Things are starting to get a little better around here. I'm slowly being able to put more weight on my ankle. On Saturday I tested it out by putting weight on it along with my crutch for support, and I started falling right over again. I waited a couple more days, and then tried again. As of yesterday, I'm able to take a few steps on my foot, as long as I have my crutches for extra support. It still feels really weak, but it's getting there. I'm mostly excited about my new ability to get up and down our stairs without scooting up and down. That was getting really annoying! Also, for some reason my arms just about gave out on me a couple days ago, my right arm especially, (I guess I just hadn't used those muscles in such a long time) so it feels much better to just use the crutch as a support now instead of having to depend on it completely. It's been really tough. Natalie has been a pretty good sport about the whole thing, but she sure does get bored sitting on the couch with me all day long. We've been keeping everything within arm's reach; diaper bag and changing pad to the right, play blanket on the floor by my feet, exersaucer right in front of me, and all my stuff on the table next to me. Phil has been working it out so that he doesn't usually go more than about 4 hours between being at home, so that he gave give Natalie a break and I can go to the bathroom. This hopefully won't have to continue much longer though, since my ankle is getting stronger by the day. I don't want to rush it though and end up with it being injured again. Every now and then I try to put weight on it without all my wraps and ankle brace, and my ankle just doesn't want to stay upright so I'm not going too fast. It will heal, I am just getting impatient! In the meantime, a bunch of families from our church have been helping us out by bringing over dinner for us almost every night! It's been so nice; on the days when we've had to make dinner, with Phil trying to cook and clean up then somehow find time to play with Natalie (who after sitting with me all day is jumping into Daddy's arms!) after working all day, by 7:00 at night it's been pretty much chaos. With meals being brought over, things have been much easier! 

One more thing I wanted to note today - we've figured out a way to get Natalie to actually eat some food. We feed her, in her high chair, at the same time that Phil and I eat. We put her right next to us for both lunch and dinner, and I spoon her whatever she's eating between my bites. She's doing pretty good at it, and she's decided that she really LOVES applesauce now! She does not at all like any of the chicken baby food varieties though, but she has eaten bits of real chicken off my plate, so it must just be the consistency she doesn't like. So now she's getting some variety in her diet, and I'm eating MUCH slower, which is probably a good thing anyway! (I used to eat really slowly before college...when I was really skinny...correlation?)

October 20, 2002 - This has been a very difficult weekend. Friday was NOT a good day. It started with me hobbling down the stairs after only about an hour of sleep (see the last entry) and it ended with me hobbling up the stairs, or rather, scooting up the stairs on my bottom because I was afraid to go up using my new crutches. I'm even more glad now that Phil's sister Julie came this weekend because she has helped us out so much. It's impossible to do just about everything for a baby when you are either stuck in a chair with your leg in the air or trying to balance on crutches to get around. I don't have much time to write because Natalie has been very clingy to me ever since, and I doubt she'll be much longer before she cries out for mamamama again. So here's what happened. Around 4:00 on Friday, Natalie didn't want to play and didn't want to eat and didn't want to sleep, so I told her, "okay, let's go out to get the mail to get some fresh air." She'd been feeling pretty bad all day with her cold. I carried her outside like I do every afternoon, and then as I reached the driveway, proceeded to trip over nothing and turn my right ankle. With the downward slope of our driveway and the weight of Natalie in front of me, I just kept falling forward. I tried to fall a little to my left because the grass was there, but I didn't make it. I don't know how far, but I dropped Natalie on the cement driveway and she hit it with the back of her head. Then I continued falling on my left side. Natalie started crying right away, which was actually good because that meant she didn't lose consciousness. I felt a lot of pain too but I wasn't even thinking about my own pain at all. I somehow managed to scoop up a screaming baby girl and run back in the house. I tried calling Phil at work but his phone was busy! Then I called his cell phone but it was off. I then called the main office number but for some reason she couldn't figure out who I was trying to get ahold of. Finally I called Phil's number back and I got through. (He told me later that he was just split seconds away from hitting the button to go online but my call stopped him.) All I said to him was, "Phil! Come home right now!" That's all he needed, he said he was on his way. In the meantime I called Dr. Kern, Natalie's doctor, and they told us that since Natalie was conscious and there was nothing bleeding, to just come into the office and not the ER. When Phil got here we got into the car and SPED to his office. Went through red lights and everything. I was in the backseat trying to keep Natalie from falling asleep, which was difficult because of all the stress of everything she wanted to go to sleep. When we got to the doctor, Phil rushed her in and I hopped in much slower behind him. Dr. Kern checked her out and said he thought she was going to be fine. She got a bad bump on the back of her head and some scrapes, but thank the Lord she was fine. It could have been so, so, so much worse. He also told us that it was a myth that you have to keep a child from falling asleep after a head injury; as long as they don't initially lose consciousness, if they fall asleep after crying so hard and working themselves into a frenzy, it's normal and okay. This all made us feel so much better. At that point I finally just started to begin thinking about myself. My left ankle was badly swollen and getting worse, and I couldn't put any weight on it at all. I've had several sprained ankles and wrists before but it had never been so bad that I couldn't walk on it or move it at all. We went to the Mount Carmel East ER to have it checked out. Natalie stayed remarkably calm throughout the whole thing but she was practically attached to me the whole time, she didn't want to let me go at all. They took x-rays and found that thankfully it was not broken, but it was a nasty sprain and they wrapped it up in bandages and a splint. I also bummed up both of my knees in the fall too, so those had to cleaned up and bandaged. I never thought I'd be back at the hospital so soon! (My info was actually still in their system from February!)  So then we hobbled out, Phil carrying the baby and everything else and me with my crutches. Of course, then the first time I try steps, into my doorway, I tripped up the step and went sprawling again into my entryway, which caused Natalie to start screaming again. (I've mentioned before how very sensitive she is to our voices.) That fall gave me the fourth injury of the afternoon, but this time it was just some scrapes on my left elbow that could be handled with just a band-aid! 

