We're now fish-less again. Both of our new fish have died in the last couple days. Yesterday Dusty turned belly-up, so I cleaned out the bowl and put in all fresh water for our one remaining fish. Today after lunch, I glanced over and she too had gone. I was really surprised because just this morning she was swimming all over, looking just fine.  Who knows. We're not going to get any more fish now until we can get some kind of filter or bubble-blower for the tank. That must be what was wrong; we think we've done everything else right. Well, the Gerth fish adventure lasted almost the whole month of April.

April 28, 2003 (part 2) - I just wanted to add a couple more things to what I wrote earlier today. I think Natalie must be going through another growth spurt right now. I suppose she is due for one; she hasn't seemed to go on an eating binge like this for awhile now. She has just been eating non-stop today! She wanted to nurse most of the day but most of the time I diverted her into eating something solid - after which, she would go right back to nursing again. And then tonight at about 10, she was telling us that she was hungry, and even the goldfish weren't doing the job; they went too fast. So we gave her a second dinner, of pasta spirals and meat sauce, and string cheese. She ate each piece just as fast as I could get it to her. She had had a second round of teething this time last week, when her four molars finished popping out, so now she's really doing a good job at chewing up real pieces of meat and other food. I just hope she doesn't grow out of her 24 month/2T clothes very soon - that's pretty much all we have and it's all summer clothes ready and waiting for her!

One other thing I wanted to mention. Lately, when we ask Natalie, "who's the Little Bean?" she points to herself. It's so cute.

April 28, 2003 - We had a very full weekend! Saturday was my sister's 16th birthday, so we spent some time at my mom's in the afternoon. Then that evening, we went to a going-away party/cookout for our friends who are moving to become chaplains at Ft. Knox in Kentucky.  Natalie seemed to have fun, and she didn't even seem to mind that it got really cold when the sun went down! There was a little boy there that was born a week after Natalie (a couple months premature and much smaller!) so they played together some. On Sunday after church, we were invited to another cookout at the house of some friends who have have a little boy who is two and a baby girl on the way. Natalie really took to Ian, the boy. After we ate, all the women were upstairs talking in his bedroom while Natalie and Ian played with his toys and shared some of his Easter candy (he shares just as nicely as Natalie). After a little while, Ian decided he wanted to go downstairs to see what his daddy was doing. When he went out the door, Natalie pointed toward the door and started bawling! My friend called Ian back in the room and said Natalie was sad that he had left, so he came back in, and Natalie's tears dried up right away. Then he decided that maybe this was a fun game (I remember when I was little, lots of boys seemed to enjoy this kind of game with girls). The little heart breaker. He kept going out of the door, waiting for Natalie to cry, and then coming back in and waving hello. As soon as Natalie stopped crying he'd leave again. Poor Natalie! Eventually we just decided to all go downstairs again so that Natalie wouldn't be upset.  It was pretty cute though, I'd never seen her get so attached to another kid before! We stayed there most of the afternoon, and then we had to drive home because we had made plans with our friends the Hardins (the ones who are moving to Kentucky) to get together that evening. We were in Delaware for the afternoon, and the Hardins live in Canal Winchester. So we did a LOT of driving yesterday! We got home last night at around midnight. Natalie fell asleep on the way home, but as usual she didn't stay asleep when we took her in the house (I'm looking forward to when we can just deposit a sleeping baby into bed from the car...someday it will happen, right?) We got to bed pretty late last night! It was a fun day though, spending time with a lot of different friends. 

Natalie seems to be really exploding with new words and signs the past week. After I wrote last time, Natalie also learned to sign for hungry (fingers to lips), thirsty (thumb to lips), and sleepy (hands against cheek like a pillow). The hungry and sleepy ones are really helpful for her to know! She also knew this one before, but now she's using the sign for "more" a lot more often too (touch fingertips together). It's so neat to see her communicating like this. She also said "book" last week and "hello" when she was playing with her play telephone. She puts toys (any toys that resemble phones) to her ear. It's really cute. We've also had something else good happen the past couple days, last night excluded because we were out so late. She's come up to me and told me she's sleepy, so I've taken her onto my lap, and she's fallen asleep without nursing to sleep!  Yay!

April 24, 2003- Natalie has been doing the cutest thing the past couple days and I forgot to mention it yesterday. She's now "telling" us when she has a diaper -- specifically, when she has a poopy diaper. She walks over to one of us and then taps her hand on her diaper. Sure enough, she has a full diaper! What a smart girl.

By the way, Goldy had his last day (sing it if you know the song), so now we have lost both of our original fish. We had gotten a couple new fish a few days before Easter; one is white and orange like Bubbles was (its name is Princess Buttercup) and the other's name is Dusty (bet you can't guess what color it is). We'll see how long we can keep these two alive. If these two keel over as fast I think we are not going to get any more fish for awhile, at least until we can afford to get a real fish tank where we can control and filter the water, because we think maybe it's our water that is doing them in. We THINK we're doing everything else right! 

April 23, 2003 - I've been trying to get my journal updated all week now, and either I haven't found the time, or when I have found the time, halfway through writing something this computer crashes on me (which is why my sister bought a new computer and I got this one - it is still better than what I was using).  So now I'm trying once again!

This past weekend was really great, from start to finish. Natalie had a fun second Easter. Much more fun than last year anyway, when she wasn't even yet two months old! I have a picture of her posted below on the "Natalie Picture of the Day" part of this page. She was so cute on Easter. She wore the blue dress that my Grandma Hedrick got for her. On Friday, just after I was finishing writing my last entry, my mom called to ask if Natalie had any Easter shoes yet. She didn't, as I had just written. So, Saturday we went with my mom and both of my sisters to get Natalie Easter shoes at Stride Rite. My mom got her some white leather dress shoes (they were all out of patent leather, being the day before Easter!) and also some brown sandals.  They are both really cute. On Friday, Phil and I dropped Natalie off at my mom's for the evening and we actually went out to see a movie! By ourselves! My mom told me that Natalie cried for a long time, but once she brought out the Elmo snacks (fruit chewy things), all was right with the world once again. Now she knows, to just start bringing out the snacks right away in order to win over Natalie. :-)  So on Saturday, Natalie looked a little apprehensive at seeing Grammy again so soon, but she quickly realized that this time mommy and daddy were staying with her.  On Sunday, before church, Natalie had a little Easter egg hunt here around the living room. We hid little treats inside of six plastic eggs and put them around the room. The first egg we just kept in her basket so she could get excited about it, then I walked around the room with her to help her find each egg. After she picked up each one, she gave them to me to open for her. I think she really enjoyed it. Then we went to church, where everyone oohed and aahed over Natalie's Easter dress, and how cute she was. I had a couple people say, "now THAT's an Easter dress!" After church, we went over to my mom's house so that Natalie could find her second Easter basket of the day. She had all kinds of good treats in that one, including a pink bunny, a BIG container of bubbles and some more sidewalk chalk, both of which she wanted to open and play with right then. She also got a few chocolate treats that she is going to share with mommy and daddy. Natalie shares so nicely. After that we all went to Grand Host East for dinner (a nice buffet and no one has to cook or clean up!) which was really good, and it was nice having the whole family together (us, mom and Brett, Nan, Sarah, and Grandma and Grandpa Hedrick) for that. We were all very full and tired. Even Natalie fell asleep for a nap on the way home and stayed zonked out on my mom's couch for a little while. (Yes! She does nap SOMETIMES!) Then on Monday, Natalie and I went with Nan and Sarah to the zoo. I had gotten yet another free pass in the mail, so I wanted to use it, and Sarah was off school for spring break this week. We had a really good time, although it had turned sharply colder on Monday than it had been on Easter Sunday, so we had to bundle up a little while we were there. Natalie's favorite part, again, was probably the fish tank. She loves walking along side of the glass and putting her face right up next to the fish.

