Faces of Evie 2!

When Evie was just six weeks old I put together a little collage of her funny faces. Well now at more than six months old I decided it was time for an Evie face update. Like many aspects of Genevieve her faces are certainly more exciting than they were at first. Given that food plays a prominent role in her little world I thought it appropriate to do a food themed faces collage!!

Halloween!

Genevieve's first Halloween was good but pretty uneventful. We dressed her up as a kitty cat (as you can see...) the only problem was that this kitty costume was clearly made for kids in colder climes... all nice a fleecy and way too hot for a Tucson Halloween! As a result we kept taking it off her during the day because the poor thing was sweating up a storm.

Evie's Halloween consisted of coming downtown with me to visit my work and then walking up the hill to Patrick's work. Everyone loves a costumed baby so she was a bit hit in both places :) That evening we hung out at home and Ben, Annie and Maxine came over with us to wait for a trick or treater or two to come to our door (of course not a single one did :( Maxine was supposed to be a leopard (a nice complement to Evie's kitty, but she had already outgrown the costume... oh well next year they can go as some sort of dynamic duo.) Well if nothing else it gave us a great chance to hang out with friends, eat pizza and drink beer (or in Ben and Patrick's case whiskey) on a weeknight!

More butts....

There are many great questions to be pondered out there, like what is the meaning of life and why do humans always seem to be fighting over/about something… well maybe it is my lack-of-sleep-addled brain but these days I feel like the most important conundrum out there is: why are baby butts so darn cute? Now I know I am your typical over-cooing mom, but I would wager that there are very few people out there, even those not yet with wee-ones, who disagree.

So what exactly is it about the backside of a baby that is so appealing? I mean, really, if you think about it this should be the least appealing part of anyone, but most especially babies. Babies have all sorts of great traits but their derrieres are, in the end, the stinkiest grossest place that needs to be cared for. When Evie was about 2 months I coined the phrase “poo-splosion” to describe the overwhelmingly large bowel movements she would have on occasion. Now how can something associated with that possibly be cute?

Could it be some sort of survival instinct created to ensure that all babies have clean bottoms? Certainly if that thing weren’t cute I would be much more reluctant to approach it. (Hmm well that is a question for a evolutionary biology type, I’ll have to have Brendon look into it, what a fabulous topic for a PhD!) Or perhaps it is just the diminutive factor, i.e., all things that are small are inherently endearing? Maybe it is simpler than all of that. Maybe the answer is just that everything about babies is cute, butts, toes, noses you name it, and that part must be cute. With deep questions like this one swimming in my head it is a wonder I ever sleep!

Wiggle yer butt

I consider myself a pretty well read mommy, hip to the stages of development jive. The past week or so I have found that I was wrong (for the first…OK really not even first…but most certainly not the last time in this baby adventure I am sure) There is a stage of mobility that I had never heard of before, indeed it isn’t even in any of the “what the heck do I do with my baby” books. Because I cannot find this stage in any "baby know it all" book I have dubbed it alternately the “wiggle yer butt” stage or the “launch position.”

The wiggle yer butt stage is the point at which a baby has mastered the art of hands and knees but cannot quite seem to get it together enough to move in a crawl. Aptly named (or so I think) in this stage the baby just hangs out on his/her hands and knees going back and forth like they are trying to propel themselves forward by sheer force of butt inertia and wiggles and squiggles their little bum in the air, trying to do what I am not entirely sure… but I’ll be darned it if isn’t funny to watch! Evie now spends quite a bit of her time in the “launch position” Every time I go to get her out of her crib, for example, she is there, on all fours, just wagging her little bum in the air and rocking back and forth like maybe, just maybe, this will be the time that she will magically move forward.

I can tell that much like the transition from rolling back-front but not front-back this whole awkward neither here nor there stage is frustrating to her. Luckily she has her parents (but especially her dad) who are well educated in the art of crawling and are more than happy to spend quality time with her working her through this tricky stage. Wish her luck as she forges ahead in the days to come.

6 Months of Life!!

Soundtrack

When I was in college I loved the show Ally McBeal. One of my favorite parts about it was that each character had a theme song, something that epitomized them that was constantly playing in their head as a motivation to their day. Well these past few weeks Patrick and I have a new “theme song.” Actually it is really more like a soundtrack… Our new familial soundtrack consists of the near constant babbling of Miss Evie, and anyone who has spent time with her recently can corroborate this, pretty much anytime she is awake she is talking, talking, talking. It is great laugh therapy for Patrick and I. She has even taken to babbling in the middle of the night when she wakes up to eat.

The theme song is not just for Patrick and I, she seems to pick themes herself as well. One day the refrain will be la, la, la and the next da, da, da and then a little ka, ka, ka. Sometimes she gets really fancy and combines the sounds (Patrick swears he has heard both a daaag (to be translated as dog) and a daaady). These more word like sounds are punctuated with the squeal, scream and not to be over looked groan and grumble. She must be telling one fantastic (and epic) story in her head!!

Last weekend we took our last trip up to Blue for the season. There were lots of great things a foot. Getting to wear Oma Monique’s outfit for the first time, playing in the grass, small jaunts in the woods and a fasciations with Grandma Mary’s painted toenails…. Ahh if we all could be so entertained by the minutiae of life!

Its heeeree!

