Oh Natalie Jane!

By Tiffany George

As promised, here is my official Natalie Jane update for The Cardinal Blog.

To know Natalie is to just adore her. She is such a fun-loving, happy little girl who draws the attention of anyone around her. I wouldn't say that she is the type to purposefully grab the spotlight, it just happens to land on her. With those big beautiful eyes and silly smile, it's no wonder that everyone has to check her out!

Natalie is not on the shy side like her brother. She is rather the opposite. She likes to say hi to random people that she meets in stores, especially babies. She has a baby radar that is amazing. She'll spot a baby a few aisles over and she HAS to run over to say hi to the baby a million times. It is so adorable. Thankfully most of the other moms are cool about it :o) She'll just keep sitting there saying "hi baby, hi baby" in the cutest, softest voice, while giving a little wave. And if she hears another child crying in the store, she'll run over saying "baby, cry...happy", because she insists on making that kid smile!

Her love of babies doesn't rest solely with the breathing kind! She has at least a dozen babies that she plays with all the time. Her babies sit in the high chair to eat, ride around on the bike, get piled up on the couch, pretty much anything she can think of. She loves to make pretend food for her babies, and lately she has had so much fun having birthday parties for them too. She sings "Happy You You", brings over a cupcake, then blows out the candles. She loves to take the clothes off from her babies, so most are found naked. And while she does want their clothes back on occasionally, she gets rather frustrated when she tries. She also loves it when her babies have shoes on!

Betty was pretty hungry...or I guess moreso thirsty!

To know Natalie is to know of her obsession with shoes. She usually is wearing one pair or another as she walks around the house, and usually they are not her own! She'll wear Andrew's shoes that are 4 sizes too big, or even his snow boots. She typically has no regard for size, season, or matching one shoe to another. The point is to have them on. She just got some light up boots after Christmas (I couldn't resist) and she is just a doll strutting around in those things!

Aside from her obsession with shoes, she also loves to wear bracelets and necklaces as accessories. She typically wears a necklace on most days, and if it sunny, you can bet she needs her sunglasses too. Seriously, who mothered this child?

Natalie has also had a language explosion. She babbles and talks constantly in her sweet little girl voice. She also loves to repeat what we say, and she does so with outstanding accuracy. She speaks in 3-4 word phrases now. She is quite the conversationalist too! If you tell her something like "it's snowing out today", she'll say "oh" with the same tone and inflection that an adult would. She also has the absolute cutest way of saying yes. It's more like nyeah...and the n is not silent!!! Other favorite things that she says are "careful" if she thinks someone may need to be careful, "drive safe" whenever someone leave the house, "scuse me" when she needs to get by someone, and "beat you guys" when she wants me to buckle her into her car seat faster than Daddy buckles Andrew.

She has also loved to sing Christmas carols. She amazed us all at Christmastime when she knew the final word to each verse in Rudolph, Jingle Bells, etc. She loved to listen to Andrew and Papa sing and play their guitars too. Nowadays her favorite song is Frosty. She knows many of the lyrics and even sings in baby tune! She calls is "Sofee the Snowman" and if you ask her if she can sing you a song, she'll belt out "Soffeee Snowman". I love it!

Natalie's comprehension of what we say is growing as well. She understands most of what we are saying, which often takes me by surprise. I'll be telling someone a story and this cute little girl from the peanut gallery will chime in to add her own two cents...and it is right on par!

Natalie's favorite word is undoubtedly SELF, or MYSELF. She is one independent little toddler. Be it climbing up into her booster, or putting on her own underpants, she wants to at least try it on her own. If you try to give her a hand, she will clearly let you know that she can handle it. Thankfully she has perfected the phrase "help please" for when "SELF" just can't handle it.

She HAD to try these jammies on right over her Christmas outfit! And she did it herSELF.

Natalies favorites also include DOGGIES. If we ask her what she wants to do on any given day, her answer will be "doggies". Despite my dislike of dogs, I am trying my best to have my children like them. We head to the pet store typically once a week, where she'll walk all around the store waving and talking to the doggies. You truly have to see her in action to understand how cute this is. For Christmas, Santa bought her one of those life-sized doggies from the toy store at the mall. This dog is alarmingly real looking, and honestly does make guests do a double-take quite often! Natalie drags this dog all around the house, puts it up on the couch, brings it to the birthday parties with her babies, everywhere! We named him James and when we leave the house she'll hollar "bye James"....pricelessly cute.

Here, Natalie is amazed at the doggy stickers that Meme used to decorate her new guitar. She sat there and pointed out each one to a very nice Daddy.

