Natalie LOVES to dance. As soon as the music comes on, she is dancing. She even dances to cellphone ring tones. Here’s a little clip of some of her dancing.

We spent the Remembrance Day long-weekend in Comox. It was a nice visit and a chance for my parents to see how much Natalie has grown. We had a nice time and stopped by the bookstore and Hot Chocolates. While we were there a nasty storm passed through and threatened to delay our trip home. We awoke Monday morning to no power although that didn’t stop us from making coffee! When we got to the bottom of the their driveway we found that several trees had fallen on the road and the power lines. There were downed power lines and a destroyed transformer lying on the road in front of us and the road that led to the beach was blocked by a large tree. Thankfully we didn’t need to go that direction. Our route wasn’t much better though: A large tree had fallen on the power lines just before the intersection and hung out over road with its branches touching the ground on one half of the road. A fireman was already there and stopped traffic for us while we drove under the fallen tree as fast as we could. It was quite an adventure, but was relatively smooth after that.

The following weekend we went for an shopping trip to Bellevue with our neighbours Keith and Amanda. Most our shopping was at the Seattle Premium Outlets in Tulalip, but we also did some near our hotel in Bellevue. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue and loved it. We got adjoining rooms so we could put Natalie for a nap in one while we visited in the other. We had a lot of success shopping and even came home with some items we hadn’t expected to… Dishes! We have been searching for dishes forever and finally found a set we both liked! I also gave myself an early Christmas present: an HD-DVD player. Coming home wasn’t quite so fun. The border line-up to get back into Canada took over an hour and Natalie cried for a lot of it. In all fairness it was past her bedtime and she’d already been in the carseat for a couple of hours.

Both of Christina’s parents came to visit us in Vancouver, with her mom staying for the week and her dad for the evening (he was here for work). Unfortunately Christina had to work while she was here, but that gave Lori and Natalie lots of one-on-one time… (Code word for babysitting!) Thanks Lori. Natalie also got an early Christmas present from her grandma and grandpa: her own armchair. She adores it and takes every opportunity to sit/stand in/on it.

The Christmas season is in full swing now. We’ve done most of our Christmas shopping, have already attended my work’s Christmas party and drank many an eggnog latte! The Christmas party was a good excuse to get dressed up and spend some time together. There was good food, music, and entertainment (magic show). Thanks to Keith and Amanda for babysitting.

Natalie has been camera-aware from a really young age. It can make it pretty difficult at times to capture candid shots as she stops what shes doing as soon as the camera comes out. Lately she has really started to enjoy looking at the photos on the camera after you take them. Last weekend I was taking some pictures of her and she immediate ran over and wanted to see them.

I’m not terribly surprised Natalie is fascinated with the camera as she seems to love all gadgets (just like her Dad!). Some of her favourites right now are the phones, remote controls, computer mice and keyboards, and our portable alarm clock. If it has buttons she’ll push them. If it is off, she’ll turn it on. It’s amazing the damage she can do with a few seconds near the keyboard and mouse. Last time she deleted some files and changed the name of the My Documents folder to 22222222222222222222222222222222222222. :) Thank goodness for undo!

She’s picking up new words at an amazing rate these days. Some of her latest are Please, Teeth, Banana, Dog (often followed by Woof), and Cheese (when you take a picture). I’m glad we snuck Please in there, it’s a nice contrast to all the Me’s we hear when she wants something.

Prolonged Potty Picking. We’ve decided to start potty training now. On the weekend we went to Toys R Us to buy a potty. We thought it was going to be fairly straight forward, but we ended up standing in front of the Potty Section for a good 30-40 minutes. Natalie got the opportunity to try sitting on each one and play with whatever toys they had. In the end we went for the Baby Bjourn because it didn’t have any distracting toys, music or lights, and also because it seems like it will be very easy to clean.