It really does seem like Natalie has done a lot of growing up recently!  She is coming up on 18 months old, and is having a lot of fun.  She enjoys reading to herself in the car, standing on her head (sort of), and talking, singing, and just making noise.

Just in the last week or two she has come a long ways in trying to repeat us, instead of just saying her “toddlish” word for what we say (for example, toddlish for “shoe” is something like “c’law!”), and has also discovered singing, and her natural talent at emulating the sound a dog makes.  Joanna, this one’s for you:

If you’d like to see that in high definition, I have uploaded a copy at 720p here.  The file is encoded with the Xvid codec.  You can download that here, or just use VLC for windows.

We’ve added a new feature! We Toads now have the ability to make “private” posts, for news or pictures that we would prefer kept to friends who love us at least enough to register an account on our blog. As an added bonus for our readers, registered accounts do not need to type in the funky visual codes each time you wish to comment.

Registering an account is just as easy as it sounds. Scroll down a bit; you’ll notice a new “Register” link in the Meta category. That will take you to a shiny blue and white page which will ask you for a username and an e-mail address. Once you’ve input those two pieces of information, a random password will be e-mailed the address you gave. When you come back and log in (via the “Login” link just below the register link), the Register link will be replaced by a “Site Admin” link. Contrary to its scary name, you won’t be able to make any real changes, but you will be able to change your own password, your display name, and some other handy things.

If you encounter any problems with the registration process, please let me know as soon as possible, by whatever means available to you.

Enjoy!

This evening, I dropped a stuffed “Larry the Cucumber,” and we were rewarded with hysterical laughter from Nata! This is definitely some of her most animated laughing to date.

For more laughing, check out the other video!