I wish I was a fish

As promised, here are photos! Natalie is sporting her new fish towel. She loves watching fish "swimming in da water," and now she gets to be one after every bath! I tried to get a better shot of what the towel actually looks like, but Natalie is just about as wiggly as a fish. When you combine that with her constant desire to be touching the camera or some other piece of technology, I figure was lucky to get the shots I did!

24 hours in the life of...

Friday-Saturday was so crazy I couldn't think of any healthy way to cope besides blogging about it. Here goes: We went to a friend's house for game night on Friday, and Dave and I played tag team (in between stints at Guitar Hero) trying to catch Natalie in her various shenanigans. These included snagging the entire bag of cheese puffs and going for broke, eating her weight in strawberries, floating dog food in the dog's water dish, and dialing random phone numbers on my friend's cordless phone. We're hoping she didn't call the Dominican Republic or anything. We'll see when the bill comes.

On Saturday morning, we ate breakfast and then walked Dave to work because it was so warm out. Natalie was all excited to "play in the water" on the way back--there's a little muddy stream with a bridge--so she wore her pink rain boots and had a great time splashing around and throwing sticks in the water. Then she made the mistake of leaning over to grab a stick while she was on an incline, and she went head over tea kettle and landed flat on her back in the water. I was standing a foot away from her, but couldn't get my hands or brain to work fast enough to help. (It's funny how I always go through these scenarios in my head of dangerous hypothetical situations and how I would save Natalie from some terrible thing by sprinting across the room, all the while maintaining my balance and speaking to her in a soothing motherly tone. Situations like this make me realize that's not so realistic.) Anyhow, I picked her up out of the water and brushed the leaves and dirt out of her hair, and we headed for the house. Of course she was wearing only a sweatshirt and jeans, so she was completely soaked. But that didn't stop her from requesting a ride on the swing set as we passed it. (Request denied!) So apparently, she was not badly wounded. This is why I didn't feel too terrible for stifling a few snickers as I thought back about what had just happened.

We got inside the house and I stripped Natalie down for a bath. This was one of those "run the water, hose child down, drain water, remove silt from tub, and refill" kinds of baths. She had a great time with her toys, and recovered nicely from the experience. For the last day she has been reminding us frequently, "Nat-o-lie fall down in water. Muddy water. Boots." It's pretty cute.

So once she was clean and dry, I decided to take a shower myself. I suggested that Natalie look at some books and do puzzles. (Yeah right.) But this wouldn't be the post that it is if she had taken my suggestion. Natalie popped in on me a couple times while I was showering to say Hi, and then I asked for some privacy and she left. When she didn't come back for awhile I knew something was up. I found Natalie in the kitchen. She'd pulled a chair up to the counter, and she was plucking grapes from the fruit bowl, dipping them in the dregs of the waffle batter from earlier that morning, and eating them!!! Disgusting! Oh, and drinking from a sippy cup of milk that had been in the sink (waiting to be cleaned for about a day). I have learned from this experience that I need to do my dishes more often. Probably for that to happen, I need a dishwasher.

Long post, no pics. Sorry. Will post some soon!