Making her mark...

...or marking her territory.

Not sure which.

All I know is our house is covered in this:

And this:

She says "James did it."

And one time that was true.

But this is James:

and this is Natalie:

Do you need to see that again?

James:

And Natalie:

It may be obvious to only a mother's eye, but there seems to be more method, and many more curly cues, to her messes. Oh, and the very telling backwards "N":

She loves lamps:

Magic eraser time.

But I was only gone for 10 minutes...

I walked outside this morning after being upstairs for about 10-15 minutes and found this.

This is such a Natalie expression.

And if you were wondering, Natalie does have a diaper on.  She wears one at night.  We just moved her from a crib to a bed and haven't taken the nighttime training step.  One of these days.

Natalie has been catching ants (the most recent one named Princess Aurora) lately (and an unfortunate spider "he's my best friend mom" that didn't last long in the sugar/water concoction in the jar) and decided she needed some ant food.  

Obviously I had forgotten to lock the pantry when I went upstairs.  I hope the ants enjoyed the powdered sugar, nilla wafers, tortilla chips and salt.  James sure did.

Warning...James does need his nose wiped really badly.  Picture may be too graphic for some. 

This is James' "cheese" face

Gracias, Dora

At the doctor's office the other day, our name was called.  I quickly tried to round up the kids and all our stuff to follow the nurse back.  But my kids weren't moving.  In fact, Andrew was glued to Tarzan that was playing on the TV, crayon mid-air.

"C'mon guys, let's go!" I called.  Once, twice.  

"Let's go..." in my sing-song voice.

And then Natalie pipes up in her little voice "Vamanos!  Let's go!" as she runs towards the door.

The fact is, Natalie's DVD of choice for the last week or so has been Dora.  But I had no idea she was learning anything.  

But even better was the fact that the spanish-speaking family we had been waiting with looked up, looked at me, and started laughing.  The dad was still chuckling, muttering "vamanos" when I finally ushered us all to the door.

Late night lipstick

Tonight I thought I heard the sound of little footsteps running around upstairs after I had put the kids to bed.  So I went up to check.  I found my bedroom and bathroom lights on, but nobody around.  But I had my suspicions.  So I opened the door to Natalie's room and this is what I saw:

Then I saw this, which also made me laugh.  She had dressed her dog Frenchy up earlier in socks and a sweater and had highjacked some of my jewelry (an earlier footsteps incident) and had stashed it in her purse.  I recovered the "valuables", but let her keep a few items that I didn't mind losing eventually.  I guess she decided the bedpost was the perfect place to store all these treasures.

And so we never forget, I have to include a picture of what Natalie's bed looks like most nights when she falls asleep.  After numerous "sneaks" to the game room book stash, and a few climbs in the closet to get all the blankets down, she has a bed full of what she likes to refer to as "stuffs."

Looks nice and comfy, doesn't it?  Yes, she is asleep amidst all those "stuffs."

Notes to self...

Natalie is not an easy child right now.  She was.  

In fact, about 19 months ago when I was about to have James, my mother-in-law commented that who wouldn't have more kids when you had a Natalie...she was so fun and easy.  

And then suddenly she wasn't.  

She cries about everything...all day long.

  

She is mischievous.  If you can't see or hear her, it means trouble spelled m-e-s-s.  Marker on the walls, water all over the floor, foamy soap all over the bathroom, nail polish all over her doll house and James' face... 

She does not listen.  At all.  She just chooses to do her own thing and pretends not to hear you.  Or she has a million reasons why she needs to be doing whatever she is doing even after you have asked her not to...several times.  

She runs away.  After running down the street or through the mall at full speed in all my pregnancy glory time after time, I finally figured out that the best thing to do is just call out "We'll see you later." and she comes running...and crying.  

When John and I were buying a car last fall, Suzann, my mother-in-law, came over to watch the kids.  We were driving to the dealership when my phone rang.  It was Suzann.  "Natalie has locked herself in the bathroom and I can't open the door."  Me: "She knows how to unlock the door.  Tell her to unlock the door and come out."  Which of course Suzann did, but Natalie ignored.  I picture her inside the bathroom with a devilish grin on her face as grandma knocks and tries to get her to come out.  Well, Suzann went for help.  She took the boys and went to the neighbor's house to see if they could help her open the bathroom door (it uses those little metal "sticks" to open and is rather tricky. It took me a while to figure it out.).  As she was coming back with reinforcements, Natalie comes running out of the garage, crying.  She did not want to be left behind and as soon as she realized everybody was gone, she opened the bathroom door and came out.  

This girl pushes all the buttons.  

I am convinced it is a stage that she will grow out of (please! be a stage!).  But in the meantime, it is good to catch glimpses of our darling, sweet girl and what I can do as a mom to encourage the sweetness without making her feel like she isn't doing it quite right.  Because sometimes I feel like I'm telling her NOT to do things an awful lot.

A few weeks ago John took Andrew AND James (superdad) camping, leaving Natalie and I to a girls night out.  We went to dinner, rode the carousel at the mall, and met some friends for a movie.  The whole night she held my hand, told me she loved me about every 3 minutes, never ran off. She was darling.  It was so fun.  Note to self...Natalie needs some more one-on-one time.

