Eighteen months

Evelyn is 18 months old now, as of yesterday! I can officially say she's a year and a half old. She's becoming such a kid, such a lovely girl, and getting to be less and less of a baby. Already I'm mourning those baby days!


She seems to be in a transition period right now, crossing and recrossing the boundary between baby and kid multiple times a day. I guess that's toddlerhood in a nutshell. She understands more than we realize and can communicate fairly well between her mix of English words, Chinese words, and signs (and plenty of intuitive mind-reading and lucky guessing on my part). But she throws herself face down on the floor when she doesn't get what she wants, kicking and crying and getting up and throwing herself down again a few feet away. She has learned how to use her little spoon and fork to feed herself, doing a fairly good job of scooping up food with her utensil and guiding it to her mouth in one piece (usually sideways or upside down). But she still puts her utensil aside mid-meal to shovel food in with her hands, and still occasionally throws some on the floor, fully knowing that she shouldn't.

As always, Evelyn can be the funniest kid, with her ever growing range of expressions and mannerisms... her Evelynisms. She screams "Mao Mao!" (Chinese for cat) at the top of her lungs when she sees Puddin, and tries her best to hug and pick her up, attempts that invariably end with Puddin running away. She loves shoes, and I mean loves them. Not known for her patience, she can sit quietly while I lace up a pair of Converses on her or try to shove a pair of boots on right, and will entertain herself endlessly in the kids' shoe section at Marshalls, trying on pair after pair with help from Papa while Mama does some much needed shopping for herself. But, I digress. My point is, she loves any footwear, even of the animal variety.


These times are punctuated by periods of crabbiness and temper tantrums. Evelyn can definitely have a short fuse -- we've seen her temper flare up plenty of times, and sometimes at the slightest provocation. This is especially true when she's teething, and you can imagine what a bear she's been lately with her first canine(s) on the way (she has 12 teeth so far, including 4 molars, and has been working on those eye teeth for weeks it seems).



Evelyn is doing such kid-like things lately. We're starting to see her imagination emerge, as she pretends to do things, such as eating or putting lotion on her hands. From bottles, tables, bath water, whatever, she plucks imaginary food and plops it in her mouth repeatedly in rapid succession. And she's not greedy -- she insists on offering us food, of both the real and imagined variety, and sometimes she doesn't take no for an answer.

She's learning new words steadily - every few days, it seems, I notice her using a new word. In English, she says bottle, apple (improved from the previous "app," though "apple" still refers to most fruit in general), hot, night night, ball, book, hi, bye bye, baby, bubble, ouch... probably some others I can't think of now, and of course Mama, Papa, and "uh oh." In Chinese, she says "dung dung" (light), "nai nai" (milk), "Po Po" (my mom), "Mao Mao," "hai hai" (shoes, of course!), and again, probably more that I can't think of. I'm sure there are plenty of made-up words as she babbles with such intention and conviction, but I know of one -- her word for "bath." She says "Da!" while simultaneously raising her right hand like she's taking an oath. Who knows where that came from. She has lots of sounds to signify things, like revving sounds for cars and airplanes, grunting "oh oh oh" for dog, and saying "Bah! ba ba ba ba" for chicken (as in Bock! bock bock bock bock). And she has said her first phrases (yelling "Mao Mao bye!" and signing "more please").

There's so much more to say but it is time for me to go to bed! Work's been insane and sleep has been short (with Evelyn waking up around 6:12am every single day and me going to bed way too late). So I'll have to end this posting with a few of my absolute most favorite bathtime pictures of late.

Evelyn's public service announcement

If I can do it, you have no excuse!

You've got to see it to believe it

Be prepared to be as surprised as I was:



I took this video last Saturday morning during our usual morning routine of hanging out, listening to music (reviving the 80s with a little New Order), and getting breakfast ready. Evelyn shocked her Papa by climbing into her Svan high chair a couple of mornings before. He quickly called me in for a repeat performance, and I in turn quickly called my Mom in to share the exciting news. "Oh that?" she chuckled, "She's been doing that for days!"

:(

Apart from witnessing this amazing feat, you also get a glimpse of the temper this girl has sometimes and usage of her favorite word of all time, "uh oh," which, like the Eskimos with snow, has a multitude of meanings depending on the context. More on that some other time...

Daddy's little helper

Quiz time. Is it:

A. A nice cold case of Sierra Nevada beer
B. Evelyn
C. All of the above

For both Papa and Evelyn, a very happy occasion in our household is the arrival of a new case of beer. The two of them are like a well oiled machine when it comes to unloading a case of beer in the fridge. I usually don't get to witness this but according to John, she's mellowed out since her early beer unpacking days.

