It's been a while...

It's been a while...but I don't feel like there has been too much to tell! So I thought I would share some cute little Natalie stories for my memory's sake. After Thanksgiving, we as most others were putting up our Christmas tree so I was sharing with Natalie about Santa Claus (which on a different note I am having trouble balancing talking about Jesus' birthday and Santa Claus-I want her to grow up with the focus of Christmas being about Jesus and the gift that He is and how we should help others less fortunate-but unfortunately for myself I tend to lose sight of this all somewhat as well). Anyways, back to my story-I was telling her that Santa Claus is going to come to our house and leave her presents if she's been a good girl-and she flipped! For like 1-2 hours she kept obsessing that Santa would not come, that she was scared of Santa, and did not want any presents! Then, she started crying (not a whimper-a full out scared cry for like 5-10 minutes)..imagine if we took her to see Santa Claus at the mall! That would be pure torture for her. I thought that was cute-I know tons of kids are scared of seeing Santa etc but I didn't know kids were scared of Santa leaving her a present-I told her that Santa would leave the presents outside!

Just last night I started being a little firmer with the whole bed time thing-I know I have talked about it quite a bit on here-but to refresh since moving in the big girl bed she hasn't been as great of a sleeper and I have to be in her room or on the stairs for her to go to bed. I realized that since I do the whole bedtime thing the majority of the time and with a new baby that I might want to change this habit sooner rather than later-so last night I talked to her about being a big girl and that big girls go to sleep on their own in their own bed. (The past few nights she has been sneaking downstairs at 2 a.m. or so and giggling until I wake up-she says "I wanted to check on Mommy and Daddy". So instead of sitting on her floor for 45 minutes and creeping out of her room 2 to 3 times a night-last night I said it is time for bed and for Natalie to go to sleep by herself-what should happen if Natalie gets out of bed and doesn't listen to Mommy?" And she replied a spanking-and I said ok-if you get out of bed you will get a spanking...it worked like a charm! I couldn't believe it was that easy-after sitting in the dark on a the hard floor for so long each night. Even in the middle of the night when she woke up (last night she woke up from a bad dream about Caillou-her old favorite tv-show until like 2weeks ago-when suddenly she became afraid of it!) it worked. Hallelujah!

Yesterday, when we were in the car we were talking and I said Ok Nat! And she told me "No Mommy. My name is Natalie, not Nat!" I thought that was so funny/cute-it made me laugh for quite a while-she sounded so grown up too.

Her favorite things to do right now is dance, run, march-any verb she can think of around the room while listening to her music CD from her Kindermusik class. You can often find us doing this around and around our living room/kitchen several times a day. She also likes to sing and march to the Ants Go Marching-unfortunately the song has 10 verses but it's worth it seeing what a kick she gets out of it. At my Mom's house she has a book there to the song Skip to My Lou-and she does the same thing only this time reading the book, singing, running around, and telling anyone else who is there to join her! (Speaking of my Mom-she has lost over 40 lbs. these last few months and is looking great! I am soooooooo proud of her!!!!)

Just wanted to tell a few random stories-I know it wasn't very interesting but I am afraid I will forget these things if I don't write them somewhere. As for the baby-we still haven't decided on a name-we dont' ever really talk about it-I am almost 32 weeks along-not too much longer!!!