Yep, still here

Well...I'm a perfectionist of course. When I do something I want to do it right, and when I am doing something right there's not much room in my life for other things. So much has happened in the past 2 weeks that it would be impossible for me to blog it all now and get it all right, so I've been putting off posting. But I want to update before Evie's 7 month post next week...

Long story short: Evie is wonderful and I have a cold. More details on Evie later in the post.

So, what's been eating up all of the late-night hours when I could have been blogging? No, not sleep. Scrapbooking. I finally decided that because Evie is/was 6 months old, it was time to get serious about putting our hundreds of snapshots of her into albums. For the past few weeks I've been basically recreating this blog in scrapbook form. I have about 40 12"x12" pages completely finished as of tonight and I have about 40 more pages mocked up and ready for journaling and embellishments. Sometime soon I'll take pictures of some of my spreads and post them, just for fun. Here's what else is happening in our little corner of the world:

• Congrats to my BFF Jen who had her daughter, Rachel, this morning at 8:30 am by homebirth! As I'm linking this to her blog she doesn't have pics up yet, only a description of how she brought on labor, but I'm sure she'll post pics and details eventually. :)


• Evie likes to eat: everything except chicken puree. She even likes water and prefers sippy cups with straws to those with spouts. We started introducing her to fruit and she can't get enough of the sweet stuff. She opens her little mouth up SO WIDE for apple, banana, mango, etc. But she still eats veggies and grains, just not with so much gusto.


• The pincer grasp is emergent. Yesterday and today she managed to feed herself one time each day, perhaps by accident, but she seems to be catching on. She would love to feed herself, judging by her lunging to grab at her bowls and spoons. After she eats she adores playing with the spoon; she inspects it, bangs it on the tray, puts it in her mouth (of course) and eventually throws it onto the floor.


• She throws (almost) everything onto the floor these days. We've resorted to simply letting her play on the floor more often than not. For now we are one step ahead of her games. For now.


• In the past few days she's discovered the joy of feeding the dogs. It was inevitable! They are like sharks swimming under her high chair when she's eating and it's incredibly annoying because she adores them and they distract her from the business of the meal. Eating takes a lot longer when you have to pause between bites to squeal with delight at the puppies.


• You know the mesh feeder thingies that are popular these days? Well, add one mesh feeder + one baby who throws things on the floor + one weasly beagle and what do you get? You get Mommy going to the store for replacement mesh bags and a new policy that Evie doesn't use the mesh feeder unsupervised with dogs around.


• I am in awe of how wonderful Phoebe is with Evie! The past couple of days they have had some close encounters in which Evie has grabbed Phoebe's skin and fur HARD and pulled. Phoebe's reaction: zip, zero, nada. I was shocked. Seriously. Is this my fluffy black mutt who growls at us whenever we need to pick her up (as in lifting her into a tall car since she has stubby legs, or helping her onto the bed where she cowers in fear during storms). Is this my ferocious watch dog who barks viciously at the Fed Ex guy nearly every day? Don't get me wrong, Phoebe isn't dangerous. She's never bitten anyone, at least not since she was a puppy and didn't know better. We trained her not to nip back then and she hasn't ever since. But those of you who've had older female dogs know what I mean when I say she can be a bit of a BI*CH sometimes with the growling, barking and attitude. :) So far she is an angel with Evie and I am very thankful.


• Evie is in the beginning stages of crawling. She is no longer content to sit up and play...now she insists on throwing herself forward or to the side to see how far she can get. She also lunges at toys and a couple of times has ended up lunging onto hands and knees. She is now rocking, too. If it weren't a developmental thing I'd be concerned about autism! She's been standing steadily (with upper body support) for months, but now she rocks her hips back and forth like Elvis. When sitting she rocks back and forth like a mental patient. On hands and knees...you get the picture. I'm using the rock'n'roll stage to plot my babyproofing strategies. Next week: implementation.


• She's starting to transition her babbling into a bit of jargon, too. Sometimes her babbling uses intonations and vowel-consonant combinations that sound like she's speaking another language. She loves when I listen to her and repeat the babbling and jargon back to her as if I understood. She also loves hearing me make animal sounds (not the tame spoken versions but real deal imitations). Her favorites are buzzzzzzz, quack and oink. Of course, since the oinking hurts my nose when I have a cold and my sinuses are raw.


• Since starting solids she now often poops more than twice a day. I am SO not enjoying this aspect of "real food."


• Her Minnesota grandparents are here for Easter and I will post a picture of her in her Easter dress ASAP.


• She's mobile enough now that we got paranoid and moved her crib mattress down to the bottom. She hasn't seemed to notice the change.


• Don't get me started on sleep because I have nothing but whining to contribute. Teething. Growth spurt. She's weaning herself from pacifiers. Her life is all very exciting. Too exciting for sleep.


• She's 18 pounds today, by way of the bathroom scale.


• She's absolutely gorgeous. This outfit was one of mine when I was a baby and Evie seemed happy to model it for you: