Our Little Fish and Swimming Lessons

Natalie absolutely loves the water and seems to be a natural born fish. Of course, Ryan worked with her a good bit last summer at the pool so that may have something to do with it. I can still remember when she first squealed with glee about being dunked under the water. Naturally, we decided to enroll her in her first official swim class this summer. Natalie wants TOTAL independence in the water, this is not an exaggeration. She squirms when you hold her and tries her hardest to kick and move and swim on her own. One of the other Moms that we met in swim lessons told me on the last day that she had nicknamed Natalie "the jellyfish". I am totally serious!

Natalie has been in the "Tiny Tots" swimming class for the past two weeks at Auburn University. I have been taking her some and so has Ryan. It is a parent & toddler type class so we're in the water with her. The skills she learned are "airplane arms" (arms straight out to the sides) and "torpedo arms" (arms out in front with hands clasped together) and floating on her back with assistance. The other skills (that she could already do) are blowing bubbles and kicking. These are the two things she is VERY good at! During the last few classes, her teacher Megan encouraged her to put her head under the water on her own. On the last day, Natalie suddenly started doing it with a little coaxing from me! She would hold onto the edge of the pool and then lower her head under the water and blow bubbles at the same time. I was SO impressed and proud!

Sadly, I have no pictures from our swim lessons since I was always in the water with her but I have something better! Here is video of Natalie's newest skill! She put her head under the water and blew bubbles at least 20 times or more today while at the pool.

Meet the "friends"

Meet Natalie's newest friends....Thomas (Mickey), Percy (Minnie), Gordon (green M&M), and James (Abby Cadabby).

Natalie has recently become very interested in Thomas the Tank Engine & his Friends. It is a tv series as well as books and movies that features many different trains. I knew very little about it until Natalie became so interested in Thomas (which started out with playing with the trains at Books-a-Million). It is actually a very old series of books written from the 1940s to the 1970s that was then made into a tv program in Great Britian that first aired over 25 years ago. (That is your daily dose of Thomas trivia.)

Natalie's fascination with the trains has now extended into her imaginative play (which continues to amaze us) and she has renamed all of her stuffed toys and dolls to be characters from the Thomas series. We are not allowed to call the toys & dolls by their "real" names. These are her new best buds and she becomes very creative with cooking for them and taking them to the train station and all sorts of things!


Reading with her friends.

"How Bout A Diffent One"

(*Second ever attempt at pig tails*)

For at least the past month or longer, Natalie has been requesting very specific songs at nap time and bed time. Apparently she has tired of the classic lullaby tunes we usually sing for her and now she tells us what she wants us to sing...."the mickey song", "the daddy song", "the skippyjon jones song", etc, etc.
Seriously, if there is any imaginable topic then Natalie wants us to make up a song about it and sing it to her. It is really quite cute but can be difficult at times to make up a song on the spot about a character from a book. Usually as I start to sing "Rock a bye baby" she lays her head on my shoulder and then pops back up saying "How 'bout a diffent one?" in the sweetest voice and then she makes her request.


Some other cute things that I want to remember from this time:

She has recently (this week 6/14) taken to pretending that some of her stuffed toys (mickey, minnie, and a green M&M) are actually characters from Thomas the train. She calls them by name (thomas, gordon, percy, james) and pretends that they are doing things with her like helping to clean or build block towers and then feeds them and puts them down for nap or in timeout. I wrote another post about it with a picture here.

She calls both the Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie, "Bernie" (which is also what Ryan said as a child).

She says "No" and "I can't" all the time and is constantly trying to assert her independence and test limits like a typical two year old. She tells us "I don't want eat my bekfest" and "I can't poopoo on potty".

She pretends that Goldilocks and Figaro and other characters are in our lives...."Goldilocks is in my playhouse! Oh no! Goldilocks is eating my porridge!".....and...."Figaro came in my house. Bad kitty. I spank figaro."