Natalie is doing a few new things these days, including saying, or trying to say, "butterfly" - she says "butt". Close enough. She also says "baby" a lot the past few days. She's been walking around with her baby in her arms, saying baby and then putting her doll in my rocking chair and rocking her, or hugging her really tightly in her arms. She also likes to try to feed her baby (or one of her Elmo dolls) from her cup or some of her snacks. She really does like to share her food. One of her favorite things to do right now is to feed me some of her goldfish crackers. She'll put one into her mouth and then take out another and put it ALL the way into my mouth. If I try to close my mouth tight or give it to her, she'll protest and put it back in my mouth. She does so many cute things these days, most of which I can't even remember enough to write down because there are so many every day. It seems she is learning new things even faster than ever before. The kid doesn't cease to amaze me at least once every day with the connections she makes and things she figures out. The past day or so has been a little rough on her though because I think she is having yet another bout of teething. I've noticed her gums bleeding where the four molars are trying to push even more through (these ones sure do take their time), plus she has two other teeth coming through on the top. It doesn't look to be the "missing" teeth next to her front teeth though, these look to be the canine/eye teeth. 

April 18, 2003 - Well, I didn't get in to see the doctor this week. It's a long story, but in short we got there and found out that they wouldn't take a cash payment (since the insurance we have now isn't accepted at her office, but I really didn't want  to have to look for a new doctor right now). Well, they would take a cash payment but it would have had to been paid in full right then; we couldn't pay in installments and since there was no telling how much the visit would cost, we couldn't afford to pay an unknown lump amount on that day, the same day we had to pay our Gahanna taxes. We got our tax refunds from state and national now though, so we are going to use some of that money to go to the doctor as soon as I make another appointment.  I still need to go, just to get checked out, but the good news is that I'm doing a lot better now. 

There's nothing else really new going on right now. This whole week has been spent between dealing with the above situation, as well as helping Jaime with different things for her wedding. Natalie has just gone along right with me on all of our errands this week. She just likes to go places, or outside to play or go for rides in her stroller too (which is good because I'm getting a lot of walking in!)  Lately she has figured out how to open the front door if it's not locked up. She hasn't figured out the screen door yet though (unless we forget to close it all the way). Today we played outside for a long time because it was just the right temperature and not too sunny to get uncomfortable. She really likes playing in the flowers. I let her pick all the fuzzy yellow flowers that she wants. You know, the ones that multiply themselves all over lawns and flower beds...

My Grandma Hedrick just called me and said she got Natalie an Easter dress! Just this morning Phil and I were talking about what we were going to put on her this Sunday. We have some dresses (from the Liz Gordon Collection) but nothing that really stood out as something special I wanted her to wear for Easter. Grandma told me this dress is blue, so I'm sure Natalie will look very good in it!  She may be wearing the dress either barefoot or with her sneakers because I think those are the only shoes that fit her right now, but that doesn't matter so much. Natalie doesn't mind. :-) We're excited for this Easter. Last year Natalie was less than two months old at Easter (it was in March last year) so she was too little for an Easter basket and such. This year Natalie just loves bunnies so much. She squeaks and yells whenever she sees a bunny. (Any bunny, even my bunny slippers.)  When we went for a walk recently at a mall, I didn't even remember about the Easter Bunny being there, but when we walked by Natalie right away saw him and  REALLY wanted to go see him. She was so cute, she pointed right at him and said "Bun!"  Have I mentioned before that she's getting to be so much fun these days? Well, she is!

By the way, I don't want anyone to miss the pictures that I'm posting at the bottom of this page. Even if I don't update my journal, I'm trying to more frequently post a picture there of little bean. I'm just posting them periodically (not every day or anything) but the picture that I do post there is always one that has been taken that day. That's so everyone can see her just in every day activities even if nothing big is going on!

April 14, 2003 - Well, Bubbles made it a week. On Saturday, we came home from doing some wedding planning stuff with Jaime and Ben, and I found Bubbles (the striped one) floating at the top of the bowl. I flushed her, with a small ceremony, into her watery grave. It was a sad moment, as sad as one can have for a fish that you had for a week... I don't think we have done anything wrong; we've fed them just like they told us to and I kept the water changed when it got cloudy. The other fish, Goldy, is doing just fine and actually seems to be doing better. I thought if either of them were going to go first it would have been Goldy, because he never wanted to swim around much before, and it seemed like he never ate the food. Now, he's just swimming all over the place and eats up the food as soon as we drop it in. Maybe the two of them just didn't get along!  So, now we just have one fish and hopefully we can keep this one alive for a little longer. Wouldn't want to have to go invest a whole other 11 cents again...

