Yada yada yada, now it's almost spring

So much to catch up on in this blog. As with parenting, I guess I will have to take baby steps and not get too overwhelmed.

Quite a lot has happened between the last entry and now, including but not limited to the entire Christmas holiday season! I'm going to have to fast forward through all that or else I'll never blog again. So, in the tradition of Seinfeld: "We had a great Christmas last year, enjoyed staying home for once, Evelyn got potty trained, my mom broke her ankle, yada yada yada, now Evelyn's in daycare and speaking in sentences."

(My mom is fine, but will be laid up til at least April, at which point we need to decide what to do with Evelyn. She loves daycare so much, she asks to go on the weekends!).

Yesterday after picking up Evelyn from daycare and heading home, she was insisting that we go to the "baby book store," which is how she refers to Ambassador Toys on West Portal, which houses 2 baby dolls in particular that she loves to visit. Evelyn loves baby dolls more than ever, holding and shushing and bouncing and feeding her babies at home and in the "baby book store." She loves Rhea's Rufus so much, that her Grandpa ended up getting her a Rufus of her own for Christmas (or as Evelyn called him at first, "E'elyn's Rufus at home." And you'd think that getting Rufus would mean that she'd neglect all of her previous loves, kind of like how her original Baby got bumped when she got Baby Boy. But actually now she lavishes attention on all of her dolls, and stuffed animals too. I guess it's like having another kid -- the love just grows to include everyone.

Anyway, in the store, Evelyn heads straight to the babies, grabs one for herself and plops her in the nearby stroller. She grabs the other one and shoves it over to me, insisting that I hold the baby as we "shop" around the store. Evelyn pushes the stroller around, picking up odds and ends that she says she's buying for baby. Weaving through the aisles yesterday, she suddenly and loudly declares, "I need go poo poo. I need find a potty." As others turn to look at her, I imagine they are thinking the same thing I'm thinking: How cute. Naturally.

After some back and forth where we find the disgusting and unusable bathroom in Rite Aid, she forgets about the potty and goes back to play with the babies, and then remembers and we head into Starbucks, she finally goes and I am just so amazed. I love that fact that she's out of diapers!!! (except at night of course). I cannot stress this enough. No more poopy diapers. NO MORE POOPY DIAPERS!

Back at home, Evelyn's Papa comes home from work and gives me a hug and a kiss. Evelyn drops what she's doing, rushes over and removes John's hand, yelling "No, that's MY Mama!" How cute.

Top 5 things that Evelyn does that make us laugh

Er, make that 3. I know there are more but I can't think of them right now....

3. When she sees planes or helicopters in the sky, she exclaims "Airplane!" or "Helicopter!" and then pinches her fingers together repeatedly, asking "Hold it?" She also loves pointing out motorcycles and if she sees 2 people on a motorcycle, she'll say "Two mamas motorcycle" or "Two papas motorcyle."

Speaking of which, she basically categorizes all people with the following labels:

• Baby (babies)
  
• Goh Goh (big brother in Chinese, for the little boys)
• Jeh Jeh (big sister in Chinese, for the little girls)
• Mama (women)
• Papa (men)
• Po Po (older women)
• Gong Gong (older men)
  

So she'll often point out "Papa riding bicycle!" when she sees a cyclist, even when she's with Papa, or will ask me "What's Mama doing?" about a woman on the street.

2. When she wants you to get something, she'll say "Mama (Papa), I'll go get it?" (because we say "I'll get it") and when she wants help, she'll say "Mama (Papa), help you?"

One morning, she noticed a parenting book in my nightstand that miraculously reappeared. It's one of those how-to parenting books with lots of pictures of babies, mamas, and papas (her favorite kinds of pictures) and it's thick and heavy and not something you want to leaf through first thing in the morning in bed while she excitedly points at pictures saying "What's that?" or "What's Mama doing" or "What's baby doing?" or "What happened?" and you try to come up with interesting responses to each repetitive question. I keep forgetting to put the book back on the shelf, so one morning I stuck it under the bed before she noticed it again. Days later, John vacuumed and put it back on the nightstand. So the next morning, Evelyn woke up with us (she tends to join us in bed the wee early hours of the morning and finishes sleeping with us these days). She saw the book and exclaimed "Oh baby book! I found it!!" followed by an immediate "Mama, I'll get it?" Groan. I mumbled "No, Evelyn go get it, you're closer." She looked at it again, turned to me and said "Too far away. Mama, I'll get it?"

1. She blames every bump, bruise, and cut on her body on somersaults. If you notice a bruise on her leg, ask her how it happened, and she'll invariably say "Somersault." Sometimes, she'll elaborate and say "Somersault. Bump head." And frankly, I'm not even seeing her do that many somersaults these days.

Let the holiday madness begin

December is always the craziest month of the year, and every year it creeps up on us like we didn't expect it. The gateway to the December madness is, of course, Thanksgiving weekend. This year John and I took the Wednesday before Thanksgiving off (so he could bake pies and I could attempt to clean the house), so that meant we had an unprecedented 5-day weekend! Thanksgiving day started with our traditional girls' beach walk, with Naomi and Milo, and Paula and Rhea, while John, Bert, Ken, Nellie and Keeeth went on their bike ride to the Marin Headlands.




Then the big feast at Paula and Bert's place, with the usual suspects and the usual excessive, delicious food... This is the reason that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. We get together with our good friends and just enjoy each other's company and the food, without all of the stress of Christmas shopping and travelling. It's the quiet before the storm...




And then the traditional Christmas tree hunt the day after Thanksgiving, in the Santa Cruz mountains... this year, with Paula/Bert/Rhea, Ken/Naomi/Milo, and Jamie & Samy for the first time. We're getting better and better at this. I remember years ago when we went up to the mountains, going from tree farm to tree farm hunting for the "perfect" tree with no provisions, and my blood sugar level going so low that all I could do was lie back in the car seat and keep my eyes shut til we made it out of the mountains and into a burrito place. I call it going into standby mode. This time, we were stocked with freshly made turkey sandwiches (with stuffing, mashed potatoes, onions, and cranberry sauce, Barbara-style), delicious leftover lemon tartelettes from Samy, and all sorts of other goodies.

We skipped the tree last year, a decision that I regretted the second we left the Santa Cruz mountains with Paula and Bert, and we wouldn't make that mistake again. Especially not this year when Evelyn is so aware of what's happening. She surprises me with the things she can remember, trivial things that happened months ago (for instance, we were at the pediatrician's recently because of her horrible cough, and as we were checking out, she kept saying "woks! woks!" and I was like, "what?" Then I finally remembered that they let her choose from a basket of smooth colorful rocks, in lieu of a lollipop, 4 months ago for her 2 year checkup, and she was asking for her rock for this visit). Anyway, I think she'll have some pretty clear memories, for a while at least, of this Christmas. The tree hunt, putting up the tree and lights and ornaments, and of course the presents. She's already very interested in that, saying "Christmas present?" or "Happy birthday present?" (the two seem interchangeable) when she sees a gift-wrapped box.

And then there are the December birthdays... Rhea turned 2 just a few days ago (Happy Birthday Rhea! What a fun birthday party), John turns 40 in 2 days (!!) with the party at our place this coming Saturday. (I mentioned to Evelyn once a few weeks ago that Papa's birthday is coming, and ever since then, she's been saying "Papa's happy birthday's coming.") Then we'll have our Fake Christmas on Haight St. the weekend after that, followed by Paula's birthday on the 23rd, and Christmas immediately after that. And we're not even flying to MA this year, for once (boo for that but Yay for Christmas in SF for once!). It's a hectic time of year but we are so lucky to have it be this way.

I take it back, I take it all back!

What was I talking about, terrible twos? That must have been a blip on the screen, a trip over the threshold to 2-year-hood. John went to San Diego for 4 days a couple of weeks ago, over a weekend no less, but it turned out to be pretty easy. And pleasant! It's really different from spending 4 days alone with a baby... Evelyn's more like the friend who is super demanding, extremely high maintenance, thinks only of herself, and drives you crazy. But she says really funny things and always makes you laugh, you can never stay mad at her, and you can't help but love her.

While John was away, we went to a birthday party in Palo Alto -- Evelyn's friend Nicolas turned 2, just a few weeks after she did. I wish I had photos to post, but being on parent duty alone meant going down the slides every time, pushing swings, shoveling sand, and forgoing the usual party things like chatting with people, taking pictures, eating, etc. But you know, it was still pretty fun. At one point while Evelyn was in the baby swing, she pointed to the one next to her and said "Mama sit there?" I said, "No, Mama can't sit there. That swing is only for babies and little kids." Evelyn shook her finger at it, saying "Babies, kids only. Not Mama, Mama's too big."

We'd talk to John every night on the phone while he was away, and she'd repeat after me saying things like "Hi Papa. How are you? I'm good. I love you, Papa. Night night." A couple of times while John was away, she'd hold up her hands and say "Papa go?" and I'd tell her. Then one night after work, I came home and said "Where's Papa?" and Evelyn said "Papa San Diego!"

Even tonight, when John was working late and I put Evelyn to bed by myself, she said "Papa San Diego." I think she must have really missed him while he was gone, because she asked for him a lot more than I would have thought. A few mornings ago when John rode away on his bike to work, Evelyn looked positively sad as she stood in her customary spot in the window to wave goodbye. The tides are shifting. I wonder if and when she'll go completely to the other side and favor her Papa over me, the way they say kids (girls?) do. But, we're not even close to that right now. I'm still Number 1 and am happy to stay that way.

Good times with Baby Boy in Grandpa's backyard

The star of her birthday party at Nana's house

Trying Times: The Terrible Twos (or, TTTTT)

Evelyn's almost two, and it seems like she's hitting all of her developmental milestones exactly on time. She's been working on her 2nd year molars all month, and I wouldn't be surprised if I finally feel that one tooth breaking through the gums tomorrow. (Yay -- no more teething after this round, I can't believe it!). She has truly hit her terrible twos, it seems right before we left on vacation. We'd been thinking all along that the "Terrible Twos" is a misnomer because she'd been defiant and stubborn and challenging for a while now, but now she's really kicked it up to the next level and I understand what the TTs is all about. She must do everything herself, in the way she wants to do it, right away, or there'd be repercussions. Serious repercussions. It's all about "E'elyn" now (how she says her name... kind of like "Ellen" but there's a silent V in there), as in "E'elyn do it!" "E'elyn have it! (Or "No have it!") "E'elyn try it!" "Mama, get it!" "E'elyn eat!! EAT!!" and so on.

It must be tough being a two-year old. There's so much more she can do now, like going up and down stairs practically unattended, feeding herself with a fork or spoon, running, jumping (off other things with actual height, which can be so nerve-wracking), doing somersaults, knowing a lot more about what she wants and doesn't want (she insisted tonight on having a hot dog for dinner. OK, just this once, but ONLY because we are on vacation, you got it?!). She's singing parts/most of a bunch of songs, like Itsy Bitsy Spider, The Wheels on the Bus, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, The Alphabet Song, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, and even the first line to Dream a Little Dream, a song that I'll often sing to her. And of course, the Happy Birthday song.

