May 21, 2004
The first couple nights in her new bed didn't work out so well. The first night, she showed up in our room in the middle of the night (knocking down the gate to get here). The second night, before Phil and I went to bed, he went in to check on her, only to discover the girl out of her bed, sleeping on some pillows on the floor. We don't know if she rolled out of the bed or if she got out, because we didn't hear any thump.  But she seemed to be sleeping soundly, so we just let her continue sleeping there on the floor. Still, around 3 in the morning she showed up at our door again. So that next day I started calling around to the local Once Upon a Child stores, to find a toddler bed rail. We found one, and she's been sleeping perfectly fine in her new bed ever since (three nights in a row now). It's not the most solid thing in the world, because it's meant to go on a bed that has a solid base and not rails like Natalie's has, so we got some wooden boards up from the basement and put it under her mattress, to create a somewhat solid base, and then took white ribbon and tied the sides of the rail to the sides of her bed. It wouldn't stand up to much pressure, but that wasn't the point of the rail. She sleeps pretty much in the center of the bed, but I think she just likes having the "wall" there to make her feel more secure, like the walls of her crib. She's still calling the bed her "new crib". In the morning when she wakes up, she hasn't yet figured out that she can easily climb over the sides of this wall, so she still calls out to daddy or mama to come get her, like she did in the crib.  But just in case, I've been putting the gate up on the top of the stairs, because eventually she will figure out that she can get out of bed herself, and I don't want her accidentally stumbling down the stairs in the middle of the night. So, with the addition of a bed rail, we are now claiming success in the bed transition.

What we aren't claiming any success on this week is in potty training. Natalie has just decided she does NOT want to go in the potty right now, so I've decided I'm not going to force the issue. For the past couple days, when we've even started putting her on the potty, she's screamed "NOOO!" and arched her back up so she can't sit down at all, and then afterwards just keeps screaming and crying until she's dressed again. Once, she woke up dry in the morning (pretty common these days) and when I asked if she wanted to go potty she had a fit and ran away from me, into her closet where she likes to hide and read books. Five minutes later I came to check on her and her Pull Up was full of pee and she was asking for me to change her -- "New Snow White, mama." She's in a pretty negative phase right now - crying and throwing sudden fits for no apparent reason and just generally not acting like herself many times a day, and if I try to keep putting her on the potty or asking if she wants to go, I don't want this to become an issue that she rebels about, which would just cause more trouble than it's worth. As much as I'd like to have her out of diapers before this baby comes, I can't force her to go potty. So, after we finish this pack of Pull Ups, we're just going to go back to diapers for awhile (cheaper and more absorbent), until she seems to be more motivated to go potty again.  In the meantime we are just returning to what we did before, which is asking if she has to go potty whenever we go (and letting her come in with us - we said bye bye to potty privacy a long time ago) and if she wants to go, fine, if she doesn't, fine. She's done so good at going potty in the past, that I know she knows what to do, so it just has to be in her timing and by her will. She'll get potty trained when she's ready. 

Natalie's speech just continues to explode. She's speaking whole sentences now all the time. Unfortunately I seem to be understanding less, partly because for some reason she's suddenly over-enunciating and over-pronouncing words. She draws out each sound longer than she should, so it's hard to understand some of her words that a week ago I had no problem deciphering. 

The poor kid really is going through some major changes right now (new bed, just back from her first vacation, learning to use sentences, not to mention mom's lap disappearing) so we shouldn't be surprised at all that she has regressed on the potty!!!!

Speaking of my growing belly, Natalie is doing the cutest thing right now. One of her favorite phrases is "Miss you", which she does with big bear hugs. I ask her "Do you mean you love me?" and she answers "Yes. Miss you, mama." The past few days she's put her arms all the way around my middle, laid her cheek on my belly, and said "Miss you, baby." She also likes to pretend to pick the baby up from my belly, and she cradles the "baby" in her arms and rocks back and forth. I tell her, "thank you, it helps when you carry the baby for awhile!" She just beams and walks around with the "baby" in her arms for awhile, then she'll either put her invisible baby on the ground or back on my belly.

One more cute thing she's doing right now - we taught her "Eskimo kisses" recently, and the past few days she's really latched onto it. When we're hugging or cuddling, she looks at me with a giggle and a sparkle in her eyes, and says "es-toe tiss-es" and then waits until I rub noses with her. She loves it. 

I think my belly has expanded yet again in the last week. Suddenly I'm looking and feeling like there is NO way I still have just over three months to go. It's probably because I'm carrying this baby so different than Natalie - this one is all way out front. 

May 16, 2004
Phil is currently trying to get Natalie to go to bed. This might take a couple days for her to get used to, because tonight we set up her Big Girl Bed. It could also be a matter of too long of a nap this afternoon; she slept for about two hours, so we shouldn't be surprised that night-night is not going well tonight. She's excited about her bed, though. When we got it put together tonight and her mattress put on it, she laid right down and tucked herself in, and said "new crib!" She looked like such a big girl, laying in a real bed with her own pillow! My baby is getting so big!! Now we're just hoping she won't roll off in the middle of the night, which will wear the novelty off of the idea pretty quick for her, I'm sure. We're also curious to see if she stays in her bed now, or if we are going to have a little wanderer with newfound freedom. The kid has never even attempted to climb out of her crib, so this is all new to us. Until we know how she does, we've put a gate up in the entryway to her room. 

We found a toddler bed at a garage sale yesterday for only $10, and it was exactly what we had been looking for - white, simple bed frame, low to the ground. We asked Natalie this weekend what kind of big girl bed she wanted and she said "purple bed". It's currently not purple but that can be fixed as soon as we find some purple bed sheets. It was definitely time for her to be moved out of the crib, even if she hadn't attempted any escapes. Lately she's been referring to the crib more and more frequently as "Natalie's crib" and "Natalie's bed", so hopefully that idea can be pushed aside in the next couple months in time for the new arrival. We were going to take down the crib, but we decided just to leave it up and move it to a new location in her room, otherwise we'd just have to reassemble it again soon anyway. We put her new bed in the same location that the crib used to be, which I have heard helps with the transition. If having the crib still in there makes things difficult, then we'll have to take it down for a couple months, but hopefully not. I just realized, we need to stop calling that room "Natalie's room" too...

Uh oh, Phil just abandoned the go to sleep routine for a little while. Apparently Natalie is just still too wide awake. They are going downstairs to play for awhile. 

I had my doctor's appointment on Thursday morning. I gained just three pounds last month which is good since I gained a lot more than that last time. Now I'm back on track with having gained the total exact amount I am supposed to by this point, according to the pregnancy weight gain charts. I'm sure all the walking I did all over Florida helped that. No, still no ultrasound, so the baby remains a mystery. Everyone I tell this to is really surprised, because it's pretty standard now to do a mid-term ultrasound not necessarily to find out the sex, but to check that physical development is going well. It's actually still hard for me to think of this baby as a real-life baby that is really, actually going to be here in just a few months. Yes, I feel the baby kicking me (a LOT) so it's a physical reality already, but for some reason it was much easier for me to visualize having Natalie in our lives. I'm finding it much harder to imagine having a second child around the house than it was to imagine going from childlessness to having A child. Maybe if we could figure out some names for this kid it would help. Anyway, the appointment went well. I had my glucose tolerance test, and I haven't heard anything back from them yet so I'm assuming the results were good. I had my appointment first thing in the morning, and I'd only eaten a little granola bar on the way there, so when that sugary drink hit my system I got a major sugar rush and the baby kicked up a storm! If I don't hear anything otherwise, I'll get the complete blood results at my next appointment, which is in 3 weeks on June 3. After this appointment, I'll be starting my twice-monthly appointments already. This pregnancy is going SOOOO much faster than last time! Speaking of getting test results back, yesterday I got a letter in the mail from the St. Ann's ER department, saying they had attempted to get a hold of me concerning my foot x-rays, and that I should call them as soon as possible. Sounded a bit ominous. Turns out, they were just confirming what they already told me, which is that I have a fracture in my baby toe. It must be a worse break than the last time I did this, though, because over a week later it's still black and blue and hurting quite a lot. I'm just keeping it wrapped up and wearing my cute little blue sandal, which if nothing else is helping to prevent my clumsy self from whacking it again while it heals. Every time I've been lax about protecting my toe I seem to knock it into something which makes it hurt badly all over again. 

P.S. I just got Natalie to sleep in her bed finally. I laid down with her until she fell asleep. It might be a bed transition thing, but we think it could just be the long nap today.

May 17 (it took this long to finish up my Florida journal)

Natalie slept half the night in her new bed. Sometime in the night Phil heard a "thump" (I didn't hear it) and then we both heard her knock down the gate that was in her doorway. We don't know if she fell out or if she jumped out of bed, but it looks like she might take a little getting used to this idea.

Here, finally, is my journal of our trip to Florida, along with a few pictures. I didn't want to post all 100+ pictures that I took, because uploading photos on a 56K modem is excruciating. (That's also why I haven't uploaded new ClubPhoto albums for a long time; I haven't been over to my mom's to do it from her computer!)

May 12, 2004
Still working on my vacation journal. But I wanted to put this picture in here because they're so pretty and spring-y. Natalie and I picked them out of my garden yesterday. Last year I didn't want to pick them because I thought they'd last longer, but before I knew it they were dried up and yucky, so this year I decided to just take them inside so I could enjoy them more. And they are making my living room smell so nice!

Do you know how much a whole handful of these cost for a wedding bouquet? WAY too much, which surprised me when I looked into them after seeing them grow wild in my garden last year!

One thing to note today, we're re-establishing potty training now, since Natalie only went once on the potty our entire vacation, she really fell out of habit. We're stepping it up a notch, too. Up until now we've just let her go when she wanted to go, which had started to get pretty good, though never consistent. Starting today I've been getting her on the potty about once an hour. She's gone, on the potty anyway, twice today. The other times she has gone pee about five minutes or less each time after putting a new pull-up on, meaning I've gone through at least 6 "big girl panties" already today. Ugh. Natalie looks down at her pull up, sees that the stars have disappeared (indicating wetness) and says "new panty, momma." Now if I can just get her to let me know BEFORE she pees! Did I mention that her language really exploded on our vacation? Suddenly she's finally putting two words together ALL the time and even says some longer sentences. Her new favorite phrase, starting on our trip and used even more the past few days, is saying "silly daddy", "silly momma", "silly rah-rah", "silly PB", or who ever else she happens to think is acting silly at the moment. It's really cute. Just a few minutes ago she was trying to force-feed me some of her rice cake (corn cake actually) and I told her I didn't want any more. I said, "no thank you, little bean." She said "silly bean".

May 10, 2004
We got back from vacation to Florida this past weekend. We're taking a few days to recuperate! I plan to get the whole day-by-day story of the trip written up here in the next few days, but I wanted to get at least a little update written here in the meantime, since it's now been one of the longest stretches since Natalie was born that I haven't updated! Natalie did great on the trip - she got tired of the car and all the driving, but no more than the rest of us, and no more than we had expected. Orlando, New Smyrna, Key West, and Daytona were so awesome, but it was a LOT of driving!!!  We've given two different names to this trip - one is the Faith Vacation: God taught us so much about trusting in him for EVERYTHING on this trip! I'll get into all about that in what is sure to be an extended journal entry (I'll probably post it on its own page). The other name we gave this two week vacation was The Timeshare Tour Vacation. We ended up touring FIVE different timeshare companies, because we kept getting everything free! We had the main one that was part of the original package we bought, which got us the hotels and some breakfasts, but once we got down there we also signed up to view some more to get lots of free stuff. We got, in this order, just by listening to timeshare tours, two tickets to Magic Kingdom, two tickets to Universal and a dinner show called Arabian Nights (part of the original etour package but they messed some things up so we got the dinner theater tickets too), two tickets to Disney's Animal Kingdom, $70 in cash, and in Key West, we got tickets to the Key West Aquarium and $85 in gift certificates that we used at local restaurants for dinner and lunch. (One of which was the Japanese steakhouse Benihana.) And NO, we didn't buy a timeshare, though now we know the entire sales pitch for just about every variation of timeshare offer out there! After what was our fourth tour, the salesperson was "quizzing" me on how much of his spiel I remembered (he didn't know I'd already heard it three times before his) while we were riding in a golf cart to view the property. When I correctly answered a couple of his questions about how much a trade to any resort within the US and outside the US would cost, he was impressed and said "you're pretty smart!" Yeah, it only took me four times of hearing it to commit it to memory. One of the highlights of the trip was not even originally planned - my Aunt Jackie and Uncle Steve, as well as my Great Aunt Lucille, were all in the Daytona area the same time we were. I hadn't seen Aunt Lucille since my wedding (and she'd never met Natalie), and my aunt and uncle live in California so I don't get to spend much time with them either. So we had a little unexpected family reunion. We spent the first Saturday there together, and then after driving back up from Key West, we stayed a couple more days at Daytona with them (the first night at my cousin Stevi's apartment, and the second night with my aunt and uncle in their hotel room on the beach.) I was so glad we ended up doing this, because after driving up from Key West, we were already exhausted (getting stuck in Miami rush hour traffic didn't help!) and weren't quite ready to be heading into a long car trip back north. So they got to spend a lot of time with Natalie, and we got to be beach bums for a couple more days. By the time we left on Friday afternoon, we were well-rested and (almost) ready for the next 18 hours of driving. The only bad thing that happened the whole time was just about an hour before we left, I was out with Natalie on the room porch watching the beach for a bit longer, and when we started going back inside, I once again whacked my left baby toe on the side of a heavy chair. Ever since I broke it in college and it never quite healed right, I whack it all the time, probably at least once a month, but this time I knew it had been hit especially hard because it hurt to walk and my toe wouldn't bend at all. By the time we were driving back and we stopped for dinner in the northern part of Florida (I drove with just my right sandal on because my foot was hurting being crunched into the left one), my baby toe was all purple and the side of my foot was all swollen and black and blue too. When we got back on Saturday afternoon, we took a trip to St. Ann's because I wanted to make sure nothing was wrong with my foot (I know nothing much can be done for the toe). When they saw my foot they were concerned too, so I got some x-rays (belly and legs covered up by the big lead apron of course). Well, yes, my baby toe was indeed broken but fortunately no other bones in my foot were. So they just splinted up my baby toe, gave me an attractive sandal to wear, and we could go.  The doctor said that maybe at least this time the toe will heal up more correctly and I'll stop whacking it so often! Saturday was also Phil's 31st birthday, so he had a fun-filled day of driving, unpacking, going to the hospital, and then all of us crashing very hard and fast to bed that night!

I'll write up the day-by-day account this week. There is so much I want to get written down before I forget all about our first vacation with Natalie! We also have LOTS of pictures. Oh, and I also have another belly picture added, since another four weeks has gone by. This one was taken ON the beach, on Friday morning before the toe whacking incident. My next doctor's appointment is this Thursday morning.