Natalie decided that she wanted to be potty trained when she was 18months old. Every time she would go to get into the tubby she would yell "potty, potty". Pete would put her on the potty and sure enough, she'd go. After doing this for a while, she started saying "potty, potty" at random when she was playing. We'd put her on and she'd go. She'd run up to the potty and just stand there with her hips thrusting forward, hoping to have male plumbing to go like Andrew does. This made us realize that she was clearly ready. Potty training her was a breeze, just like with Andrew. The only thing that was difficult in the beginning was that I didn't realize she was a camel like her daddy. This kid honestly only needs to go potty a few times a day. Most mornings she doesn't even go until 11 or later! She got quite frustrated when I would try to get her to go earlier in the morning when she wasn't ready. Quite frustrated being a slight understandment :o) Now that we are in sync with one another, she tells us whenever she needs to go, and has done a wonderful job. And her bum in those Elmo undies is adorable!

The best part of Natalie's day every day is her brother. They adore each other, they honestly do. Natalie wants to do anything that Andrew is doing, be it climbing the stairs, vacuuming the floor, or using glitter and glue. She is wonderful at taking turns too. She'll be on her bike and if Andrew wants a turn, 9 times out of 10 she'll get right off and say "An turn". It melts our hearts. Their favorite thing to do together is probably running around nakey or in jammies just before bed. Natalie loves when Andrew chases her, and the feeling is mutual. They run around, then we will sit together and have reading time with Daddy and Mommy, then off to bed she goes.

Here is Natalie enjoying the treats at Andrew's holiday party at school.

These two love each other so much! They are very blessed to have each other...almost as blessed as we are to have them.

Natalie doing a craft project with Andrew. She could string the beads onto the pipe cleaner all by herself!

And here she is applying her own glue and glitter!

And she would never miss out on a jam session with Papa!

Here is Natalie being her goofball self. She has adopted her brother's love for wearing rotisserie chicken holder "party hats".

And here are some other photos that are too cute to pass by!

Natalie decked out in one of her Christmas outfits. She climbed inside of this lit tree for photos. Once at the party, she kept hat on for a good hour! Sweetheart!

Natalie is not a huge fan of the cold weather. She must have inherited that from her mother! We finally did get her to have some fun outside when we taught her to munch on some snow.

Natalie is always doing cute things like this. She took off her own clothes, put them in the washer all by herself, put on her backpack with her sleeping bag in it, then ran all around the house.
We were in the middle of doing something with Andrew when we realized Natalie was missing. We went in the playroom to find her perched on this little decorative stool, being sweet as an angel. Notice she is wearing my socks!

Here is the cutie pants giving her best cheese face in the tubby. This girl loves to pour the entire bucket of water right over her own head! She also loves to lay on her back in the tubby to feel the water over her ears.

Another favorite thing of Natalie's: putting gloves on and off...and Elmo likes to try them on too!

You may remember this hat from last year. Thankfully it still fits and it as cute as ever! Also, please notice the shirt. She requests this "doggy shirt" every single day. Thanks for passing it down Corinne and Courtney :o)

Thanks for reading and admiring the photos! We hope that you get to feel some of the joy that is our lives every day.

No Photo Needed

By Tiffany George

Andrew George just may be in the midst of potty training. For the past many months, he has had no interest whatsoever in going pee on the potty. He wasn't even interested in sitting on his potty, for that matter. He had shown some interest last summer, but it seemed as though that opportunity had come and past. With two little cuties to take care of, I'll have to admit that potty training wasn't necessarily high on my to do list. It wasn't that I don't want him to go through pottty training, it's just that I wasn't going to pressure him into it until he was ready.

Well, lo and behold, Sunday night I was talking to my mom on the phone when all of a sudden I see Pete and Andrew make their way to the bathroom to go potty. Much to my shock and surprise, Andrew did go pee on the potty! I hadn't put enough previous thought into what I would do when he actually took the leap to potty train, so I thought quick and rewarded him with a chocolate guitar pick. For those who were able to make it to Andrew's 2nd Birthday party, you saw the little chocolate guitar picks that made. Andrew covets these as much as yogurt raisins. Getting a guitar pick was like winning the lottery.

After the initial success, I called one of my friends whose daughter has been potty training to ask her how she rewarded her child. She said that a nurse at our peds recommended one M&M for trying, 2 for pee, and 3 for the big one! I decided that this would be my strategy. I plan to switch to M&Ms once the guitar picks run out. He's never had an M&M before either, so hopefully the transition will be fine. Otherwise I'll have to open up my own guitar pick making business.

Anyway, Andrew has been consistently going pee on the potty all week whenever we put him there. I know that potty training can be difficult, so I'm not getting my hopes up, but I am so proud of him.

The trouble is, he is just too smart. He has got to be the only person who can poop, jump up and down to get guitar picks, eat the 3 guitar picks, then sit back down on the potty to pee! Earlier I think he ended up with something like 8-10 guitar picks because he first pooped and then would only let his pee out in installments!

We have a lot of jubilation in our house right now, as Andrew is so proud of himself every time he goes on the potty, as he should be. Our excitement has prevented us from thinking to grab the camera to capture his cuteness, plus with potty training, I'd say there's no photo needed.