Natalie has been doing something that's really cute, although we try not to laugh too much because it could become really annoying. She likes to shake her head VIGOROUSLY to say "no".  We think she started doing this because it probably makes her feel a little dizzy, but now she knows it's cute so she does it a lot. She thinks it's funny when she shakes her head "no" after we say "yes" to her.  So far she doesn't use it to be defiant; that's when it will start being less cute! Oh, well, I guess she does use it like that on one occasion, but she just does it as part of a game and not necessarily to be contrary: we ask her for kisses and she laughs and shakes her head "no". Afterward she either then kisses us or we "steal" a kiss, which she also finds really funny. (She does still love to give lots of hugs and kisses most of the time though, so we know this is just a game.)  She also shakes her head "no" whenever she hears anyone say "no" - even when it is "know". Yesterday I tried explaining to her the concept of homonyms although I doubt she has grasped it yet (ha ha).  Speaking of being cute, she's learned a new sign, which actually her Aunt Sarah taught her. In addition to pointing to her head to tell us she's smart, now she points to the corner of her cheek to tell us she's cute. Lots of times she points to her cheek and then her head right after each other, especially when we tell her either that she's cute or that she's smart - she responds, "I'm cute AND smart!"  I think pretty soon we're going to need to come up with a sign for "I'm humble!"  I think now that she's getting walking down a lot better, she's going back to working on words. (She had a significant drop off in saying things for the last few weeks.)  Whenever we say something is good, she says "mmmm!" which is really cute. (She'll keep it up too, until you respond to her with, "yes, it is good!") She's signing for "hungry" and "more" a lot now, and the last couple days she's been saying "up" when she wants to be picked up, or as we go up the stairs, or when she sees something that's "up" too. Yesterday she pointed to some lights and said "up". I think she also may be trying to say "cup" too, but so far it just sounds the same as up.  She's getting really good at communicating what she wants or is interested in though, however it is she tries to get her point across. This morning she really, really wanted to go outside, but it was too cold out (it snowed last night - hopefully winter's last appearance; it's supposed to warm up again later this week). I took her to the front door that she kept pointing and crying out toward, and let her feel the cold on the screen door window. She must have figured it out because she stopped trying to get me to take her outside.  She's doing lots of other cute things that let me know she's beginning to really understand a lot, such as, a couple times last week when I said "yuck" to something, she started signing "duck". She was right, that sure sounds close. What a smart girl!  It seems like every day she surprises us by showing that she is learning and understanding something that I never would have expected her to.  Little things Natalie does just amazes us all the time.

March 27, 2003 - I love spring! It's been so nice lately, and Natalie and I have been really enjoying being outside. Every day, we've gone outside for a walk (and she is walking now too instead of "going for a walk" meaning just me!) and also playing with sidewalk chalk out front of our house. Natalie loves the chalk. She cries every time we start to clean it up to go back inside. I've also found lately that she enjoys gathering and collecting things. She tries to hold as many things in her little hands as will fit, and then starts giving me whatever she can't fit. She likes to color with at least two chalk colors at a time. And she loves to collect little rocks from outside. (Just like I used to do when I was little.) I just have to convince her that while it's okay to pick up and hold the rocks, they are NOT little nuggets for her to snack on...

We have new pictures posted at Club Photo. A lot of these are Natalie playing and walking around outside. Some of them are from Easton, some from Blendon Woods, and others are of Natalie playing with her chalk. (There are also a few pictures of my friend Jaime and her new fiancé Ben. They are mostly pictures taken so that they can be submitted along with forms requesting U.S. residency for him - he's Canadian for now). The pictures are posted at ClubPhoto.com. You need to "find it" using my email and "Gerth" to get the pictures, as usual. I tried to create a direct link but it didn't work for some reason.

Today Natalie and I did something really fun. We went to the zoo! And this time it wasn't freezing cold, and most of the animals were out too. We haven't been able to buy a membership yet, but we got a free pass in the mail yesterday, so I used it.  I've been wanting to go since it started getting warm. It was such a beautiful day to spend out there. Natalie especially liked the apes and monkeys (there were a couple baby and mom duos that were really cute) and of course, always, the ducks were a favorite. She also enjoyed the petting zoo for the first time! I think her favorite part was the aquarium though, because she got to walk around out of her stroller and press her face right up against the glass. Every time a fish, turtle or shark swam by, she looked at me and giggled.

That's all for now. Phil is working late at his office tonight so I have Natalie here beside me and she doesn't want to sit here any longer. Go see the new pictures! (No the new zoo pictures aren't up yet, they are still in my camera.)

March 18, 2003 - You think I would start to figure it out.  This weekend while we were in Cleveland for my sister's thesis presentation (she did a really great job by the way) Natalie was unhappy a lot and just wasn't her normal self. She was fussy during meals, didn't want to eat any solid foods at all (breastfeeding constantly), and she had many diarrhea diapers. I just figured, well, she's still getting over whatever it was she was dealing with last week. I thought it was strange that she would still be having bad diapers though. Then on the way home on Sunday night, we all came to the realization that maybe, just perhaps, it was teething. Well, duh.  Yesterday I felt the right top molar, and today the left top molar popped through. I think she's still working on molars on the bottom too; they haven't broken skin yet but you can see them pushing up. She's still due to have two more teeth on the top too. Before the two top molars poked through this week, all she had were the two center teeth. Typically, the two next to those two come in next, just like on the bottom, but they show no sign of being around yet. So she could potentially be working on six teeth all at the same time. No wonder she had such a difficult weekend. It was hard too, because since we were in Cleveland we ate out for every meal, which was when she shrieked and screamed the most. She was very quiet the whole time we were at Nan's college for the presentations though. We just sat out in the lobby with her the whole time, until my sister's turn (she was second to last), when I went in to the room to listen and Phil took Natalie by himself. Natalie did have one really good time this weekend though - she went swimming for the first time! The hotel my mom got for us had a pool. We brought her bathing suit with us (really cute - just pink and orange bottoms) so she got to go in! We 'swam' for about a half hour and she giggled the whole time. She even kicked around a few times in our arms too. She especially liked splashing with her arms. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera (even though I had even charged up my extra battery just for the trip!!) so we didn't get any pictures. (Just like I forgot to take a single picture the entire nine days that Julie was here! I felt like smacking myself!)  

It's been so nice here the last few days! We even played outside yesterday and today. Since we pretty much missed the entire spring last year with Natalie being a newborn (with reflux), we are really enjoying being out of the house now!

March 14, 2003- Well, now I know what was wrong with Natalie the other day. She wasn't having a meltdown the other night for no reason. She was starting to feel really bad. At about 4:00 that night, the power went out (as it does really often, for no apparent reason, here in Gahanna). I woke up to hear Natalie coughing and then a little crying. We were going to go in to her, but then we didn't hear anything else, and we realized that the power had just gone out, so I figured that maybe the sudden lack of lights had just startled her to wake her up. I laid in bed but I couldn't fall back asleep, because I just kept thinking there was something not right but I had no idea what. About 20 minutes later, Natalie woke up coughing and crying again, and this time I could tell it sounded really wet. Phil went into her room to get her, and yep, she had vomited all over her bed. We got her cleaned up and then realized that she had diarrhea too. Poor girl! We put a waterproof pad down on our bed and she spent the rest of the night with us. She was okay the rest of the night, until about 8:30, when she woke up with throw up and diarrhea again, and that continued all of Wednesday. Yesterday, she didn't have any more vomit but she continued to have more diarrhea, and today so far she has been doing much better (just pee diapers) but she still doesn't have an appetite for anything other than breast milk. We keep trying to feed her mild foods but she has barely touched anything.  She really just wants to be held a lot still.  I know she's hungry because she's wanting to nurse all the time, but she just doesn't have any interest in solid foods. Hopefully she'll be back to feeling good by tomorrow, because our whole family is driving up to Cleveland for the whole weekend. (My older sister is defending her master's thesis this weekend and we're all going for support.) We did get out last night to get some groceries, and she seemed to do okay on that short trip. We're just going to bring a few extra changes of clothes this weekend because she's been going through them faster than she did as a newborn (explosive diapers!)  I'm trying to give her Pedialyte, but she doesn't have much interest in that either (though the popsicles are more of a hit because, of course, she's teething right now too). I hope she is starting to feel better. It's been a rough week!  This is pretty much the first time she's been sick like this though, so I really can't complain; it's taken a little over a year to have the inevitable mommy initiation of being vomited and pooped on all night and day! (Though I certainly did get enough of that first part, from her reflux, in her first six months!)  