News flash!! Yes folks it felt like forever to her mom and dad (and we did not actually have to suffer any of the pain… well maybe a little pain in the ear and head(ache) department) but really it couldn’t have been more than six months… Evie officially (as of Monday night) has a tooth!! Now the tooth is not quite photogenic enough yet to share, it is still in its nascent stages but a quick once over on that little lower gum definitely confirms its existence. Hooray only 19 more baby teeth to go!

In other news it was a banger-up weekend for birthdays. On Saturday (after a much needed massage that Patrick bought me for Mother’s Day) we went over to Ben’s mom’s house for a birthday feast that included ribs and other gourmet goodies for Ben's birthday. Evie got to see Maxine again and that was great! It was really neat how interested Evie was in her, especially when she cried.

On Sunday we went up to Phoenix for my Dad’s birthday. Mom and I spent an hour or so trying to take video of Evie that she can use for her Prep stuff. The “weekly video” is an out-take from that and is posted special for her Uncle Brendy who thinks that her excited belly convulsing is particularly hilarious… Dad thought it looked like swimming… of a sort. Brendon spent some good quality time with his niece playing on the floor in Mom’s office… mirror and someone new to play with = hours of entertainment!!

Maxine!!

Huraahh! Annie and Ben had a little girl last week... her name is Maxine. We all went over there to meet her last Saturday. What an amazing little tot. It blows me away that just a few months ago Evie was smaller than she is right now! Maxine also graciously let Evie play on her awesome rocking horse.

Baby Babble!!

Have you ever seen a badly dubbed Japanese film? Well Evie does a great impression of one these days… her mouth moves and the sounds that come from it don’t quite seem to match. It is hilarious to watch! (Or at least I think so… maybe those of you with hobbies other than baby may think otherwise ☺) Well lucky for us this week I don’t have to try to explain it… I can just show it! Mom bought us a video camera to take videos of Evie for her Prep work and so we of course set about putting it to use. I am still working on my skills as a videographer and catcher of the perfect baby moment....What fun!

Baby Prison

There are crafty doings a foot in the Mott Lacroix household. A little over a week ago I removed the bumpers on Evie’s crib, which now reminds me of a baby prison. It’s the “this is where you go when we want to be able to take our eyes off you” place. Now generally she only goes to the clinker when she is sleeping but increasingly she will wake up and not make any fuss so I’ll come into her room in the morning or at nap time and she’ll just be hanging out in cell happy as a clam. Well more or less happy, based on recent evidence I firmly believe she is trying to find a way to make a jail break.

Exhibit A: One week ago at around 5 am I hear a pounding that sounds like bad drum set playing coming from what I thought was our next door neighbors (We once had a neighbor there that, I kid you not, played like Animal on the Muppets so I just figured he had decided to pick up the hobby again). Finally at around 5:30 am the unrythmical rat-a-tat-tat drove me from bed and on my way to the kitchen to make coffee I realized that in fact the “drummer” was Evie. She had scooted herself all the way to the end of her crib and was having a jolly old time kicking at the end of her crib. It may seem like innocent fun but I know she was just testing the strength of those boards.

Exhibit B: Last weekend I walked by the nursery when I thought she was napping only to find Genevieve chewing, to the best of her toothless ability, at the bars of her baby prison. She was clearly trying to beaver her way out.

Exhibit C: Last Tuesday I woke up at 3 am to feed Evie, went into her dark bedroom and proceeded, as is per usual, to blindly feel around the crib for her little body. What I found was a baby on her tummy with two legs dangling out of the crib between the slats. Obviously she was trying to discreetly lower her self to the floor for a fast getaway.

Can these three incidents possibly just be coincidence, just the innocuous crib explorations of a five month old? Perhaps, but when I post a note about an escapee baby in the weeks to come you’ll find that I was indeed in the know about this one…

Clever stuff...

There is a very ripe market out there for clever baby “stuff”. Most of this stuff is decidedly just crafty marketing aimed at the desperate, naïve or otherwise susceptible new parent. I am, for the most part, pretty anti baby stuff for myriad reasons not the least of which being we have a small house and a finite amount of money to spend. I must admit however that Evie and I have encountered a pretty darn cool item that some ingenious parent out there invented. It definitely falls into the useless baby stuff category but heck sometimes you just have to indulge your inner consumerist... I am not even sure what exactly it is called but it is essentially a pacifier with a net at the end of it that you can put stuff in.

This amazing device came to my attention by way of our nanny, Nicole, who commented that it might be a cool thing for Evie because she likes so much to suck on ice cubes wrapped in washcloths. An ice cube in a washcloth is really quite nice and low tech but requires constant supervision, as I am sure some smart parent out there realized, and voila the net-pacifier-thingy was born and millions (or at least thousands) of dollars were made.

Anyway last Friday I had a flex day and my mom graciously came down to Tucson with a really cool highchair for Genevieve (it is in the background of the pictures). I had mentioned this invention to her earlier in the week and she picked one up for Evie in Phoenix and brought it along with the highchair. We started out with an ice cube, which was nice and all, but I think a large part of having a baby is a great excuse to make a terrible mess, so we nudged it up a notch and gave her frozen mango. Of course she thought this was the best thing since sliced bread (or would have if she knew what sliced bread was) and for the first time ever protested when we took it away from her to put in more mango. Since my mom was here I have taken it up another level and yesterday after a stressful day, (Nicole’s poor daughter is sick so I had to spend ½ my work day with Evie with me at work…. which actually worked surprisingly well… in that I was able to get something done) I decided to give her some frozen blueberries to try in an effort to amuse both of us. Ohhh the beautiful mess!!

