It's A Girl!

We found out last week that we are having a little girl! Well if it does turn out to be a boy then I feel sorry for him - you know what I mean.

Natalie is very excited about me having a girl - I think she would have been disappointed if it would have been a boy! Both Natalie and Tyler love to "kiss the baby" (kissing my tummy). They are both so sweet and I know they will do well once the baby is here.

So far all is well - except for the fact that I am getting fat, have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night then can't get back to sleep, and that I have a "lazy hip". Every time I get pregnant I get this pinched nerve in one of my hips and it drives me crazy. I have trouble bending over and occasionally my hip just kind of gives out on me. Yikes! But the baby is doing well - we haven't quite chosen a name yet. We just can't seem to find one we both like. Luckily we have a few months still to decide.

Here are some pictures of the little one!

Natalie Starts School

First off I must say that I cannot believe I have a child going to school. It is a little scary. I still feel like a kid myself and now I have a child that's going to school!! Natalie has been SOO excited to start school and did absolutely amazing on her first day. She has late kindergarten so she didn't have to be there until 12:50. But here's the catch - we are in the process of moving so I enrolled her for the kindergarten where our new house is. Its a half-hour away!!! We were supposed to be moved in by now but so many things kept happening so we aren't supposed to close until this Friday. So I have to drive a half-hour twice a day for at least a week to take my daughter to school. Ridiculous. Anyhow, Natalie didn't seem to mind. Last Friday we went to meet her teacher and when we got there she asked if I was going to drop her off and leave. I told her no, not until Monday. She seemed a little disappointed about that. So when we arrived to school on Monday she went right into her class with no problem! She turned around and waved and didn't look back. When we went to pick her up, she was so excited. Apparently the only thing she could remember about what she did on her first day was color. But I found out that she also met one-on-one with one of the teacher aids to go over numbers and letters to see where each of the kids stand. Natalie told me that she counted to 100 and the lady was very proud of her. I am so excited for her because Natalie is so smart and I know she will do very well.

Once we dropped Natalie off Tyler was immediately sad, saying "I miss Natalie." We hadn't even got to the car yet! The whole time she was gone Tyler kept saying that he missed her and couldn't wait to see her again. Those two are NEVER apart so it was really hard for him to be away from her. I thought it was adorable.

We brought our dog with us and left him in the car while we brought Natalie to her classroom. When we got back into the car, the dog just looked around like he knew someone was missing. Then he promptly sat in Natalies car seat and just looked at us. It was so funny! I think even HE missed her!

Natalie is so excited to go back to school. I am so proud of her (and myself - I didn't cry once!)!

But I have to admit something even cuter happened...Today was her second day of school and Andrew had to work (he took her first day of school off so he could be there with us). So when I got home with Natalie after school, Andrew called us at about 4:30. He doesn't usually call home while he is working so I asked what he needed - he said he just wanted to talk to Natalie. So they talked on the phone for a few minutes and she told him about her second day at school. I thought that I was the cutest thing ever. What a wonderful daddy!!!

Baseball Fan

Natalie loves to color. She also loves to spell. She is always asking me if she can color and asking me to spell things for her. She is very smart so I usually tell her to sound out the words to spell them. She is very good at it. On another note, whenever we watch the Cubs play baseball on TV the kids like to watch. Andrew has got them trained as to what the information means at the top of the screen - each team, their score, how many balls, strikes, and outs, which inning it is, and so on. Yesterday we were watching the Cubs play the Florida Marlins. At the top of the screen, it read: CUBS (their score) FLA (their score). Natalie knew right away which one the Cubs were but asked us what the other team was. She sounded it out just as it showed - I explained to her that FLA was short for Florida. She seemed happy enough and went on with her day.

This morning as we were getting ready for church, she asked if she could color. I told her yes so downstairs she went with some paper and markers. About 15 minutes later she comes upstairs and says, "Mommy, look what I wrote!" then proceeded to show me her paper:

Oh my sweet girl I couldn't help but laugh. What a memory these little kids have! She was very impressed with herself, as was I. Her daddy will be so proud of her - surely she will grow up to be a great baseball fan.