What part of "No" don't you understand?

Of the many new words that Evelyn has learned and uses, "No" has got to be in her Top 5. Maybe Top 3. And she uses it in a wide range of situations... for example:

"No eat!" (or one time, "No hungy!")

"No bathtime!"

"No pee pee!!" (in response to my telling her that I am going to go pee pee before I read her a book)

"No sit!" (refusing to sit in her highchair)

"No di di!!" (refusing a diaper change)

My personal favorite was when she whispered "Byyyee.... No night night....." while shaking her head and grinning as she slid down the side of our bed one afternoon.

And sometimes, there's nothing like the general, all purpose "NOOOOOO!!!"

She applies this approach to getting dressed sometimes, too. Usually, when she refuses to let me put a shirt on her, all it takes is offering her a choice between that shirt and another one, and she'll happily choose and let me continue dressing her. One time though, she would not budge. I tried appealing to her emerging girly-girl side (where she likes to put on something cute, run to the mirror, and exclaim "Oh! Pretty!!"). So after a rigorous bout of "No"s from Evelyn, I pulled out a shirt with flowers on it and said, "Look, how pretty! Do you want to try it?" and she shook her head vehemently and sobbed "NO PRETTY!!!!"

The worst, though, is when we get ready for work in the mornings. Evelyn has been saying "Papa work. Mama work" in the mornings, and then as evening approaches, before we get home, she says "Papa home. Mama home." You think that's sad enough? Lately, as we bustle around getting ready to go, she'll say "Mama work" and I'll say "Yes, Mama is going to work today" and she'll say "No work!!!"

This morning, I was all dressed and ready to go (and already late for a meeting). Evelyn started looking for ways to delay me, and ran to the couch with book in hand yelling "Mama sit! Mama boot! (book)" So I sat down and said, "OK, let's read this book and then Mama's going to work." So she nestled close to me, thumb in mouth, and we read for a little while (she's into pretty long books these days, like The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham). Halfway through the book, I gave her a big squeeze and kissed her on the head. As if suddenly remembering something, she pulled away from me, turned to face me, and started shaking her head. After a few seconds of continued shaking, I stopped reading and said "What's the matter, honey?" She quietly replied, "No work."

Heartbreak.

All Quiet on the Western Front

So we went to our friends Matthew and Wolfgang's house in Monte Rio this past weekend for a couple of days. We got there on Saturday afternoon. This is only the second time going there since Evelyn's birth nearly 2 years ago. We used to go often.

Evelyn really seems to like it up there.She's got much more freedom than she does in SF since the humongous backyard is all fenced in from the street. It's very satisfying to let Evelyn run around nearly unattended. It reminds me of when I was a kid and most of what I remember about playing NEVER-EVER involved our parents! Unfortunately when kids play outside in SF, it's under their parents ever watchful Sauron-like eye(s). Even in playgrounds! Oh well... I'm sure there'll be benefits to growing up here that I can't imagine which will outweigh the costs.

Bedtime Saturday night was particularly tough for poor ol' Evelyn.Hai-Nhu'd spent more time than usual trying to get her to sleep, and ended up having to pry her out of her arms to get her into the pack-n-play. Evelyn was crying and crying! Hai-Nhu was upset. I with my usual cold exterior trying to pretend everything was OK was trying to stop Hai-Nhu from crying herself. Finally Hai-Nhu couldn't stand it and went back in for a while. I don't think it helped.... much. Many minutes later, Hai-Nhu came out of the room and Evelyn was still quite upset! She quieted down shortly after that thankfully (for Hai-Nhu).

This is where the 10PM fireworks come in. In Monte Rio, they set them off about 500 yards or so away from Matthew's house in the river. They WERE amazing alright. Amazing and really freaking LOUD!

So we're outside digging a trench and getting ready to face the Germans with Ernest Borgnine and John Boy, while the Monte Rio artillery division (a.k.a. the Monte Rio volunteer FIRE DEPARTMENT!) mortar shells are going off above Matthew's house.

Hai-Nhu's very nervous about Evelyn waking up. I have my usual uncaring cold exterior on again... trying to reassure Hai-Nhu with complacency. This time however I feel quite bad for Evelyn... and really don't enjoy the fireworks at all. STUPID PARENTAL EMPATHY! Ah for the days of only caring about myself.