And she can communicate!! I've tried so hard to pay attention and capture how it is exactly that she's learning to talk, but it happens so quickly it's hard to remember what it was like just a couple of days ago. I remember first marveling at the fact that she was getting gerunds, not just simple verbs or nouns (for example, a couple of months ago, she spied me lying on the couch with my eyes closed, resting after a probably tiring day at work, and she whispered to Papa, "Mama sleeping"). Her vocabulary gets bigger every day, and she can name so many of the everyday objects around her (couch, TV, chair, table, dinner, water, oatmeal, egg, bread, airplane, bird, and on and on) and concepts (outside, sad, mad, surprised, hurt). But it really blows me away when she puts everything together into somewhat coherent sentences. Again I think back to a couple of months ago, when I took Evelyn to our bed for a Saturday morning sleep-in. After a little while, she popped up and saw her Baby lying in the hall, and said "Mama, get it. Baby. Get it." I could not believe my ears. And now she barks off commands like that all the time. Like, "Mama, sit up!" or simply "Mama, up! Mama, up!!" while bringing me my slippers (again, while I'm stalling for time in bed in the mornings). She repeats quite a lot, and says things like "I got it" or "Up we go" in the same sing-songy way I say it. She can repeat some pretty complicated sounding words (e.g. "satellite dish"). She is a little person!!

But there's still so much that she can't do (either very well or safely) and she just does not understand that she can't. And it is exactly this intersection of her assertion of independence and her still-heavy reliance on others where we find ourselves: this is the terrible twos. The more she thinks she can do something herself, the more it is sometimes necessary to step in and either help or stop her, and doing either just really ticks her off. She is impervious to reason and yet we still need to reason with her and explain why we do things and how things work and give her labels for her feelings (I can't count how many times I say "I know it's frustrating that you can't do X....) and alternatives for her to take. Parenting a two-year old is so much easier, and yet so much harder!

Which leads me to the last of my reasons for being happy to be on vacation in Massachusetts:

5) Evelyn's in a challenging time of her life right now, navigating her new abilities and many limitations, and I'm so grateful that the timing worked out perfectly that she is going through this now, while we're on vacation and I can be with her every day, all day, to help her understand her tough emotions and guide her while letting her figure things out for herself. It's really hard to know when to step in and when to back off, but I do know that Evelyn really needs me, needs us, to be around, especially now. I know it's not going to end when our vacation ends, and it kills me to think of us going back to work full time after this. My mom loves Evelyn and does her best with her, but she's of the old school, and is a Chinese Grandma through and through, and I don't think is able to understand the nuances of the parenting that we're trying to do with Evelyn. (Heck, do WE even know?! We're figuring this out as we go along. Our guiding principal is to do better than just "the best we can" -- a totally attainable goal right?)

When we get home, we need to seriously start making changes to our schedules. It's unacceptable how little we see Evelyn during the day - about an hour to 1.5 hours in the morning at most, then about the same in the evenings in our mad rush to get home, play quickly, and give Evelyn her dinner, bath, book, nursing, and bed. Then we have all sorts of time in the evening to veg out in front of the TV (or work, as has been the case lately). And yet both of our jobs are as flexible as you can hope for. We stick with our 9-5 schedules like we have no choice, but we haven't even tried to do anything creative in order to get more time in with Evelyn during the day. So we've been talking and will be talking and thinking some more, to come up with some creative ways to make to make it work. Maybe John will do four 10-hour days and take one day off. Maybe I can work a couple of extra long, 12-hour days and do half days the rest of the week. It sounds a little daunting, but the idea of this time of Evelyn's life passing so quickly will push us to try. Before we know it, she'll be starting preschool, then elementary school... these unstructured days, full of possibilities and ideas that I haven't been able to executive with Evelyn, are literally numbered. What are we waiting for?

Little Miss Birthday

Evelyn turns 2 years old tomorrow!! The Big 2. We're currently in Massachusetts, enjoying a visit with John's family and our friends in the summer for once. We didn't expect to be here at the beginning of the month, but somehow all of the stars aligned and here we are, at Nana's house, planning tomorrow's party.



I'm really excited to be here for a number of reasons (in no particular order):

1) Work has been a little too stressful for too long, and I realized that aside from a short and extremely exhausting trip to visit my Dad in Arizona in April, which I would hardly call a vacation between the bad sleep, extreme heat/constant air conditioning, and Evelyn being in Monkey-Overdrive mode, I haven't had a vacation all year.

2) Being here in the summertime gives us a chance to give Evelyn what she can't have at home in the city -- lots and lots of outdoor space to run around in (watch out for mosquitoes though!), sunshine, the sound of crickets, delicious corn and apples. And maybe most poignantly, a little taste of the endless summers of John's childhood. When you can just run around in the woods unattended all day long. Something that I never had growing up in San Francisco, and that Evelyn won't have either as long as we stay in the city. Yesterday we were at the Red Apple Farm and there were 2 kids riding around on dirt bikes all on their own. Driving down the road, two other little boys were walking in the opposite direction, baseball caps on and who knows what kind of mischief on their minds. Maybe it's a very idealized vision of "country living" but for some reason it's really appealing to me right now. Sometimes the city can be so tiring.

3) Paula and Rhea have been here all month, staying with Rhea's Grammy and Grandpa. We were sad to realize that they would have to miss Evelyn's birthday party at home, which happened to coincide with Paula's 20th high school reunion. But, like I said the stars aligned... I realized that if I didn't have a vacation soon, I'd fall apart at the seams. Paula's brother Scott was also flying out from Costa Rica for the last week of August. Bert was flying out on 8/20. John's family is all here and we see them only in the dead of winter (which I'll admit is quite beautiful here but I've never experienced a Massachusetts summer - see #2 above). And somehow or another, it eventually seemed crazy NOT to go to MA and celebrate Evelyn's birthday there. So while we were expecting to throw a big party (at home) on the 23rd, we're instead having a big party here in MA, with Evelyn's Nana & Grandpa Jim, Grandpa & Memere, Aunt Taryn & Uncle Chris and cousins Luke and Amelia, Paula, Rhea, Bert, Scotty, Grammy & Grandpa (Rhea's), Aunt Nellie, maybe Trent and maybe Great-Aunt Francine. Then when we get home, we'll have another party sometime in September with the SF family and friends. Evelyn's such a rock star, partying on both coasts for her birthday. But seriously... she is, and we are, so lucky to have this wealth of family and friends.

4) It is hot here! But not unpleasantly so! I was expecting heavy humidity and my clothes sticking to me, but it's actually been relatively dry, hot in the sun but pleasant in the shade, and just beautiful. I guess it had been raining for weeks before we arrived, and while I am grateful for the summer that has finally arrived here, I wouldn't mind seeing a thunder and lightning storm before we head home. Hopefully Evelyn won't mind either...

We just got here a couple of days ago and already it feels like our vacation is too short. We're at Nana and Grandpa Jim's for a few days, then heading over to Grandpa and Memere's for a few days, and then off to Grammy's and Grandpa's, our extended Pralinsky family, for the last few days and then we fly home. Somehow booking 10 days seemed like plenty of time, at the time.

I wish I could post pictures but I didn't think to bring the USB port for the camera, so I'll have to pummel the blog with MA pics when we get home. Along with videos that I took before the trip that I haven't had time to edit, including one of Evelyn singing, very fittingly, the Happy Birthday song. She's been doing it for a couple of weeks now and nowadays she's pretty much got it (the words anyway... she still sounds like a bad American Idol audition). We always start off singing it to her, and as soon as we sing "Happy Birthday to Evelyn..." she shoots off the name of the next person to sing to. Milo is usually at the top of the list, then by association, Ken, "Nomamie" (Naomi), then Rhea, Paula, etc... Or sometimes Mama, Papa, or Paw-Paw. Yesterday, she would sing it and then blow out pretend candles. She must be practicing for the big day.

8-8-08

With the Summer Olympics starting today, Evelyn has become inspired to start her gymnastics training. First we have her tumbling floor routine that she's been developing this week, without any coaching at all:



She's also been practicing for when she finally gets on those uneven bars: