Evie has always shown a great deal of focus. We could almost see her figure out how to sit up, crawl, walk, etc. as she worked on it day after day. But lately that focus has become less convenient for me. Evie still isn't talking, but she's learning that she can communicate and she wants what she wants. The other day, she grabbed a red sippy cup, which Anna had already claimed. So I tried to give her an orange one that was exactly the same except for the color, but Evie just threw the orange cup. Only the red one would do. And if I dare to give her food that she doesn't want, it goes on the floor. She will usually look me in the eye as she drops it over the side of her high chair. Of course, I try to limit that by grabbing her tray as soon as I see that she's rejected her food.
For a few days last week, she was extremely moody. One morning she was trying to pull one of her blankets out of her crib, but it got wedged between the slats and she just couldn't get it out. She was screaming at it, but it took me awhile to get in there to help her and by the time I did, she was so upset, she cried for several minutes even after I got her blanket out for her. I tried to cuddle her on the couch, but she preferred to do laps around the love seat, crying as she went.
She also gets easily frustrated with her new hobby of climbing onto our kitchen chairs. She has finally figured out how to pull herself up onto a chair, but sometimes she's so excited about being up on a chair that she doesn't pay attention and she falls off, dropping like a bag of rocks. I don't like to see her fall off and I don't like to see her sitting on top of my kitchen table either, so I usually get her down and push all the chairs under the table. Of course then she gets frustrated when she manages to pull her body onto the chair, but can't lift her head without bumping into the table. Sometimes she will just lie on her tummy with her head on her hands and cry. It looks like a classic temper tantrum.
I was starting to worry that she'd hit her terrible twos several months early (she turned 16 months last week), but then on Sunday afternoon, her ear started to drain--an ear infection. This has been a pretty ferocious cold. She first started acting sick about ten days ago. Thursday night she woke up with a fever. I took her to the doctor on Friday morning, sure that she had an ear infection, but the doctor couldn't find any signs. Then once her ear started to drain, I gave her the antibiotic ear drops I have, and her ear infection seems to be gone. Then for the past three days, she's started coughing and she seems to choke on the phlegm in her throat, causing her to throw up. Still she seems to be showing some signs of progress.
Despite Evie's temper tantrums, she's still a pretty easy going kid. Lately she's been great about falling asleep at Church. If she wants a nap, she just takes one, no matter what else is going on around her. These days she also loves dancing to music. She will usually turn in circles with a big grin on her face when she hears music. Her favorite food right now is fruit. Last night while I was slicing strawberries, I handed her five or six and she would take it over to the kitchen table, stuff it in her mouth, and then come back for another one. She has also decided she loves grapes and she would gladly stuff them in her mouth, but I do try to slice them in half first.
She also seems to have some favorite books these days. She really likes Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown and insists that I read it every time we sit down to read books. She also likes to look at Anna's library books and for the most part she's pretty good about not ripping the pages, but we've had a few incidents.
This little girl also loves hair bows. I hang them on a ribbon on the back of our bathroom door and she's always pointing at them and grunting for me to get one down for her. Except usually she doesn't want just one--she wants two or three or four. And then after I put it in her hair, she'll pull it out to look at it again.
Today I decided to try and cut off some of her shaggy ends in the back. Like most babies, she rubbed a bald spot on the back of her head, but she has some strands on top that have now grown down over the shorter hair that grew in where her bald spot was. These longer strands hang down past the rest of her hair and tend to snarl up. So I wanted to trim them off, but when I got her out of the bathtub it was hard to tell which were the longer pieces--mostly because I couldn't her to hold still. I decided to live recklessly though. I grabbed my sewing scissors and hacked away at the back, while Evie crawled all over the bathroom floor. It's not the most even hair cut, but when it dried, it turned out okay. At least it doesn't look like it was Anna who cut her hair instead of me. Now she looks so much older to me.
Evie's hair yesterday before the hair cut
Evie's hair this afternoon after the hair cut
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