Evie's new "crib"

Well it was touch and go there for a bit but I am happy to report that last weekend the whole clan successfully moved into our new digs.... we are still in boxes and everything is just a bit chaotic so not too much time to post but I thought I'd put up a few pics. Hope everyone has a merry christmas and a chilly wonderful solstice and I'll update with stories later

Cookies

Mmmm cookies. Last year Annie and I hung out and made Christmas cookies and it was a lot of fun so we decided to do a repeat this year… only this year we had two additional “helpers", which of course we had to dress for the occasion. Maxine was fabulous (except when Aunt Kelly tried to hold her, then she would cry) but Evie was trouble… Luckily Maxine let Evie use her swing otherwise cookie making would have been nigh impossible. This picture of Annie says it all!



Anyway over about 4 hours we managed to make one batch of cookies… not nearly as productive as last year (ahh story of the life of a person with a small child) but man was it fun!

In other news Patrick and I are buying a new house this Tuesday so stay tuned for pictures of Evie and Kita in their new digs!!!

Look out world... here I crawl

Here is a little footage of Evie crawling her stuff after Thanksgiving last week.

DangeDar

It would appear that our daughter has a terrible affliction. (Or is it ability?) Some sort of evolutionary malfunction… I call it baby DangeDar. DangeDar is a radar for danger and let me tell you Genevieve’s DangeDar is acute. I suspected she had this ability when she was still a log-rolling babe and would frequently roll herself into awkward situations, but now that she is fully mobile there is no mistaking this “talent”. In any given room she is able to find the one item that should under no circumstances be placed in one’s mouth.

There are a number of different types of items that get caught in her DangeDar net. Some are floor errata, such as tags from recent purchases, rocks, kitty litter. Others are more vertical in nature like corners of coffee tables, edges of rocking chairs, trash cans and (of course) the almighty electrical outlet.

Now I am all about positive redirection of a seemingly destructive habit. So I have done some thinking and decided that Evie and I could open a business and channel her DangeDar for the forces of good (like say to start a college savings account). You see one of Genevieve’s specialties is dust bunnies. Oh yes, if a dust bunny resides within a good 20 foot radius of her she hones in and goes for it. So here is how the business would work… Genevieve and I would seek out any and all persons who are exceptionally neat-freaky. We would then offer her services as a guaranteed dust bunny locater, just place her on the floor of the client’s home and let her do her work. I would then follow her around with my dustbin and broom and wrangle any free-range dust bunny she should encounter!

Crazy times!

Whew what a crazy past few weeks. We went to Baltimore, Evie and I got (and still to some extent still have) yucky colds, I rode in the Tour de Tucson (33 miler), Sonja and Wili came to visit, we went to a baby party, Patrick's friend Elisa came to visit and then we just got back from San Carlos, Mexico for Turkey Day. What excitement all packed into just a few weeks... here are some photos of the fun!

Baltimore!!

The big weekend finally came! Last weekend Patrick, Evie and I went all the way across the wide ole U.S. to meet our nephew Dylan for the very first time! It was a whirlwind of a weekend but wonderful... albeit quite cold for us (well at least me) desert dwelling types.

Although many a pre-trip hour of mommy sleep was lost in anticipation of the plane ride I am happy to say that both the coming and the going were blissfully uneventful. Evie was a great traveler and mostly just slept on the ride to and fro.

On Friday we arrived after dark and stayed up late (including Evie....) talking and having fun.



On Saturday we went for a wonderfully cold walk around Nicole and Vivian's "hood" Including a trip to a great second hand baby clothes shop where Evie acquired an awesome new hat. The afternoon was spent at the Visionary museum... the place where loony (as in crazy) people's art is displayed. Lots of fun colors for babies to look at that is for sure!





That evening Evie and I adventured out on our own to Silver Spring so I could see some of my good friends from my DC days. Sarah and Jamie made a fabulous dinner and a good time was had by all (well as you can see toward the end of the night Evie wasn't too happy but really up to that point she had fun!) Of course I got totally lost trying to get home. Thank goodness for map guide and Patrick's ability to talk me through the streets of Baltimore at 11 pm....







On Sunday we went to the famous Baltimore farmer's market and had the world's best crepes and picked up some fine fixings for Genevieve's baby food. Sunday night was the highlight though. Erik made a wonderful lasagna for everyone and Monique and Karen came by to visit too. The evening's entertainment was (of course) sitting around watching Dylan and Evie play, play, play.

I desperately need to sleep so I'll have to let the pictures do the rest of the talking... Whew what a wonderful weekend!!

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!!!