Natali things

Natali is a growing little girl. She is 4 years old now! :) She is changing and to me acting a little older. It is very difficult to carry her any more which at 4 she shouldn't be carried anyways I guess. :)
One of the differences is that Natali is making up lots of games to play. She has a thing with our dog Ranger that she puts towels on him and calls him the "Pressible". I guess she got this from us saying impressive? Not really sure. Ranger puts up with a lot from her and we are thankful he is so patient. Natali also likes to put her Hot Wheel cars all over and around Ranger. Another thing she started is she builds a ladder out of Legos for the Lego people to go up and be on Ranger. She will cover him up with pillows too which is what one of the pictures is of. You can barely see Ranger's head.

Natali also does a lot of playing with her toys and making stories for them. It is really cute and it's neat to see her use her imagination. She does dialogue with her cars and other things.
Natali still likes to play with Legos also as I mentioned. She got a set for her birthday that you can make 3 different vehicles out of 1 set. She is changing it multiple times a day and is able to do a lot of it by herself. She can look at the instructions and follow them fairly well.
Things are going good around our house. Natali goes and goes and goes all day. :) She is quite the talker and doesn't like taking naps but still does.

This last picture is from our latest visit (maybe a month ago?) to see Natali's cousins - Finn and Asher and Aunt Jenny. Finn slept a lot of the time and Asher was taking a nap when we got there. But when Asher woke up, he and Natali had a little bit of interaction. Asher seemed to be proud of his little sister I think - he went over to where she was and smiled big and seemed to kind of show off his sister to us. We had a good time with them.

A post

So yeah, haven't posted anything since last August...... I wonder if anyone still looks at our blog. I can't believe how time flies!

Things are going well around the Edinger household. See if I can update in a nutshell. :)

For Josh - he is working at a Dennys store now as the operator (head hancho in my words) and he has a pretty good commute for that. It has had its own trials but overall, he is doing good and the store is doing good also. I am proud of what he has accomplished!

For Christina - I continue to work at the animal hospital. I have cut my hours back a little to be able to spend more time with Natali.

For Natali - She is a smarty pants and she still loves her cars! And trains and trucks and anything with wheels. :) I asked her what kind of birthday party she would like this year and she said "Cars". She talks so clearly and cracks us up all the time.

It is hard to believe that our child will be 4 years old NEXT MONTH!!! That is so crazy to me. It seems like we were just celebrating her 3rd birthday last month.

We redecorated and painted Natali's room in December and it has Thomas the tank engine decals on part of the wall. We are trying to slowly "fix up" parts of our house in case we decide to move closer to Josh's work place, then it would be ready for that. God has blessed our family in a lot of ways. We have only had non-severe sickness in the past months, we have been safe driving some long drives and Josh's every day commute, and have had things we need and even a few splurges! We are so thankful.

I'd like to share a few pictures of random things since it's been so long!!!!!

Natali

Just thought I would update on what Natali is up to these days.

She is for sure in the "Why?" phase of being a 3 year old. She asks "Why?" about just about everything! Can be very frustrating but I'm glad she cares I guess.

Natali will be starting a mother's day out / preschool in a couple weeks. It is on Tuesdays and Thursdays from like 9-2:30 something like that. I told her that she would be going to something like day care soon and that's all she talks about now! :) I had no idea she would be so interested in it, but every day she says "Can I go to day care today?" So hopefully it will be a good experience and she can make some new friends and learn some things.

Natali's favorite movie right now is the Disney Cars movie. She loves it and is now quoting lines from the movie! She is still very much in to playing with vehicles and trains.
Natali likes to sing and is really in to dancing, jumping, and just plain moving around. She goes and goes and goes and goes.....

Natali's asthma has been non-existant for the last 5 months or so. We are thankful for that. However, Natali has what her allergy doctor is cally Excema on her elbows, knees and belly. We are trying steroid cream (unfortunately) and a moisturizer cream twice a day and will see how that helps.

Well, there you have it. I need to stop because there is a 3 year old cruisin for a bruisin as you might say.

splash park

Well, I guess it's about time I put something on the blog. These pictures are from about a month ago - Josh and I took Natali to one of the parks in town. It has a brand new water/spash pad. We drove up and the water wasn't going so I started to get really disappointed really fast. I walked up to it to try to find a button to turn it on, touched one of the poles and all the water came on!!! We were the only ones there for a while, then some other kids came. It was a really neat place and I was impressed with all the different water features. Natali had a blast and mommy and daddy got wet too!

Natali was scared of the big buckets that dumped water so she stayed away from that part. The nice things was all the water would come and go in a certain pattern so everything wasn't going all the time. We had a really good time and I am sure we will go back some day.

More to come on other summer adventures. :)

Writing

Natali can write her name!! She needs a little help with which letter to write but she know how to write them! She is getting better - even today she knew that A comes after the N. :) She did this on Sunday I think it was. She gets so happy when she writes each letter!

Making faces

I love to have Natali make different faces and it's something she seems to like to do too! Here are a few from our "session" the other day. I'll tell her what kind of face to make and she'll come up with something!

Frown face

Silly face

Another funny face

Surprised face (Yes, she can still do the "o" face)

Smile Natali!

Grandma's visit

My grandma came to visit for a few days this past weekend from Wed night until Mon morning. We had a really great time - got to go to Pump It UP, ate out for lunch and dinner a couple times, and played at the park. We enjoyed our time and had 4 generations together!

Bday catch up Part 2

We had a great time with the Bradfords who came over and brought ice cream sandwiches. Natali shower her cousin the train set and he decided it was good enough to eat!! :)

Catch up on birthday events Part 1

Birthday party at KidsView Park

We had a party with some friends and family last Sunday for Natali's birthday. It was at a local park and we had a pavillion rented. The weather wasn't exactly what I had wanted, but at least it wasn't raining. It was extremely windy!! We had to duct tape to tape down the table cloths and it was actually a bit chilly. But the kids didn't care about the wind when they were playing on the playground and us adults made it through also. :) We had a Thomas the Tank Engine themed party so I made train sugar cookies with the help of my sister and mom. Actually Natali helped me make the batter and they helped me decorate and cut them out. I also made a chocolate chip cookie "cake".

We had 3 other kids attend the party - 2 of which I got a picture of plus Natali. They were all moving around so fast at the playground, it was hard to get pictures! Overall I think the party was a success and Natali got some neat presents and some new clothes.

I will have more pictures/post at another time with our other birthday events.

Caldwell Zoo trip

I know we have been MIA for a while. Life goes too fast sometimes. Josh is training in Dallas for Denny's and he is gone from home a lot so mostly it is me and Natali. However, Josh was home for a long weekend and I happened to be off work Monday so we decided to do something different and went to the zoo in Tyler which is about 45 minutes from our house. This is a wonderful zoo and we always enjoy going. Natali did really good even though she had not napped and we were there for almost 3 hours from about noon until 3.

We asked Natali what she wanted to see first and she said "the giraffes" so we did that first.

Another highlight I think for her was the bird walk through where you can feed the birds with seed on a stick. Natali even picked a little toy bird from the gift shop as her treat above all the other cool things.

One of the cool parts for us was when the white tiger came right up to the side of the cage and just stood there for a few minutes because he/she was very interested in something outside of the cage. Wow.

I will hopefully put more pictures up tomorrow but that is not a promise. :) We have a lot of cool and fun pictures to share. We had perfect weather and the zoo was not crowded at all so it was even better. Natali called the penguins "sassy" and she would say "let's keep moving" and she was excited to see "all kinds of animals". It was a great experience for all and we look forward to going back hopefully when my sister and brother-in-law come to Longview in a couple weeks. Thanks to all who check this blog regularly - I will try harder to have updates closer together!

Snow day 2010

I am finally getting pictures on here from our snow. Our electricity had gone out for about 7 hours and it messed up our internet modem. We got it fixed today so I can use the internet now! I was amazed when I got up last Friday morning to find a TON of snow covering everything! Everything was white and beautiful. Natali loved the snow and I captured some cute pictures.

We went over to my parents' house because they had electricity and Uncle Mike was kind enough to play with Natali for a little while and pulled her on the sled. Yes, we have a sled. My parents have had that since I was little!

Silly girl

I took this picture a few weeks ago. She was going potty and had been in there for a while, so I went in to check on her. This is what I found.

She is normally allowed to get 1 sticker when she goes potty. She went a little overboard and dumped the whole bag! :)

A trip to the park

So today we all got to have a few hours together and we went to the park. It was a beautiful day outside, a little windy, but overall pretty nice. We brought bread of course because Natali wanted to feed the ducks and hear them go Quack Quack. She really enjoyed herself as did we.

Here they come when they found out we had bread!

Natali not real sure about the ones close up

I love when the water makes the rainbow color!

Natali saying "cheese"!

Josh started his new job at a Denny's restaraunt and he is having to work a lot of overnight hours (they are open 24-7). We haven't seen much of each other lately so we were so glad to have a couple hours this afternoon together! And to spend with our cutie!

Well, we made it through Christmas. We had a wonderful time Christmas Eve with Josh's parents and sister, brother-in-law, and 2 month old little boy. He is so cute and starting to smile at things. :) We had Christmas with my family last Saturday because they went to Florida this week. Natali received all kinds of things: CDs, a couple videos, a My Little Pony, shoes, and other fun things. She was most excited about a few new vehicles of course. She also got a remote control car from A. Jenny and U. Christian which she loves! It's made for little kids and she is able to work it pretty good.
We have been letting Natali take naps again because after about a week without a nap, we realized they still might be necessary sometimes! She was being quite cranky. So if she needs it, we let her nap but try to make it early in the day. She is doing wonderful with potty training! We are so proud of her and she got more panties for Christmas. :)
Will try to put pictures up soon, I know it's been a while. Busy busy bees around this house.
One more bit of information, we will be closing the coffee shop that we opened last year in September. Unfortunately the sales and income were just not enough to keep going. We will miss the place and put a lot in to it - especially Josh. We know the Lord will provide for us and Josh has actually had a job offer somewhere else already. Hopefully all will work out.

Changes

It's crazy how fast a 2 1/2 year old seems to keep growing up. Natali has gone 4 nights wearing panties and staying dry all night. She does just fine during the day so far staying dry all day. She is finally okay with learning how to pull her panties down by herself too. She has also stopped taking naps... I should say, we have stopped letting her take naps. She was staying up until 10:00pm a lot of nights so we are trying no naps and she is getting to bed a little earlier - about 8:30pm. She has SO MUCH energy at night it is amazing!! She runs around making lots of noise yelling and singing... back and forth... back and forth. Crazy. She just talks so much, she knows a lot of songs and can sing them pretty much on tune, and her vocabulary is wow!

A couple pictures of the precious


The above picture is just another example of how she lines things up. (Notice all the cars are facing the same way too) :)