Artist at Work

Tuesday night I got a late start on dinner. So I was a little focused on cooking when Anna walked out from my bedroom, handed me a fat permanent marker and said, "Here Momma!" She had a single black mark on her shirt and had obviously been able to take the lid off although when she handed it to me, the cap was back on. I quickly went into my room to assess the damage. There were some scribbles in my planner, which I don't mind too much, and there were also a few marks on our computer monitor. Luckily for all of us, it looks like Mr. Sharpie doesn't work too well on a computer screen, but I quickly grabbed a cloth to try and take care of the few thin lines that did appear on the screen. When I turned around Anna had managed to get her shirt off and was running around shirtless, which seemed like a fitting wardrobe choice for her recent behavior.

Since then she's also figured out how to get her pants off and had a few more run-ins with an uncapped marker, but mostly she just draws on herself instead of on our computer screen.

She actually did this lovely art work on Sunday afternoon when Dan and I both collapsed of exhaustion on our couches. I guess I should have seen it as a warning, but I've been too tired to think much lately. Last night I made pizza and totally forgot the yeast for the pizza dough, because I was too tired and frazzled when I was mixing it up. Not so yummy.

Evie's Tongue

Recently we've noticed that Evie sticks out her tongue a lot, and she can make it look really long. She often does this when it seems like she's working hard on something. Her tongue comes out a lot when she's on her tummy or when she's trying to reach for a toy. Heather says she does the same thing when she's concentrating on something, so maybe it's genetic.

Three Months Old

Every now and then when I take Evie's photo, she gives me this funny look like "Oh my goodness!"



Evie turned three months old last week. These days Evie is quite the little talker. She loves to talk to anyone who holds her and she smiles at just about everyone. Most of the time she doesn't cry unless I'm really slow getting her bottle. When she is getting hungry she just yells out at me, like she's saying "hey!" But if she does get upset about something, then she wants to make sure I know about it. When she got her two month vaccines, there was a lot of complaining after the shots and it was heart breaking.

We've also been working on the tummy time, especially since she's also got a little bit of the flat head issue. She loves sucking on her hands and often will bring both of them together and try to stuff them both in her mouth at the same time, which can make getting a bottle in her mouth a little tricky.

This past Sunday I heard her giggle for the first time. Dan says he's heard her giggle before, but until last Sunday, I hadn't heard it. Anna was down on the floor playing with her and it looked like it was Anna that got her to laugh, but as soon as I came over to hear more, the giggles dried up. Evie usually has a pretty quick smile for Anna, although sometimes she looks at her like, "what are you going to do to me now?"

Evie's also doing great at batting at toys. The other day, she actually grabbed the chain hanging from her little gym and was pulling up on it. She's a strong little kid and sometimes when I set her up against a pillow, she'll also try to lean forward as if she's ready to sit up, but she's not quite there yet.

She continues to grow like a weed. Today I put her in an outfit that Anna started wearing when she was about nine months old. Evie's also wearing a size three diaper. They're probably a little big on her, but she kept outgrowing the diapers when I was only halfway through the box so I decided to just jump to the size three diapers and they fit well enough. Anna currently wears size four diapers, so I guess if Evie grows out of these diapers then I won't have to worry about buying more than one size of diapers.

Little Foodie

I love Hot Tamales and Anna loves candy. So if she catches me eating Hot Tamales, she wants one. She likes to take her time eating them too, so she often ends up with red stickiness all over her face and hands. And when she eats them, she often says to me things like "burn Momma" and "Ouchie candy." Despite the pain, she always asks for more.
The other night, I told Anna she could have an Oreo of she got in the tub. It seemed like a good idea until she was sitting in the tub and a small chunk fell into the water. It immediately disintegrated and soon we had little black crumbs all over the place, which were freaking Anna out. So I had to empty all the water and refill the tub. But I decided to wait to fill the tub until after she had finished her Oreo. She took her time enjoy ever little bit of that cookie while she sat in an empty tub.

Little Buddha

The other night while I was bathing Evie, Dan looked at her and said, "I expect that child to attain Nirvana at any moment." Because I'm a little slow and not as rich in cultural currency as Dan, I had to ask, "Do you mean that she looks like a little Buddha?" And that is what he meant.

We love all her sweet little rolls and she is a pretty serene little baby, but we don't plan on letting her go anytime soon.

First Nightmare?

Last night around nine Anna started crying. We had just put her to bed a little after eight, so I figured she was just trying to get attention. It had been rough getting her to go to sleep and she pulled out every trick she knows to try and buy herself a little more time. There was something about her cry that convinced me to go check on her and when I got in there she was pretty distraught. I thought that maybe she wasn't feeling well or she was working on cutting her two-year molars, so I brought her out to the kitchen to get some medicine. She perked right up once she got out to the kitchen, leading us to believe that she was playing us for fools. But at one point, she walked back to her bedroom and when she got close to her open door, she freaked out and started crying again. When Dan tried to take her back to bed, it was the same frantic crying and he had to bring her out of her room to calm her down. Finally, we turned her lamp on before taking her into her room and then I went and lay down with her in her bed. After singing some songs to her, I asked her what made her so sad. She said, "Caillou hurt."

Anna loves watching Caillou and thanks to her slacker mom and Netflix's Watch Instantly feature, she watches a lot of Caillou. In one of the episodes, Caillou falls and scrapes both his knees and for some reason this is really traumatizing to Anna. She often comes running to me whenever she's watching this episode and wants me to hold her. So last night, I spent about twenty minutes having the following conversation multiple times:

Anna: Caillou hurt.

Me: But his mom put Band-Aids on his knees and he was okay.

Anna: And Rosie (Caillou's little sister).

Me: Who is your little sister?