Ever since then, things have been really difficult in getting around. Phil (and his sister Julie) have basically been doing everything and I've just been trying to get around. I put a porch chair in our bathtub so that I can sit down and take a shower too. Everything is more difficult now, and I'm really concerned with how things are going to go this week while Phil is at work. I can't hold Natalie and move around because I have to use the crutches, and of course she isn't mobile enough yet to just say "come with me". So in order to go to the bathroom, change Natalie's diaper, or do anything, I need someone else to help me. Which has also been made more difficult because since the accident Natalie has gotten suddenly even more clingy to me than she even had been getting recently. It's been a rough weekend for all of us and she's also still not sleeping well because of her cold, but she has just not been herself. I also think, just by looking at her eyes, that she might have a headache too. She just is all around unhappy, and all weekend the only one who can attempt to calm her is me. So we've been doing a whole lot of just sitting, since that's all I can do when I hold Natalie. I can't even get take her to my rocking chair or upstairs once she falls asleep without help. If it sounds like I'm whining, well, I guess I am but I really don't care. It's hard enough to get around on crutches anyway, but I have a very dependent baby as well, and I just care about her. I can't help her without someone else which has been hard enough this weekend but will get harder this week unless my ankle is miraculously healed. (Not giving up hope for that either!)  Julie is here tomorrow, so she will still be able to help out then, but she leaves on Tuesday morning so I don't know how I will manage after that. I can't even get down on the floor to play with Natalie because then I can't get up. (After scooting up the stairs backwards Phil has had to pick me up to my feet. I tried getting up on my knees in order to stand up, but with my knees being hurt too, I couldn't even do that.) So, it's been a really difficult weekend. (Oh yeah, and then added on to that, we were heading out to church this morning - running an hour late - when I looked down at saw that my car's front tire is completely flat. We must have run over a nail or something, because it is gone! So now we have to get that taken care of too. Not that I can drive right now anyway though.) It just feels like it has been one thing after another recently.  (There's a lot of other things I won't go into right now, like I said, not much time to write.) Mostly though, I am just so relieved that Natalie is okay. She has obviously been dealing with a certain amount of stress from this, but how her head hit, well, Phil and I don't want to think about what could have happened. I feel really bad that I basically dropped my 8 month old baby on her head, on the cement, but I tripped over nothing at all and it just happened, and I know that I did everything I could in those milliseconds of the fall in order to protect her. That's probably why my left ankle got all the damage that it did, because I was just trying to fall to take all of it on myself. After things calm down around here, and as I heal and get back to normal (I have no idea how long that will take) Natalie will be perfectly fine, no lasting damage. God was really protecting my precious little girl.