Up at Blue

This past weekend in an effort to escape the oppressive heat of Tucson we ran away to the cabin. It was a great relaxing weekend with the grandparents! On the way up Evie had a total meltdown outside of Safford, so bad we looked into staying in Safford for the night (desperate I know). We couldn’t believe it, one place wanted $120 and the other $160!! Of all the craziness… well anyway we didn’t end up staying in Safford and we were able to keep her calmed down only by the power of me riding in the back seat with her holding an ice cube to her mouth. If only that darn tooth would make its appearance.

The Mighty Maw

I have always been a fan of the great philosophers They Might Be Giants. The past few weeks one of their sage musings has seemed particularly applicable to Genevieve: “There's only one thing that I know how to do well, And I've often been told that you only can do what you know how to do well; And that's be you, Be what you're like, Be like yourself; And so I'm having a wonderful time; But I'd rather be whistling in the dark.” Except of course in Genevieve’s case it is not whistling in the dark but rather open-jawed “mouthing” everything, under any light conditions.

Assuming her obsession with placing anything she can get in her hot little hands into her mouth is normal, it really makes me think about how we as humans, evolutionarily speaking, have made it so far. I mean isn’t this nubile tendency to place any object in one’s mouth just a tad bit dangerous? In the past few weeks Evie, who is under pretty tight supervision mind you, has managed to get a cat’s tail, her dad’s forehead, the edge of the table, grass, countless toys and goodness knows what else into her maw. All of this and she isn’t even really mobile yet! I cringe to think of the items she will try to ingest once she can make her way through the world more efficiently.

A coworker of mine told me a great story about another colleague whose toddler ingested (unbeknownst to him) at least half of a San Diego beach worth of sand. The sand consumption was only noted later in the day (and in the days to follow) in the abnormally large amount of sand-encrusted-poo. How did early humans possibly survive this early oral stage? Sand is fairly benign, just think of all the potentially lethal items there are in this world that a young tot could ingest! (Well I guess in some ways early-man’s world was a safer place, no Chinese lead painted toys to chew on).

Well anyway thankfully for Evie she has a cadre of willing and able watchers to ensure that she (for the most part) only places pre-screened items in her mouth. Speaking of Evie watchers, the other eventful occurrence of the past week is our nanny Nicole started! We are very excited to have her and her daughter Riley taking care of our little Evie. Stay tuned for more on this exciting new development.....

The whole family loves to swim...

Evie is having a rough yucky-here-comes-a-tooth-I-just-know-it day so she needs constant mommy attention so I don’t have time to write a full blog… too busy wrapping the next ice filled washcloth and dancing to take her mind off her mouth. These are a few pictures from this weekend up in Phoenix at my folks’ house. We sure do have fun when we go swimming!!!

Super Dad!

Patrick in his second and first honest to goodness full week as stay-at-home dad has been a hoot! On Monday he proclaimed that staying at home with Evie is great and all but honestly he was pretty bored. So in order to spice it up a little he started looking for exciting activities during the day. The first was to go out to lunch with a colleague, OK pretty normal, mundane. Then he decided it would be fun to take Evie down to visit with his soon to be employer. Sounds reasonable to me. Home depot was on the list too. But by far the best boredom-beater of the week was signing Evie up for scientific experiments at the U of A. I kid you not; he took her in to a “language lab” that where they flashed all sorts of images at her a la Clockwork Orange (sans the scary eye contraptions thank goodness) to see how she would respond. I must admit if it took such lengths this week to keep our super dad occupied I fear for the rest of the month!!

Patrick the super dad spends his days (when not facilitating and furthering science through our progeny) encouraging Genevieve’s development. I call every now and again to make sure all is well at home and as such get a good window into the days activities. As I understand it the schedule goes something like this

8 am – snack
8:15 am – tripod training
8:30 am – nap
9:30 am – snack
9:45 am – change diaper
9:50 am - laugh inducement (i.e., Patrick tries to be a silly as possible in order to get Evie to laugh)
10:00 am – explore the latest Cooking Light for good pictures
10:15 am – tripod training
10:30 am – zurburt lesson (a zurburt for those of you who don’t know is a belly raspberry)
10:45 am – puts Evie in her chair for a break
10:50 am – decides Evie doesn’t want to be in her chair
11:00 am – lunch
11:15 am – change diaper
11:20 am – nap
Noon – hand-eye coordination training with colorful objects

Well you get the idea. Lots of activity, very structured all for the benefit of little miss Evie ☺

The highlight of my week, however, was on Wednesday when Patrick called me at lunchtime. I was away from my desk and when I got back I had a very excited message from Patrick that involved zurburts but was otherwise totally intelligible (I think most of what he said was not in English but baby-speak) Well I called him back and he said that he had just called to let me know that Evie, intentionally or accidentally, while on his tummy and gave him a zurburt. What a brilliant child we have!

