I wanted to mention a little about Natalie's second Christmas. Of course, she got a car load of stuff, most of it having to do with her baby dolls. She got a baby high chair, a stroller, a changing table/baby bath, and lots of play food. She got some other things, like some Leap Frog toys, which she loves, and a sit and spin (the kind that plays "6 ROCKIN' TUNES!" Yay...) and lots of other things, all of which she loves and plays with (we temporarily had to retire about half of her old toys so that we would have room for the new stuff), but most of all she loves her new babies and all the accessories she got. It's so cute to see her playing pretend so much more these days. Instead of just chewing on her play food, she makes dinner and then feeds her babies, and she loves to put them in the "tub" and give them a bath. Also, the last couple times I've given her a bath, she's now starting to wash herself after I finish soaping her down. She takes the washcloth and scrubs her face, tummy, and legs. She does a pretty good job, too! Last night, she washed her face and ears, and then had me lean in so that she could scrub my ears too. My little baby is getting so big! Oh, one more thing I wanted to mention, it looks like she may finally be attaching to a toy. We've tried for awhile to get her to have a special bedtime toy or blanket, but she cared about it as much as she ever did for pacifiers or her thumb - nothing. For the past few nights, though, as we say goodnight, she has wanted to have her new baby doll go to bed with her, a really soft Fisher Price one that she got from my mom. Last night, Phil said she fell asleep with her arm around it. She also is beginning to LOVE to take her babies' clothes off. Then she giggles and shows me the baby and says "nakie!"

This coming year is going to be an exciting one for us. In addition to this new baby coming, God has been moving us in some new directions that we think we will be able to move toward this year. My little wedding consulting business has been taking off, on two different levels. So far I have two (and a half - one I'm just doing to help out a friend at church for free) weddings already scheduled for next year, and I'm also going to be our church's official on-site coordinator, which I'm just starting up with our new pastor at our church. Our first church wedding will be in May. AND I get paid for it too!

December 25, 2003
Surprise! Look, site changes AND big news! We finally broke the news today. We held it in for a week. Mom had no clue. When she opened our gift, she saw the picture of the pregnancy test and thought I had added a picture of Natalie's positive test. Then she looked at me looking at her, and she said, "is this an old picture or a new one?" To catch up on what has happened, click this link to read the hidden journal I've been keeping all week.

December 21, 2003
It's now been three days since Natalie has nursed. I'm still so amazed that it has happened so quickly and easily. Who would have thought even a month ago that Natalie would be weaned without any trauma or tears? (And, I'm happy to say, absolutely no soreness or engorgement on my part.) In fact, not two weeks ago I picked up a book at the library written by Le Leche League about mothering your nursing toddler. Though she wasn't nursing really frequently per day, that was mostly because I tried to hold her off. She couldn't seem to go more than two hours without at least asking to "nuss", and most of the time I could hold her off with juice or starting a new activity, but sometimes she just wanted to nurse and nothing else would do. But when bedtime came around, there was no way around it; she wanted to nurse. Now, she's been just fine without it, for three days. Once yesterday she came up to me and said "nuss" but I said that nursing was all gone, it was empty. She didn't act upset at all, like she just took it as, "oh, okay." Then I asked her if she wanted a cup of milk and she nodded and said "mult" (her word for milk). And that was that. It's all in the right timing! One thing I read in a Dr. Sears book about weaning is that we can just look at scripture to see how weaning should be accomplished, where it talks about feeling contented, filled up and satisfied, like a weaned child. Dr. Sears' point was that this should indicate to us that weaning shouldn't have to involve struggle and fighting and leaving the child feeling frustrated, but that once a child reaches the point of contentedness, they are ready to move on to something else. You see so many times methods to wean a child that include putting something bad tasting on your nipples to discourage nursing. I think that sounds horribly mean and unfair to a baby; I wouldn't want their last impression of nursing to be something unpleasant. I suppose if a mom gets desperate enough to wean the kid, they might try something like that but it doesn't seem to lend itself to a child being contented. Anyway, I am very happy that she has weaned now. After going past the one-year mark I said I would go to age 2 before I really started being more encouraging of weaning, and so we got pretty close to that. There were more than a few times that I started getting really impatient with Natalie to stop, but just like when we struggled to start nursing I just told myself to give it just a little longer, and I tried to remember that ultimately these days of nursing would pass by in such a flash, such a relatively short time of my life. Already I've noticed the past few days that while I don't miss her nursing, I do miss holding her close to me and being able to touch her face as she falls asleep in my arms. I've been trying to consciously spend more time holding and touching her, because I know physical touch means a lot to her too. (She has loved nothing more than being held from the moment she was born.) Tonight she was coloring (purple, of course, always purple) while sitting on the floor right next to me, and several times I couldn't help but lean over and kiss her head. I'm ready for her to move on to the next step now too, but I don't think I'll ever have my fill of loving to be close to my little girl. 

