We haven't been able to get our air conditioner fixed yet, so we're trying to spend a lot of time out of the house. It's thankfully been nice and cool in the evening, but during the days it gets hot in here! We've gone to the library a few times, spent Monday afternoon at my mom's, and yesterday we went with Sarah to the Anthony Thomas chocolate factory for a free tour. (And free samples!) We've been spending a lot of time with Sarah this summer, and now Natalie is asking about her when she's NOT here. We've been trying to teach her to say Aunt Sarah, but until yesterday all she got out was "bah".  Aunt "bah". Then yesterday she pointed to her and said "Rah rah" a couple times. This morning when we got up, she did her usual point to mommy and say mama, and then point to daddy and say dada, but then she looked around toward the hallway, pointed that direction, and said "Rah rah?" I told her, no, Aunt Sarah isn't here this time! :-)

Oh, one thing I wanted to mention that I forgot last time. I've been losing more weight again! I've been trying to lose weight, mostly by getting out for long walks every day, since around May, and I did lose quite a bit of weight that way. But for the last several weeks I was stuck at 160. Every now and then the scale would go down to 159 but I just couldn't seem to get a single pound lower than that. So, for the last week and a half, for the first time in my life I'm actually trying to diet on top of exercise, and I lost about 6 pounds so far! For the past few days I've been eating a lot more than I would like, because Natalie has been nursing so much more than normal.  I am just so hungry all of the time, but I haven't gained that weight back since Natalie is taking so many calories.. The next weight goal (now that I've finally gone below 155)  is 150, and then after that I would ideally like to be 140 pounds. When I got married I weighed 125, which was a weight I don't want to be again.  I wasn't eating nutritionally back in college and I didn't feel good at that weight, but I remember feeling really healthy when I weighed around 140.  I'm just happy right now that I'm fitting into jeans and shorts that I haven't been able to wear for a few years! Yay!!!

Today I think Natalie and I are going to go to my mom's friend Karen's house to use her pool. She gave us an open invitation to come over to swim any time we wanted, even during the day when they aren't home, but we haven't taken her up on that yet. Today I think we might, as long as Natalie still acts like she's feeling good. It's supposed to get really hot this afternoon. On Friday Phil might take some time off and go with us to the Ohio State Fair. It's the opening day of the fair and admission is only $1.50. Natalie is so much enjoying seeing new things these days and naming everything she sees, especially animals, so we think she'll have a good time there. We probably will be able to get our air conditioning (and perhaps my car!) fixed soon though, because we just got a nice big check from George W. in the mail! Yipee!

July 27, 2003 - We've had a rough couple days. We took Natalie to the Children's Hospital care center this evening because for the second day in a row, Natalie has had a fever, of around 102. Apparently that's not so bad of a temperature for kids though; the doctor said that's considered "low grade". All I know is, I sure feel miserable when my temperature goes that high! And of course, your kid gets sick on the weekend, when the doctor's office is closed. :-) Natalie has been pretty miserable. Even though we are starting to work on weaning, for the past couple days nursing is all Natalie has wanted to do, day and night. Last "night" Natalie didn't fall asleep until 7 am. Even nursing to sleep didn't help; she just kept waking up to cry. And I'm really sore too since she hasn't wanted to quit!!!  I was hoping to get to my old church this morning to see Jaime's fiancé, Ben, get baptized, but Natalie just wasn't doing well. On top of Natalie being sick, our air conditioning is out also. It's been doing strange things for the past week, but then on Friday it just decided to quit. Did I mention that my car also died on Friday night? Something to do with my alternator going bad -- turns out, when we drove to the park on Friday evening (it died as we pulled into the parking lot at the park), I was actually driving straight on my battery the whole way there since the alternator isn't working to get juice to my car. That's actually not high on the priority to be fixed list at the moment... in the meantime we're just using Phil's car. On Saturday afternoon we had a guy come out to take a look at our air conditioner, since Natalie is feeling so awful anyway, this high heat and humidity (sticky!!!!) isn't helping.  According to him, the motor on our fan is shot and so are a couple other things, which he said is going to necessitate a new system. We're going to get another opinion about that though, because the unit itself is NOT that old. We did have a leak in our Freon fixed last year, and that has also happened again in addition to the motor dying. So he charged us for a service call and also pumped some more Freon in, which he said would keep it going for a few more weeks. Well, it died again today. It ran just fine all last night and then this morning until around 10:30, when I was holding my sick baby on my lap and realizing that it was getting really hot in here and it wasn't just because of Natalie's fever.  So, now we have every fan we own going in our house which is at least circulating air, and the temperature is fairly cool outside, but we also had a big storm tonight so the air is just thick with humidity in here. I'm hoping Natalie sleeps some tonight, but I'm counting on another rough night! We do feel happy that the doctor said she doesn't have any ear infection that he can tell or anything else, this is just a summer flu and should pass in a couple more days.

I haven't been able to update in a couple weeks now. We've been keeping pretty busy around here. Between Natalie being more active and demanding these days, getting little details worked on for Jaime's wedding, and also working on my business in general,  I haven't had much time to sit and write lately! I have been working on my new website a little and on pulling together a bunch of documents and forms and such for my business. Last week I designed and printed some business cards at my mom's house (she has a nice new printer) and they look so good!  I've been wanting to get some printed for some weeks now, because several places (vendors) have asked me if I had any cards they could distribute so they could recommend me, but I didn't have any. I've got all kinds of things ready to go now, I just need to find my first paying client! :-)

Oh, there are a couple things I am remembering that I wanted to mention. First, Natalie will be getting her 18 month pictures taken on August 4th, so we'll have an updated picture of her soon! My mom told me that Dr. Teague, my doctor who delivered Natalie, is in her Weight Watcher's class, and the only picture my mom had to show her was her 1 year picture. She does look a lot different from 6 months ago. (Continually getting cuter, of course!) The other thing I wanted to mention is that Natalie has discovered how to take herself out of  her car seat. Supposedly the only ones kids could undo themselves were the overhead bar kinds, but Natalie figured her 5-point harness kind out. Most of the time it isn't so bad because one of us drives and the other one sits back with her, but a couple times now when I've been driving by myself she's done it too. It's pretty scary to glance back at her while I'm driving on the freeway to find that she's taken both straps off and is just sitting loose in her seat. At least she hasn't tried to jump down yet before I get a chance to pull off the road to snap her back in, but I know that's only a matter of time. 

I guess that's all I'll write about for now, because Natalie is crying again. I know there's a lot more I've been wanting to update about since I haven't written in two weeks, but it's going to have to wait until the little bean is feeling better! Hopefully soon!!!! 

July 14, 2003 - Natalie is saying so many new words these days. She basically tries to repeat everything we say. Last night I made popcorn, which in the past we've discovered that she likes almost as much as I do (she tries to eat it the same way - fast and by the handfuls). First I got her saying "pop", then she started saying popcorn. Almost anyway. She says it more like this: "oop! pah"  - and yes, with the exclamation on the first syllable. It's really cute. Everything is "up" now. If she wants to be picked up, she says up. If she wants down, she says up. As she tries to climb up on the couch, she says up. If she wants off the couch, yep, she says up. Up is wherever she currently is not but very much wants to be.

One thing that is not so cute that she is doing right now, is liking to bite and scratch.  She usually does it when she's frustrated about something, but she's done it when she's in a really good mood too. She just launches over and tries to take a bite, on my leg or arm usually. When I tell her NO, no biting! Then she gets upset and starts to claw me. We're keeping her nails really short, but she still manages to dig in. She also likes to grab my lips and PULLLLL. I don't really know what else to do different. We try to distract her and get her involved in something else, and sometimes it helps, but other times she just comes back over and over again to bite or scratch. It's driving us crazy. She is almost one and a half though. Her little assertive self is starting to assert.