I have an appointment with Dr. Teague tomorrow, for what happened/maybe happened last week. I don't know what they are going to do but I'm not looking forward to it at any rate!  It's been a rough week; I think in some way this is related but I don't know how, but I've had a headache for the past 7 days straight. Not a terribly horrible one, but just enough that it's more than there and enough to really wear you out since it doesn't go away. I've taken Tylenol and Advil, and drank lots and lots of water (I've also felt pretty dehydrated especially in the mornings) but nothing seems to take it away. And of course Natalie is still in the current SCREECHING phase so that isn't helping!! Natalie seems to be doing pretty good these days. I think we are in a teething break right now so that's a nice change from the four molars at once!  She's getting so good at walking around right now, at times it looks like she's about to run. She's starting to bend her knees when she walks now so she's a lot more fluid (and less like Frankenstein walking). She still falls down all the time though, so she's beginning to get her share of bruises and other "boo boos"! Yesterday at church, during a special evening service we had, I took her out to the playground for a little while and she just wanted to take off running to the swings and slides. The only problem is that she's not used to walking around on uneven wood chips. She fell straight out forward, landing on her face and hands. She got all scraped up by the wood pieces. (It hardly fazed her though, she just wanted to get to the slides.) 

April 11, 2003 - Something has been happening the last several days that, believe it or not, I don't want to share with the whole world. :-) If you happen to be one of the few people who know me but just never got around to signing up for my mailing list, you can go ahead and email me and I'll send you the private link. As I explained on that page, this is my journal, and while I do use it to keep family and friends updated on what's going on around here and to post incredibly cute pictures of our incredibly cute girl, I first and foremost use it as an actual journal for myself, which secondly just happens to be online.

The only other thing I wanted to mention today, which I hadn't yet up to this point, is I wanted to write a public congratulations to my friend Jaime. She met a Canadian boy last year and now they are planning a wedding for this November!  It's a little complicated because he is Canadian and wants to move here to the States, so Phil is helping them out with the legal aspects of getting married to a not-yet-U.S. citizen. Of course, as with some other of my friends who have gotten married in the last five years, I am helping them to coordinate their wedding and she also asked me to be a bridesmaid. So now I have even more reason to continue losing weight like I have been the last few months! :-) I'm really excited for them. Ben seems like a really great guy.

April 9, 2003 - Believe it or not, Natalie is 14 months old today -see her picture today at the bottom of the page.  (And I still haven't gotten all of her one year pictures sent out...sorry...)  I haven't written down all of Natalie's "stats" in a couple months, so I thought I'd do that tonight. She hasn't gained too much more weight; at least according to our home scales (which have been known to be off slightly), she is about 26 pounds. I don't know her height at the moment, but she is now wearing either 24 months or 2T clothes.  I've actually found that, for some reason, a lot of the 2T clothes fit her better because they aren't as LONG in the legs as the 24 months, so they don't have to be rolled up as much (so she doesn't trip as she's walking). I don't know why 24 month clothes would be longer than 2T, but a lot of the time the 2T's also give her more room in the waist. She's definitely been slimming down lately in the face, arms and legs, but her belly doesn't fit into any pants that we have to zip and snap up, like jeans. She's lost a lot of her baby fat in the last couple months. We notice more and more all the time how much she looks like a little kid now and not our round little baby! We went through her closet last week and got rid of everything that is smaller than 24 months. (We've been really blessed by a family at our church who has had three kids because since her family is finished having kids she's given me boxes and boxes of old clothes. Some of them are really ratty because they've been through their kids plus a couple cousins, but other things are really nice. Most of Natalie's wardrobe consists of these clothes, which I've jokingly dubbed "the Liz Gordon collection." That's my friend's name.)  Natalie's closet is now full of summer clothes. We haven't put her warm clothes too far away yet though, since the weather can't decide to stay warm yet. I just moved the winter things into her dresser since there weren't that many left after we bagged up everything that didn't fit any more. As far as shoes, she's now wearing size 5. She's outgrown all but the one pair of tennis shoes that we bought her a few weeks ago, so she's just been wearing those shoes with her church clothes and everything else lately. :-) That's the one thing I won't let Natalie wear used at least at this point, since shoes meld to a foot shape I don't want her learning how to walk with someone else's foot shape!

