Memorable Day

We just had a wonderfully relaxing and fun-filled Memorial Day weekend! We're really getting the hang of this baby thing, I think. This past weekend in particular was just the perfect balance of relaxing downtime and fun running around time. Evelyn's sleeping is back on track, and she's sleeping solidly during naps and at nighttime again. We even kept her up a couple of hours after her normal bedtime 2 nights in a row this past weekend, and she was totally fine. In fact, during one of those nights, I put her down in her crib and as I prepared to leave the room, she sat right up, grabbed the side of the crib, and pulled herself to standing in one fell swoop! She was very pleased with herself, and got to stay up even later while John lowered her mattress to the lowest setting possible.

Memorial Day in particular was just the perfect day. Evelyn had a long nap in the morning, during which John napped and I tried unsuccessfully to nap. Then, we walked to West Portal and met up with Auntie Jennifer and Uncie Mike at Peet's... Mike, in addition to lauching his new Web site (www.mikesyoung.com - check out Puddin's portrait!), showed off his new motorcycle. Both in the name of art. (To explain - Mike plans on riding around the German countryside for the next couple of years while getting an MFA.) I think John's getting the motorcycle bug again, and we can see Mike's bad influence on both John and Evelyn already.
Joe and Heidi had us over for a delicious BBQ that afternoon, complete with grilled artichokes and corn, among other tasty treats. We'd been pretty conservative with introducing lots of different kinds of solid foods to Evelyn, partially out of not having the time to make lots of different foods for her to try, and partially out of fear of giving her something that will exacerbate her eczema. That day, though, we let it all hang out and it was liberating to see how easy this whole food thing can be. She chowed down on artichoke hearts and gnawed on the leaves, and loved corn on the cob. I'm glad to know she likes artichoke, since she literally gags at the taste of avocados and even at the mere sight of peas! At least I know she likes some green food...

9 months and several light years later

Evelyn turned 9 months old last Wednesday! It's hard to believe that we're already over 3/4 of the way through the first year of life with a baby. A child. Our child.


We had a relatively uneventful 9 month checkup (until the end, when Evelyn got a vaccination, that we forgot we had to do, and a finger prick to test for anemia, which we didn't know we'd do). Evelyn is 23 lbs and 28.5 inches tall now. Still off the charts for a baby her age, and at the 75th percentile for babies 1 month older than she is, just like the last time we checked. I never would have guessed that I'd have such a big baby, and it's a good thing too, or else I might not have ever done it!

Evelyn continues down her path to independence at breakneck speed, a little too fast for me. Gone are the days when I would enjoy a nice long cuddle with her in the mornings after her first feeding of the day. She used to give me such sweet smiles when she was done nursing, and then would lean her head against my shoulder as I burped her and sang bits of "Good Morning" from Singing in the Rain. Now all she wants is to eat and then get down on the floor and play! I try to hold on to her for a just a little longer, distracting her with a shower of kisses on her face or a quick speed-read through Goodnight Moon (at the pace at which she turns the pages), but as soon as I'm done, she struggles to break free, shoving off with her legs to reach the curtains, pushing with her arms to get to her toys on the floor. Eventually, always, I concede and let her go.

I'm sure any seasoned mom reading this will tell me that motherhood is all about letting go. I spent 10 months growing this baby inside of me, sacrificing the essentials of life, such as sushi, wine, raw oysters, and speeding on the freeway, all for the sake of this little person I hadn't even met yet. And then we met. After a loooooong and intense labor. And I thought the hard part is over, only to be given an extremely rude awakening (repeatedly, oh, every 2-3 hours or so) to the realities of life with a newborn. And then the mess... the seemingly bottomless liquids ejected, sometimes forcibly, from all parts of the body. The constant, and I mean, constant nursing. The neverendingness of it all. I longed for the orderly life I once knew, the life in which I had complete control over my immediate situation. The 6 months of maternity leave spanned before me like the dunes of the Mojave....