Natalie and I went to Alum Creek State Park beach today with Sarah. We've gone a few times now. Natalie really likes it. She usually clings to me like static, but sometimes I can pry her legs off and get her to kick a little. She likes chasing the bubbles that pop up out of the water. Today, I swam out a little ways while Aunt Sarah was holding her, and she got a little upset about how far away I was, but other than that, she had a grand time. Sarah built her a little Natalie-sized chair out of sand too, which she had fun sitting in and eating a pretzel stick. I'm glad there is some semblance of a beach close to us; I can sort of pretend that I'm on a real beach somewhere, in lieu of an actual vacation!

July 7, 2003 - Natalie had a fun time watching the "booms" this weekend. We almost didn't get to see any fireworks (at least up close) because it has rained so much! On the third, we watched Red White and Boom (the big fireworks in downtown Columbus) from the parking lot of the middle school up the street. You can see all the way to the downtown skyline from that point, except that you have to look over the lights of the airport to see downtown. Still, it was a nice warm up for the fourth (without having to actually go downtown and fight all the gazillion people). Natalie could sort of see them, enough to learn to say "boom!" and point to them way off in the distance. Most of the time though she was more interested in running around the field where we were sitting, and pointing out all the dogs (which she does by pointing to her tongue and panting). On Friday, we went to the Gahanna parade (to watch Aunt Sarah march and also to collect some of the candy that was thrown from the floats -ahem- for Natalie). Then in the afternoon it started to rain and it kept it up, off and on, all day. The fireworks were postponed until the next night. By the time Saturday night came along, Phil had lost his enthusiasm for fireworks but I still wanted to go. And I'm glad we did, because Natalie really liked them. This time we could really see them, and every time there was a pause in the action she would start signing for more! The weather was threatening to turn bad all night, but it held off until just as the grand finale was finishing. All the "booms" went up and then the first raindrop fell. We watched the fireworks from a church parking lot and our car was just about 20 feet away, so we mostly stayed dry, but by the time we got home it was a real downpour! It hasn't really stopped raining much since then, and now Natalie is saying "boom!" every time she hears thunder or rain. 

Something else I did on the fourth, while we spent the day at my mom's house - I got three months' worth of pictures uploaded to Club Photo! Yes, finally! These are pictures from all the way back to Easter. I have them in albums separated for April, May, and June, although the June album has the three pictures I took on the fourth of July in it also. In case you have forgotten how to find the pictures, here's what you do. Go to Club Photo, then at the bottom on that first screen, enter my email address. Then to get to the password protected albums, enter in my password (let me know if you don't know what it is) on the left side of that screen.

Just a quick update on my fish. Yes, they are still alive. But only the original two, Rosa and Spikee. All the babies are...gone. When we cleaned out the tank a few weeks ago, we had three babies left, which we carefully removed before cleaning out the tank. Now we've found those three are gone. We thought that maybe they had just stayed under the filter, where we put them back to after we cleaned the tank, but they must have gotten out...

Everyone hope for the best for me. And my car. I took my 16 year old sister (Sarah) out in my car for the first time this afternoon. She passed her written driver's test this afternoon (Natalie was such a good girl, being so very patient while we waited in chairs at the BMV for over an hour) so she now has her temporary learner's permit! Stay off the sidewalks in Gahanna! (Just kidding, actually she did a very good job going around in circles in an empty parking lot today.) :-)

July 2, 2003 - First of all, I want to let everyone know that I will be purging the Picture of the Day archive here in a few days. I said I would only keep a few months of pictures there at a time and I'm going to stick to that, so that this web size doesn't get out of control. Sorry I haven't uploaded any new pictures up to Ofoto or Club Photo for awhile; I just haven't gotten over to my mom's to do it (and now she has a new computer so I have to go over there to reinstall the camera software now too). Even Club Photo is starting to wonder where we are; I keep getting emails from them saying "we miss you!" Anyway, so all of those pictures from the Picture of the Day will (eventually) be on one of those sites so that they can be ordered, but in the meantime if you were wanting to create a Natalie screen saver or something (grandmas and aunts) then get the pictures from the Archive page before the end of this week.

We had a little unwelcome excitement yesterday afternoon. Natalie and I were outside playing with sidewalk chalk, right out by our front door. There wasn't any wind, so it caught my attention when I heard a distinct rustling sound in the leafy plants that go along the right side of my front door. I looked over there, and then I suddenly saw movement and it wasn't a cute furry little critter. It was a snake. A brown snake with black diamond shaped markings on it, and when I saw it stretched out it was about three feet long. I grabbed Natalie, with her chalk still in her hand, and went into the house behind the safety of my screen door. I tried not to say too much because I didn't want to freak out Natalie, but I was completely shaking inside. I do NOT like snakes! I don't even like looking at them through the glass at the zoo! We watched it slither around and come out of the garden area, then it went along the crack between my sidewalk and the wall of my garage, and then eventually went down into a crack in my sidewalk that goes down a drainage pipe. I don't even know if there are poisonous snakes in Ohio, let alone suburbia Ohio, but even if it wasn't, I hope to never see a snake within inches of where I'm playing on the ground with my baby again! 

Natalie tried to say hippopotamus the other day. It was so cute - she got out "hip-pa-pa" before she started going off into random sounds again. Phil and I just looked at each other with surprise. She has a book from the library right now that is about a hippopotamus, so that's where that came from. She is an insatiable reader, and she really likes repeating everything we say right now, so reading has become an all day activity. That's pretty much all she's playing with right now, along with her babies and some crayons. If I didn't need a break every now and then, that child would bring me book after book after book for the entire day long, nonstop. I know this is a REALLY good thing, but I do need a break from it every now and then! That's when I tell her, Natalie, you read for awhile. And she does. She sits right down on the floor, opens up the book and goes through the pages. She's also getting very good at coloring pictures now. We got her some fatter (WASHABLE!!!) crayons, and she's been having a blast with them. So far the only things she's attempted to color other than papers (or her Elmo food mat, which we use under papers for her to color on) are herself, the kitchen floor, the glass dining table, and a few book covers. The crayon markings from all of which have come out easily, thank goodness! She really gets into her drawings. Aunt Nanny should be so proud. :-) Her other favorite thing right now is dancing with her babies. We got a few kid songs tapes from our neighbor, and we play them in the tape player in her room whenever we are in there for diaper changes or clothing changes or something. Now as soon as we go through the door into her room, she's signing "more -or, "I want", as it becomes sometimes, when she does the same motion with her fists instead of her fingers, and she points to the tape player. 

I'm so glad I have this journal to remember all these little things about Natalie. I'll have her scrapbook too, but lots of times, if something doesn't have a picture attached to it, or isn't an "event", it won't get scrapbooked. (Or I'll just be taking this journal and making a more detailed scrapbook...someday when I have the time to do that!) I just don't want to forget all the little sounds and words and everyday things she does. I can't even quite remember what she was like at this time last year, I don't know how I would remember 10 years from now. If sometimes it seems that what I write about goes on about something inane and of little importance, it's because I'm writing about it for that very reason. I want to remember all these seemingly unimportant things about this time in my life! Already she's changing again right before my eyes, edging even closer to "the two's". She's starting to test me and try out her independence. After church service was over on Sunday, we were milling around, talking to friends. Natalie just refused to hold my hand, be led where I wanted her to go, or even be held in my arms (which is a big change!!) Every time I would go to her and grab her hand to lead her back somewhere, she snapped her hand back and turned her little body in the opposite direction. Finally, I was talking to a friend of mine, and Natalie just took off in the direction of Phil, who was completely on the other side of the sanctuary. She walked all the way over to him. I watched her and kept waiting for her to turn around and realize I wasn't trailing after her, but she never did!  That's all well and good at church, but she wants to go off on her own at the store too (she isn't happy sitting in the shopping cart seat anymore for too long) and that is NOT going to happen!