Baby Party II

What fun! Our centering (pregnancy) class got together again this weekend for a pool party baby style. It is so much fun to see so many other little ones that are almost exactly (some of them within days of) Evie’s age. They are all so similar in so many ways…. The best was the nearly across the board obsession with sticking all or most of both fists in their mouth. Every time I looked around another tot was going full gusto at their hand… sooo cute! Of course they all share the same tribulations as well as triumphs, namely the whole back to belly but no belly to back as of yet…. I guess it is good to know that misery loves company eh?

Evie's big adventure!

Last Monday night Patrick, Evie, Kita and I left Tucson for what was to be Evie’s greatest adventure yet! Unfortunately the adventure was not so adventurous for Kita who made it only as far as my parent’s house that night… no dogs allowed where we were going....

Months ago Patrick and I decided to take a trip to Havasupai as a post-bar/ anniversary excursion. The idea was to relax and have fun… well for poor Patrick even the best laid plans run awry… this whole parenting thing is a learning process is it not and learning is not always fun? Anyway a few weeks ago I was given the opportunity to combine my vacation with a work trip through the Arizona Strip and because it was OK to bring babe and husband I jumped at the opportunity!! So for the first few days of the great adventure Patrick and Evie tagged along as I helped my boss and co-workers do some fieldwork in this very remote area of Arizona.

We almost handed in the towel on the second night, when I met up with Patrick and Evie after a day of work and the poor pumpkin had given her dad a terrible afternoon of inconsolable crying. Fortunately (or so I think, maybe Patrick feels differently ☺ ) we pushed ahead!

Ohh the sights we saw… agricultural fields, MIA wells, plateaus, flooding rivers, huge (is there any other kind) gorges, polygamist housing, dairy farms, sand and gravel pits, dams…. Yes all in a days work for the adventure-water nerd.



On Friday my “work week” (god I love my work!) was over and Patrick, Evie and I headed for Grand Canyon Caverns for the night. Evie had her first cave tour and I am sorry to say that she is not an aficionado of caves like her mom. We think the dry air (it was a dead cave) down there and/or the elevation change was just too much for her. OK so I admit defeat on this one… no more caves for my baby until she is at least 2 years old.


At 4 am on Saturday we set out for Hualapai Hilltop, the beginning of our 8-mile trek into the canyon that is home to Havasu Creek and the town of Supai. We got a super early start so that all (but especially the babe) would be cool for the hike. That part of the plan seemed to work quite well. The whole baby big enough for the pack part… umm not so much. Patrick felt like little one was bouncing too much in the pack (I couldn’t see because my role was as mommy mule) so poor guy was all stressed out the whole hike down that we were going to end up with a shaken baby. Fortunately she made it unscathed but Patrick did not and was so worried about her both in terms of heat and bobbley head that he really seemed to be bummed.

Ahh but all was not lost in the vacation department. On Sunday morning I found out that Evie and I could take the helicopter out of the canyon thus saving 8 miles of heat and bobbing! Hooray! So with a much-improved familial mood we set out to see these wonderful waterfalls we had come to see. We spent the day at Havasupai Falls…. There was even a little baby pool/travertine deposit just for Evie. She took a couple of good naps on the red sand and seemed to be pleased as pie.

The next morning Patrick set out hiking for the top in the wee morning hours (although not too wee for fear of mountain lions) and I got up a 6 am to wait for the first-come-first served helicopter ride. Well things don’t always work so smoothly and it ended up taking until noon for Evie and I to take that copter ride… I think the tot would have preferred to wait forever for that life first. She decidedly did not like that horrible old helicopter… quite frankly it made me pretty queasy too! Good thing we stopped in Seligman, AZ at the Road Kill Café on the way home…..

But I am happy to say we all made it back safe and sound from our “relaxing” vacation and are all hoping that sometime in the next week or so we can get some rest ☺

A million thanks!

Patrick is finished with the bar!! Yeah Evie and I have our Patrick back... we are both very excited. It also means that our life-savers for the past few months Monique and Gerard have headed home to Texas. We are soooo thankful for the invaluable help they have provided us we can't even say. The long and the short of it is that the last two months would have been a nightmare with out them!! So this week's blog is dedicated to them :)

Roly-Poly

A complaint was lodged in the sibling department about the lack of pictures of Evie with Uncle Brendy... this is a pretty good one from this weekend :)

Pretty convenient for the blogging mommy, Evie seems to be picking up new skills each week…. This week it is the roll from back to tummy tum tum. A good skill I guess but really maddening for poor Genevieve seeing how she doesn’t particularly relish tummy time. In fact I would go so far as to say it frustrates the heck out of her.

You see she has learned quite well the back to front maneuver but just cannot seem to manage the front to back and thus she keeps getting herself “stuck” on her belly. Very annoying indeed. This problem first manifested itself last Tuesday night when Patrick and I took her on a long walk that cut into her normal bedtime routine, i.e. she was not on her way to the land of nod by 8 pm. This wrinkle in her evening plan caused her to get quite fussy, and therefore more in motion in her crib than usual, and much to everyone’s surprise transformed her into a rolling genius. The problem of course was that she had no desire to actually be on her tummy, yet she kept ending up there. I kept getting her pretty calmed down then I’d lay her in bed letting her squirm around a bit like usual and then… bam… she’d roll over and get really po’ed. We eventually got her asleep that night but ever since then she has been a back to tummy rolling fool.

