Stone Soup

I love the toddler imagination. It's so sweet and spontaneous. Today, I heard Natalie open up the silverware drawer (ours is ridiculously low and within her reach so she helps herself to silverware all the time)and wondered what she was up to. I turned the corner to find her sitting on the stairs with a plastic cup filled with rocks, feeding herself (and her baby) some good old fashioned stone soup. She'd taste a bite and then say, "yum, yum" and pretend to chew it before she would dig in for some more.

Just Plane Prepared!

Did I mention Natalie's doll is her constant companion? Well, tonight she walked into the kitchen with the baby in her little airplane. Apparently they were going on a trip.


Then she must have realized she was drastically under prepared for a plane ride with a baby and she opted to re-think her carry-ons. In she comes again a few minutes later like this...



She realized she needed the stroller (good idea...a must for any airport layover), her diaper bag (yes, filled with 2 bottles...always good to have plenty of food to thwart a meltdown), and an empty cat litter container (I'm puzzled by this one...but I trust she knows what she's doing).

I'm afraid Corey and I have the same look on our faces as we trudge through the airport with our baby in a stroller!

The Zoo

We went to the Phoenix Zoo on Saturday and had such a good time. Natalie and I have passes so we go fairly often, but this was Corey's first visit. Natalie's favorite exotic zoo creature?...the goats in the children's petting zoo area (oh, and a moody Goose named Lucy)! Good grief. She's ho hum about giraffes and lions and not all that impressed with the lazy rhinoceros, but she did not want to leave those goats.

You've gotta love Lucy Goose's house with her name over the door and a little window box!

These goats get the royal treatment. 4 little girls with goat hair brushes all tending to the same little patient and saintly goat. There's not a mat or a tangle on these critters.

Oh, and this was really cute...Fisher Price set up a life size "Little People" exhibit at the zoo called Discovery Farm. Yes, it's a farm...not really zoo-ish, but Natalie liked it!

Some of our favorite zoo residents....

I will forever remember the names of the rhinoceroses (as will everyone in the vicinity that day) as Natalie has now grown just tall enough to touch the red button that starts the automated rhinoceros story including what inspired their names. Natalie pressed it...and pressed it...and pressed it again. She'd press it, listen to the shpeel, clap (of course) and then press it again.
It was a really fun day. And a gorgeous one...at least 75 degrees by the time we left! Anyone want to come visit?

What did we do before this baby?

And I don't mean our baby...I mean this baby...



Natalie is such a doting little mommy to her dolly. She's always feeding her baby, putting her baby in the cradle and rocking her (a little too fast, but it's the thought that counts), and putting her in the stroller and taking her outside onto the porch for some fresh air. She packs her bottles in a little diaper bag and flings it over her shoulder and off she goes with her baby. It's so funny how good at this motherhood gig she is! And her dolly (who Corey has named "Noa" because that's what he wanted to name Natalie and I wouldn't let him) has to sit in the mini high chair next to Natalie at almost every meal!





Noa had a rough night this week, though. Natalie has been able to reach up onto the counter for a few weeks now and usually deposits her cup or her snack bowl up there when she's finished with it. Well, tonight, she set Noa and a book up on the STOVE on a hot burner. I shrieked as Noa's face started melting and the book started smoking and tossed both of them into the sink. Well, Natalie started screaming, horrified at the speed in which two of her favorite toys flew across the kitchen and crashed into the dirty dishes. When I collected myself and retrieved little Noa I realized the damage was minimal. She now has a bit of a melted plastic hairlip but she'll live. The book has a series of permanent black burner ring tattoos but it, too, will be fine. Thank goodness! It could have been a lot worse!

THE park

Everyone kept asking me if we'd been to Desert Breeze Park. It's supposedly this really great park near our condo. Well, I thought we'd been to it...and frankly, I wasn't that impressed. We were dropping off our recycling one day and I saw a pretty sizable playground and Natalie and I stopped for a while. But there wasn't any shade (and it was still REALLY hot..this was back in September), the play equipment was a little advanced for toddlers and there were some naughty little brothers there teasing each other by shouting "you're such a little girl" as if it's the ultimate insult and frankly, I was just turned off by the whole hot, sunny, little macho man experience so we left.

When people kept mentioning this amazing park near our house I just didn't get it. Then they started talking about a train, a carousel, duck ponds and a huge shaded play structure and I determined they MIGHT be talking about a different park. Well, sure enough...there's another entrance and that entrance (that I apparently never noticed) leads to the coolest park. They were right. It's awesome and Natalie totally loved it.

We went last Sunday morning and we rode the carousel (Corey made us ride the one super huge freaky chicken instead of one of the nice horses), played on the slides IN THE SHADE and watched the train and the ducks. It only took us 4 months, but at least we finally found it!

Oh, and as we rode the carousel around and around, Natalie kept saying, "I see you, chicken!" and tickling his eye! So cute.

The Dowa Cup

So, as I mentioned a couple of months ago...I was trying to rid the house of toxic plastics that we drink from. This was just a few days before Natalie received a free toxic plastic sippy cup with a kids meal at the zoo and refused to drink out of anything else for weeks. Enter my new toxic plastic nemesis...the Dora yogurt cup!

Our little almost 2 year old graduated from YoBaby yogurt (and whole milk) last week and I found her these little lower-fat-just-for-kids yogurt cups with Dora all over them. I knew she'd love the yogurt but I had no idea how much she'd love the cups the servings come in. She wouldn't let the cup go when she was finished with her first yogurt, so I washed it out and let her continue to play with it. Then she wanted me to fill it with water so she could drink out of this new Dora "cup". Now it is all she will drink out of. Meal after meal, she refuses any other drinking aid. "Dowa cup, Mommy. Dowa cup", she pleads until I fill it up and let her have it!

I think I need to pick a new battle!

Our biking baby!

Natalie LOVES her tricycle! So much so that she tries to lug it inside when it's time to come in...up the step in the garage and into the kitchen. She still doesn't quite get the peddling part, so Corey and I push her as long as his back and my neck can handle it...which isn't very long, unfortunately.

When her prematurely old and achy parents can't push her anymore, she gets off and pulls it by the handle bars, up and down the driveway. She's so spoiled with the length of the driveway behind our condo unit...it accesses 9 garages so it's really long and there isn't any traffic to speak of. When we end up in a house again, our standard driveway length is going to be a huge disappointment to her.

I See You, Mommy!

One of Natalie's favorite sayings these days is, "I see you". She says it to everyone and everything and she just cracks herself up. She'll peek around the corner and say, "I see you, Mommy" and start giggling. She says it to our cats, neighborhood dogs on a walk with their owners ("I see you, puppy"), and often to her favorite toys (her rocking horse, her baby doll and her Care Bear). It's one of my very favorite things that comes out of her little mouth because it's so playful.

That Smile!

photo shoot courtesy of Auntie Kiki!

Natalie has always had a sweet smile...and lately, it's still very sweet, but there's also a heavy dose of mischief in a lot of her giggly grins. I think one of the biggest challenges in raising a toddler is keeping a straight face when she's being naughty. Some of the antics are pretty funny, but one poorly timed snicker on my part can quickly ruin any learning lesson opportunity.

She thinks if she covers her eyes that we can't see her either. So, I'll catch her doing something she shouldn't be doing, tell her "no", and usually, she'll stop. Then she'll promptly shut her eyes (or cover them with one hand if the dirty deed can still be accomplished single handed) and do it again. Such a boundary tester!

She's such a typical toddler (I can confidently say that because I spend a lot of time with other toddlers these days which is such a good thing because, otherwise, I would be very worried about Natalie's defiant days!). "Come here, Natalie" often means she runs as fast as she can in the other direction. "Uh uh uh", spoken while Corey or I shake our heads and frown, trying to look stern, is usually mimicked with a toddler version of "uh uh uh", accompanied by tiny raised eyebrows and her signature smirk as she keeps right on doing whatever it is she's not supposed to be doing. And she can turn from giddy to ghastly and back to giddy in the blink of an eye!

But, she has started saying, "sowwy, Mommy" when I ask for an apology. And the other night, when I asked her to pick up the peas on the floor that she had thrown off her dinner plate, she nodded and said, "otay", and proceeded to carry each individual pea to the trash can one at a time...and knew enough to hand me the fork (she'd also thrown on the floor along with the peas) because she was pretty sure that didn't belong in the trash. Pretty smart (and sweet) little stinker!

Working Weekend in Sedona

Corey needed to head to Sedona this weekend for work and Natalie and I decided to go along and "help" him. What a stunning place and this isn't even THE season to see it in all it's glory. I think we were more of a hindrance than a help, but we sure had fun!





Our first stop was Chapel of the Holy Cross, an amazing Catholic church built into the red rocks. The views from the terrace around the church are so incredible and the structure itself appears to have just emerged from the mountain.




There is so much art anywhere and everywhere! Natalie loved all the animal statuary...and before we noticed the large signs clearly stating, "STAY OFF THE SCULPTURE", we got a few pictures of her riding on them. Hopefully there weren't any security cameras watching us!



We even had the pleasure of seeing a full "mow" over Sedona. Seriously? Too cool.

This is Corey's hotel room office. That's a cut and pasted aerial map of Sedona (I at least did the cutting and pasting for him!) behind him on the wall, around the corner and...onto the other wall. So, my skills end at cutting and pasting and not necessarily finding the best wall for 7' long map!

Did I mention all the amazing metal art in Sedona? This little goat was my absolute favorite. He was in a plaza near a restaurant we went to. The title of the sculpture was "The Goat Ate My Junk" and I loved it...his head and body were made up of an ice skate, pliers, a wrench, a lunch box, a hubcap...you get the idea!


And there was a horse, too...

And a bear. I forget what he was made out of, but he was amazing.

We also fit in a visit to a local park and a dinner where Natalie was less than cooperative. But it's amazing how fast the service becomes when you have a toddler being obnoxious. I think our meal came in 5 minutes because they wanted us OUTTA there!


Such a cool place. Just a few parting shots....