Pictures, Milestones, a Confession and a Lesson Learned

In reverse order.

Lesson Learned: On Thursday night, J and I agreed to babysit a friend's daughter. I've written about this little girl before (she's the brilliant, gorgeous 5-year-old whose mom is a photographer). Her mom had something important to take care of and J and I love both of them, so we were happy to help. We've watched B before, for days at a time, and she's a delightful kid. BUT. Oh my goodness. We learned what having two young kids is like. All I can say is...wow.

It was fun, we did fine, both girls were taken care of and happy. But J and I? Exhausted. I suppose the reason it was so draining was because we aren't used to it, but right now we're dreading a little bit what it will be like when we adopt #2. (We are tentatively planning to jump back into "the pool" this winter, just in case the adoption tax credit really does expire in 2010.)

Short version: play time, dinner, walk to the park with all 4 of us and the dogs, bath for Evie, books for both girls, bed for Evie, more books for B, bedtime for B, bedtime for J, bedtime for me, B wakes up early, J makes pancake with her and keeps her from coming upstairs to wake me up, Evie wakes up, I wake up, breakfast for Evie, play with both girls, get both dressed, more play and books for B...it was just. so. busy.

Moving on...

A Confession: J and I are parenting outlaws. Evie had her first bit of whole egg on Friday morning. J made pancakes with B and later on when I was eating my share, Evie was acting very interested in them. I tore up a few bits and let her eat them. (I gave her bits without syrup.) She did great with them and didn't have any reaction to the small amount of egg white in them. I'm also planning to give her a tiny amount of peanut butter about once a week, beginning around 9 months. My reasoning is this relatively new information that introducing peanuts early not only doesn't cause allergies but may actually prevent them.

The short version is that peanut allergies have been on the rise ever since pediatricians started telling parents to delay introducing them until kids were 1, 2 or even 3 years old. Just to clarify, I don't mean we're going to be feeding her scrambled eggs and peanut butter toast every morning now, just that we will offer her tiny amounts of these allergenic foods and then watch her carefully. Evie has no family medical history of food allergies (from her birth family of course) and she hasn't had any allergic reactions to the foods we've introduced thus far.

I don't have a picture of her eating the pancakes, but here she is later that day self-feeding asparagus and zucchini. These were vegetables that J and I were eating for dinner and we just put some in the microwave to zap them mushier, cooled them down, tore off the zucchini skin and mushed them up. She had a great time. Yay for green veggies!

By the way, the dress she's wearing in the above picture is another one from my baby box. Here's a shot without the bib (the dress is missing a red button over the "D" and her right hand is on the red "K"):


Next up, milestones. I finally got a picture of her pulling up on her zoo toy! Yesterday (Saturday) she really started pulling up, on more stuff than just her zoo toy. She's not good at it yet, but she has the idea of it and is trying to pull up on:
*her bumper pad
*chairs
*Mom and Dad's pants/legs
*shelves
*knobs
*her activity table

She has been doing a lot of practicing with transitions this week. Every time she's on the floor she seems compelled to go back and forth from all fours to sitting, then back to all fours, back to sitting, etc. She's getting very good at it, and last night we found her sitting up in her crib (crying) for the first time. That was cute. I felt compelled to wake up J (he had gone to sleep 5 minutes before) and make him come see her. He couldn't appreciate the milestone because A. I had woken him up and B. Evie was awake at 11 PM. Have I mentioned lately that she is not sleeping well? I thought so.

As for crawling, she took her first couple of crawl steps on Tuesday afternoon, but I clapped and cheered so hard for her that she stopped, sat up and beamed at me. No more crawling that day. Ever since then she's crawled once or twice a day, a couple of steps at a time. It seems as though she is doing it unthinkingly, in response to a really exciting stimulus (puppy, Daddy, favorite toy) appearing unexpectedly. The first time she crawled it was because I had just put her down onto the kitchen floor and Phoebe walked into the kitchen. The next day it was because she was on the floor of her nursery and Daddy walked into the doorway. The next day it was for Pearl, her teddy bear. Etc. She is also only crawling when naked or in just a diaper or a diaper and a t-shirt. Anyhow, I keep trying to capture it on video, but she isn't showing off for the camera just yet. I'll keep trying. I think that one of these days she'll figure out that crawling isn't just one of the things her body can do, it's a productive way to get somewhere and then she'll start doing it more. We'll see.

She also started walking reflexively yesterday. It kills my back to walk with her, so I'm thinking about getting these.

Last, a couple of cute pictures. We rarely take pictures of the dogs anymore, unless Evie is also in the shot, but I couldn't resist snapping Apollo yesterday. "If I can't cuddle with my Dad, I'll just cuddle with his shoe."

And Evie discovered that her play mat is also a puzzle: