her tongue is doing that suckle thing. And she's sleeping with her Wiggles DVD like it's a teddy bear. This is one thing she doesn't do anymore! Although now she sleeps with her teddy bear "Jeff". (Named after the sleepy purple Wiggle of course.)

All that time watching Wiggles videos I think has contributed to her being really excellent at remembering songs. Here she is singing a song she learned at Vacation Bible School. Now mind you, she didn't utter a peep of this song during that week nor the week after! And then bam a week later I start hearing her bust this out and she sounds like the most evangelical three year old I've ever heard.

So that's a bit of my sweet lovable and ornery Natalie. I wuv her!