Anna: Evie. Caillou hurt.

Tonight when I put her to bed, I got her to lie down, we sang a song, and then Anna said, "Calliou hurt. Mom Band-Aids. Rosie." I think she's making some progress at getting over this trauma. If I had only known how rough this would be on her, I never would have let her watch the show.

Hairstyles

The other night when we had family over, someone thought it would be fun to play with Evie's hair and make it stand up, giving her a little mohawk of sorts. With such soft hair, it's hard not to touch it.
Lately I've noticed that Evie's getting even more hair. On this day, I noticed that one side of her hair had a nice little flip going on. She looks a little concerned about it, but I thought it was adorable.

So soon after Easter, I was reading Cami's blog and saw some pics of her little girl with some super cute hair and it motivated me to try to some braids on Anna. If I turn on something like Caillou, sometimes she will hold still long enough for me to braid part of her hair, but I'm not enough of a pro to get too fancy just yet, especially if she's bopping up and down while I'm working on her hair.

I was actually trying to get a photo of Anna sitting on her potty, but she wouldn't hold still, so instead I got a photo of the top of her head.

Easter

Friday night Anna and I decorated Easter Eggs. I tried to be overly prepared to prevent any stains on clothes or our carpet, but it still gave me a heart attack when she threw an egg into the blue dye and it splashed all over the newspaper. We had fun dying the eggs and then Anna took the stickers from the kit and stuck them on Evie's face. Those stickers gave her enjoyment for several days.

Finding her Easter basket

Trying a Peep for the first time: they weren't her favorite. Instead she loved the Robin's Eggs. In addition to the basket, the Easter Bunny hid some eggs in our living room for Anna to find. He made them pretty easy to find, but Anna still needed a little help from Mom and Dad.

Saturday afternoon our ward had an Easter Egg Hunt. They fill about 1400 eggs for 100+ kids and they are gone in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately for all of us, it was COLD and windy that day. But since the hunt itself doesn't last that long, we all agreed to stick it out. Meanwhile, Evie was comfy and asleep in her car seat thanks to the cover my neighbor Adrienne gave me.
On our way to the Church, Evie started to fuss. Anna turned to Evie and said, "most Evie, almost." I think she was trying to tell Evie that we were almost there, which is what I always say to Anna when we're driving somewhere and she starts to cry. Lately Anna has also started saying "aw" whenever she looks at photos of Evie. I'm not sure where she picked that up. She has also started saying, "look at that" as if to say, "isn't that cute." I think she gets that one from my mom.

Later that night, Grandma hid some eggs around her house. By then Anna was pretty good at finding the eggs.

Anna loved the candy in her Easter basket. We try to avoid giving her candy most of the time, so Easter was like a bonanza of sweets for Anna. Sunday morning she was still working on her candy while we were watching Conference. At one point, we looked at Anna and she had red liquid dripping out of her mouth. I had watched her start to put jelly beans in her mouth, so I sprinted towards her to try and keep it off the carpet. Eventually she ended up in the bathtub, where Dan pulled nine jelly beans out of her mouth, but not before she managed to drip red-orange drool on the carpet, her clothes, a set of sheets. It was a mess.

Surprise!

One morning I went into Evie's room to toss some dirty clothes in her bin. She had been asleep all morning and since I hadn't heard her make any noise, I assumed that she was still asleep. I decided to peek at her and I was surprised to see that she was lying there wide awake. I guess I surprised her too because as soon as she saw me, her arms flew up over her head (as if she were signaling a touchdown) and then her face crinkled up and she started to cry. I felt bad, but I couldn't help but laugh too.

Ironically, a few days later I was reading in my book that has activities for kids ages zero to five years, and it suggested that young babies like it when you surprise them in their cribs. So maybe we'll try it again in a week or so.

First Part of April 2010

I've been trying to spend more time just playing with Anna, so as part of that effort, I bought her a basic set of water colors. I took a water color class in college, but after I learned that I should have taken the drawing class first, I gave up on the hobby and dumped my paints. I wish I would have kept them. Maybe I'll just get my own set of cheap paints so that I can paint with Anna instead of just sitting beside her and dying a little every time she takes the brush from the red paint directly to the yellow without rinsing. She's having fun and the paints were cheap.

During General Conference weekend, Anna decided she liked sitting inside her lego box. Dan likes to ask her if she wants to be "tumped" over. I think that's East Texan for dumped/tipped over. Dan also likes to ask her how the bobsledding run is going.

Anna is still putting all the stickers she can find on Evie. Evie mostly just puts up with it, but she doesn't look too please, does she?

Now that we have two kids, I decided that I wanted a new double jogging stroller for my birthday. It only took me a full month to actually purchase the stroller and then once I got it, it seemed to snow or rain every time I got up the courage to get it out. But finally the stars aligned this past week. The weather was nice and Evie finished her bottle in time for us to take a little walk around the block. It was wonderful to have such nice weather and to be able to get outside and enjoy it.

Saturday morning we went to my parents' house for breakfast and to see my sister Katie and her husband off as they move to Arizona. I had been holding Evie, but she was a little squirmy so I put her down on a blanket. Then my sister Christa picked her up and I followed Anna out into the backyard. When I came back in to check on Evie, she was back on her blanket and asleep. She often falls asleep on her blanket and would probably sleep really well there, but I usually pick her up and move her since I never know when Anna's going to try to sit on her or fall on top of her.

Today was Evie's second Sunday at Church since we were home last Sunday for General Conference. Earlier this week I dug out one of Anna's dresses to see if it would fit Evie. I bought this dress for Anna when she was six months old, but it was always a little short, so she didn't get to wear it very long. It works great for Evie right now, although the sleeves are a little long.