Many Mini Posts in One

Butt Scooting and First Steps?
Today, Natalie scooted on her butt across the living room to get to me. She would put her hands down to the side, like she was going to crawl, and then somehow move her butt forward. It was funny because I'd look up and then she'd be a little bit closer. It took her half an hour and I kept encouraging her, but she did it all on her own. I was all excited for Mike to come home and have him see her at the end of the coffee table. I was ready to tell him she had moved there all by herself, but, about two minutes before he got home, she tipped over backwards and whacked her head on the lower level of the coffee table. I had to pick her up to console her so there went that plan. That's the second time she's hit that part of the table and she's never hit the top part where the protective foam is. I guess I have to buy and apply more foam. Later, Mike had her standing up alone and caught her when she lost her balance after a couple seconds. Even though she was crabby for bed time, she seemed to be enjoying the game a little bit. Then, she decided to take two steps all on her own! I was so surprised I actually yelled something like "Oh my God!" in a high voice. I'm lucky I didn't scare her. I was also worried that she was going to fall flat on her face. Now that she has teeth, I worry about her breaking them or cutting her lips with them when she falls. Anyway, I'm not sure if this counts as her first steps or not. I feel kind of like it was luck, not ability.

Chippy Visitor
Natalie and I went on our walk late today so that I could try to repeat the miracle nap of last week in the crib. No such luck today, but she did sleep for a little bit. After nursing around three, we went out to walk. Natalie was awake and happy for almost the whole walk. I was tickling her feet (with and then without socks) and she was laughing a little and giving me that toothy grin. But, as we approached the end of the walk I could tell she was fading. I didn't want to struggle with putting her down in the crib and her not sleeping when she was so obviously tired, so I went down a dead end we've never done before and then looped around the first part of our walk again. This added about 20 minutes on so that she got to sleep some. When we finally arrived home, I sat on the steps and drank some water as usual, but when I looked over at my car I was very surprised to see a little visitor. Sitting on one of my front tires was a chipmunk! It was only about five feet away, and it looked a little scared. I'm not sure if it was there the whole time I was sitting there or if it had just arrived. Anyway, I felt bad staring at it because I thought it was afraid. Soon, there was a noise which I thought was a bird, but could have been the chipmunk, and he ran away.

Dr. Sears Breast Feeding
After seeing a Yahoo! Answer recommend this Dr. Sear's breast feeding book, I decided to get it through inter-library loan. I started reading it on Friday and wasn't that impressed. In fact, most of what I read in the first half wasn't overly comforting because there were a good number of things it made me feel I was doing wrong (like wearing too tight of a bra and breast pads with plastic liners and sticking to a feeding schedule now and not feeding ever three hours). But then today, I decided to keep reading it and read about night time feeding. This chapter made me feel really good. It was strongly accepted to nurse your baby to sleep, both at bed time and nap time, and past the age Natalie is currently at. That made me feel a lot better about our nap situation. What was funny was that Natalie was nursing and napping on me at the time I read it. Natalie has been doing this less and napping in her crib more, so I'm not as worried as I was about her napping once she's weaned, but at the same time it was nice to hear support for doing it. I also liked the section for fathers, but its too late for Mike to read it.

Swiffer Pole, Fitted Sheets, and Pillows
We have a water bed. Even after almost six years, I still find it odd. I mean, who has a water bed? I was skeptical if I would like it at first, but its really not so bad in terms of being water like. Its the kind with fibers inside to help stabilize it. But because it is a water bed, every once and a while it gets air bubbles (usually on Mike's side for some reason) and we have to burp the bed. We decided to do that tonight since we were finally going to change the sheets. (I've been meaning to get in a sheet changing routine for weeks now). To do this, we use the Swiffer pole and each stand on one side of the bed and pull this across the mattress. When I pulled out our clean sheets to put on the bed, I was ashamed of our fitted sheet. When we were at my parents' this past weekend, Mike said he could barely tell my mom's fitted sheet from her top sheet. Then I place this massive, crooked lump down on our bed. Oh, such fitted sheet folding shame! Upon inspecting our mattress pad and pillows, we've decided that we will get new pillows and a new pad. This should be a nice little errand for Natalie and I to run sometime this week.

Harry Potter and Summer Basketball
Every night we read some of Harry Potter to Natalie. We are trying to get through all seven books before the last movie is released. I've read all the books but number 7 at least twice, but it still has been amazing me how realistic the dialog is and the characters are. When Mike came home tonight, he said that he had finally heard back from the summer basketball league he emailed. He asked my permission to still join it even if it was two nights a week. I don't want to deny him something that will make him so happy, yet I am worried about the added stress it will put on me over the summer. I also worry about him not seeing Natalie and us not seeing each other. I said that we really have to make sure that I get weekly time away if he is going to be out doing this twice a week with me here at home. However, Mike being away two nights a week is two nights we can't read Harry Potter, making it still harder to reach our goal.