Daddy's little helper, or daddy's little enabler?

Hugs and kisses

I mentioned that Evelyn learned how to hug and kiss while were in Massachusetts. There's nothing lovelier than seeing her pucker up and lean in... except maybe seeing her do that with Rhea instead of slapping at her head as predictably as the tide coming in an out.

Here's one of my favorite videos of all time of the girls, taken by Tio Scotty during his visit this past weekend.

The More Monster

(here's the next installment of the much promised but as yet undelivered recounting of our time in Massachusetts...)

Evelyn has been using a handful of signs for a few months now - namely, the signs for "more," "hungry," "no more," "full," and waving "hi" and "bye." Considering how much the girl likes to eat, it's not a shock that "more" is her most used and favorite sign. When I ask her if she's hungry, she puts her bunched up right fingers to her mouth, her sign for "hungry." From there on out, it's More More More (touching her bunched fingers to each other, sometimes with such vigor I swear she's just adding exclamation points, as in "More. More. More!! MORE!!!! Who knew signing could be so loud?).

Maybe she was indulging over the holidays like the rest of us, but she seemed to be eating even more than usual while we were in MA. Everyone marveled at how much she can eat. One morning, Evelyn had a whole banana, some grapes, some apple, an egg, her portion of oatmeal and some of Rhea's, and some toast. She would have kept going if I didn't decide at that point that she'd had enough and was in no danger of starving.

Another morning at Grandpa's house, John and I sat on either side of Evelyn in her high chair; John with a bowl of oatmeal and raisins, I with a plate of fried egg. Evelyn turned to her left to sign "more" to Papa, then promptly swung to her right to sign "more" to Mama. She was like a little More Maestro, orchestrating her symphony of breakfast delights from her podium.

We're now in the stage where she wants to eat whatever we're eating more than what she's eating, particularly if we're eating anything with bread. So it begins. She might be happily eating her meal but once she catches sight of bread, there's no stopping the relentless "more" signing, which, if ignored, is followed by whining and crying until she gets that bread. Luckily though, when the bread is gone, she readily accepts it when we say there's no more and happily goes back to her meal.

(We think she has even learned to say "bread," as she almost clearly said it one morning at Nana's house while frantically pointing and reaching for the bread on the counter.)

She did the "more" sign so much that I think Rhea learned it by the end of the 2 weeks just by watching her. Meanwhile, Evelyn picked up a new sign while we were there -- the sign for "Thank you." It only took a couple of days of modeling it for her to get it, so then I wondered what other signs I could teach her. Since we got home, we've taught her how to sign "please," and just in time, because the incessant whining and begging turning into crying is not such a pleasant way to be told that she wants something right now.

(Here are some pictures of Evelyn at Aunt Taryn's and Uncle Chris' house on Christmas Day. After a few persistent tries at putting her tray on her portable high chair, she resigned to waiting patiently for us to get started with Christmas dinner.)

Back East and back home again

We got home last week from a 2-week trip back East to visit with family and friends for the holidays. It was our first big trip with Evelyn anywhere aside from a couple of nights in Mendocino, and her first plane ride. While we prepared for the trip with much trepidation over how she would fly, eat, and sleep, we soon discovered that our fears were totally unfounded. She flew cheerfully (if not a little restlessly at times), ate like she knew it was the holidays, and slept like a dream.



I have lots to write about, and over 600 pictures and videos to go through (only a third of the way through!), so the next few postings will hopefully recap some of the highlights of our trip. In a nutshell though, I think this trip was really good for us. We were so nervous about traveling with Evelyn, but sometimes (usually, actually) it takes getting outside of your comfort zone and routines to learn about yourself. And we learned quite a lot about Evelyn and ourselves that turned out to be really liberating in many ways. For instance, it turns out Evelyn can sleep just about anywhere, and through quite a lot more noise than we thought possible! Now there's no excuse not to go on weekends away every once in a while.

Evelyn seemed to grow in leaps and bounds in just the 2 weeks we were away, developmentally and socially. Much more on that later, but to sum it up, she's replaced most of her swatting and slapping at other kids' heads with hugs and kisses (really!) and her language skills seem to have blossomed. I'm sure all of the extra stimulation, new surroundings, being constantly surrounded by many different and new people, and especially being around her Mama and Papa all the time really did wonders for her. It makes me so sad that now we're back in our normal routine of working full time and seeing Evelyn only in the mornings, evenings before her bedtime, and weekends. And it makes me even more sad that Evelyn doesn't get to experience that kind of social interaction more often.