Standing independantly (or trying to)
Blowing rasberries
Her #1 Favorite ???
HER DADDY!!!!
We had a great weekend. We took Natalia to Balboa Park “the nation’s largest urban cultural park”, this park is amazing and it brings back fun childhood memories for me.
We took along Naty´s walker so she could walk around freely in a large area. She took to that instantly and walked all around a huge fountain, stopping here and there to observe the other people around who were equally curious at the peanut in the walker.
I asked someone to take this picture, Í'm rarely in any photo since I'm always the one taking them...
Here's another one. You can´t really see but there are some beautiful water lilies in the pond
It was a gorgeous sunny day so we got her these cool shades... which she didn't like very much. Oh well, another 6 bucks down the drain. We had to hold her arms to take this.
When Natalia was all pooped out we went to Trophy’s for dinner, and there she got her second wind and had a blast with the crayons and toys… actually she was a little loud- I’m glad Trophy’s isn’t particularly known to be a quiet dinner scene.
We are making it a point to have more outings with Natalia, she loves to observe people and explore her surroundings, home is getting pretty boring for her now... and going out is sooo much fun! Hurray for summer!
I can’t believe more than a month has flown by with no posting! Well, Natalia’s been keeping me busy. She has a ton of energy! I remember thinking a few months back that maybe she would always behave like a cuddly baby. But slowly but surely, like everything she does, she has developed this cool little personality. She now D E M A N D S attention.
She has also found out the great power of reaching her arms. She never used to reach her arms as a sign of something she wanted, and now she reaches her arms and knows she can get someone to carry her or to move towards something she wants. I think it's great until I try to get her to play by herself and she throws a tantrum because she's not getting her way.
Defying her therapists’ advice, I got her a walker. She absolutely loves the freedom it gives her. When I assembled it I purposely didn’t attach the toy that went in front with the thought that she actually used it as a walker and not a toy. That way she has a clear view of where she can go. It took her a day to find out the difference between it and her excersaucer but now she moves all around the house and enjoys reaching and touching everything. 
Natalia also had her aunt Laura and cousin Coco come and meet her from Cozumel, Mexico. We loved having them and they fell in love with our peanut.
As far as signing, I finished my ALS for Infants and Toddlers course and loved every minute of it. It was great to be amongst adults and have extra activities; I didn’t realize how I missed that since I stopped working.
I’ve started to use the signs for “eat” and “more” consistently with Natalia since I started the class. She will look at the signs curiously and keep on doing whatever she doing. No indication that she’s connecting the sign to the concept yet… but I’ll keep you posted.
Here's a little of what Natalia's been up to, she has been so active lately, she practically demands we go outside and play...I love it!
Today we went to Speech Screening. We had an appointment with a very kind and professional speech pathologist this morning to set out a game plan regarding Natalia’s communication development.
2 weeks ago, when we had her 1 year developmental evaluation, she was at a 3 month level in her communication skills, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Let me say this: Nati gets her point across with Aaa’s in many intonations and I certainly understand her. But now we are going to start coaching her to use some consonants, i.e.: Babababa, Dadadada, Mamamama, Tatatata… you get the picture. We’re supposed to make these noises very interesting and look at her directly to get her attention; I prefer to talk to her with real words and must confess I feel a little silly doing this but suppose that I’ll get used to it. Our goal is to get her to respond to us after a pause.
As we suspected, Nati's not going to start speech therapy yet, but will be having follow-ups with the speech pathologist every 3 months to evaluate her communication skills and be able to start speech therapy as soon as she is ready.
I asked the speech pathologist for tips for raising a bilingual baby, she had some interesting things to say: Babies relate language with people, so as long as the same person ALWAYS talk to her in the same language her brain can sort out that info and learn to speak and understand both languages. Now this is very important to Natalia because our home is bilingual and we would like her to understand both languages. Between her caretakers, friends and family and media she’s bombarded with both English and Spanish, so now I plan to talk to all the bilingual speakers and ask them to choose: English or Spanish, but stick with it. Hope that helps Nati in the long run….
Here's Grandpa using Natalia's favorite kind of non verbal comunication: goofing around.