October 18, 2002 - Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. It's really been a blessing that it has taken so long. Natalie is really sick. She's had a touch or two of something before, but this is the first time she's been really sick. It started out looking like a bad cold, developing slowly over the last week, but now I think it is more than that. We haven't slept much at all the last two nights. Wednesday night, Natalie wasn't feeling well (her usual eye sparkle wasn't there) so I knew it might be a rough night. I finally got her to sleep at 2 am, only for her to wake an hour later, at 3. Usually when she wakes up, she starts by stirring and making little noises, and then she often doesn't even hardly open her eyes the whole time she's up. This time, after getting settled in our chair, she started screaming; I don't remember her screaming like that and for as long since the day she was born. After awhile she would stop crying and nurse, but she wouldn't eat for more than a couple minutes when she got stuffed up again and she would pull off, screaming again. This went on for two hours. Finally at 5 am we got back to sleep, with the cool mist vaporizer going in the room. The rest of the night, until 9 am, was uneventful so at least we got some (but just a little) sleep. All day yesterday she seemed to get worse and she started vomiting too. I think most of the time the vomit was just the excess-phlegmy kind, but I don't know for sure. It went on like this all day. Then last night, we didn't sleep at all. Every time Natalie would get to sleep and I'd put her in her bed, not five minutes would go by and she would wake back up with her nose running, or coughing, or sneezing.  Finally at about 4 am I decided to just sit downstairs on the couch with her. If I could continue holding her slightly upright, she was able to sleep for a little bit longer stretches. I think I MIGHT have dozed off and on on the couch too, but I don't really sleep sitting up, so it was just tiny snippets here and there if anything. This morning, when we did what is a complete blur, but eventually I called Phil to come watch Natalie so I could get a little sleep. I slept from about 10 until 11 am, when Phil really had to get going into the office. It is times like these that is really nice for him to have such a flexible schedule! Today so far Natalie has still been throwing up and still can't sleep for any length at a time. I just keep suctioning her nose (she HATES it, of course) and have the vaporizer going. It's awful seeing her so unhappy and obviously miserable. As for me, I'm beyond tired right now, but that's part of what I signed up for in becoming a parent and stay-at-home mom at that (meaning Phil sleeps as much as he can, which on nights like these is very little too). At least I've got a really great book to read and keep me occupied on nights like this!

I really hope she feels better today, she needs her sleep and we have (maybe HAD) a busy weekend scheduled. Tomorrow night I'm supposed to be hosting an Usborne Books home party. I hope I don't have to reschedule so late, but I can't have it with such a sick baby. Then late tomorrow night, Phil's sister Julie is coming to stay with us until Tuesday! She's away at college in Missouri, and has yet to meet her sweet niece. We are so excited for her to be coming. She will be only the second person from his family, after Phil's Aunt Shirley, to meet Natalie. A fact that really pains us...they're all scattered all over the country, but still... Julie had a long weekend from school, and she found a friend who was going to Ohio, so she asked to come along.  Hopefully Natalie will be feeling better and like her normal self (the one with a sweet disposition and the ability to sleep at least 7 hours a night) for her aunt. Otherwise Julie is going to be getting a crash course in the realities of being a parent!

 October 16, 2002 - "From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have ordained praise." (Matthew 21:16) I came across this verse recently and it really struck me as profound. The word "infant" means, literally, "without words", so it's just amazing to me that according to this verse, babies are praising God before they even have the words to do so. It really makes you think how much God loves to just be with us, to spend time with us, even without lofty prayers and high words. He doesn't care, he just wants us to praise him with our lives as well as our simple thoughts. It gives me even more reason to be thankful for other such verses such as the one that says the Holy Spirit intercedes for us when we don't know what to pray, with groanings and utterings that words cannot express. I know lots of times when I'm praying I can't find the words to say what I'm thinking or feeling, and it distracts me sometimes because I want to find just the right words, but I don't have to. If God delights in the simple cries and babbles of babies, I sure don't have to worry about saying just the right thing either! There are so many things about the love God has for us that I never knew about before having my own child. Natalie's a little sponge and soaks up everything around her, but I think I'm learning just as much if not more these days.

