Evie's First Christmas

I've been trying to write this post for a few days, but Evie is keeping things hopping around here, what with the screaming and not napping. So, I'm lumping in some snippets from the past few days along with the promised pictures from Christmas.

• We just got home from seeing a movie; yes, we left Evie with a babysitter for the first time! The babysitter is one of my former students who lives nearby and has been our trusted dogsitter for a couple of years. She also works in our church nursery. A perfect first babysitter for Evie and she did a great job. We came home to a sleeping baby; what more can we ask?
• We are having lunch with R & G on Saturday and when I called G yesterday to set it up he mentioned that he and R might be getting married in the next week. Huh? Wow.
• Evie is now sleeping sans-swaddling, ever since Christmas night. It was very warm in San Antonio and my dad refused to turn on the AC. (Dad, if you're reading this, I love you anyhow.) I couldn't wrap up Evie in her miracle blanket in a bedroom that was almost 80 degrees! She slept through the night without it and hasn't worn it since. She has, however, acquired the nickname "Thumper" due to her new habit of kicking loudly and forcefully at the mattress and sides of her crib/bassinet while staying sound asleep.
• She is now adept at rolling from her stomach to her back, both directions, while in tummy time. She's also getting more expert at her mini-pushup, which directly contributes to the aforementioned rolling.
• My parents took me to San Antonio's Riverwalk when I was a baby, and Evie got to visit as a baby on the 26th. It was crowded, but we had fun doing a bit of shopping and sharing a pitcher of margaritas while my nephew, C, watched ducks in the river. While we were there, Evie got to ride in her Baby B*jorn facing out for the first time!
• Speaking of the warmth in SA over Christmas, a couple of days it was so nice that I took Evie outside and we just sat and enjoyed the breeze as I talked to her about grass, leaves, clouds and cars. It made me eager for springtime with her, in a few months.
• Evie has now traveled almost the entire length of I-35. The only parts she hasn't been on are the section stretching north from Albert Lea to Duluth and the section stretching south of San Antonio to Mexico.

On to the photos...

J's dad visited us before we left for San Antonio; I love this picture!

Evie's 3 month e-mail from Baby*Center said she would start attaching to comfort objects at this age, so we've started trying to have her snuggle this doll from J's mom. But, my SIDS paranoia keeps me from putting it in her crib. No flash so that I wouldn't wake her:

At the same time J's dad was visiting, Evie also got to meet J's brother and his wife for the first time...Evie's aunt and uncle! Here is C, Evie's beautiful auntie (I didn't just say that because she reads the blog):

We didn't get a picture of J's brother with Evie, but they'll be back through here on their way to Austin before the next semester begins, so we'll capture one this weekend.

On the way to SA, we stopped in Dallas overnight and stayed at the Palomar hotel. J travels so much for business that he gets free hotel stays, so we slept in a two room suite for $0. Here is Evie checking out the couch in the front room (which became her changing table):

And here she is enjoying some tummy time on the luxurious king-sized bed:

Once we arrived in SA, the next day, she was eager for cuddle time with Grandpa:

And was very sleepy on Christmas morning after J fed her at 6 AM:

But eventually she woke up and posed for photos...

Here she is in Christmas pajamas (from Grandma):

Reading a new book with J:

Looking super cute for Christmas dinner in a new outfit from her godparents:

The promised "4 Generations" photo of me, Evie, Great-Grandma and Grandma:

My dad is so tall that the flash didn't reach his face very well, but I love this photo because Evie looks like a caroling angel:

Another photo with Great-Grandma, who was out of practice holding wiggly 3-month-olds:

We had a lot more great pictures, but they aren't on my camera, so I'll update this post with more pictures once my cyber-slacker relatives upload them to Snap*fish (hint, hint). :)

Cousin Portraits

I'm working on a post about Christmas, but first, here are some portraits we had done at JCP while we were in San Antonio. The little cutie boy is my 18-month-old nephew, C. We tried to get pictures of the two of them together, but, as you can imagine, doing so is difficult! This is the best photo taken during the whole session: Isn't he adorable?!

Here are a series of shots of Evie and C together, none of which are that great:

Here we were telling him to hold her hand:

Something quite interesting was apparently happening off to the right:

And in this one C was smiling at me instead of the camera:

Awwwww...but not worth ordering:

Creepy, no? --- "Give me candy or I will crush this baby's skull!" We were telling him to put his hands on her shoulders or on the back of the chair, I think:

A smile! And somehow her face/head looks completely square:

I love this one, but C's mom and my mom don't like it because you can't see C very well:

Meeting Jessica, John and Colt!

Surprise! Jessica and I plotted to meet up for lunch today, since J and I were driving down I-35 to San Antonio and back for Christmas, and they live along the route. We ate at Apple*bees and chatted about babies, adoption, etc. It was a lot of fun and Colt is even more adorable in person, with his sweet little newborn wrinkles, teeny hands and cuddly tininess. He was perfect through it all, since he'd just eaten, but Evie put on a little show toward the end and I'm sure some of our fellow diners were wishing I would just make her be quiet already. I did get her to sleep so that she's not crying in the picture!

Which one of us looks like a cliche "new mom?" Me in all of my traveling grunginess or Jessica, all put together and looking cute, having just gone to church? That's what I thought.

