I'm still not sure exactly what was wrong, but I suspect maybe i accidently selected the Numbering button on the ribbon, and not the Numbered List button on the right. So I went back and unnumbered everything, then selected the numbered list style I had set up for all the numbers, and it seems to have worked. In the process I turned "show Paragraph Marks" on, and I found several "style separator" characters that didn't need to be there. And all in all it worked. Showing paragraph marks really makes it easier to see what's going on! I wouldn't have thought making those few little symbols visible would help as much as it has!