All of the big people in the world who just can’t bear to see her suffer have pitched in to educate our wee one on the proper tummy to back technique in an effort to end her suffering as soon as possible. Days with Monique and Gerry have become a defacto belly-to-back-boot-camp where Monique has gone so far as to get down on the ground face-to-face with Miss Evie in an effort to explain the proper technique. Monique favors the put your knees under to gain leverage approach. My father this weekend also got face down on the ground for a bit and I think he is a proponent of the tuck the arm under method but I’ll have to double check on that one. Of course everyone involved is very diligent about cheering her on when it looks like success is neigh, yet belly to back success still eludes our little one. Here’s to hoping that this week is good for a little belly to backing so that Genevieve can once again be content and completely in control of her little, yet ever-expanding, world.

Grab it!

When you’re a baby and you learn a new skill man do you become manic about it…. Or maybe we just have an OCD baby because she really gets into her new skills! The skill of the past week is grabbing things. For the most part this is a really funny, not to mention fun, new skill but it does have its dangerous moments (all the experienced parents out there are thinking, I’m sure, ohhh you’ve seen nothing yet!) One of the funny (and dangerous) moments this week was when she decided that she really needed to partake in her mommy’s morning coffee. I, as is per usual, was yakking away and looked down at her in my lap just in time to see her close her little fist around my precariously perched coffee cup. Once I realized what was going on it, of course, became a cute, fun game to watch (and take pictures of) the baby trying to “drink my coffee.”

The other fun grabbing game is the look-ma-I-can-stick-my-feet-in-my-mouth game. This game can, however, only be played when she is sans diaper because the diaper is big so it is a little bit risky. You never know when the urge to pee can overcome her and although she is not as dangerous as boy she can still spray with the best of them. Nevertheless it is definitely my favorite of the grabbing games. I’ve decided she has a little yogi in her because in the process of open mouth insert foot she does a mean happy baby pose ☺

At the pool

Evie is becoming quite the swimming tot. Both last weekend and this past Friday we went to the pool with my friend Annie and Evie's soon to be friend who for the moment resides in Annie's belly.

Baby Tricks!

This past week my mom came down to Tucson to watch Evie during the day so we could give Monique a much-needed break. Being that she is a pediatrician she is always “testing” Genevieve and giving us the low down on each new developmental milestone. We are very fortunate to have her around to give use the “scoop” on these things!

Developmental milestones are pretty cool, they give you a way to track how your baby is, well, developing. But lets be honest here folks really all they are is a set of baby tricks. Now most of us of hip late 20 early 30 ish baby-having set started out with what many like to refer to as “starter children” i.e., dogs. Most of us doted on these pets and, of course, spent inordinate amounts of time teaching them to do tricks in order to impress (or so we thought) our neighbors, family and friends. Although it may seem off-color to say so, having a baby is no different, except eventually the “tricks” are much, much cooler than anything your residential fur person could accomplish. I mean think about it. What are our current favorite baby tricks to demonstrate to people…. Look at her, she can almost roll over, wait, wait there she goes she can sit! Of course one of the most popular dog tricks that no parent in their right mind would want to demonstrate their child doing is play dead so I guess the analogy ends there ☺

Anyway here are our favorite baby tricks over the past few weeks. I have even included pictures where I could get them. So in order of “coolness” Evie now: brings hands to the midline, brings hands together, coos and ahhs at you, bears weight on her legs, can pull herself up to a stand from a sit (with a little help of course), sucks her thumb and most importantly and best of all SMILES! (There have also been only quasi-confirmed sightings of the elusive baby laugh and roll over)

Ben and Annie's Baby Shower!

Well no pictures of the mom and dad to be (I was taking pictures with Annie's camera for most of the party) But here are a few of Evie with my friends Kristen, Tania and Evren....

Living in fear...

I imagine it is typical for a new parent to feel fear for or about their child. This past week we have been feeling a whole different sort of fear, fear of our child. Now don’t worry she has not started spinning her head around 360 degrees (although she does occasionally spit-up like the exorcist kid) or breathing fire or anything like that. No this fear is likely a normal fear that parents have of their two-something-month old… it is a fear of the almighty, sure to be overwhelming, poo. This fear sets in round about day two of what I like to think of as the do-do-diaper drought. Maybe it is not so much a fear but an expectation, like the expectation you would feel if you were the sad fool sitting on the seat in a dunk tank. You know eventually some sharp shot is going to nail that little target and then you will be drenched. Well in this case the drenching substance is not water but baby poo.

As the days passed we got evermore fearful of what exactly this massive poo would entail. I stopped wearing my nicest clothes while holding little Evie on my lap, knowing that Murphy’s law must have something to say about the inevitability of a baby pooping on you when you have your dry-clean only skirt on. Every day when I came home from work my first question to Monique was… “So has she pooed?” Day after day the sad response was no, not yet. Every little fart was met with anticipation, would the goods follow? Unfortunately through all of this stress Genevieve was a victim too. She did not want to unload the mother load on anyone… she just wanted to be free of her burden as well. Finally after a more or less five day drought the wait was over and I am happy to say no one got hurt (well no one except for the bouncy chair she sits in).