Last Saturday night we went to a bonfire party with the "young marrieds" group at our church. It was so much fun. A big fire, chilly, crisp fall air, hot dogs, s'mores, and warm apple cider (yes Natalie tried some and she loved it!) She didn't enjoy the long car ride out there, but then when we got there she had a great time. She just stared and stared at the fire (like I did - I love looking at fire but that's about it, I can't even light a match!) and tried to sample everything her daddy and I were eating. Then we went on a hayride. She started getting fussy about halfway into the ride, but I just held her against me and she actually fell asleep! Even car rides hardly ever do that!  She was zonked, too. She stayed asleep for about a half hour or so after the hayride was over, which is a long time for one of her naps. I actually got to sit and talk to some friends without holding a squirming baby for a little while! :) I told Phil that we needed to get a tractor for our house and take Natalie for a bumpy ride round and around our tiny little backyard to get her to sleep at night. Ten minutes flat and she'd be sleeping hard! :)

One thing I forgot to mention last time that Natalie really likes right now - any book with touchy feely areas. She goes right to the textured spots too. The other day I went to the library and got her every touchy feely board book that was at the library. Some are better than others story wise, but she at least liked to feel the textures. Now she tries to do that with every book we read; if there's a spot on the book where the picture looks a little textured (when it's not) she still reaches out and tries to see what it feels like. It's really cute. 

October 10, 2002 - Yesterday Natalie was 8 months old. Eight months was how long I was pregnant for. (Nine months minus two weeks early minus the two weeks added on to the beginning of the pregnancy cycle.) It's just so hard to believe it's already been so long. Pregnancy seemed to last forever and these 8 months have been just a breath of air. It feels like we just came home from the hospital. I think I say that every month, don't I? I'll be saying that when she goes off to college or gets married too. Ooh, I'm just going to steer clear of that line of thought.  We weighed Natalie yesterday morning and she weighed in at.. 22 pounds? Two pounds less than last month? We've used our home scale the past two months (next month we'll be back at the doctor) so, either it has been off one of the two times, or else Natalie really has lost two pounds. I guess it's possible, she's moving around a whole lot more and she hasn't had any of her do-nothing-but-eat-and-sleep marathons for awhile now, but I wouldn't think it would be down two pounds. I guess we'll find out for sure next month. She's as healthy as can be though, and still feels like a ton of bricks when I hold her on my side for too long, so I think she's doing just fine even if she has lost weight. I measured her too, and her head circumference is now (again, may not be as accurate as the doctor's) about 19 inches, and her length is about 29 1/2 inches. One big development this month is that I think her tear ducts are finally opening up! For the past several days she's only had minor goop in her eyes in the morning and relatively nothing the rest of the day! I haven't had to fight with her every morning with a wash cloth, trying to hold still her head and pick at her eyes so that she can open them. It makes things much more pleasant. I'm sure she would agree too! So now that the tear ducts are opening and her reflux is pretty much gone, I can say goodbye to her two biggest newborn issues!  Already I'm forgetting what big of a deal her reflux was. I don't know how that's possible, but I am. She still has spit up every now and then but we don't have spit up clothes on hand, over shoulder, and another within reaching distance anymore. We just don't hardly think about it anymore. Amazing, since it very much preoccupied many of our early days with Natalie.