But then things got easier, imperceptibly but certainly, and I got into a nice rhythm. Just when I thought I'd gotten things figured out, and Evelyn was sleeping well and I was confidently taking her out of the house to run errands and meet with other moms and their babies, it was time to go to back to work full time. And then it was time for a different kind of letting go. Of course, we have the best daycare situation next to me staying home, which is having my mom watch Evelyn. But I had to trust that the perfect little system we had, the routines and the sleep schedules and all of the carefully orchestrated interactive games we played, wouldn't completely fall apart when I left for the office. And of course it didn't. It took me a while to learn that Evelyn would do just fine while I was away, and maybe even better, because now she has another person she's attached to, another way to interact with the world, another way to learn and grow and become the complete little individual that she is today. The one who learned how to clap and wave and understand Chinese from her Grandma, the one who screams and shouts at strangers walking by to get their attention, and who saves the biggest screams and shouts for me when I get home from work.

Nowadays, both John and I rush home in the evenings, often leaving work too early and not getting enough done, so that we can give Evelyn her bath before bed. I bathe her, and John dresses her for bed, in a perfect little ritual we have. John loves taking her for walks to West Portal on the weekends, with or without me, sitting with her in front of Peet's and enjoying watching her attract attention from the passersby. As he says, it's like hanging out with a celebrity. I'd say he's come a long way from not ever even wanting a kid...

And the same goes for me. I wasn't sure at first, but now I can't imagine life without this little girl. In the beginning, she needed us, and me in particular, so much that it was overwhelming and almost suffocating. Then things got easier, and I had the luxury of wondering if I was holding her too much, spoiling her to the point that she'd want to be held all the time, or so my family warned me. And now, as I struggle to hold on to her for a just a little while longer in the mornings, I know that I had nothing to worry about. I know now to just enjoy everything that Evelyn is and does because these ephemeral moments will vanish before we know it. Now, when she wraps her arms around my shoulders with such ferocity, I just squeeze her and hold on to that feeling before she decides it's time to crawl after the cat. They say that babies grow so much during their first year, but no one ever told us how much we would grow too.

The young and the restless

Or, "The old and the tired," depending on who you're talking about. OK, I know, we're not old. But boy, a few nights in a row of not enough sleep will make anyone feel old. Evelyn is usually a consistently solid sleeper who goes to bed at 6:30-7pm every night and wakes up at 6am every morning, give or take a few minutes in either direction. But the last few nights in a row have been fraught with (albeit brief) bouts of crying and general restlessness. We think she's teething, but we've been thinking that for a while, and all I can say is that I better see some new teeth soon!

Last night, I was positive that she'd have a nice solid night's sleep. After all, she hadn't slept well the 2 nights before, and yesterday she had 2 nearly 2-hour naps during the day. I figured, she's caught up on her sleep and she's going to sleep great tonight! (The whole sleep begets sleep thing...) Well, she didn't cry last night, but she was just awake and my Mommy radar hears everything. Basically I spent a restless night listening to her being restless, and then she decided that 5am would be her wakeup time this morning. As is usually the case with extreme fatigue, I actually had a lot more energy today at work than usual. But I know I'm going to crash soon (and I'm praying for a quiet night tonight).

If it's not teething, we think it could be the fact that she's learning to do so many new things all at once, and it's all just a lot to take for such a little person.

She's a little speed demon these days, crawling around commando style all over the house. Here, she's showing off her expanding repertoire of skills, combining a few of her favorite things in life - noisy toys, crawling, yelling, and door opening (or closing, as the case may be):


Just yesterday she learned how to pop those little baby cheerio things into her mouth by herself. I nearly fell off the stool when she did it! I'd only started giving those to her recently so she can work on her fine motor skills (yes, everything must be a learning opportunity), and she hadn't really made any discernable attempts to feed herself before. She had a cheerio embedded in each fist, as usual, and then she started sucking on one of her fists. I was telling her, "You have to open your fist first Evelyn..." and all of a sudden I realized that she had a cheerio in her mouth! In the next 5 minutes, she managed to get 3 more in there, each time with a little more dexterity (I use that term loosely). She even started grazing them with her two bottom teeth, holding the cheerio precariously at the edge of her closed fist.

She's also got a couple of new games that she likes to play with her Papa. He starts it off by shaking his head from side to side while making monkey sounds. She watches, and when he's done, she shakes her head (sans monkey sounds). Repeat. This game goes on and on for a while and it is hilarious. Another new one is where her Papa squeezes one of those squirty toy things to blow air in her face. She looks at it and then blows right back.

