I think Natalie is going to be walking soon. One of her favorite things to do is take walks around the room, holding our hands. Sometimes it feels like she's hardly holding on, but she hasn't taken off on her own yet. Yet!  She also is really getting into tossing a ball (a SpongeBob ball we got her for Christmas) back and forth to me.  Actually she mostly "tosses" it into my hands and then I roll it back to her. Always makes her giggle.  

We've been so proud of her lately for other reasons too - she has been sleeping through the night again, in her own crib in her own room, for the last couple weeks! She hadn't been sleeping through the night ever since our Thanksgiving trip. I guess it just really threw her off. It had been a difficult couple months with suddenly having to get up in the middle of the night again! So this is a happy development, especially since she hardly ever slept the whole night through in her own room before. (She mostly slept in her pack n' play next to our bed.)

One other thing I wanted to mention this time. She gave our pastor a kiss the other day. It was so cute. We have to get a picture of her giving kisses, I just love it.

January 26, 2003 - We had a fun weekend.  Yesterday it warmed up a little, and we really wanted to get out, so we took Natalie to the zoo for the first time! We didn't get there until 3 and then found out that they closed at 5, so we were thinking about coming back today after church. It's a good thing we didn't; the temp dropped again today and it REALLY snowed, ALL day! As it turned out, it was all for the better that we were just there for a couple hours.  It was still pretty cold out, and there weren't that many animals out braving the cold with us anyway, so a couple hours were all we needed. It was probably just about all Natalie was ready to handle for her first trip to the zoo anyway! She really liked it. This morning when I was getting her dressed, so pointed out the zebras, elephants, and ducks on her wallpaper with even more enthusiasm than usual. Some of the other animals we saw were the manatees (nice and toasty warm in there!), fish, turtles, snakes, a few monkeys, and some sheep, goats and chickens. I think she was most enthralled with the chickens. Or maybe she just liked listening to her daddy cluck cluck cluck at them. I thought that there were inside areas to see the lions and giraffes, but I guess I was wrong, they were nowhere to be found. We'll probably be back several times once spring comes though! 

You can see the pictures from our zoo trip and also some other pictures I've taken this month at www.clubphoto.com. Once you get there, enter my email address (debbygerth@earthlink.net) and then my password, which is Gerth. I had to put them into two different albums when I was uploading them, but both of the January 2003 albums have new pictures in them, all mixed up and out of order. :-)

January 24, 2003 - Natalie climbed up our entire flight of stairs this afternoon! It really is a big accomplishment; it's pretty steep. (I know I sure was afraid of them when I had to go up on crutches back in the month of October!) Natalie has gone up a few at a time before this, but she'd never ventured all the way up. Now we just have to teach her how to get back down. :) She seemed pretty proud of herself when she got to the top; she giggled all the way into our bedroom, where she went right to and then grabbed one of her favorite treasures out of our room, a little back massager bug. 

I forgot to mention something yesterday that Natalie is doing. She's now giving kisses to her daddy and me. Not the open-mouthed, hit something randomly in the direction of our faces kiss, but a puckered up and right on the lips kiss. It's really cute and of course I love it.

January 23, 2003 - Happy first birthday Addie! 

I haven't been able to write the past couple of days, because yesterday was my mom's 50th birthday and my sisters and I planned a surprise party for her. I couldn't have not mentioned my mom's 50th birthday on here, so I had to say nothing instead. :-) Happy birthday Mom! I made her a cake that was gray/blue. It was originally going to be a black cake (though you couldn't tell from the outside, I wanted to make that as light and pretty as possible) but when I added the black food coloring to the white cake, the closest I could get was gray. Then once it was cooked it was even more blue tinted. Which was actually way better than a black cake, because now that my Mom is a grandmother and is 50 years old, it's about time for her to start acquiring her granny blue hair she's always talked about getting. :-)

Lots of birthdays going on around here. We went to Addie's birthday party last Sunday (talk about a houseful of people!!) and last weekend was also my grandpa and grandma Hedrick's birthdays (Friday and Saturday, respectfully) as well. And then little bean's is coming up really soon...!  Plans are coming together for that. I found an Elmo cake pan and frosting colorings earlier this week, and I'm borrowing April's cake decorating supplies, so I'll get to make an Elmo cake for Natalie! April gave me some of Addie's party decorations to use, and I also got a few Elmo things for Natalie's party.  Just a couple weeks! I keep thinking, where I was this time last year. Still at work for one thing, running to the bathroom every 10 minutes or less, and by this time I think I was off the shaky pills, or close to it, so I was waiting on pins and needles with every cramp and contraction. (That I still continued to have for the entire month!)  So much has changed in one year. I couldn't even begin to describe all the ways. Everything, in one way or another. 