I wanted to mention one other thing that was so cute today. We went to Wal-Mart this evening, and as we drove into the parking lot, she pointed toward the front of the building and said ..something. We weren't sure, but it sounded like "walmart". Nahhhh...couldn't be, right? Well, we had parked in an aisle right in front of the big white, lit-up Wal-Mart letters, and as we were out of the car and walking into the store, she pointed directly to the Wal-Mart letters and said "walmart" again. How did she know that? It's not like we even go there that often; the place drives me crazy with all the people and flashing lights and stuff. Apparently it's made quite an impression on her though; I think this is the first time she's actually said a store name (and on top of that to point right to the words and say what it said was even more funny)! Consumerism strikes young!

This will more than likely be my last update before Christmas, so merry Christmas to everyone! I've been working on some major site changes (as I mentioned last week; the colors and the new banner were not all!) so I'll be finishing that up and getting it posted probably sometime on Christmas Day. If you don't get my email update, you should stop by to check it out anyway!!

December 19, 2003
She did it. She went the entire day without asking to nurse even once. Is this it? Was last night's 20-second nursing the last time ever? Last night right before bed she nursed for about 10 seconds each side but didn't seem like she was getting anything. After she didn't look enthused on the second side, I asked her if she wanted to read a book and she popped right off and said "book!" and ran over to get a few books to read. After she brought them back to me, we snuggled up really close on the couch and I read her some books. After that, I said "night night" and "Mommy loves you, sleep good!" and Phil took her and put her right upstairs in bed! We did the same thing tonight, minus the fruitless nursing. The past few nights she does start to whine and cry a bit as I give her a goodnight kiss and as Phil picks her up, but as soon as they start to head upstairs, she cuddles up against him and the tears stop as quick as they started. Then she goes right to sleep.

We've had an exciting past couple days (for a few different reasons). Yesterday Natalie and I went with Sarah to the zoo again. We had a lot of fun, but boy was it COLD! We wanted to go back to see the lights with Sarah and to visit the zoo's Santa Claus. As you can see from the picture below, this one did make Natalie smile but we were laughing pretty hard too...Santa couldn't have been older than about 15!! And he was SKINNY!!!! It was pretty funny. But the kid did a pretty good job and he did give Natalie a PURPLE (see, Santa does know) lollipop. Then after that we went to see Mrs. Claus, who resided in the next tent over. After seeing her we understood why Mr. and Mrs. Claus weren't cohabitating - Mrs. Claus couldn't have been younger than around 70. What an adorable couple... Mrs. Claus wasn't very friendly though; she didn't even want to say hello and she looked a little disgruntled. :-)  Today Phil and I went Christmas shopping finally. We got several things bought, including Natalie's presents. This will be the last year we can just take her with us to pick out her Christmas presents! Another exciting is that we paid a guy to come dig a 7-foot hole in our front yard this week. The city said we had 10 days to fix a water leak, otherwise our water would be turned off. So we had someone come out to fix it. We weren't happy about a second water line leak since we've moved here, but that's home ownership. He dug down to the water line but found no break nor any water. So he did his own test - no leak detected. We called the same city guy to come and retest. He couldn't find a leak -THIS TIME- either. Now, there is a leak somewhere among our area, but it could very well be one of our neighbors too, in fact, one neighbor's sump pump is running every minute or two, so we have always had the suspicion that it was his. At least our hole-digger  was a very nice man; we highly recommend him if you want to dig up your own yard.

