A Focused Sixteen-month-old

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

Family Christmas Party

We got together with my side of the family to exchange presents with those who would be out of town for Christmas. Katie and Jack drove up from Las Vegas and braved a winter storm, just barely making it. We took Anna to a friend's house to play since there wouldn't be any presents for her--she had to wait until Christmas for her presents. I think we brought Evie with us because she had been sick, but she sure didn't look sick. She was the star of the party.                   

We started a round of stomach flu in our family. Evie gave it to my mom and to Erica (she likes to stick her hands in peoples' mouths). My mom passed it on to my dad and Lauren, who was pretty much over it by the time we got together, but still telling stories about being sick. I guess those stories were freaking Jack out, so he decided to take precautions, but that only lasted for a few minutes.

The Farm

December has been a hard month for the flu. It feels like I've been dealing with diarrhea and exploding diapers since Thanksgiving. Just when Evie started to get over that first round of the flu, Anna started throwing up and passed a new flu bug on to Evie, starting the diarrhea over again. When Evie was finally getting over that round of diarrhea, she got an ear infection, requiring antibiotics, which led to more diarrhea.

I shouldn't really complain because even though Evie has had exploding diapers for most of December, she usually only had two or three a day, so it wasn't like it was a constant flow. She did get lots of extra dips in the bathtub because sometimes it felt like that was the only way to clean her up. I learned to keep her in footed pajamas or sleep and plays so that the poop wouldn't drip all over my house. I think she's worn two different outfits at Church for the past four weeks because she has a blowout every Sunday. In fact, it's become a common thing for me to scoop her up and run out of a meeting, as I hope to get her on a changing table before there's too much of a mess. Thank goodness for tights! They also work well at holding in the poop.

With all this sickness, we spent several days at home, missing our playgroup and nursery. So Anna was feeling a little stir crazy. Dan agreed to babysit Evie one Saturday (Dec. 11) so I could take Anna to the Farm at Thanksgiving Point. The weather was fairly warm for December, so we had a good time checking out the animals. Several of them made Anna nervous though, so she asked for lots of "huggies" and I ended up carrying her a lot. 

I really didn't think she'd want to ride the ponies, but she surprised me. Most of the time I walked beside her, but she let me step away long enough to snap this photo of her riding Chief.

When we'd seen about everything, I suggested we go check out the reindeer by the water tower, but when I wanted to drive over there, Anna started to cry. She wasn't ready to leave yet. Being the great mom that I am, I bribed her with ice cream up at the Deli. They have these tiny cones that are the perfect size for Anna and their free for kids three and under. Of course, after she finished the first one, she wanted another and I didn't have anything left to bribe her with to get her home, but somehow we made it and we had a good time while we were there.

Dinosaur Museum

On our way home from California, we discovered that Evie had picked up a flu bug. In the middle of our  flight, I noticed a warm, wet spot spreading across the leg of her pajamas. It's not fun trying to clean up a baby with diarrhea in an airplane bathroom, but I'm just glad I had packed an extra pair of clothes for her. I kept her in her onesie for most of the flight home, saving the other outfit just in case she had another episode. Luckily, she didn't.

But over the next few days, she had several more episodes, and had several dips in the bathtub. We mostly stayed home, but Anna had been asking to go to the Dinosaur Museum. So that Wednesday (Dec. 1), I decided to risk it and head to the museum. Evie did really well, and I don't think I had to change her diaper while we were there. But when we were only a third of the way through the museum, I realized that Anna had come down with Evie's same flu bug. I'd been asking her if she pooped because I thought I smelled something suspicious, but she insisted that she hadn't. I now know that I should have checked her, because by the time I did check her, we were stuck in the middle of the museum and when I checked her, I ended up with poop on my thumb. But's that's probably too much information. I didn't realize that the only bathroom is outside the front desk, so I rushed Anna all the way through the rest of the museum, frantically hoping for a bathroom. I had to drag her past the sand pit and the water erosion exhibit/play area, but I promised her we'd be back.

I'm probably a bad mom since I let my sick kid touch stuff that other kids would be touching. Oh well. It turns out that most of the museum terrifies Anna. There are several dark, shadowy rooms that represent the beginning of time, and she doesn't really like the large skeletons. In fact the sand pit is probably the only part of the museum she likes, but she had a good time.

Looking for dinosaur bones