I get two questions more than any other these days, now that Natalie is almost a year old. The most oft-heard one is "how long to you plan on doing "that"", (Meaning, breastfeeding.) Usually the "that" is said like I'm doing something I shouldn't. The second most popular question right now is "so when do you plan on having another one?" (Meaning another baby of course.) So I thought I'd answer those two questions here. To the first, I don't know. To the second, I don't know. :-)  Natalie is eating pretty much three solid meals a day these days and lots of snacks too, but she's still breastfeeding, especially in the morning and at bedtime, and for naps (when she does actually slow down enough to take one!). I've kind of adopted the attachment parenting principle of weaning, which is, around a year old to not offer and not refuse. This apparently leads to weaning but it's just not quick, so it's not harsh on the baby or on the mother. We'll start giving her cow's milk after her birthday, here and there, and see what happens from there. In any case, she won't be breastfeeding when she's eight, like I heard someone on the news recently talking about.  I've been pretty surprised though, how disapproving some people are about doing what is best for my baby. It couldn't have been more than a month after I had really gotten breastfeeding well established that I started hearing people asking me how long I intended to do THAT. Good grief! As for the second question, the short answer is, I honestly don't know. It could be a month from now, it could be never, at this point I guess it's all up to God. After going through all the fertility issues to have Natalie, I'm not going back on any chemicals, whether to prevent or to try.  Maybe a few years from now if nothing has happened yet and we really want to give Natalie a sibling, I may consider fertility drugs again, but right now I can't imagine wanting to go through all that again. On the other hand, it may happen on it's own; I've heard many times of people who became ultra fertile after having one baby changes their entire body. It doesn't look like that is happening to me (I've been blessed with that now since May of 2001! And I don't miss it!!)  Though at this point I can't really know for sure if it's continued infertility or just repressed by breastfeeding.  If it were up to me to plan, I think I would ideally like to have three years between children, but we'll see what happens. And that's the long answer. :-)

Before I go for today, I wanted to also make sure I mention Natalie's two newest words. On Saturday, Natalie finally said Daddy. And just in time, too. On Sunday, she said Elmo. Phil was very glad that he got in there at least before Elmo.  Phil was changing Natalie's diaper and that's when she said Dada. Then the next day I was changing Natalie's diaper (we get good talk time in then!) and the new one was an Elmo diaper (they all have different Sesame Street characters on them, and we always show Natalie what diaper she's getting before it goes on). She got all excited, as she always does when she sees Elmo, and she said "EL" like she has for a while, but this time followed it with "mo". After she said that, she instantly got a big smile on her face and started to giggle. She knew what she had just said! 

January 16, 2003 - I still don't have my computer, so I can't post new pictures yet, but I've been taking some really cute ones lately with my digital camera. Hopefully I can get those up soon.  

Natalie has been "talking" a lot the past couple days.  Last night after her bath, she was really going on and on about something, so Phil recorded her with his video camera. She'll hate that one when she grows up; she was running around the bathroom without clothes on. In other words, really cute.  I won't post that kind on here though, even if I do get to eventually put some streaming video set up. 

Natalie has lately begun to play independently more often. She's becoming such a little kid already, it's just so hard to believe how much she's changed in a year. She goes over to her book shelf, pulls a book out (or pulls them all out, usually) and then plops down on the floor and reads. She gets really into it too; sometimes she looks at me to come over and read her the book, but other times she is just as happy "reading" to herself. She does a good job too; she turns pages and looks at every one. It's so amazing to watch her these days. Sometimes, when she's cuddled up and nursing in my arms, she could be just a few months old again, but most of the time I look at her and think, she's already a little kid, not a baby! I never knew, before I had Natalie, how true it was that "babies grow up so fast". I don't know why I never realized that, because I'd see one year olds and they looked like toddlers, not babies, but when Natalie was born it just seemed as if she would be a little infant forever. Now when we go to the store and I see all the cute baby clothes, I think about how Natalie didn't get to wear all those cute things for long enough. She was wearing 12 months clothes by the time she was 6 months, and now she's wearing 18 months to 24 months. The cute baby clothes only go to about size 6-9 months.  I think I really realized this when we went shopping with my grandma Hedrick and my Aunt Patti before Christmas, because my grandma wanted to get Natalie some Christmas pajamas. I wanted to find one that said "baby's first Christmas" on it, but I guess the people who design those things don't figure that any babies were born last year between January and March, because there was nothing above size 6 months. We did find her some cute pajamas though after looking at several stores. She wore them after church on Christmas eve when we were at my grandma's house, and we planned to let her stay in those through Christmas morning when we opened up presents, but then, Natalie had a diaper explosion midway through the evening.  So she didn't get to wear her Christmas pajamas but for about an hour on Christmas Eve.  Well, so much for our plans; that's the way it goes!  