With all of these new things happening within a span of just a few days, it can't be coincidence that she's been sleeping poorly, can it? I am just dreading the day when she learns how to stand up in her crib and shake the railing, a skill I am sure she'll debut in the middle of the night...

Filmography

Since I only started writing this blog recently, I thought it was time to take a retrospective look back at Evelyn's life, through video! Of course, it's impossible to include everything, so here are just a few favorites...

This video was taken when Evelyn was 5 days old, on August 28, 2006. We were stuck in the hospital because of Evelyn's jaundice - her bilirubin levels were higher than the doctors wanted them, and she ended up needing phototherapy for 4 full days, so the 3 of us stayed in the hospital for 6 days before we were finally allowed to go home. This is day 5, and we're listening to a CD of the Dalai Lama chanting. We had listened to it quite a lot during the early part of my labor and we were desperately trying to reclaim some of that peace and serenity in the midst of the hospital-hustle-and-bustle, stress, sleep deprivation, and general emotional meltdown. If you listen carefully, you may hear the utter terror and panic in our voices, as we had absolutely no idea what we were doing.



Here's another video taken at St. Luke's -- this time, it's in Paula's recovery room the day after Rhea was born -- December 4, 2006! It was super hot in there, so Evelyn is just in her diaper and you can see her in all her Buddha Baby glory. We were just hanging out when Evelyn suddenly burst into laughter, completely on her own. It was the second time ever in her life, and luckily I had the camera handy. Evelyn was 3.5 months old at the time.



Now jumping way ahead to April 21 is Evelyn's first time in a swing. This was in a park in San Rafael, at Bert's birthday BBQ, which had to be moved indoors due to unexpectedly cold and wet weather. John made a bee line to the swings with Evelyn, barely saying hello to anyone. To state the obvious, she loved it.



And finally, another video of Evelyn laughing, this time in the car while her papa cranks Led Zeppelin on the stereo (perhaps trying to reclaim his pre-baby youth, who knows?). This was taken not too long ago, on April 28.

Crawl-volution

Here's a video of Evelyn crawling from April 20 -- a couple of weeks after she first started moving in an intentionally forward direction. She's crawling a lot faster and with more purpose now (and less grunting), but she's still about as low to the ground.

Independence

Evelyn's crawling around all over the house now, and is getting pretty fast too. She's still pretty low to the ground - "commando style," we call it, where she mainly uses her arms to pull herself forward, and she uses her legs and feet to push forward just enough to get going. We've got our work cut out for us, since we haven't done a whole lot of baby-proofing just yet, aside from installing the safety gate at the top of the stairs.

This newfound mobility is really refreshing for me, and I'm sure Evelyn feels the same way! She used to cry the second you left her alone in a room, but now, she just crawls out to find you. When getting stuff ready for Evelyn's bath, I used to have to make sure someone was around to hold her, or I'd have to put her in her bouncy seat on the bathroom floor (way back when she was smaller) and prepare for the bath as quickly as possible before she lost her patience. Tonight, John was working late so I handled the bath alone. I left her in the living room and she steadfastly made her way down the hall towards the bathroom, following the sound of my voice. By the time I finished filling her tub, Evelyn came crawling right into the bathroom with a huge smile on her face. Everything is so much easier these days!

But it's a little harder too, with all this independence and freedom of movement. We find ourselves saying "No" quite a lot more these days, as in "No, Evelyn, don't play with the space heater" and "No, Evelyn, don't pull on mow-mow's (aka Puddin's) tail." Sometimes I think she understands us -- when John puts on his stern voice when she's playing with the heater, half the time she actually stops. I think we are probably seeing the end of the "honeymoon period" of infancy and getting a preview of toddlerhood. I wish someone told us that it would end that quickly! If Evelyn's personality remains the way it seems to be now, she's going to be quite a handful when she's running around and speaking her mind.

Ultimate guilt trip

I think we had our most parent guilt-inducing experience to date last Tuesday night. Evelyn went to bed around 6:30pm as usual. I went off to pilates at 7 and came back an hour later. Shortly after that, Evelyn started crying, which was really unusual, especially that soon after being put down. Because we sleep trained Evelyn, and because she wasn't crying that hard, we left her alone. She continued to alternately cry and fall silent for about an hour, and then she stayed quiet.