We don't know what is going on with Natalie right now, but she's been very difficult the last several days! I'm sure part of it is just still the always-constant teething, but I'm not sure that's all it is. She's back to doing her terodactyl-like, high-pitched squawk like she did at around 5 months. Only she's learned how to be louder now! Maybe she's just practicing using her voice, but oh it just GRATES the nerves!!  She does it when she's unhappy and she does it when she's happy, she does it to get attention and she does it when she is wants to be left alone; it doesn't matter. We're trying to figure out a way to get her to use a QUIET voice, but I don't think she's figured it out yet. We just keep telling ourselves that this too shall pass, just like it did when she first made annoying sounds for the fun of it. One other difficulty we've had lately is that we've pretty much decided to abandon our Great Experiment of Getting Natalie into a Routine. It just isn't doing anything. We've been trying for the last couple -few? - months to hold to a set routine every single night without fail: bedtime snack of nice, filling oatmeal, bathtime whether dirty or not, quiet play time for a few minutes, Daddy reads a few books, then nurse/rock/go to sleep. We thought it might be working for a few days, but then it didn't again. We've decided that nothing has changed; whether we do the at least hour-long routine or not, Natalie goes to sleep when she is ready to go to sleep. Sometimes that is right with the bedtime schedule and other times it is three hours later. No amount of rocking, nursing, or sitting in the darkened room has changed that. If she's tired, she goes to sleep (relatively) easily. If she's not tired, she won't. Whenever I've gotten frustrated to the point of just letting her cry (by that I mean I stay by her crib side and I sing to her or sit quietly), hoping she's wear herself out, she just works herself up more and wakes herself up completely - just the opposite of what I hope! She is a child who will not adhere to a schedule, and I've just got to learn to work with it. She has never been a schedule baby in any other way either, so it shouldn't surprise me that bedtime is no different. Sometimes I get so frustrated though, when after our "bedtime routine", it is still two hours or more before Natalie will fall asleep, but Natalie has never been an easy baby this way. Maybe our next child will have the temperament to just fall off to sleep when the clock dictates, but not miss Natalie.  We just have to once again change our expectations about how to parent a one year old and stop listening to all the "experts" who don't know our particular child.  The only one I have read that comes close to knowing how Natalie is Dr. Sears. I haven't read any of his books in a while now and I think I need to go to the library to get another dose of encouragement! They always seem to give me another burst of confidence to keep going through whatever stage Natalie has been in just when I am getting frustrated to the point of wanting to abandon some of the parenting ideas that I really believe in. In the meantime, we're still keeping some kind of a bedtime routine because eventually Natalie will understand, but we're not going into it with the expectation that she'll slide quickly into a night-long sleep afterwards. Before long, we'll be able to tell her to just go upstairs and play or read quietly until she gets sleepy, but for now, she is still a baby (even if she is wearing 2T clothes!) so we can't expect her to be anything that she is not.  If she was fussy a lot or irritable (other than getting teeth) we might think differently, but she's not. She is a really happy kid after late bedtimes and early waking and very quick naps. We just need to face facts, the kid just doesn't need as much sleep as mommy and daddy! 

I hadn't mentioned this yet, but up until today I thought that maybe Natalie was lactose-intolerant.  It seemed like every time I gave her a cup of milk or some cheese, she'd have vomit-y spit up all day. Now I think it all might have just been coincidence or related to her massive molar teething.  I had stopped giving her milk products for the last month. (And then hoping that she was getting enough calcium from other sources...) But then the last couple of days and today in particular, I've been giving her a lot of milk and cheese again (just because I wanted to see what happened) and she hasn't had a single case of spit up today. I'm not ready to say she is okay yet but I'm not ready to concede to her being lactose intolerant yet. I'm going to keep giving her milk and cheese the next couple of days and see what happens.  

Boy this got to be a long entry! As Phil pointed out, it's hard for me to tell because this new monitor is a lot bigger than the little early-90's, 15-inch, non-SVGA monitor I was using, so all the words are spread out further instead of being in a narrow column! 

