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)