The other day she was crying (again...for no reason) and wanting me to hold her.  I said, "Natalie, do you want to help me make pizzas for dinner?"  She immediately stopped crying, said she needed to put on the napkin (the apron) Grandma Larraine had sent her, and was so helpful and cute the entire time we were getting the pizza and breadsticks made.  Note to self...Natalie likes to feel needed and helpful.

And tonight.  She had gotten out of bed several times (her usual routine at night, even though she is exhausted because she will not nap during the day).  I took her back up to her room and tucked her in.  She looked at me, "Mom, can you lay in my bed with me?"  Some nights I just want everyone in bed because it is the ONLY moment of the day where I can be alone with my thoughts.  But tonight I laid down by her and she turned on her side and put her arm around my pregnant belly and waist and tucked her little head up against me.  And every once in a while she would pat me with her little hand.  

And I lay there loving my little terror.  And loving my sweet daughter.  Note to self...Natalie needs lots of love...and she gives lots of love.

I'm Hungary

We had the big world map down a few times before we left for Japan so we could show the kids where we would be going.  I showed them Japan, Arizona, Utah, California, Venezuela, and then I showed them Hungary and explained that dad had served a mission there.

We got the map out the next day and Natalie was looking very carefully at the places we had discussed the day before.  She looked at me and said, "Mommy, Daddy went to Lunch...right hehr."

And then a few days later we had the map out again when John was there.  Natalie, looking at the map, said to John, "Daddy, you went to Dinner."

I guess Hungary can mean Lunch or Dinner to a three year old.

We'll supply the pixie dust...

(**Warning...this post is specifically for my parents who were not at the party and actually might be interested in seeing this many pictures of it)

Self-applied lip gloss

I was not planning on a three-year-old party for Natalie. But I think she has been planning on it since Andrew's party last March. She repeatedly reminded me that she was going to invite her friends to her "pahty." Her blue train party...just like Andrew's. She was so excited that I finally decided that I wanted to have a party too. I just redirected the theme, and we were good. And I don't regret it one bit...I mean, look at her face. She was in heaven.

Natalie's party was last Saturday. Tinkerbell seemed to be a fitting theme. Natalie reminds me of a pixie/fairy anyway. So we sent out the invitations...

I bought a package of invitations and then inserted our own words (in a different font) and some glitter (pixie dust)...

Think of the happiest things
It's the same as having wings.

Tinkerbell invites her Fairy friends to come in their
Fairy attire to Natalie's 3rd Birthday Party!

All you need is faith and trust
And we'll supply the Pixie dust.

Fly second star to the right to the Garner Home on
January 24th at 10:00am.

If you believe in Fairies say I do, I do and RSVP to...

We dressed Natalie in her 18 month old Halloween costume from 2 years ago...it was rather short and tight at the snaps, but she didn't care or notice.

Natalie was in heaven with all her fairy friends.

We started with a make-up station: lip gloss, nail polish and flowers to go on your finger nails, tattoos, glitter...

We tried to play pin the star on the wand, follow the fairy (whoever was wearing the wings), and a hot potato version of pass the wand. Most of the guests were interested in the first game, not so much the second, and nobody wanted to pass the wand on the third game, they wanted to keep it. Luckily that was the point of the game so we had plenty of wands available. Andrew wanted to play them all.

Olivia doing a victory dance after placing her star

Andrew as the leader...not too many followers

We then moved to the table where the girls decorated a book I had put together. They covered them with stickers and I added each of their pictures, a picture of Natalie and a picture of all of them. Below is what the cover looked like (with a different font and print size and no square around the picture) and then the inside was a story about the fairies attending Natalie's party. Very simple, but the girls loved it. They sat there in silence putting sticker after sticker in their books.

A Fairy Merry

Birthday

And then it was cake time. I love making special birthday cakes. It is as much for me as for the child ;-) This year I got very lucky. My friend Marci's mom decorates cakes. I called Marci to see if she had some tips I could use for the frosting and she suggested that her mom come over and "help." All I had to do was bake the cake and whip up some frosting. She did a BEAUTIFUL job and Natalie was just thrilled with her Tinkerbell cake. In fact, all the girls wanted a closer look at the cake.

After cake and ice cream, it was time to open presents. One of our little fairy guests cried and cried when Natalie opened the gift she had brought. So after Natalie had opened it, I gave her what was inside, thinking that was what she wanted. It took me another minute to realize she just wanted the bag..."her present." So I handed her the bag and she was fine.

Before we opened the presents, I gave each of the girls her party bag---a green purse I found at the dollar store. Inside was candy, a pinwheel, a lipgloss ring, glitter, and Tinkerbell stickers.

Natalie was so excited that Grandma and Grandpa Garner were able to come to the party!

I got the directions for these flowers from my friend Erin...I just LOVED them. They are sitting in my room waiting to be hung from Natalie's ceiling.

I TRIED to keep the decorations simple...cardstock signs and banners...a grove of mini pine trees...balloons

The banner I made for above the front door.

It was a great morning. Granted, of course there was the par for the course stressful few moments right before the party started and the balloons weren't there yet, but Natalie thought it was just wonderful, and that is all I wanted out of this party. Well, that and a few new Tinkerbell toys. Check.