April 7, 2003 - What a weekend we've had!  I'll just go day by day, otherwise I'll forgot to include something. On Friday, Phil taught Natalie a new word - boo boo. She has a pretty minor scratch of some sort right below her elbow on her left arm, and she has been fascinated by it. I'd been calling it an ouchy or a scratch, but she didn't take to either of those. When Phil started calling it a boo boo, she repeated it back to him and pointed right to her scratch. Now she loves to point it out. It's pretty close to healing up so I don't know what she's going to do when it goes away!  It's really cute though, if you ask her "Natalie, where's your boo boo?" she pulls up her sleeve and taps her scratch. 

On Friday night, we acquired two new members to our family. I said I wasn't going to have any more animals in this house, but these ones don't pee or butt scoot on the carpet, won't rack up any vet bills, and required a total investment of only 22 cents, not including a small canister of tiny food pellets and tap water poured from the sink. We got two goldfish! (The real kind, not the Pepperidge Farm kind, though we have a lot of those too.) We'd been noticing that Natalie really liked to look at fish - whenever we went to a pet store she would squawk when she saw the fish, and at the zoo, so far the aquariums have been her favorite thing. So we were at Wal-Mart the other night (the place I hate to go unless it is late and not crowded) and when we went over to see the fish tanks, we decided why not. We have a orange and white striped one that we named Bubbles, and the other is almost all orange except for a few black lines, one of which is right across its top, uh... lip. It looks like a little mustache. We named that one Goldy. Natalie really likes them.  I think they're pretty cute too, as fish go. :-) They are living on top of our mantle in our round glass cookie jar. (We don't use it that often.) Now if we can just keep them alive for a little while. I found out the day after I got them (from my mom) that you can't put tap water directly into a fish tank; you have to let the water sit out for awhile in order to get the chlorine out of the water. Apparently chlorine might not be good for them (why not? They'll just be extra clean that way, right?) So far they seem to be doing just fine though. I did pour water from my Brita water filter and not just straight from the tap. So far they like to stay close to the bottom of the tank, we think because our mantle is mirrored, so they think they have company every time they look downward. 

On Saturday, my mom came over to watch Natalie while Phil and I went out for a little while. (We really wanted to go see a movie but there is nothing out right now that doesn't look highly offensive or outright idiotic, so we just walked around Easton for awhile. We also got new cell phones to replace our old ones.) When my mom came over, she brought over a new COMPUTER! Well, technically it's not new because it was my sister's before she got a new one last month, but it's new to me! And it's definitely newer than the old computer I had been using! Just for the record, I want to say a thank you to my grandma and grandpa Hedrick for letting me use their old (OLD!) computer for the last several months. It was pretty annoying to use because I really couldn't do much on it besides email and updating this website, but I was very glad to have that instead of nothing, ever since Phil's work computer fried and he needed to take our home one.  I'm excited to have this one now though. For one thing, it has a few USB ports, so now I can finally start updating my own pictures -more frequently- from my digital camera instead of doing it from my mom's house. And I can also get some video on here now from our digital camcorder too!  One interesting thing I wanted to note, which really has nothing to do with anything other than being interesting (and also a caution): when I loaded up the Internet for the first time on this computer, of course I didn't have all my website addresses that automatically popped up so that I don't have to type them in, and I accidentally typed just www.gerthfamily.com instead of "gerthfamily.debbiesweb.com". I was confused at first by what came up because I thought my site was messed up, but nope...there is actually another Gerth Family Website out there! (Go ahead, click on it above!) Now I wish I would have just left my site address as TheGerths like it was at Homestead. I just never thought to look to see if there was a gerthfamily... So, in order to see MY site, just make sure you don't forgot to type in the "debbiesweb.com" part! 

Finally, I think that maybe we are actually starting to get smarter about knowing when Natalie is teething. It could just be a bad reaction to the time change, but I doubt it since Natalie really doesn't have a set schedule anyway. Today she's been fussing a lot, nursing a lot, eating very little else, drooling, and she had a diarrhea diaper. She's also been wanting to bite down on our legs and arms. (To which we tell her, no Natalie, that will make a boo boo!!) So maybe those two missing teeth are working their way through now.