Hummus and Milo

Evelyn continues to chatter away at home, saying more and more real words (mostly Chinese words!) and words of her own special creation. There is one particular and long combination of sounds starting with "Ma!" and a pause, followed by a crazy sound that she makes with her tongue and then a few more syllables. She repeats it often and at random (as far as we can tell) and we still can't figure out what it means.

I call my mom "Ma" (in the Cantonese way, not the Italian mobster guy way, just so you know...) and often I kind of yell it to get her attention. Now, Evelyn sometimes says "Ma!" either to me or to my mom. Today while working at home, I could hear Evelyn yelling "Ma! Ma!" across the house and my mom saying "No, call me Paw Paw." (I'm still trying to figure out how to spell Grandmother in Cantonese phonetically! Paw Paw is probably more accurate than Po Po.)

Of course, once we're around a bunch of people or if I'm trying to get her to say something on cue, she completely shuts up and just stares at you like you just sprouted a second head. So I decided to take some video of her saying a few funny things... humma (for hummus), Milo (who we just saw on Easter Sunday), and what else, my name! She hasn't said it in a while but clearly she still remembers.






Other Evelyn news... before I forget her growth stats from her 18 month checkup (which was a month ago!), she was 28lbs, 8oz (90th percentile in weight), and 33.5 inches tall (80th percentile in height). She is over half my height already, so she is surely going to tower over me at some early point in her youth. As it is, when I hold her and she wants to snuggle and rest her head on my shoulder, she has to scrunch down a bit, like the tall girl during a middle school slow dance.

The picture on the left is from Christmas in Massachusetts (obviously) and the picture on the right is from last Thursday. The pants she's wearing on the right were a Christmas gift from Grammy - they were long at the time but are already too short for her!

Say what?!

Evelyn has learned how to say my name! No, not Mama. She's saying Hai Nhu. She's been such a chatterbox lately, chatting away at the lights and her books, launching into big long monologues at Peets, pointing emphatically and punctuating with multiple exclamation marks. I can't even imagine what she has to say so much about!

She's also been mimicking a lot, so for fun, John started to say my name yesterday. Almost right away, she caught on, saying "Hi Nooo." "Hi Noooo!" At first she only did it when we said it, but today she's just saying it on her own. This morning she was wandering around, chanting "Hi Nooo! Hi Nooo!"

It's so hilarious, and somehow a little heartbreaking... I know that sounds crazy, but there's something about hearing my little girl sounding out my real name, instead of Mama...

She also said "Jah!" for John, but for whatever reason she isn't as tickled with it. She says "di di" for diaper, cha dai (for sit down), and we think she says "there!" when she's jabbing the center of her high chair tray as we get her food ready. It seems like she's learning English and Chinese at about the same rate. I can't believe she is really going to start talking soon, like really talking! I should probably enjoy the relative quiet now.

Mothering the mother

I have come down with a flu of seemingly epic proportions. Alternating between chills and boiling hot temperatures, my skin literally hurts. This is the kind of flu where you just want to chug a hot mug of Theraflu and pass in and out of consciousness all day on the couch and watch bad daytime television.

But, I can't. Not the way I'd like to, because Evelyn's here and won't leave me alone. Friday I stayed home from work and managed to have a fitful nap while my mom took Evelyn out for a walk, during which time they visited a friend and Evelyn had a little catnap. That afternoon, Evelyn took a very unusual second nap with me. In retrospect, that probably wasn't the best idea but it was so comforting to have her with me. To help her fall asleep, I recited some of her favorite books that I've committed to memory... Goodnight Moon, of course, and a few really sweet books by Mem Fox, like Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge and Whoever You Are.

Evelyn's become such a book lover, more than ever. I've always read books to her, right from the beginning, and she's always enjoyed them, but now she has a newfound appreciation of them -- she's actually beginning to understand them. Funny how that makes reading so much more fun, for both her and me. She's mostly moved past board books, preferring the bigger books with regular pages. Reading books is now interactive -- she anticipates certain parts and excitedly points out and names things as we go. One of her latest favorites, Whoever You Are, is about how there are all different kinds of people in the world but that deep down we're all alike. There's a line that says "They smile like you, and they laugh like you too" and she always throws back her head and yells "ha ha!"

Which reminds me of a video John took about a month ago:


Evelyn loves the How Do Dinosaurs... series (so far, we have How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? and How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon?). Friday morning, lying on the floor in Evelyn's room at 7am and feeling sorry for myself, I mumbled to Evelyn, "Mama needs to get well soon." Evelyn promptly extricated herself from me, went to the stack of books on her toy chest, rifled through them and came back with How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon?. So maybe I can't be mothered the way I'd like to while I'm sick like this, but I can't think of a nicer thing that anyone can do for me.

A great set of lines from that book is:

Does he push back each drink,
Spit his pills in the sink,
Does he make a big stink?
Is that what you think?
No...

Evelyn jumps in at exactly the right time to say "Nooooo!" with me. She even did it when I was explaining to John what she did and recited those lines to him.

So obviously, "no" is one of her new words. She's also saying "hum" or "humma" for hummus, mo mo (Chinese for hat), purple, and my personal favorite, mao mo (Chinese for cat fur). Last week she started blowing at a tiny bit of cat fur, then she pointed at it and quietly declared "Mao mo." It's not too surprising really - my mom probably curses the existence of mao mo all over the house all day long.

Anyway, as this Mama tries to get well soon, I'll just continue drawing from the theurapeutic benefits of simply being with my hilarious, animated, happy little baby girl.

Dance machine

If there's one thing that Evelyn loves, it's music and dancing to music. OK, two things. She can be in the crabbiest trantrumiest mood, but the second we put on one of her favorite tunes, she immediately stops what she's doing and starts bobbing and bouncing.

Generally she likes the music we listen to, especially anything with a good beat, preferring it over the few kids' songs that we've played for her. One of her absolute favorites has to be a song by Peter Bjorn and John called Paris 2004. The second this song comes on, all is right in Evelyn's world. Years from now, hearing that opening beat will forever bring me back to this time. I wonder if it'll do the same for her in some way?

James Brown is a huge favorite for her. Evelyn can be in the other end of the house, but if we put on Sex Machine, she'll come running into the kitchen and start getting down. Kind of like this (with New Order):



Her dancing is irresistible, and soon after she starts, she's got everyone in the room dancing... Mama, Papa, Po Po, and when she's there, Jennifer. She doesn't even let Baby sit still for too long! Here, Evelyn's administering a little bit of Shaken Baby Syndrome:



And let's not forget Evelyn's jazz hands...

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...