March 11, 2003 - Little Bean is beginning to acquire yet another nickname: little miss cling wrap. We've decided that ever since birth up to now, Natalie's primary "love language" has been physical touch. It's from a series of books we've read called "The Five Love Languages", "The 5...of Children", and my most recent read, "The 5...of God. The basic premise of these books is that every single person has a way of understanding love that they most easily receive (and also give -most of the time it's the same one but not always). When you discover what someone's primary love language is, you should continue to "speak" all five but make sure you really fill them up on their primary, otherwise they won't really feel completely filled up with love no matter what else you do or say. (The five are physical touch, quality time, gifts, words of affirmation, and acts of service. Everyone falls into one of these categories, even if they can't name it outright. The books really help you to identify yours.) It's been really helpful in our marriage; we learned early on that both Phil and I have quality time as our primary love language; this is something that has actually been quite a challenge for us to learn to deal with, having a baby. One of the things about the children's love languages is that they can change as the child gets older (adults can change sometimes too), so up until parents begin to get indications of the way their child best understands their love, parents are encouraged to "speak" all 5 languages of love equally to their child. Up until recently, Phil and I were thinking that maybe Natalie's was quality time just like ours, because she wants to be with us so much. This is something we have noticed since the day she was born, when we'd read how some babies can go right to sleep after eating, Natalie just always wanted to be held. There were so many times the first year that I thought, sometimes with exasperation, Natalie would probably be completely happy if I could just hold and/or nurse her 24 hours a day, nonstop. This hasn't changed one bit through the year, and it just seems to be getting more so as she becomes more independent: she has to draw back in and be held all the time, followed by brief bursts of activity and play...followed quickly after by more of momma's (and often none other's) arms. That's when it hit us; Natalie wants to spend time with us but especially she wants to be IN arms, being held and touched. She loves to hug and kiss even her doll baby. At least for now, she's most definitely a physical touch person. Just knowing this has actually helped us in the last few days. Instead of getting frustrated or exasperated with her extra neediness to be held, we just know that right now she needs a few extra fill-ups of being held to get her through whatever it is she's dealing with. Last night, she did sleep (thankfully) the whole night through in her crib, but I was really surprised that she did. Yesterday, after getting her to sleep in my arms for a nap, I put her down on her nap quilt on the living room floor. (Lately I've given up, for the time being, the idea of putting her down for a nap in her crib; she just won't go to sleep that way.) She continued sleeping on the floor for all of about five minutes, then she started waking up and making pre-crying sounds. So I moved over to the chair next to where she was sleeping and I called out, "it's okay, Natalie. Mommy's right here." She got up on her hands and knees, and continuing to make sad little noises but not even opening her eyes once, she crawled toward my voice and pulled up on my lap. I picked her up and cradled her in my arms, and she fell right back sound asleep. For the past several days she's been this way, just wanting to be held even more than usual.

Tonight I think we had our first official tantrum, too. Phil was downstairs doing laundry and I was playing on the floor with Natalie. (This time she was playing with one hand and had her other hand somewhere on me the entire time.) She was playing with her shopping cart, putting toys in and taking them out of the basket, when suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, she just started whimpering and then full blown crying, thrashing around and basically just looking all around pathetic. She kept going back and forth between hugging me tightly and then pushing me away, sobbing all the while. Phil came back upstairs and asked if I knew what was wrong. No, I still have no idea what it was all about. Maybe it's teeth trying to push through. We took her upstairs to her bath (Phil took her up and she was still squirming and crying) but by the time we got her undressed and in her bath, it was all forgotten about. Who knows!

Her walking continues to improve. Yesterday evening (while my mom was here and we had out the video camera to tape Natalie walking) she walked all the way across the living room floor. Meanwhile my walking is getting worse. My ankle, from my fall way back in October, seems to be hurting worse lately. It's starting to concern me; shouldn't injuries get better with time?

March 8, 2003 - Okay, I take back what I said yesterday. She's walking, it's true. Officially, walking a day before she is 13 months, and exactly one month after she took her first step. (Which was at her birthday party.) Later last night and then today, she really started moving around more. She's still crawling too, or sometimes that half-crawl, half-walk step, but she's also getting from place to place on two feet. We figured, that's considered walking: when she doesn't just shuffle around like she's dancing in place, but when she walks just to get from point A to point B. She's doing that now! And she could continue to crawl sometimes for who knows how long, anyway. It's so cute to watch her walk, all stiff-legged, with her toes digging in for traction. Maybe now she can start wearing more of her pants too, the ones that she hasn't been able to wear because they would get pulled down when she crawled. 

I don't know if this is related to her starting to walk or not (I've read things like this can happen right after babies learn a big new skill like walking) but last night was really rough. Natalie didn't want to go to sleep on her own at ALL. Every time we put her, sound asleep, into her crib, she instantly woke up screaming. Even when we tried to just put her between us in bed, it was the same thing. Screaming, crying fits. The only way she would sleep last night was in my arms or somehow otherwise laying across my body. She even refused Daddy's arms. She just wanted momma. So needless to say, I slept very lightly, and all twisted up uncomfortably last night, when I did get to sleep! Hopefully tonight she is tired enough to conk out early! (Early being a relative term; I'm writing this at 9:45 pm.) :-)

March 7, 2003 - Today has been a big day! This morning, first thing, Natalie pointed right to my bunny slippers (which she knows I keep at the top of my closet), and she said "Bun bun!" and then she looked at me and smiled. Later in the morning, Natalie walked 6 steps before falling back down to crawl! Is this considered walking now, or not? Probably not yet, because she's only taking small, shuffling steps and then she goes back to crawling. She's doing so good though. Phil said, "that's walking - she's walking better than some elderly people who shuffle!" :)  Then right before lunch, Natalie was playing with her blocks and she stacked up four on each other! She's been working on doing this for a couple weeks, but I hadn't seen her successfully stack any, let alone four. I was so proud.

Julie is still here with us, until Sunday after church when we'll drive her back to Dayton. It's been really nice having her here, but we haven't been able to do too much because Natalie hasn't felt so well. On Monday we took her to get some immunization shots and they seemed to affect her more than other times. I don't know why, she didn't get any shots she hadn't gotten before. Maybe she was just starting to not feel well anyway; she seems fine in other ways (no runny nose or cough) but she's had *really* yucky, goopy eyes, even sealed shut when she's woken up in the morning (poor thing, it's awful to see her not be able to open her eyes). And she hasn't slept so well either; she's been hard to get to sleep and she has only napped a couple times this week. (That could be related just to being out of sorts with a visitor here though, I don't know.)  I was getting concerned that she had conjunctivitis -pink eye- , but I called her doctor today and they said since it was just goopy eyes and her eyes themselves weren't pink or discolored, that it's probably just a cold "in her eyes" (didn't know that was possible) and all we need to do is wipe her eyes with a warm washcloth pretty often. I hope she feels better soon! Just after her eyes had stopped being so drippy as they had been all her life so far, now she gets a cold stuck in her eyes! :)

One more thing I wanted to note- we got Natalie her first pair of walking shoes yesterday. She's had other shoes of course, but these are made specifically for walkers. And they are pink and white little tennis shoes, with butterflies, sunshines, and flowers on them. (Oh so Spring-y, now where's spring?) She's already a size 5! Oh, and they are ties, so hopefully they won't be pulled off as fast as her velcro shoes were. :)

Natalie will be 13 months on Sunday!!! Maybe she'll start walking for real in the next couple days. Aunt Julie must have that effect on her; she started crawling on Thanksgiving day in order to join in her game of chess. (Oh, and by the way, my mom wanted to correct me that I walked at 14 months, not 13 months like I thought. It looks like Natalie is going to beat me.)

March 2, 2003 - I've been meaning to add something. As of right now, Natalie is such a good eater and I am so happy about this. I'm probably among the world's most pickiest eaters. I still don't like a lot of "grown up" foods - just give me plain, basic foods, nothing fancy, and I'm pretty happy. Unless it has carrots, mushrooms, onions...any kind of food at all that once lived in the sea...okay, well the list is pretty big of things I don't like. I don't like it that I'm this way; it sometimes makes it hard to eat and fancy -grown up- restaurants, but I just am.  I asked Phil today if he was a picky eater when he was a kid and he said he remembers eating just about anything. So far it seems this is how Natalie is. She just gobbles up whatever I put on her tray. I'm not expecting this to last forever, but for now it sure is nice to be able to cook whatever for dinner and not have to worry about making much special for her to eat. And since she doesn't eat any baby foods (I think she probably ate mushy baby foods for all of about three weeks) it's been a lot cheaper too, because I just give her what I make for us. Her favorite things right now seem to be broccoli and green beans. I can put a whole buffet full of other foods on her plate including fruit dices and pieces of string cheese (other things she loves) and she will still devour the green stuff first. This kid may not have been the easiest baby in other ways (such as, she hasn't seemed to have the need of sleep) but as for feeding, she's been very easy and also very inexpensive. I don't know how we would have made it through the first year if we would have had to buy formula (we never bought a single can - the free samples from the hospital got us through the whole year) and we probably didn't buy more than 15 jars of baby food either. She just didn't like eating that. She always has wanted chunky food. A friend of mine from church told me that her son was just the opposite - up until close to age two he refused to eat anything if it had the slightest lump in it, so her food masher was a constant companion.  So anyway, I just wanted to say Thanks, Natalie. I'm glad you're not a picky eater like your mom, and I'm going to try to encourage you to continue to eat like your daddy. I've even cooked carrots for her a couple of times. But I still won't ever cook fish in my house. Sorry, Phil.

We have new VERY CUTE pictures! These ones are posted at Ofoto instead of Club Photo (they have a good sale right now). They are all of after-birthday February, including the snow we had a couple weeks ago. There are quite a few pictures of black and white "baby parts" too; I took these pictures for a scrapbook page I am going to do. Click here to see the new pictures!

March 1, 2003 - March, already? (I had to say it.)

Well, we got our websites back up after a couple weeks without them. (Not only mine, but my mom's and Phil's as well.) I've been keeping up with my journal anyway though, so if you missed anything, you can read the second half of February by going to my journal archive link, above.

We've had an exciting couple of days. On Thursday, we went to visit friends of ours who are moving to Ft. Knox (he's in the military) in a couple months. We'll miss them!  We also found out that Phil's sister Julie would be coming to visit us this week for her spring break. (She goes to college at Evangel in Missouri, the same place Phil went.) We thought, originally, that she would be coming on Sunday, but instead she came to Ohio yesterday. The girl she drove with lived in Dayton, so we drove out there to pick her up last night. Some other friends of ours, Gary and Marcia Kirchhofer, who we hadn't seen since their oldest of two kids, Hannah, was four weeks old (she's three now) recently moved out to the Dayton area from Tennessee, so we decided to stop by and see them as well. The plan was to go visit the Kirchhofers first, and then pick up Julie when they got into town at around 10 pm. The girl that drove must have driven at least 80 the entire way to Ohio with no stops, because they got into Dayton at about 7:45. (As a reference, it took us 12 hours to drive from Springfield to home at Thanksgiving. They LEFT Springfield at about 10:15 am. They must have flew!)  So, halfway to Dayton, we called our friends and told them about the change of plans. We said we'd be there around 8:30 after we picked up Julie. Well, after picking up Julie, we got lost. Really lost. We must have been just a few miles from Indiana, because we were way out in the middle of nowhere. Two hours and one pit stop at McDonalds later (because none of us, least of all Natalie, could handle any more time in the car just then) we managed to find our convoluted way to the Kirchhofer's house. At close to 10:30. We thought that their house must be way out in the middle of nowhere, but actually it was very close to Dayton, which we discovered when we drove home and DIDN'T get lost. We had just made a wrong turn very early on and then continued going the wrong way for about 20 more minutes, so we really were way far away. What we thought would be a few hours of driving, max (we didn't even bother to bring many toys since it wasn't going to be long) ended up being six hours of driving last night. Natalie did so well though, considering! She just zonked out on the way home (before we had barely left their driveway). It was worth it though; we hadn't seen our friends in so long. The last time I had seen Hannah, I was holding her in my arms at Marcia's baby shower (Hannah came 6 weeks early), and that made me think that maybe I could do this mommy thing... 

Aunt Julie is going to be here all week, so we will be doing all kinds of fun things. The last time Julie came to visit, it was the day after Natalie and I fell down the driveway, so all we did that week was sit on the couch with my foot up. Julie was ever so helpful though! :-)  

The past couple of days, Natalie has gotten one of her signs mixed up. We don't know how it happened, but now whenever we say "you're smart!", instead of tapping her forehead, she points to her nose. I think she got confused because lately we've been playing a lot of "where's your nose, where's your ears, etc etc" and then we say "oh, you're so SMART" after she points to the right thing. It's pretty cute though; right now she seems to really have a fascination with her nose. :-)