December 16, 2003
Natalie visited Santa at Easton today. (Picture is below.) She didn't cry but she didn't want to smile either! Although, they didn't give me much time to get Natalie to smile; since I didn't buy one of the packages (the cheapest was ONE 5x7 for $7.95!) Natalie got about 20 seconds with Santa before they wanted us to move on... she did get a candy cane as she left though, so Natalie was happy. I think I still want to take Natalie to see the Santa at the zoo in the next few days; he's there in the evenings during the Winter Wildlights. Natalie and I were over in Dublin yesterday so we popped over to the zoo for about an hour. It was cold but we spent most of our time at the (indoor) aquarium anyway. The only thing that would make our zoo membership better would be if the zoo was right around the corner from us, like the Springfield zoo is with Uncle Andrew's house. Natalie and I would be there ALL the time, but with the Columbus zoo being on the other side of town, I still have to take into account gas money to get over there even though I don't have to worry about admission or parking fees anymore. I think we'll still be getting good use out of it though, especially once Spring comes around.

December 14, 2003
In case you didn't notice, I'm working on some site design changes. I thought it was time; I'd kept the old basic look for quite a long time and I was tired of it. I think it's the longest I'd ever gone between site designs ever.

Well, for the last three days, something has been happening that I wasn't sure was ever going to happen. Natalie is going to sleep in her own bed WITHOUT me nursing her AND without being rocked to sleep and then ever-so-gently, holding-our-breaths-that-she-won't-be-woken placing her in her crib. I've given her a final goodnight kiss, and then Daddy takes her upstairs and puts her right in her bed. He puts the covers over her and then sits close by until she dozes off. I just can't believe it. Three nights ago (I can't say "the first time we tried it", because we've tried this many many times in the past with NO success), Phil rocked her for a few minutes and then put her in her crib and sang her song to her. As soon as Phil tried to leave the room she was instantly awake and asking for Daddy Daddy Daddy, but when Phil went back in, he just told her to lay back down, and he sat with her for a few more minutes and she was out. We were amazed. So we tried it again last night and she went out. Tonight he put her in her crib and just sat down next to her for a few minutes. I thought he was rocking her but as it turns out she went right down in her crib. We truly are amazed at this turn of events. I knew it had to happen eventually, she wouldn't be needing us to rock her to sleep on her wedding night, but I was just expecting much more trauma than this. You hear all the time, oh, if you don't let them "cry it out" they'll never get to sleep on their own. Well, so there. It just took the right timing. A couple months ago when we attempted this last she began screaming for us before we'd even left her sitting in her crib. I am especially surprised that she has accomplished this right now, when both Natalie and I have been dealing with the flu all week. We got the same flu that everyone is getting, and it has not been easy. I seem to be feeling better now, but for a couple days I just wanted to stay curled up in bed. Natalie had a pretty high fever for a few days and has been having a really bad cough. (Milk makes that worse too, so I'm glad she isn't insisting on nursing to get to sleep. I also have her down to only a couple times a day, sometimes just once or none at all, which means my milk supply is pretty much gone, so when she does nurse I'm completely empty after just a minute. So much different from the days of nursing for hours straight!!!) Today, we had every good intention of getting up for church, in fact, I was going to be singing for worship team this morning (first time since having Natalie) but I think the final bits of that flu just made us sleep today. When Natalie woke up this morning and Phil put her down next to me for our cuddle time, I figured we'd all be getting up, but the next thing I knew it was...I still can't believe it... 12:40 pm!!! Natalie and I just kept sleeping and sleeping. Phil said he just didn't want to wake us up because we obviously needed the sleep. Apparently!! I did feel suddenly a lot better today than I had all week. So we woke up this...afternoon...to see everything all white for the first time this year (Natalie LOVES to say "snow!") and then found out that Saddam had been caught!  And to top off the day, The Jerk on Survivor didn't get in the top 2. Yay!

This last week, Natalie has switched from calling me "mama" to "mommy". At first I really liked the change, but now I'm not so sure. I didn't realize how much easier it is for a 22-month old to sound whiny when she says "Mommmeeeeee" than saying "Mama". It's okay, and I think very cute, when she's just saying my name because she really enunciates that "ee" sound - she sort of puts the emphasis on the second syllable - but when she wants my attention, boy does she know how to draw out that "mommeeeeee". :-)

December 2, 2003
Before I write about our Thanksgiving trip to Missouri, I first wanted to get written down some bad habits Natalie has begun to acquire. Wouldn't want to forget these very pleasant things that she does at almost 22 months, would I? First of all, she has started to bite her nails. It's driving me nuts. She mainly does it when she is bored, I think, because she tends to do it most often when we are driving in the car. Every so often I look back, and there she is, chewing at her fingers. This is something I never did but my older sister always did and it always bugged me (because then she would complain that I always had nice nails and hers never looked good), so to see my baby doing it is really hard to see. It started a few weeks ago when she had an obviously painful hangnail on her thumb. Before we noticed it and could trim it down, she started picking at it, which made it worse, and then she started biting it down past the white part. Now she chews on all her nails and not just her thumb. I know she knows she's not supposed to do that because every time I look over at her and catch her chewing her nails, she stops chewing and looks up at me, and before I even finish saying "Natalie, in the phrase, "Natalie, stop biting your nails" she has quickly taken her fingers out of her mouth. Ugh! I keep thinking, well, at least she's never developed the habit of thumb sucking or being tied to a pacifier, but I hope this one doesn't last too long either. I'm painting her toenails these days, which she loves, but I definitely can't do her fingernails yet if she insists on chewing on them. 

The second bad habit she's gotten into is picking at, in, and around her nose. She's done this off and on for awhile now, but lately it seems like her fingers are in or around her nose a lot. Then, two days ago she was eating some pretzels  and I noticed her poking more than usual in her nose (those who are parents probably know where this is going but I was not yet prepared for it). Then she started making whiny noises. I looked over and said "stop picking your nose, please" but she kept pulling at her nose and looking more unhappy. Then I noticed something protruding ever so slightly from her right nostril. She had put a piece of pretzel in her nose! (I hope this doesn't become a trend; I've heard that some kids have a strange tendency to put all kinds of things in their noses.) I tried to pull it out a few times and was about to ask Phil to bring me the tweezers (and having visions of a trip to the ER for a nasal extraction) when she twisted her nose just a certain way and suddenly I was able to reach in and grab the end. I pulled it out, and it was a good 3/4 inch long! We were so shocked; we weren't expecting objects to be pushed into her nose for a good half a year or so! Oh, she likes to keep us on our toes. Speaking of which, Natalie had her first could-have-been-quite-serious-but-wasn't head injury last night. We had April and Addie over for dinner and we were just sitting around talking and the kids were playing afterwards, when suddenly, THUMP! Usually that sound is Addie because she's typically much more active than Natalie is, but this time it was Natalie. The thump was her head, which had fallen directly on the edge of our brick fireplace, which we just recently un-bumpered because Natalie hardly ever has hard falls anymore and she had never even stumbled on the fireplace, even when she was just learning to walk. So of course, she falls now. It started swelling up right away but we drug out first the boo-boo bunny, then a bag of frozen french fries (no peas or corn in the freezer) which worked better because it was bigger and went all around her forehead. The swelling didn't get that bad and there was no bleeding other than a scratch, really. Even today, I thought she would wake up with a big purple goose egg on her forehead but this morning the scratch had already faded quite a bit. She cried quite a lot and wanted to be held for awhile, but after the initial shock and then after daddy brought out the "meddie" (grape Children's Advil, which Natalie likes), all was fine.  I was glad April was here when it happened because she probably kept me more calm about the whole thing than I would have been otherwise. She's already seen more than her share of head injuries (one involving stitches and another involving Addie driving her scooter car down a flight of stairs) so she could tell pretty quickly that Natalie was okay. I think Natalie may have had some amount of headache today because she was a little cranky and whiny, but that's all. Natalie really has been amazingly healthy and free of major incidents so far in her life. We feel really blessed about that. I know that my new-mom self about a year and a half ago would have laughed at my not-as-new mom self, who today says that Natalie really is a pretty easy baby, a good first baby, but it really is true. At least, once I let go of my expectations of how a baby "should" be, like how much they "should" be held or fed or sleep, according to the "experts" who don't know my baby, once I let go of all that and just learned to relax and take care of Natalie the way she needed me to, regardless of what others may think, then I didn't see her as that difficult anymore. Natalie hasn't followed very many textbook examples of what babies should or shouldn't do, and that used to bother me because I wondered if I was doing something wrong. That's about when I discovered Dr. Sears. :-)

Okay, so now I wanted to write at least a little bit about our Thanksgiving trip to Springfield Missouri. Last year I kept meaning to write about it but never did, other than that Natalie learned to crawl. Well, we took the long drive again this year. On the way there, we left at around 7pm on Tuesday, first stopping by Nan's house in Springfield (Ohio) -lots of Springfields around!- to see her new apartment, meet Jim, her beau, and eat dinner. We left there at about 10pm and drove through the night to Missouri. Natalie woke up about 6am (Ohio time) and by then we were halfway between St. Louis and Springfield, so we stopped for breakfast. It was 5am their time so nothing was open other than McDonalds, but at least that was something and we were really hungry. We were so glad Natalie slept through most of the trip though. It makes the transition so much easier! We got to Uncle Andrew and Aunt Sue's house just as they were leaving for work, so the three of us crashed out at their house for the rest of the morning. Then around noon we picked up Julie (Aunt "Geegee") at Evangel and spent the day with her. Thursday we had SOOOO much food, including about 6 different desserts. Aunt Sue cooks so much. I know I didn't HAVE to eat so much, but it was all so good. (I lost my four last pounds I had been aiming for, on the weekend of Jaime's wedding; that's all back plus a little more now!) On Friday, Phil's dad drove down from Kansas City to spend time with us. Natalie just took right to him, it was so cute because Natalie just doesn't take that quickly to people. She couldn't get enough of him. We went for a walk on Friday evening at a local mall, and whenever Grandpa (she calls him papaw too, like Grandpa Hedrick) went out of her sight, she would turn around in her stroller, calling out "Papawww! Papawwww!" It was enough to make anyone's heart melt. I think his did, too. I just wish Natalie could see him more often. When he left on Saturday, she snuggled up right in his arms and gave him a big long hug and kiss.  After he left, we went with Julie to the Springfield Zoo. We got in free because we have a membership to the Columbus Zoo! It was a nice little zoo, and it was such a warm day too, perfect for being outside. Natalie saw lots of animals, closer up than at the Columbus Zoo because it's just a lot smaller place. She really giggled at the cute tiny monkeys (no more than 6 inches tall) as they jumped all around some branches. I think the best part was the petting zoo, which had cows and sheep! They ate right from Natalie's hand, and she just could not get enough. One cow in particular, we all just loved. It is so cute and friendly and came right up to you. Natalie would feed the cow and say "moo!" and then feed the sheep (when we could get the pushy goats out of the way) and then say "baaa!"  I think we spent a few dollars in animal food at the petting zoo, but it was so worth it. 

We left after church on Sunday (actually, after one last Sue dinner, so at about 2:30 pm) and drove all day and evening to get home. We got into Gahanna at about 3:30 in the morning. Natalie did pretty good with that drive too. She stayed awake and played with her toys the first few hours, until it got dark, then after we stopped for dinner around St. Louis, she conked out. At one point, Phil was driving and I was in the back, sleeping next to Natalie. She started to giggle in her sleep and then said "gee-gee" and then right after that, "pappaw"! I wish I could know what she was dreaming about! I mean, obviously it was about Aunt Julie and Grandpa Gerth, but I wish I knew what it was about. :-) Oh, this is really cute. Let me preface this by saying something really neat that Natalie has been doing lately is insisting we hold hands to pray before every meal, and afterwards she says "AAA-men". If she thinks we're going to forget to pray, she says "pay! pay!" and holds out her hands. So once we brought her in the house at 3:30 am, Natalie started waking up so we decided we should just go ahead and change her diaper and get her PJ's on. After that she didn't want to go back to sleep, but Phil and I were crashing so we put her in between us in our bed. Of course, with that she fell right back asleep. Phil and I always pray before we got to sleep at night, so since Natalie was there between us, we prayed very quietly this time. At the end, after Phil said "amen", Natalie said very lightly and sleepily, "amen, amen..." It was so very, very, highly adorable. 

Wow, another marathon entry. I'm not wordy, I'm just descriptive.