Now apparently it is totally normal for little babies to go days sans poo. So we reset the clock and now are on the watch again… you just never know when you’ll get “hit” Ahh the joys of being a parent ☺

Rasberries

The most prominent new skill of Miss Evie these past few days has been the all mighty and ever shoulder-wetting raspberry. Laugh if you will but this new skill is a big deal to her and she is ever so excited to practice it day and night. The only problem with raspberry fun is that the byproduct is an excessive amount of drool and Genevieve has absolutely no consideration for anyone when it comes to drool. She will happily place it on your shoulder, nose, arm or any other part that should enter into the drool green zone, i.e., within two feet of her head. The most impressive part of the raspberry drool phenomenon are the bubbles…. I had no idea one could make such large bubbles using spit alone! I must admit that part of the reason for my delay in posting was my quest for a “bubble photo” Fortunately Patrick was happy to provide me with a raspberry demo but then in the end I am happy to report I actually got one ☺

In other news I took Evie swimming for the first time last weekend. She really wasn’t a fan at first but warmed up to it OK by the end. The whole floating thing was just a little too creepy for her at first. It was pretty funny, I would let her stand on the bottom of the kiddy pool and then gradually bring her legs out from underneath her and the more she floated the farther out her lower lip went, not to the point of cry but it was definitely displeasure. Well regardless we will have to go again because darn if she didn’t look cute in her swimsuit. (We also will have to go again because being the dodo I am brought my camera but not the data card… hey man I am a new mom I can’t expect to remember it all!)

Working mom

Like any new job or specialty motherhood has its terms of art, intelligible and even counterintuitive, to the uninitiated. The phrase of the week is “sleeps through the night”. Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Hey so here I am proud to announce that Evie now “sleeps through the night” hooray! Right? Well not quite. Sleeping through the night in mommyhood speak equals six hours or more. Six hours? What normal human considers that sleeping through the night? OK so the problem here is interpreting sleeps through the night to mean a good night’s sleep. Ahh the trickiness of language ☺ Well so now Genevieve is sleeping six hours at a time and it is definitely at night. Actually I consider myself lucky. She chooses to do her six hours from 9:30ish to 4 am ish. I met with some friends from my pregnancy class this weekend and some of their babies choose to do their sleeping through the night starting at 7pm. (Which at this time of the year it isn’t even dark then so it is a super misnomer then now isn’t it?)

So it is a good thing that Miss Evie is giving me 6 hours at a stretch these days because working two jobs (mommyhood and at ADWR) would be next to impossible otherwise. I had a bit of a rough week because a pending deadline dictated that I needed to work pretty close to 40 hours this week which was much harder (mentally not physically) than I thought it would be. I think really it was the stress combined with the hours that did me in… well that and the first embarrassing, mildly degrading pump on the go experience.

I was at a conference helping out with the AV side things so it was impossible to just slip out and in as needed. It was at this fancy hotel but I didn’t have time (and honestly was just a little bit too embarrassed) to ask for a special room to pump in. So I escaped to a bathroom that fortunately had very few people in it and whipped out my contraption. I squatted on the floor (wearing a suit I wasn’t about to sit) and proceeded to take care of business. I felt like that darn pump was as loud as a jet engine and everyone coming and going must have been curious as to what that bizarre noise from the last stall was. Well that was OK, but then 3 hours later when we had another break everyone, of course, made a b-line to the bathroom. At this point there was no way I was going to hold up a line at the bathroom so I could squat and pump for 10 minutes so I decided (foolishly) that I would just wait until I went home. Ouch what a mistake that was! Ahh the adventures of the working mom….

Cover girl...

What an eventful week! Saturday June 2 in the morning Evie got to meet her Great Aunt Lisa and Great Uncle Bob and second cousins Jessie, Becky and Missy as well as their goats…. Then that afternoon she met her Grandma Monique and Grandpa Gerard. They drove out from Texas to drop off Monique who will play the role of super sitter for the next 6 weeks while I go back to work and Patrick studies for the bar. We spent the weekend hanging out and playing with the baby…

Then on Monday the big day for me came, I went (or in the end tried to) go back to work. I got everything all prepared the night before… being the goober that I am I even made a list so I would not forget anything because really there is sooo much to consider, clothes, wallet, snack, breast pump, towel, because disaster would strike if I forgot anything god knows ☺ and woke up bright and early fed the baby, fed myself and got out the door by 7:40 am I was so proud of myself ☺ I get to work a ready to be as I was pre-baby only to find my computer is totally messed up, all sorts of problems such that I can barely work on it. I do my darndest for a few hours and then take it as a sign that I should just go and work from home as a way to ease the transition for both Evie and I. It turned out to be a stroke of good luck because Evie was having a bit of a rough day on account of the fact she wasn’t 100% used to the rapid eats that she can get from the bottle (baby tummie bubbles are no good I tell ya).

After a bit of a bumpy road on Monday the rest of the week went pretty well. Wednesday Monique and I took her in for her 2 month appointment (which included some shots… not the best way to achieve baby happiness). My mom was looking for some good baby at the doctor’s office pictures to put on the cover of the journal she edits so of course I jumped at the opportunity to potentially have a cover girl for a daughter ☺ Man taking good pictures of babies is harder that I ever imagined!! Well hopefully one or two will be good enough for us to call our babe a model, I’ll keep ya posted on that one.

So here are her current stats: she weighs 11 lbs on the nose and is 22.5 inches long. I can’t believe she has gained over 3 pounds in just two months…. I guess they really do grow up fast ;)

Five years!!

This is a collage I made for Patrick to celebrate our 5th anniversary...

The end of an era

My good friend Annie came by on Friday, my last official work- day of maternity leave, with lunch. As she was leaving I commented on how I had created a massive list of must dos for my last week of “free-time” (ha what a misnomer that is) and had not managed to do really even half of my tasks. She commented that 30% was doing well. This truism got me to thinking about the past two months and how much and somehow at the same time how little I have been able to accomplish.

Since having Evie I have been able to achieve things that I once thought would be so simple yet somehow became gargantuan tasks, such as take a shower every morning, eat breakfast and brush my teeth. Who would have ever imagined (except of course for the experienced mom) that accomplishing such routine tasks could be counted as a major success for the day?! Other not-so-small victories of my first month as a mom have been to get used to my new sleep regimen, squeeze into (a very few) of my pre-pregnancy clothes and the most important of all, learn how/when/where to feed our baby. (And really I should admit that I am still on the novice level of baby feed-dom).

In the end I actually accomplished many of my tasks (really about 55%) because Evie was quite cooperative. She even slept for 5.5 hours one night last week! (Sleep being an important factor in the productivity level of course). In the end, however, I came to realize that all of my said tasks were not nearly as important as the “task” of just enjoying my last week of complete total and utter baby time.

Now onto the next phase of parenthood…

Into the woods pics!!

Here are the pictures!!

Into the woods...

Long before Genevieve was born Patrick and I decided that we should spend the last two weeks of my maternity leave (and Patrick’s last two weeks of freedom before he is sacrificed to the study-nonstop-for-the-bar gods) up at my folks cabin on the Blue River. I am happy to say that we stuck to our guns and have been hanging out doing close to nothing up here in the woods since last Thursday. The place is super remote but even so as of a month ago we have internet… how crazy is that?

Little Evie, who for the first few days up here was better known as Fuss Bucket, is doing well. Last Tuesday I weighed her in at 9 pounds 8 ounces. Patrick is very concerned with weight percentiles and was pleased to research and discover that this puts her exactly at the 50th percentile for weight. Now for those of you who do not spend your days obsessing over a baby’s weight and height, these percentiles are not like the SATs, a 95th percentile versus a 25th does not mean your babe is extra good or extra bad… it is simply a range of acceptable. For example a 95th percentile baby only has 5% of kiddos that are heavier and a 25th has 75% that are heavier etc. But average (or heavier) n this case matters most to Evie’s daddy so both the food machine (aka me) and the babe are happy to comply.

I guess changes in altitude can wreak havoc on little bellies (or so grandma pediatrician informed us) because man was she an unhappy camper (or cabiner to be more exact) our first day or two here (thus the alias of Fuss Bucket). Fortunately for our sanity she has calmed down considerably and is back to her usual happy calm baby self.

The most eventful occurrence so far has nothing to do with babies, but with lost dogs and close encounters with bears… seeing how Evie and I just held down the fort during that whole adventure I will let you ask Patrick, who survived to tell the tale, fill you in on that one! Evie went on her second hike (what a lucky gal) on Monday. She is quite the hiker I tell ya, spent most of the hike awake and looking out the side of her little pack, nice and quiet and I imagine happy.

I am taking tons of pictures but have no easy way to post them here so y’all will have to wait until we return to the land of the hot and sweaty next week ☺

Nicole comes to town!

Last Wednesday Genevieve got to meet her Grandma Nicole for the first time!! Nicole came all the way out from Baltimore to see Genevieve and to see Patrick graduate from law school. We have had a wonderful past few days…. Mostly involving sitting around the house and playing with little Evie, who is very fond of her Grandma and has given her the number one place to sleep award ☺

We have been having a lot of fun recently because Evie is smiling more and more and is really starting to interact with the world around her. She loves to stare into the little mirror on top of her vibrating chair and actually started grasping at the toys on the sides. The chair turned out to be a fabulous investment… and to think that to get the adult version of one of these bad boys (i.e., massage chairs) we would pay a fortune and still not have the music and “toys” associated with it that she has. Ahh the privileged life of a baby!

Unfortunately for Nicole it has been pretty darn hot here. We tried to give her a reprieve from the heat and on Friday went up to Mt. Lemmon for Evie’s first official hike. I carried her so it was not a long excursion but an important milestone nonetheless. (Some people keep track of head lifting etc but being the hippies we are we are most concerned with important events like hikes and trips to the mountains )

Of course the highlight of the past week was Patrick’s hard earned graduation from law school. Being the cheesy lady I am I made a onesie for Evie that said “Proud Daughter of a J.D.” for her to wear to the graduation. I guess Patrick and I are well matched because he seemed to really appreciate the little get up I put her in. The ceremony was really nice and Genevieve was perfectly behaved (may those days last for as long as possible… I won’t say forever because not even I am that naïve). It will definitely take some adjustment for all of us to think of Patrick as an attorney instead of a law student…

Mall madness

Genevieve reached the one-month marker this Sunday… but was four weeks old last Friday, yet another confusing aspect of parenthood, four weeks does not equal one month. So when they say your child should be able to balance one toe (or some other equally important milestone) at three months do they mean 12 weeks or the 6th of July which is more like 13 or 14 weeks?

In any case the most exciting aspect of the whole month marker is that we can now safely take Evie out into the wide world. Her first foray into the urban forest was a much-needed bra run to the Tucson Mall, not the most thrilling of outdoor adventures but hey you have got to start somewhere. So I figured my best baby-outing bet would be to stuff her full of food and then make a b-line to the car to maximize the amount of time I had before she was hungry and fussy again. Ohh the folly of young motherhood….

We made it to the mall fine but of course I parked on the absolute wrong side of the mall for the store I wanted to go to and had to hike it at least a mall mile to my goal. I am pretty anti clunky stroller these days (while she still light enough to carry I can afford to be) so I had her in the baby sling. For whatever reason this was a curiosity and well-meaning people kept stopping me to ask about her not realizing that my baby-so-cute-not-fussy-clock was ticking.

We made it to the store without incident but man did I have a heck of a time getting things down off of high racks and doing my darndest not to turn my baby into a defacto clothes hanger. So I get ¾ of the way though trying on clothes when the fussy alarm sounds and she starts to cry and I, who am in between trying on bras look down to see my boobs starting to leak (little did I realize I too had a timer) So I fumble my own bra back on and then proceed to feed her in the dressing room hoping that no well meaning worker comes to check on me because I am certainly not comfortable with the public feeding thing yet. Fortunately the babe was fed without incident and I purchased a few items and we headed to the car.

At the car I realized that in my rush to get a well-fed baby into the car I forgot to change her diaper as well. I decided to change it in the car before we left the mall… lets just say she was very productive and I count myself lucky to not have had a great yellow-green disaster to add to our first trip out…

Good news and great irony

An update on the general state of babydom.... Genevieve and I went down to the Birth Center yesterday because I thought it was my pregnancy class reunion (turns out it wasn't but that is another story, chalk it up to lack of sleep... gotta love it I now have an excuse for every dopey thing I do :) Well regardless I had a chance to weigh her (remember I am still concerned about the whole birth weight thing...) and she is a whopping 8 pounds 10 ounces!!! Hurrah that means I can finally lay to rest the whole "I must be starving my baby" thing!

We also finally got a breast pump, I ended up just buying one online for conveniece sake. Evie has been sleeping really well and I am ready to cautiously declare the whole reverse the night to day endeavor a success. In fact, last night she slept for 4.5 hours in one stretch! The great irony is that I had to use that hard found pump after about 3.5 hours of sleep because I was so full as to be in pain... nothing is ever simple is it?

Adventures in Rural Diapering

On Thursday of last week we decided to pack it in and head up to the woods… rumors of a 90+ degree weekend were certainly a consideration in the exodus. The drive up to the cabin emphasized the whole everything-takes-longer-when-you-have-kids mantra. The drive is usually about 5.5 hours but took us closer to 7 because we periodically had to stop to feed Genevieve. The upshot of this was most of the places we stopped were very pretty and at I think just about every stop Patrick ran into someone and started talking to them about something random and interesting.

My folks were up at the cabin with us which was great. Genevieve and I mostly took it easy, and we discovered just how great breastfeeding on a hammock in the cool sunny air can be for ones state of mind. Patrick spent most of his time either helping to clean up the cabin and prepare it for the fire season or noodling around on his guitar. Ahhh the life.

The big experiment of the trip was to see if we could stick to our cloth diapering guns while away from the “modern washing machine convenience”. To that end Patrick and Dad fixed the aged (and I mean really aged) washing machine in the upper shed so that we could give it a whirl… so to speak. The fix proved to be an exercise in creativity, the hose used to plug and drain the washer was so old that in trying to see how much “flex” it had left it just cracked in two. Having no extra circa 1950s hose at the cabin improvisation was a necessity. They dinked around with it for awhile and in the end Patrick used a whittled down champagne cork to stop up the washer and keep it from draining. The amazing thing is this actually worked!

So Mom and I set about washing the diapers which entailed cold soaking them in one of the rinse bins, washing them in the machine, sending them through the finger crunching wringer, rinsing them, sending them through the wringer, rinsing them, sending them through the wringer and then onto the line to dry. The wringer was the most interesting part of the whole endeavor, it took two of us to safely feed the diapers through it…. I have no idea how a solo washer would manage quite frankly.

So washed and ready we hung the diapers to dry on the clothes line inside the shed because it looked like it might just rain…. And rain it most certainly did. About 4 hours later I checked on the diapers (supply was getting low and I was getting a bit anxious) and they were still as sopping wet as the moment they were wrung. A plan B had to be enacted. So we started a fire in the fireplace and set up a baby diaper drying rack out of the holder for the fireplace accessories… all very high tech. This certainly did the job but it was a pretty labor intense operation… all that diaper monitoring and flipping like burgers. We did a few diapers this way with the hope that the next day would be sunny and bright and we could use solar power as our dryer.

As luck would have it the next day we had about 4 hours of morning sunshine (not potent enough to dry a single diaper) and then 6 hours of rain. So back to the fireplace those darn diapers went. In the end they were all nice and toasty dry and we can call ourselves hardcore… or maybe just cheap…..