Natalie's first Christmas was really wonderful. Natalie made out with a haul of stuff, most of which makes some kind of noise. :-) She got a lot of really great toys and she loves them all. (We just love when they are all going at the same time. Particularly her Leap Frog drum, that yells at you to come back and play with it if you ignore it for more than 10 seconds. "Play the drum! Play the drum!!!!")  It was such a blessing for Natalie to get all that she did for Christmas, and very much so for my digital camera and Phil's digital video camera too! We were both so completely shocked. We just did stockings of candy and little toys this year, but we didn't at all feel like we missed anything. In fact, Natalie's favorite gift this year, with the exception of her cute baby doll which she is inseparable from now, is probably the container of bubbles that was in her stocking. It was a great Christmas. On Christmas Eve, the whole family went to church at Jersey Baptist (where they all go), and they had a nice service there. Natalie was all dressed up in her beautiful red dress and new black patent leather shoes. It was a candlelight service. I didn't hold a candle because I had Natalie in my arms, but Phil on one side of me and my sisters on the other had candles, and the whole service Natalie kept reaching for any candle (UNLIT!) within her reach. She would grab a candle and the then drop the one she already had. Then Phil, or Nan or Sarah, would pick up the dropped candle, causing Natalie to decide she wanted that one instead so she would grab it, and drop the one she had, etc etc, over and over again. It was pretty funny. And then toward the end of service she started to get antsy, so we broke out the trusty container of Cheerios. This kept her quiet for a few minutes, but then she grabbed the container herself and then promptly threw on on the ground in front of us. The lid popped off, spilling Cheerios ALL over the floor and into the purse of the lady sitting in front of us! She didn't mind though, she thought it was funny too. I told her she'd probably be finding Cheerios in her purse next summer. Christmas Day, Natalie wore her little Santa suit that Aunt Patti got her. It's red velvet with white "fur" trim on it, and it has a little hat too. For Christmas dinner, Natalie had a little bit of everything. She liked the cranberries the best.  I didn't think she would like them, but when I gave her a tiny taste, her eyes lit up and she wanted more more more! 

For New Year's Eve, we ended up having a little last minute party. The day before, Phil and I were sitting around and I asked what he wanted to do for New Year's Eve.  We had nothing planned, so we called a few friends and asked them if they had no plans either, if they would like to come over and do nothing with us. We actually ended up having a few different families who wanted to come over and do nothing with us! April and Brett and Addie, Allie and Jason Marshall, and our friends Dan and Ann Hardin and their 3 kids came over. We had quite a houseful once everyone got here! (Though we do have a small house!) :-)  Addie and Natalie played together, and the rest of us played a memorable game of Taboo.  I made some fruit and white chocolate fondue which burned, and also some chili cheese dip, which burned too. My fondue pots got too hot I guess! It was all still really good though, if you just avoided the black bits. Natalie and Addie seemed to have a good time the whole night also. They ate all kinds of treats too.  Overwhelmingly, Natalie's first holiday season was a completely success.  It was definitely a good age for her to have her first Christmas. I think any younger and her toys would have been baby toys still and she might have just played with paper or boxes more than anything else, but being 10 1/2 months, she really enjoyed herself with everything. Even Santa Clause didn't make her cry yet. We'll see about that next year! When she'll be almost TWO?!?!?!? (I'm still pretty much in denial that she will be one in a couple of weeks.)

Oh, speaking of that, we ARE planning a birthday party for her. I'm not sure we're going to be able to get out printed invitations this year, so I'll probably just be calling people in the next few days. It's going to be on Sunday, February 9th, (which will be her birthday!) probably at 3:00, at our house. I'm not sure how we're going to fit everyone into our living room, but we'll manage! I'm going to try to do an Elmo theme, because she just goes NUTS for Elmo. (When she sees him she points to him and says "ELL!" I think she'll really like an Elmo balloon and maybe a cake with him on it. I'm not going to do too much with decorations though, because I don't want to overwhelm her. Phil and I are looking for an Elmo doll (we found one that sings and talks which is nice but its mouth moves too, which scared Natalie, so that was out) and we also want to get her some kind of riding toy. All the good ones we've found seem to be at least $20 though, so I think we're just going to take a look at what Once Upon a Child has for those. We love that store!

Whew! That was a long entry! (I had a lot to catch up on though - and I still haven't talked about Thanksgiving!) 

January 10, 2002 - Hey, I'm finally back online! My computer forgot some settings so I haven't been able to do anything for the last few weeks. My mom is currently working on getting my real computer working, so I'm still on a temporary computer for a little longer, but at least I can get to the internet and get my email. Until I get my good computer though, I won't be able to really start enjoying my Christmas present, which was a digital camera! Yay! Once I can get that going (this computer is really old so it doesn't have a USB port) I'll be able to start posting a lot more pictures, and much quicker too! (Most anything is quicker than my usual rate, which is posting pictures that are two months old.) :) There has been so much happening in the last few weeks of being off of my journal, and I'm not going to get to all of it tonight because there has been so much. For tonight I thought I'd just start at the most recent and then I can work my way backward to Natalie's first Christmas. For that matter, I haven't even written about our Thanksgiving trip to Missouri yet either! Goodness. Well, one thing at a time. 

Yesterday Natalie became 11 months old. And we are not proud to say, we actually forgot! Today Phil and I were talking and I asked, "When is the ninth anyway? Sunday?" For the past couple weeks we've been talking about when it would be, but then yesterday just came and went and we didn't even realize it. We were pretty busy and Natalie and I still weren't feeling so great though (we've both had a really bad cold the last week or so) so that's our excuse.  I took her picture today for her 11 months, but this will be the first time that I didn't take a picture ON her birthday. Whoops!  At 11 months, Natalie is weighing about 25 pounds (Phil just weighed her on our home scale), is wearing 18 to 24 months (mostly 24 months) size clothes, and size 4 diapers. AND, she now has six (well, sort of 5 and a half) teeth! Two more started popping through on Monday, on the bottom. You'd think we would be starting to see patterns to her unhappy behavior right before a tooth pops out and know that's the reason why it's been a little difficult around here, but ohhh no. We still don't seem to make the connection until the tooth pops out and we say "ahhh, well THAT's the reason..."  Her lower left tooth is all the way out and moving up more and more every day, but the right side one is taking longer. It's out, but just the tip has broken through the gum so far, so she's been doing a lot of chewing and drooling all week, not to mention a little fever, spit ups, and general crankiness. Speaking of chewing, something else to note at 11 months is that Natalie is now pretty much completely off of baby food. If it's mushed or pureed, she typically doesn't want it. She tries to push my hand away if I come at her with a spoon, so she eats most things with the 5 pronged utensil that's attached to her wrist. (Her right one, by the way; she hasn't inherited my leftiness.) She still likes applesauce, but I have to convince her to try a bite when she sees something resembling baby food coming toward her mouth. Her favorite foods are pretty much whatever we are eating for our meal, but she especially likes green beans, peaches, chicken, mac and cheese, cheese chunks, bread, and CRANBERRIES! We gave her some cranberry sauce on Christmas, thinking she wouldn't like it, but she couldn't get enough. Last night we had some more and she wouldn't hardly let me have some for myself; every time I tried to take a bite she would get angry.  Oh, and that's something else she's doing now: when she is unhappy about something or doesn't get her way, she growls at us. It's pretty cute but I'm trying to discourage her from continuing that!  Life has definitely gotten more...active...around here since Natalie has begun crawling. I'm not trying to teach her to walk any time soon. She'll figure it out fast enough on her own I'm sure. We now live in a gated community - one gate blocking the living room off from the hallway, and a chair turned over on its side to discourage her from going into the kitchen to play with the kitties' food and water.  Right now her favorite toys are anything that she can push buttons on. She got lots of really cool toys for Christmas that make all kinds of noise (more on that when I get to Christmas in a later journal entry) but her current favorite thing to do is play with the TV buttons. We need to get one of those button guards. Right now we have it blocked off with a piece of plastic crate and tape, but it only slightly slows her down. With our TV, if you push the power button you may not get your picture back for another 5 or  6 hours, so we are really trying to keep her away from the TV buttons as much as possible!  She also is fascinated by the floor lamp in our living room right now. Things are definitely more active these days! My reflexes are improving! Other things at 11 months: Natalie says a few other words here and there but nothing consistent yet except mama. She points things out when you ask her to point to something, or when we read books, and she loves ducks. She says "quack" sometimes and makes little quack motions with her hands, which is really cute! 

Is is really possible that, one year ago yesterday, I went into labor and had to start taking the shaky pills? Is it really possible that Natalie will be one year old in a month? Nahh.. I must have been counting wrong. She can't be more than, oh, 5 or 6 months old yet...

Hopefully this computer won't forgot something else tonight so I canl post more this weekend. I'm so far behind...

By the way, Happy New Year, and YAY Buckeyes!