Thanks, Jessica, John and Colt, for meeting us. It is so fun to turn online friends into real-life friends!

So, we got home tonight at about 9 PM and we're unpacking while Evie is sleeping soundly, back in her crib. Just in time...we were running out of bottles, burp cloths, bibs and Evie's patience.

Loot

Grandma's been out supporting the economy.

Merry Christmas

Tagged: Seven Random Facts

Kischa tagged me for a meme, so here goes:

Seven Random Things about Me

• I have bad feet: plantar fasciitis, which I supposedly inherited from my aunts, on my dad's side. I used to wear shoe inserts to help with the pain, but then I dicovered Crocs and now almost exclusively wear them. Crocs = no pain. Supposedly, doctors say they aren't good for PF, but then why do my feet feel good? I have twelve pairs of Crocs (different styles, not just different colors of the "Beach" style).


• I once wrote a 10-page paper for a modern poetry course about poems that describe grasshoppers. Seriously. (the poets were William Carlos Williams and e. e. cummings)


• One time when I was a baby I really did sleep in a drawer, just like that poor kid on The Simpsons.


• I didn't change my last name when I married J because he and I have the same last name. No relation, we checked.


• J and I honeymooned at Hedonism II in Jamaica.


• Did anyone watch that show called Grease: You're the One that I Want! on NBC last year? Laura Osnes, who won the role of Sandy, is now my cousin-in-law. She married J's cousin right after she won, and we were at the wedding. It was beautiful, but crowded. You know how at weddings you can expect maybe 70% of those invited to actually show up? Well, if you've just won a reality show then 100% show up and there isn't room to dance.


• I've never broken a bone (knock on wood).

Three Months!

Thanks to Kimberly for my new blog design, Merry Christmas to me!

Yesterday Evie was 3 months old and also 13 weeks old. She went to the doctor in the morning for the last two "2 month" vaccines: Pc and Hib. She cried at the sticks, but not as hard as she did during her 2 month visit. The nurse didn't charge us a copay for this visit, I suppose thinking of it as an extension of her 2 month appointment. Thus, I had to ask for them to weigh her: 13 lbs. and 1.5 oz. I looked it up on a growth chart and she appears to be staying in the 75th percentile for weight. We didn't get a height, and it's hard to measure her ourselves, but she's definitely grown in the past month. She's now outgrown 3 month clothes when in a disposable diaper and her 3-6 month sleepers are starting to get too short for her huge nighttime cloth diaper.

I thought it was hilarious that the nurse gave Evie cute band-aids, since she's too little to care. Anyhow, I wanted to capture the cuteness, so here are her poor little thighs after her appointment: We put Evie back into her "birthday" diaper and took more pictures, and video! If I can manage it, I'm going to try to start "interviewing" Evie in her milestone diaper each month. Wish me luck keeping up with that. The video follows the pictures.

Two weeks old:

One month old:

Two months old:

Three months old!
And a bonus 3 month photo because I love this one!

Finally, the video. It's pretty long, and she really gets going with the "talking" toward the middle and second half, so you may want to skip the first half if you don't have time for 8 minutes of Evie interview. :)

Here is a cute picture of Evie with our friend Becca's daughter, earlier this month. Becca is the photographer who did Evie's newborn portraits. Her daughter is soooo gorgeous, don't you think? Yes, well she was on the cover of Kansas City Parent magazine a couple of months ago. It was in our hospital room when Evie was born! Click here, it's the September 2008 issue.

Here's a picture of Evie that Becca captured while she was over for dinner. Evie is thinking "Crap, Mama let the paparazzi lady in the house, again."

But Becca also managed to capture a smile, which I find very hard to do:

She also captured this adorable picture of "the smile behind the paci." Evie gives these to me all the time, and I love them.

In case anyone is interested in Evie's birthmark, here's what it looks like these days:

It is still small and located in a place where she can hide it easily, in case it takes a few years to disappear. (If you're disoriented, the green is her shirt and the blue is her pants; the pink with hearts is my pajamas, at 2 in the afternoon.) I took this picture while Evie was sleeping in my arms, so here is the face shot of that, with no flash so that I didn't wake her up:If I ever leave a really short comment on your blog, or haven't commented in awhile, it's because this is what my left hand is occupied with. Look at those eyelashes!

I've already written a lot about this month in this post from Dec 8, but here are a some things that I can add from the past couple of weeks:

• Evie now turns to look at loud noises (a milestone), and generally reacts more strongly to them than she did as a newborn. When she hears a very low, very high, very sharp, very loud or new sound, she gets a concerned look on her face: pursed lips, knit brow, wide eyes. Super cute.


• She is now adept at rolling to her right side. When on her back, she frequently brings both legs together, lifts them into the air perpendicular to the floor and then lets them drop to the right, bringing her torso with them. Sometimes she will continue to kick and will end up on her back again. Other times she'll start to fuss, "asking" us to right her. Frequently she'll just bring her hands to her mouth and suck them happily, enjoying the new view. Rolling practice makes changing her a bit more of a wrestling match at times; but nothing compared to what it will be in a few months, I'm sure!


• She's just generally acting much more like a playful baby. Today she was practicing pulling her wubbanub out of her mouth and then trying to put it back in, and tonight as I was changing her she pulled it out and started sucking on the side of the pacifier, instead of the nipple. It is no longer just a pacifier, it is a toy, too. About a week ago I was holding her on my lap and writing an e-mail and noticed that she was staring, hard, at my fingers as they pushed the keys. Not surprising, really, since I type very quickly (80 wpm) and my students used to look over at me when I was typing too, because I can make such a racket when I really get going. Because she was so fascinated, I saved my e-mail and then pulled the keyboard into her lap. She happily banged on it for over five minutes before she got bored. It was adorable, and I'm thinking we should find an old keyboard that she can have as a toy. In a similar vein, yesterday I had her in my lap as J and I were finishing dinner, and I noticed her looking intently at the table cloth. I scooted forward so that she could reach it, and she spent a few minutes stroking, patting and scratching at it (it is blue and white with a snowflake pattern). I love that a tablecloth can entertain her; for J and I, watching her play was entertainment for us!
  
• Occasionally she has smiled at her bottle as we are preparing it or carrying it toward her for a feeding. She's not just smiling, she's smiling at the bottle. :)
  
• Amazingly, wonderfully, I can (sometimes) calm her with my voice and/or face, without a touch or cuddle. I discovered this last week when J was away on business and I had come back from aerobics desperately needing a shower. I got Evie asleep in a bouncy seat in the bathroom and hopped into the shower. Toward the end, she woke up and began fussing. All I had to do was pop my head around the curtain and coo at her and she quieted down and let me finish shaving my legs. Yay!
  
• Before, she only looked at windows at night, when they act as mirrors. Now she will sometimes look out during the day, and seems interested in what she sees.
  
• I've tried a few baby games with her, like peek-a-boo and some songs with hand motions; she doesn't smile at them, yet, but they do hold her attention.
  
• She likes to listen to music, whether it is the "seasonal" music station on cable, our church band or the singing star in her play gym. I actually found myself on Amazon the other day, looking up customer reviews of musical toys. This was huge for me, because I swore up and down before Evie was born that we wouldn't be one of those families with loud, annoying toys. I told family and friends that we only wanted "quiet, old-fashioned" toys, nothing with sound, lights and batteries. My intentions were good, but I underestimated the importance of the fact that babies like sound, lights, music and things that need batteries. Oh, well. I'm still holding firm on no TV, videos, baby internet sites, baby video games and absolutely no CDs of kiddie songs with high pitched children's voices singing them. Those are so annoying! I know, I know, but kids like them. Ask me two years from now and I'll probably have "Wee Sing Silly Songs" on repeat in my car.
  
• Ways to get Evie to smile/giggle: tickle her tummy, blow raspberries on her tummy, cheeks or feet, play with her feet or legs, grab her hands/wrists and lift her torso gently up and down, grab her feet and lift her lower half gently up and down, do big movements with your body in front of her (she smiles as she watches me at baby aerobics and baby yoga), take her to see Rabbit, turn on her singing star, or simply sit facing her at eye level and smile and talk to her.
  
• She also really likes it when I kiss her hands, or pretend to eat them, and a few times when I've been holding her in my arms she has thrust her hand(s) toward my face so that I will kiss them. I believe it's the first game she's made up!
  
• She does the cutest flirty smile and I will try to capture it on camera or video sometime, but it's very difficult for me to catch these things. Anyhow, she smiles coyly/sweetly/shyly and bring her hands together and into her chest/under her chin. She's practicing for when it comes time to ask Daddy for something important, like a new cell phone.
  
• She and I now have a "key and lock" cuddle position that works 90% of the time to get her to sleep. Our bodies have figured out how they fit together most comfortably for her (see above picture). When she's in this position, she likes to reach her left hand up and put it on my chest, since I'm usually wearing a v-neck or scoop-neck pajama top and she can either grab the edge of it or just lay her palm on my skin. It is very sweet, unless she's fussy and I'm trying to soothe her in this cuddle position. Then that left hand is a weapon and she scratches at my chest with her sharp little nails. No wonder we haven't had to cut her nails at all in the past 3 months...she files them on our skin! Ouch. I try to pull my neckline up to protect my chest from the onslaught, but she is persistent and will grab the fabric and pull down and then reach back up to find my skin. It's hard, at those moments, to remember that she's not actually trying to hurt me!
  
• Which reminds me, it amazes me how quickly she can go from being happy to being fussy and then back to happy again. She'll seem 100% content and then a dark shadow of a frown will flash onto her face. At that moment, whoever is with her has to do a dance, sing a song, smile and coo, do something to prevent her from breaking down into full-on fuss. It's about 50/50 whether the situation can be rescued. It always makes me ponder what happened that soured her disposition, but I haven't noticed any patterns yet. In the same vein, sometimes she'll wake up from a nap or in the middle of the night and give one or two loud cries or fusses, but by the time we get up from the bed/couch and go into the nursery, she's happily back asleep. Very strange.
  
• We've started putting her play gym on "movement" mode sometimes, instead of continuous play, meaning that her singing star will only sing if she pulls on a toy or kicks one of the cross-bars, instead of just playing all 10 songs in a row. She does well with this, as long as we position her so that her feet can reach one of the crossbars. Now I can lay her down there and go into the bathroom to brush my teeth, etc., and if I hear silence for too long I just have to yell "kick, Evie!" and then I'll hear the toys shake and rattle and the star begins singing again. She likes to kick!
  
• Tummy time is going well, she is tolerating it longer and longer, and spitting up less in the process. She can do mini push-ups and bring her head to 90 degrees, but doesn't do it often. This is what tummy time looks like, usually:
  
  
• Sometimes she likes to sit with us holding her waist and reach for her feet. We don't do this too often, because 85% of the time it ends with spit-up on her pants, but she is definitely interested in her feet and it's only a matter of time before she's adept at grabbing them, and eventually, putting them in her mouth.
  
• Finally, in addition to blowing bubbles she now adds raspberries and motorboat sounds to her conversational repertoire. She seems to enjoy the sensation on her lips, but when we repeat them back to her she just looks astonished and vaguely annoyed at us.

I recently decided to join Stirrup Queens' Barren B****es Book Brigade, and the current book is An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir by Elizabeth McCracken. I loved McCracken's The Giant's House: A Romance, so I was excited to join in. On Thursday, I picked up the book from the library after aerobics and Evie took a 45-minute nap at about 3 pm so that I could take a bath and start reading. It felt so luxurious to take a bath and read a book. These are things that I did almost every day during the summer, but haven't done during the past 3 months, at least not that I can remember. I've always been an avid reader, but mothering took the book lust out of me for a bit. I've read, though, that children rarely become reading enthusiasts unless they see their parents reading for pleasure as they are growing up; reading to them is not enough. So I am going to begin with this book and try to make a point of reading my own books in front of Evie and not just enjoying them when she is asleep. Wish me luck on that. The first day she only tolerated it for five minutes before fussing for my attention. I think that grown-up books are going to end up on her list of "things Mommy is not allowed to touch," along with phones and forks.

Anyhow, on page 20, McCracken writes "like any mother I can't imagine taking the smallest step from the historical path that led me here, to this one, to such a one" ("one" being her baby). Her context for this statement is different from mine, but this quote resonated strongly with me. I know it sounds weirdly Pollyanna, but my infertility is becoming less of an antagonist and more benign in my imagination. It brought me Evie, indirectly, and now I can't imagine not being her mom. As she has grown in the past month, and enjoys making eye contact with us more and more, we can see her unique self emerging. After all, "the eyes are the window to the soul." It is amazing when she fixes a steady gaze on us and then her face assumes a focused stare, a furrowed brow or a broad smile; at those moments I feel as though I can peer into her future and see the little girl, young lady and beautiful woman she will become. The last five years have brought me here, to this baby girl, and my negative HPTs and unsuccessful IUIs no longer feel like "failures."

Shiny

I have a t-shirt from threadless.com that says:

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator

Click here to see it. I don't really agree that haikus don't make sense, but I still love the t-shirt; it makes me laugh.

Anyhow, Tiffany over at Poetry and Hums has a writing prompt to create a haiku about something shiny. Here is mine:

Evie is teething
The drool makes her chin shiny
Until I wipe it

OK, that took me less than a minute to write, let me try to do better.

A cranky baby
Then Mommy kisses her toes
Shiny, happy eyes

and

Forehead shiny, hot
I kick my leg in the air
And Evie giggles

(that was about aerobics, by the way)

OK, these are too cheerful...

Evie loves to eat
Until it's time to burp her
Tears shine on her cheeks

Gross, these have all been about bodily fluids! Last one...

Mirrors are shiny

Hey, there's that other baby!

Evie smiles with joy

.

ETA: Still unclear what's up with Evie, but yesterday she slept 10.5 hours, took a 4 hour nap in her swing, ate 6 times anyhow (6 feedings x 5 oz. is normal for her) and remained cranky much of the day. I'm thinking growth spurt and teething onset, combined.

My Mom Asks Moxie

As I'm typing this morning, snow is falling outside. J decided to work from home today, due to the snow tying up traffic along his commute route, which means that I got to brush my teeth before 9 AM! Yay!

Yesterday was rough. After going to bed late (J at 11, me at 1), Evie woke us up for a 3 AM feeding for the first time in who knows how long. (Yes, I am aware that I have no basis to complain here, I'm just stating facts.) Then she got me up for the day at 6 AM and refused to nap anywhere but in my arms. She's been bad about this...as a newborn she happily napped in her Boppy, but after a few weeks it no longer worked and she would wake up right after we put her in it. Then she seemed to like napping in her moses basket in the family room, but now refuses to stay asleep in there for longer than 5 minutes. For the past few weeks I've had success transitioning her from my arms to her swing for a nap, but in the past 3 days she's rejecting that as well. Argh! I would start putting her in her crib, but that doesn't work because her nursery is the "lightest" room in the house and it wakes her up. The computer room is much darker during the day because it faces west, so she sleeps better in here, if I can figure out a new baby apparatus that she'll tolerate. Any suggestions? She likes sleeping in my chair:

But she's started working on rolling over in the past few days, so this is not a safe option unless I'm right there monitoring her (i.e. no laundry, dishes, taking Phoebe out to poop...)

Yesterday, I repeat, was rough. She refused to be set down anywhere, until I finally got her sleeping in her swing for a few minutes around 10:45 AM. As she slept, I quickly took the opportunity to heat up my lunch and chat with my mom on the phone. Evie woke up to find me doing three things she hates: eating, talking on the phone and NOT HOLDING HER. She started crying hysterically. It had only been two hours since she'd eaten at 9 AM (she's been on a 3 hour schedule pretty happily for the past several weeks), so I tried to comfort her with a diaper change (which she generally loves) and some rocking and singing. Meanwhile I'd hung up with my mom and my lunch was only 1/5 eaten and sat on the counter getting cold. She just kept crying, more and more hysterically, with big gulping sobs and tears streaming down her face. Nothing worked! Her diaper was dry, I was holding her, I tried pacifiers, rocking, bouncing, patting, jiggling...argh! Finally at 11:30 I gave up and decided she must be having a growth spurt and actually be hungry, so I set her down in her swing to wail like a siren while I went into the kitchen to make her bottle. I came back in, picked her up and sat down at the computer to read blogs while I fed her (I know, everyone says I'm supposed to talk to her and sing to her while I feed her, but she has always ignored people who are feeding her, preferring to stare off into space as she sucks). I pulled up Bloglines and noticed that Ask Moxie had a new post up.

Please be patient as I now go off on a tangent...

Evie's had this t-shirt for a few weeks. Moxie has had some big stuff going on in her life and I wanted to support her by buying a couple of things from her cafepress.com store, because I love her blog so much (the other shirt I bought is the "Rock Me" one shown in this post). I've been waiting for the right post to show off her new t-shirt, and this is it.

...tangent is over.

Anyhow, the post yesterday was about teething, something that I thought I didn't need to think about for another couple of months. Boy, was I wrong. As I read the post and the comments that followed (Ask Moxie is one of those blogs where the comments are as good as or better than the original post), I was struck that Evie is experiencing almost every symptom:

• drooling (past 10 days or so, before that everything that came out of her mouth was white)
• eating hands (she's been doing this more persistently lately)
• rash when she poops (and a never-seen-since-hospital 2 poops in a row yesterday)
• sleep interruption (well, how about sleep pickiness?)
• eye boogers
• inconsolable screaming

So, yesterday I quickly washed up all of Evie's teething toys and popped them into the refrigerator. The verdict: likes the Super Soothie, kinda; still prefers her regular Soothies; sorta likes the Sassy Teething Butterfly; maybe likes her water-filled teething ring.; still thinks her hands taste better. On order: RaZberry Teether, Vibrating Teether and Sophie, based on recommendations from Moxie's commenters.

She doesn't have red gums yet, but a few commenters on Moxie's post said their babies had teeth by 4 months, and the pain starts way before teeth appear. BUT other commenters said their babies started showing teething signs at 3 or 4 months and didn't have any teeth until later than average (6 months is average for first tooth). So we could be dealing with this new Evie for months and months and months. Great. Are any of Evie's contemporaries (Declan, Payton, Snippet) showing any of the same symptoms, by any chance? Am I just imagining this? I can attribute everything but the drooling to other causes, if I think about it. OK, let me ask you this, Ashley, Diana and Deanna, when you lift your son high in the air over your head and wiggle him to make him smile (everyone does that, right?*) does he drip drool onto the floor, your hair and onto your face? Evie does, every single time. She's still spitting up, but now it is more watery and soaks through her bibs, getting the neck of her shirt wet. Almost every time I change her shirt now it has a wet neck. And I'm constantly wiping drool off of her chin. She loves that, you can imagine.

*but only in the hour before she eats, because otherwise it would be spit up on the floor, in the hair, etc.

Thanks, Moxie, for helping explain my Rough Monday.

Photo Inspiration

I just read about this on Ashley's blog and wondered which photo would come up if I tried it. The idea is to go into "My Photos" then to the fourth folder (of if you're not organized, just the fourth photo) and then to the fourth photo in the folder and post it without cropping or editing, then explain it.

I was delighted to find that the fourth folder in My Photos is titled "Evie" :) Yippee! And because I'm very organized, there are no "loose" photos in that folder, only more folders. So I went to the fourth folder in my "Evie" folder and it is her "Month Two" folder. What's in that folder? More folders, of course. (I'm blushing...) The fourth folder in there is titled "October 27." Before you think I'm insane, let me please point out that this was our "Forever Family Day." There are only two photos in the folder, so I'll just post the second one:

Here's a link to my original post about this day. It was, in a word, anticlimactic. It was sweet to hold Evie in my arms as I testified under oath that I would take on the role of mother to her from now until her 18th birthday (and beyond, of course, but the court doesn't really care about adults needing mothers, too) and accept the rights and responsibilities as if I had given birth to her. But the sterile courtroom, judge we'd never met before and our pricey lawyer put a strange spin on the day and left us feeling as though we'd just renewed our drivers licenses, moreso than that we'd just gone from a family of two to a family of three.

It reminds me of a funny story about my late grandparents, my dad's parents. They married right before my grandpa went to England with the Army Air Corps during WWII. They had to move up the date of the wedding to accommodate a last-minute change in his deployment date, and in the shuffle my grandpa somehow forgot that he needed a marriage license. So they were married by a minister, in a church, with friends and family all in attendance, had a reception and their wedding night...but weren't legally married until, as my dad says, my grandpa "was first in line at the courthouse on Monday morning."

Here's a picture of me with these grandparents, right before my high school graduation ceremony.

Silly story about my grandma, she traumatized me as an 8th grader by mentioning offhand one time (context: conversation was about how my brother and I both look(ed) like my father) that she looks just like her father, too "but he didn't have boobs." I almost died. The very idea of my grandma uttering that word. Horror.

Another story about my grandparents: my dad was their first son after having three daughters (and they finished up the family with one more daughter and one more son for a total of six kids) and they fought over what to name him. They couldn't agree and so ended up bringing him home from the hospital with "Baby Boy __(last name)____" as his official birth certificate name. They didn't remember to have it changed to his real name until he was going into Little League, and needed his birth certificate to sign up. Obviously they had ongoing issues with paperwork!

Anyhow, back from my tangents, I think that as my grandpa went to the courthouse, obtained a marriage license and had the minister sign it, he and my grandma probably felt much the same way that J and I felt having a judge finalize our adoption of Evie. The type of love created through marriage and adoption happens in intimate moments with family, not through legal ceremonies and paperwork. Here is a more accurate representation of our family being finalized. This is the first picture we have of her in our house, minutes after bringing her home from the hotel.

In this photo, my love for her is already forever, judge or no judge.

My grandpa will be forever tied in my heart and in my mind to our adoption, and to Evie. He died on the morning of March 26, 2008, the day of our match meeting with Lucy's parents. The coincidence of it made J and I both think of the song "The Circle of Life." Thankfully, we had been able to see him over President's Day weekend and he was able to meet his newest great-grandchild, my nephew. And, October 27th, our Forever Family Day, was also my grandpa's birthday. He would have turned 91 years old. We regret that Evie will never meet five of her eight great-grandparents. Of the three who are living, she hasn't met any of them yet, but she'll meet my mom's mother at Christmas, so expect some pictures of her with me, my mom and my grandma. It's a great photo op to have four generations of women in one place.

Instead of tagging four people, as I am meant to do, I'll just follow Ashley's lead and say that if anyone else wants to do this photo exercise, consider yourself tagged. And when you're explaining your photo, don't feel obliged to go off on a tangent about your grandparents. :)

Baby Photography 101

1. Put baby somewhere safe and secure. It helps if she is up at your level so that you don't need to crouch on the floor while taking photos. Evie's Space Saver High Chair works for this. It has been set up in our kitchen for the past few weeks and is a fabulous place to put her while we are eating, doing dishes, etc.

2. Give baby toys to amuse her so that she'll smile for the picture. Because Evie's not eating food yet, we've made her high chair a "bug attack play center" by decking it out with her Me In The Mirror toy, wrist and foot rattle set (a gift from my friend and former co-worker, Megan...hi Megan!) and her "bug on a leaf" German toy from my sister, Anne (hi Anne!).

3. Make sure baby's diaper is dry and her belly is full, so that she will be happy in the photos. Because her belly is full, make sure you cover her shirt with a bib (these are our favorite bibs, by far).

4. First, try to use the red-eye reduction flash setting on your camera. Her eyes will come out looking normal, but her face will look grumpy because she doesn't like the red-eye reduction flash that comes before the real flash.

5. Next try the regular flash, which will make her look more surprised than grumpy, and give her devil eyes (hard to see in this online pic, but the red is there).
6. Turn on all of the lights in the room, even the AeroGarden, and turn your flash off. Capture your baby's antics as a blur of movement! Evie kicking her ladybug and butterfly foot rattles!

Evie shaking her bumblebee wrist rattles!

Trying to get all four limbs moving at once...

The exertion is showing on her face!

Now the bug on its leaf is even vibrating in her lap!

Keep taking pictures until baby is worn out and needs a nap, or your memory card is full, whichever comes first. Hopefully you'll capture something worth printing for her baby book. Or maybe not.

Evie's Best Friend

I guess our nursery is passé, after hearing Nate Berkus on Oprah a couple of weeks ago, denigrating "Pooh Bear" and "big nursery murals," but parents with the type of trendy, adult style nurseries that he endorses are missing out on a fabulous bennie: Evie's best friend is always there to help me entertain her when she's getting a new diaper! Enjoy this 5 minute video of her conversation with Rabbit last week. J calls this, "Evie worshipping at the feet of her Rabbit god" because of the pure awe on her face during parts of these conversations.

Do you need a boost today?

Press "play" and be inspired:

And now for something completely different

Apollo, age 13+, has been having some trouble jumping up onto the couch and onto the bed. He has arthritis and some weakness in his legs/hips. We help him up onto the bed at night, but we aren't always around during the day to help him onto the couch. We tried the "as seen on TV" dog steps, but they are plastic and too lightweight. If he approaches them sideways they slip on our tile floor. Perhaps they work better on carpet.

(Because of my allergies, our only carpet is in the basement and on the screened porch; both are indoor/outdoor carpet without padding, since the padding is what grows mold spores and the I/O carpet is thinner and easier to thoroughly clean with our Dy.son.)

When my mom was visiting recently, she suggested that we buy Apollo a vinyl bean bag so that he has a fairly soft place to curl up that's lower to the ground. A regular dog bed or cloth bean bag wouldn't work since we have a dog door and he is in and out all day, so his paws are sometimes dirty. I decided to get purple so that if this solution doesn't work out for him, we can still use the bean bag for Evie.

Well, the bean bag arrived in the mail yesterday and as soon as I had unpacked it I encouraged Apollo to try it out. He was so grateful that he even posed for my picture!

How long do you think it will take us to try posing Evie on there with him? :)

Santa Baby

Yesterday my MIL and I went shopping to a local mall, which was giving away 5x7 photos with Santa! (Zona Rosa 12-8 pm, feeds reindeer from 3-3:45, for those who are local.)


(The glare in the photo is because I took a picture of the picture.)

Evie had just eaten in the community room adjacent to Santa's workshop, so I was praying she didn't spit up on him! That would have been classic. She didn't spit up, but she also refused to smile. She stayed serious despite the antics of the helpers with their dancing, cooing, rattles and bells. The helpers were very nice, but Santa left a lot to be desired. He barely spoke to me and didn't talk to Evie or tell me she's cute (don't you think he should have?) :) Maybe he's better with older kids. Santa gave Evie a free tiny stuffed santa bear and would have given her a candy cane, too, if she'd been old enough. It was quick and painless (no line when we were there at 2:00) and the first of many photos with Santa, I suppose. The Santa pic was never a tradition in my house, but it seems like a fun thing to do. Do you take your kids to get Santa pics each year? Why or why not?

J and I had a quick conversation the other day about whether or not we're even going to "do the whole Santa thing" with Evie and her future siblings, since we are Christians and like to emphasize the religious background of the holiday. We decided we didn't want to be "those parents" who tell their kids the truth and are then at fault if their kid spills the truth to a friend. Plus, our parents embraced Halloween, Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, so we've both grown up with models for how to raise a Christian kid who can still participate in secular holiday traditions.

Along the same lines, you may remember from my "Deck the Halls" post last month that J and I both have homemade felt Santa stockings from our childhoods, and that my mom is making Evie her own felt stocking. The felt kit my mom found at a craft store is of a manger scene! I like that Evie's stocking will reinforce the religious side of Christmas, but it will be amusing to have Jesus flanked by two Santas on our mantel next year.

Photo Slideshow of Evie's first 2.5 Months

Brilliance Abounds

J leaves tomorrow for his second business trip since Evie was born, so I'm happy to have his mom here for a few days to help out with Evie. Things are crazy here, as they are with every family at this time of year. Amidst the clamor of the season, Evie is like a little butterfly, emerging from the cocoon of her fourth trimester* (a little early, but she is brilliant after all). She is doing new things every day and is so much fun to be around!

The other day we had our first conversation; I said something silly like "Hi, Evie, I love you!" and she looked me straight in the eye and said "Gaaaa!" and then I said "gaaa to you, too, honey bee!" and she said "Baaaa!" and then I said "ba ba black sheep!" and she said "cooo." You get the idea. It was beautiful, and fun!

She's also started looking at me a lot. (Remember my angst about that? Gone.) She'll stare at me as she's drinking her bottle, she'll look at my face from a few feet away while she's in a bouncy seat or in someone else's arms. She sometimes even turns away from Rabbit and looks at me during diaper changes! She looks, then I give her eye contact and a smile, she smiles, I coo...etc. I just love that she seems to seek out my face, initiating baby/mama communication. (She does this with J, too.)

Evie's also started offering J and I smiles in the morning (everyone warned me this would be my favorite thing...and they are right); even when she is fussy about her wet diaper and empty tummy, she interrupts the regularly scheduled wailing to flash us a brilliant open-mouthed grin, just to let us know that she knows who we are and appreciates that we didn't take off for Mexico in the middle of the night, apparently.

I got my first giggle tonight by kissing her hand as we were cuddling right before her nighttime feeding...whoopee, I can't wait for the giggling and laughing to take off. She's squealed a couple of times, but they were for Rabbit and her singing star, not for me. Oh, well, I'm getting used to coming after Rabbit.

She also seems to be starting to imitate sounds, because she frequently will look at me and say, clearly, "ha." I think she's imitating that I say "Hi!" to her so much. It's part of my mommy patter to get close to her and say in a high-pitched voice "hi Evie Bea! Hi, hi, hi! Hi, Evie Bea...etc." Wouldn't you think that would be annoying? Apparently not, since it elicits smiles and now some returned "ha's."

I never would have thought that blowing spit bubbles is a milestone, but one website claims it is. So be it. She's doing that, too.

Evie's also become very tactile, wanting to touch things, grab them and bring them to her mouth. So it begins: the oral fixation. She's been rubbing her hand along the wall while she talks to Rabbit for a couple of weeks, but now she will also focus on other things (usually red or patterned fabrics) and then reach out toward them to try to touch/rub them. Anything she can grab goes into her mouth; usually this is her bib, shirt, my shirt or a toy.

She's doing great with tummy time...well...what I mean is that she tolerates it a bit better and now consistently raises her head to almost 90 degrees or works on her mini push up skill, unless she's tired and then she just goes to sleep. I think she'll be a tummy sleeper as soon as she learns to roll over; she seems to prefer it. Despite our tummy time attempts, she's started getting baby pattern baldness from her habit of rubbing her head vigorously against her sheet saver at night. She does this during "active sleep" and looks a bit like Stevie Wonder. The bald spot is developing on the back of her head and more on the left side, so I'm trying to turn her head a couple of times at night to encourage her to sleep a bit more on the right side. I'm still a bit paranoid about the flat spot phenomenon, although her pediatrician said at her 2 month visit that her head is perfectly round. You can say that again! :)

She's also figured out what dangling toys are for. Really she's been batting at toys for weeks; I think she did it for the first time when she was less than a month old. But in the past several days she has developed a gusto for the sport that is amusing to watch. She gets all four limbs going at once and tries to use all of them to land blows on any dangling object in reach. We enjoy egging her on: "Go, Evie! slap Eeyore silly! Good hit, sweetie! You show that crab who's boss." We're already parents on the sidelines, cheering on our star athlete. In this case she's training for karate?

I am so grateful for my little girl! I am still not a morning person, but I look forward to seeing her for the first time in the morning. At times like this, as I'm up late blogging, reading, cleaning, wrapping gifts, etc. and she is asleep, I truly miss her. As I've written this post I've pushed the video button on the monitor about ten times, just to watch her little facial muscles twitch in her sleep. Beautiful.

I'm STILL working on continuing my series of posts about adoption; stay tuned. I'm also working on some video and photo slide shows. With J's mom here to help for the week, hopefully I'll get something fun posted soon.

*one of our favorite parenting books is The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer and in the book, Dr. Karp describes a baby's first three months as being like a fourth trimester of pregnancy because they can act more like a fetus than like a human being (I'm not saying fetuses aren't human, but you know what I mean, right?). We like this idea of a fourth trimester; it helps newborn care like swaddling and white noise make sense.

Phoebe + Evie

In the first attempt, neither one looks very comfortable with what Mommy and Daddy are trying to accomplish. That's J's hand in the pic.

In the second attempt, Evie shows off how she's already learning to look at the camera. She's just so smart. Phoebe, on the other hand, is looking for an escape route.

Phoebe: "I'm outta here." Evie: "Daddy, rescue me!"

Well, we tried. Baby + dog photos are tricky.

Wool vs. Clothes

Sigh, I am angst-ridden about something right now. Every morning I have to choose between putting Evie in an adorable outfit from her enormous wardrobe (of 3-6 month clothes right now) OR putting her in her beautiful new wool longies (a type of diaper cover) with one of her pretty long sleeved shirts. What a problem...

I have found "longie" love in the past few weeks. Sock monkey Crankypants: and her super soft girly longies made by a work-at-home mom (I got these second hand on Diaperswappers):

What I am loving about the longies is that they are warm for winter, plus cute and comfy for her. Imagine, if you will, how your own bum would feel if it were enclosed in plastic all day, every day. No wonder babies in disposables or in cloth diapers with plastic covers end up getting rashes sometimes. Wool diaper covers stay dry on the outside (for an explanation click over here) but still let air circulate against Evie's skin.

I'm loving them so much that I'd be happy keeping her in them most days. But, what about her other clothes? I can't put her in onesies (the bottom part of them would snap over her wet diaper and that would be gross) and of course there's no need for all of her cute pants, either. It wouldn't be such a big deal except for the fact that she has TONS of clothes. Between my own bargain hunting, J's mom's shopping trips, the generosity of my sister-in-law, my mom's many purchases and many gifts from friends and family (people love to give 3-6 month clothes for new babies, I've found, because they think you have too many 0-3 month clothes already, which is true), Evie has an obscene amount of clothing in general and in 3-6 month size in particular. I mean it. Really. Obscene. I could clothe sextuplets who all spit up like Evie and still not have to do laundry more than 2x per week. And all of those clothes are sitting, lonely, in their drawers and on their hangers, while Evie is wearing her longies more often than not.

Because we're still using our miracle blanket, Evie's is wearing pocket diapers and sleepers at night, so at least those are getting some use. But, just thinking about all of the money that we and others spent on the other clothes makes me feel anxious and guilty. Sigh.

Merry SITSmas Part Deux

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Listening

Yesterday, as J and I were driving home from Minnesota (and passing many cars in ditches...we're glad we stayed an extra day!) we listened to "This American Life" on CD as Evie snoozed in the back seat. Close to home, we were surprised by a particularly relevant story about open adoption and "Dear Special People" letters on the August 22nd episode (Act 3). Here's a link to the "This American Life" radio episode website where you can listen to the story I'm referring to and many others. Listening online is free, but a download is $0.95. The most recent episode is always a free download, and they have a podcast, too. I tell you this because if you listen to an episode or two you might get hooked like J and I are. The other acts in the 8-22-08 episode are also fascinating, so give them a listen if you have time.

In other listening news, I have decided that the TV is now banned from our home unless J and I are watching a specific program (i.e. no more watching CNN while feeding Evie) because she is just showing too much interest in it. So, today I popped some Christmas music into the CD changer and I've been singing along all afternoon. My favorite Christmas CD by far is James Taylor's A Christmas Album from 2004. His voice is so sexy, even when he's singing about Jesus.

Merry SITSmas!

Well, I said last month that I was going to join SITS this month, and I just read on Kelly's site that there is a good reason for me to follow through: I can definitely use the grand prize of a $200 Target gift card. Who can't?

So, Merry SITSmas to everyone!

And here's a link to my previous post about holiday decorating.

I'm working on a couple of other posts, as Evie allows, so I'll keep this one short. :)