I crept into her room around 9pm to close her windows and throw a blanket on her, and was struck immediately by the smell of puke. "Oh no," I thought. I felt around her crib in the dark, and sure enough, there was vomit all over her bed, and worse, all over her too. The poor girl was sleeping in a pool of her own puke!

I got John, and we went into the room and turned on the lights. Evelyn was sound asleep, and her eyes remained closed as he picked her up, put her on the changing table, and removed her damp pajamas. Eventually she started opening her eyes, one eye glued shut either by sleep or by dried puke, or both. She was just sitting there on her changing table, naked and in a daze, looking around and wondering what in the world we were doing in her room in the middle of the night (to her it was anyway).

Gradually she came out of her daze a bit and started smiling, watching quietly as John changed the sheets on her bed and gathered up some clean clothes for another bath. There were dried bits of puke all over Evelyn's face, ears, neck, head, and her chest, arms, and legs were all damp and reddish.

Throughout her bath, she had the sweetest and softest smile on her face, and she kept her body twisted so she could look and smile at her papa the whole time I bathed her. We have never seen her so mellow, and it killed us! As John put it, she seemed grateful. She had none of her usual impatience and annoyance with the bathing and dressing process. We joked that we should wake Evelyn up every night for a midnight bath -- it sure was easier than our usual bath routine!

Freshly bathed and dressed, again, I nursed Evelyn once more and put her down for the night, again. She was such a trooper through the whole thing. She wasn't asleep when I put her down, and just looked up wonderingly at me as I raised the side of her crib and left the room. Then all was quiet and she went to sleep on her own. John and I finally went to bed, exhausted, and we both lay there feeling awful.

I'm sure this is the first of many such guilt trips, and in the grand scheme of things, this is nothing. And on the spectrum of "good" and "bad" parents, I think we're still pretty good! Lord knows there are much worse things that happen... so, if the worst thing that's happened to Evelyn so far is falling asleep in her own vomit, well, she's got a pretty life.

Revelation

When I was pregnant last year, one of the unpleasant surprises of the experience was the lack of courtesy and consideration that I got from other riders on the bus to work. It was a rare occasion when someone would actually offer a seat to me, an obviously pregnant woman, and it was shocking. Able-bodied men and women would sleep, or pretend to sleep, or read without daring to look up, or one time, even look up and then continue to read. I was on the high horse handed out to all first-time pregnant women, and I was outraged.

The other day, I was standing on a crowded bus on my way to work, thankfully and comfortably no longer pregnant. At some point, I saw in the reflection of the window a pregnant woman standing behind me and off to the side, and once again, I seethed at the inconsideration of my fellow passengers. There they were with their perpetual tunnel vision. And as a couple of people sitting nearby were preparing to get off at the next stop, I prepared to loudly and pointedly offer this woman one of those seats. But as we approached the stop, and as those people got up, I hesitated. What if this woman isn't really pregnant? What if I'm wrong and publicly embarrass both myself and her? In my hesitation, those seats were snatched up by other passengers and I just stood there. And then it hit me. Maybe all those times no one offered me a seat, they didn't want to presume and make a mistake. Isn't it I who have always said that you should never ever ever assume a woman is pregnant unless you actually see a baby coming out of her vagina?

Last month, on a whim, I went to New York for a weekend to help celebrate an old and dear friend's 30th birthday. It was my first time away from Evelyn, and the first time John had to take care of her completely for a couple of days - bath, bottle, bed, and all. But that'd be a whole other blog entry... There I am in New York, 7 months postpartum and feeling utterly out of place and unprepared, surrounded by my friend's friends, all childless, fabulous, and New York-skinny. We're in line to get into some club and at the door this 20-something frisks me. She opens my coat and exclaims ecstatically "Oh, you're having a baby!"

I still think about that woman sometimes. I didn't want to be the person that that woman on the bus thinks about, if she turned out not to be pregnant. And so I didn't say a word, and no one else did either. Eventually she got a seat, and you know, she sure did look pregnant, but even I couldn't be totally sure...

At the Copa, Copacabana

Our beautiful little girls dancing to the beat of Barry Manilow (or so I imagine in my head)...