At eight months, Natalie's favorite thing to do is climb all over us, especially me. I've definitely become Natalie's person of choice at the moment. It's pretty exhausting when no one else will do, not even Daddy lots of times, but I know that this won't last long and soon Daddy will be the one who can do no wrong, so I'm cherishing it also. It's just a little frustrating at times, like now when I just want a few minutes to collect my thoughts and all I can hear is "ma-ma-ma-ma!" :)  or when she wakes up in the middle of the night and wants only me. If I dare even hand her over to Phil for a minute, and not even go out of her sight, so that I can put on a shirt before we head downstairs to nurse, she just erupts with so many tears and wails. It just breaks your heart, because she just doesn't understand. Phil and I say all the time, she's such a big girl and has grown so fast and so smart and it's just amazing how much she's learned, but she's still just a little girl, just a baby.  She's so wonderful and precious. She' s becoming so aware of things. The other day we decided she was finally way, way too big for her bassinet which we kept by our bed (and has been for a long time, we just hadn't done anything yet) so we moved that to the basement and put her pack n' play in our room.  When she saw the bassinet go downstairs she got a strange look on her face, and then once the space was made in the living room where her pack n' play had been, she kept looking over there and then crying. Eventually we brought her upstairs and let her see where it was, and then she was just fine! Let's see... what else is she doing new this month? She's making a LOT more different kinds of sounds and loves it when we imitate her by making her same sounds back. That makes her giggle. That game can go on for quite awhile. Like I mentioned a few days ago, she's waving now and still clapping all the time. I've tried to get that on camera but it's hard to take a picture of a clap or a wave, it just doesn't look the same in still.  Yesterday Phil was playing with Natalie and she stood on her own for about five seconds before she toppled back over. It was pretty amazing. She likes to crawl all over things, and pull up against the couch or my chair's ottoman. She also recently liked to play a new game with Phil called climbing the mountain, where Phil holds onto her arms against the couch and she climbs up first to the seat and then up the seat back. She especially likes this when there's a kitty sitting on the top of the couch. :) Her favorite toys right now are probably her jingle balls and, well, some Tupperware bowls that I gave her to play with.  Of all her toys she always grabs the bowls first when I set them out. Oh, and the two balls she likes best are actually cat toys, ones that we've had for several years. The kitties don't seem to mind; PB has always ignored them them anyway and Tabeal just goes right over and plays with them too. 

Natalie still doesn't have much interest in eating baby food, but I don't really care anymore. Every afternoon I try to feed her a little of something, but usually she refuses to open her mouth for anything mashed or pureed. Now, solid, normal food, that's a whole other story. She wants all of that. Whatever we have for dinner, she wants to try. Today for a snack we had an apple. I strained some for her (a friend of mine has let me borrow her baby food masher) and Natalie pretty much ignored it and just kept grabbing for the slices I was eating. She does pretty good with it too, those two little teeth scrape off a good deal of food. I just have to hold onto the food and let her take tiny bits of it, because I'm afraid of her biting off too much and choking. At this rate though, I'm just going to be saving a lot of money on baby food because she's more than happy to just have breastmilk and whatever whole foods we're eating. The one thing I think about is how whatever I'm eating isn't as pure and unadulterated as the foods used to make baby food are but then, hey, before long that's what she'll be eating anyway because she'll be eating with us, so she might as well just get used to eating the same foods she'll be eating her whole childhood, right? The chemicals in mac n'cheese won't hurt her too bad, and whatever she doesn't like will just go through to the other side...like those green beans did last week. (yuck..) Mostly she's just still happy nursing all the time. Food for her is just another toy. I asked a friend of mine about it whose babies liked to nurse as much as Natalie when they were little too, and she said they were the same way. And they eat normal foods just fine now. So, I'm not going to force it.

October 6, 2002 - I'm now back online at home! My mom came over this weekend and got my grandma's old computer set up. I think it's going to drive me a little crazy because it is really slow and continually (not just when it is processing) makes a chunking sound like it is thinking really hard, but at least until we can get Phil a new hard drive for his computer, it's better than what I had before! At least I can keep up with Natalie's journal! :-) There's just a couple things I wanted to note today, since Wednesday is her 8 month birthday (already) anyway, I'm going to leave most of it until then. Sunday during church Natalie finally started to wave. We'd been trying to teach it to her for about a month. She'd sort of waved a couple times, like at herself in the mirror, or shaking her whole arm in response to someone waving to her, but Sunday during the service Natalie entertained herself by really waving to herself. How all little kids do, that is, waving facing themselves. Since then she's decided that is a fun game to play, she won't quit now. And it is very, very cute, of course. 

Her boo-boo scar came off today. She must have rubbed it off while she was snuggled in nursing this afternoon, because I looked down and noticed my eye didn't go right to her nose.  I'm glad her first injury is now behind us! We went to Once Upon a Child this weekend and bought some childproofing stuff. Unfortunately they didn't have any baby gates (they did last time I was in there) but we got a bunch of cabinet locks and even found a cushion that goes around our fireplace brick. I thought I was going to have to somehow tape blankets all around it or something, because those things are really expensive, so I was really happy to find the cushion for six dollars!  We may not have to worry about gating off the basement steps though. (Our cat's litter is down in the basement and our fat cat PB couldn't possibly jump over a gate to get down there, so we've been trying to figure out what to do.) PB is about to become a basement-only cat, therefore we would just keep the door shut to the basement anyway. She's living up to her name these days (for those who know her name doesn't mean peanut butter...) I hate to even think about it because PB was my baby before Natalie came around, but she's driving me nuts. She's gotten into a horrible habit of peeing on the downstairs landing, for no apparent reason at all (it started before Natalie was born so it's not that), and she also has been scooting her bottom on the living room carpet because apparently it's too much of an effort for her to keep herself clean without using my floor. I feel like I'm following that cat around with a can of Carpet Resolve these days. We even tried shampooing PB last week (hooboy that was fun - Phil still has the scars) but it hasn't helped that much. And now that Natalie is moving around it's even more important to me - it's more than just the smell now, I want it really clean!!!!  We're trying to put PB on a diet to see if that helps any. I hope to figure out something. I love my cats, and PB has always been my kitty,  but with being home all the time now so I can't get away from it and especially knowing Natalie is crawling around, she is more important to me. It's amazing how fast your pets become actual pets and not your babies anymore as soon as you have a real child. I never thought I'd ever say that, I've been such a cat person all my life.

October 4, 2002 - Yesterday we had a high point and a couple low points. First, the high point (at least in some ways!) is that Natalie is really truly becoming mobile now. Time to really begin babyproofing in earnest. Yesterday afternoon I was sitting with her on the floor and she was once again leaning, lunging, arching and crawling all over me (mommy the human jungle gym). Suddenly she got up on all fours and then proceeded to crawl off my lap, backwards, then she continued quite a ways across the floor! Backwards. Well, if she just wants to crawl backwards that's fine with me. I never did crawl, myself. I just scooted around on my bottom.  Then this morning she was up on all fours again and she bounced up and down and then lunged forward just a little. She's definitely getting to where she wants to go. From here on out it will just be a matter of doing it faster. We've got to keep an even closer eye on her now though, which we learned yesterday and which brings me to one of the low points of yesterday. I was sitting at the table eating lunch and Phil was sitting on the couch with Natalie, when suddenly she lunged forward really far, like she does often, but this time she did it much quicker than other times. She went right off the edge of the couch to the floor. Phil grabbed her but it was a little too late, her head went THUMP against the floor, face first. I don't think I've ever gotten across a room in one step before but I did that time. After a few minutes she was calmed down (breastfeeding works wonders!) and it didn't look like anything major had happened, but we both felt so bad for her and it was really scary. Within a few minutes we didn't see any bumps appearing on her head, but her poor little nose was getting red and was swelling up. (She really looked more like she had my nose now, being bigger!) We tried to keep her Boo-Boo Bunny against her nose for a little while (mostly she just wanted to chew on it though) and after that the swelling didn't get any worse. By evening the swelling had gone back down but she now has a not-so-little strawberry on the tip of her nose. Little Rudolph. I think it even looks worse today, but that's just because it's darker now. She'll be fine, with how quickly her skin heals I'm sure there won't be any scars.  Just the first of many injuries as she learns to become more mobile I'm sure. Hopefully they'll all be as benign! 

Then last night was the second low point. After thinking Natalie was asleep yesterday, I was sitting down reading my Bible for the night, but Natalie woke up so Phil went to get her up and change her diaper. We ran out of good diapers upstairs so he was hurrying with Natalie (being diaperless) to the downstairs changing station. Well, one of my biggest fears, something I have visualized happening over and over (as much as I try not to think about it) is one of us falling down our stairs (they are really steep) when we are holding onto Natalie. Suddenly I hear a "rumble rumble THUMP" and then Phil crying out. It was the exact sound I had been fearing. I jumped up, while screaming, to the top of the stairs. Phil had fallen down only two stairs and Natalie was just fine. He must have just turned his ankle and missed the last step. He had a tight grip on the baby, just like I did when I broke my baby toe against my dresser and fell headfirst onto my bed when Natalie was just a few weeks old. Phil's ankle was a little sore but everything was fine. After it happened I just broke down, sobbing from the sudden fear and then relief. It took me more than a few minutes to compose myself, meanwhile I probably scared Natalie with my crying more than the fall itself! By the time we fell asleep last night for the final time, I was so ready to end the day. So I'll forever associate Natalie's start of mobility with all of this! 

I can't believe it's October already! Didn't I just say that a few days ago when it was the start of September?