The celebrations didn't stop when the Monte Rio fireworks stopped. There were explosions going until early Sunday morning, 4AM or so is my guess. Through all of this Evelyn slept. At least we think so. Maybe she was in her crib paralized with fear. Only Evelyn will be able to tell us (Evelyn?). She slept through the night. It's not unusual for her to wake up when we're not sleeping at home. Maybe she was an infantry solder in her last life?

The next morning she woke up at 5:30 which isn't uncommon. By 6 it was clear that she was UP and didn't want to stay in bed with us. I got up with her to let Hai-Nhu sleep in. Evelyn and I hung out with Matthew and did some exploring of the back yard and the tennis courts across the street. As we shuffled through the exploded ordinances of freedom debris, there was a post climactic calm in the air.

We headed back to Matthew's around 8 to eat. I started making oatmeal in the kitchen chatting with Matthew and giving rasins to Evelyn (which for some reason she calls "¡EEEYAHHH!"). At one point Evelyn trips clumsily over my foot and is splayed dramatically across the kitchen floor. The look on her face is one of, "hmmm... should I make a big deal out of this or not?". I calmly tell her to get up and get some more ¡EEEYYAHHHH! and she ignores me. So... I ignore her! I continue talking to Matthew and then he heads outside for a while. I'm waiting for the oatmeal and Evelyn is still on the floor, now picking at some debris that's stuck to it. I'm slightly worried she might eat it... but not enough to say anything.

Matthew comes back in eventually and she's STILL on the floor. He thinks that she's starting to fall asleep. I'm inclined to agree with him at this point, as strange as it seems. Within minutes she's breathing heavy, face in hands... and now SNORING!

Evelyn catching some Z's on the kitchen floor, red thigh-high boots and all.

Nellie comes into the kitchen now and looks down at Evelyn. So I say, "Don't worry Nellie, she just tripped over my foot and fell asleep!". Nellie's like, "YOU SURE SHE'S OK!?". I realize that my story sounds a bit... bad... and I explain to her what happened, "she's fine, she's really just asleep!". Eventually everyone was up. Keeeth, Nellie, Matthew, Hai-Nhu, and I all stood in the kitchen laughing at poor ol' Evelyn sleeping on the floor and drinking coffee.

She slept for an hour.

La Petite Baleen

Every Thursday morning, John takes Evelyn to her 8:45am class at La Petite Baleen. I can't believe she's already had a month's worth of lessons. I went to her first class and was blown away by the facilities -- from the gorgeous setting of Crissy Field, near the Warming Hut and the beach with Golden Gate Bridge as the backdrop, to the miles of new changing tables in the pristine changing rooms. And let's face it, that cute little whale slide had me at hello.

Evelyn had a pretty good time on her first day, smiling and laughing and going along with the activities with a pretty open mind. They put on flippers, sang songs, swam through tunnels, practiced climbing out of the pool (or at least, learned about the concept, with lots of parental help), and learned how to walk their hands along the wall to get around the perimeter of the pool. The only thing I remember her not liking was lying on her back in the water.











I missed her next two lessons because of work, and was finally able to go last Thursday. In such a short time, she's become so much more comfortable in the water. First off, she's willing to keep goggles on the entire time, which is just about the most hilarious thing. And instead of being coaxed into "jumping" (i.e. being lifted by Papa) off the edge of the pool and into the water, she's jumping in herself without hesitation, and doesn't mind it when her face and head go under water.



One of my favorite activities of the class, and definitely one of Evelyn's, is where they set up a floaty thing as a sort of walkway and have the kids run off it and into the water:



And that whale slide... On the first day, I looked at that and thought, Wow, Evelyn's going to go down that slide one day. Maybe upon graduation or something. How naive of me.



What more can I say? I am just loving this swim class.

Then and now, Part 2

Well, any good clip show has 2 parts, right? That'll be my excuse for forgetting another set of pictures I was going to include in my last posting. I swear, I can only hold 2 things in my head at one time these days. A 3rd set of pictures popped into my head at the last minute, and I could not remember one of the two I already had in mind...

So here they are. These are pictures I took of portraits of Evelyn that John had taken, for Mother's Day last year and this year. He couldn't have come up with a better gift. Last year, he came home at lunchtime while I was at work, took Evelyn (forgoing her nap!), dressed her up in an outfit of his own choosing, and swept her away to the magical world of the Sears portrait studio. It all would have been the biggest surprise ever if my mom had been able to keep the secret. She was just bursting at the seams when I got home and let slip that John dressed Evelyn up and took her out earlier. (Hmph). But still, I had no idea what he was really up to til he presented me with this:



And a little less surprising this year, but not any less special, was my 2nd Mother's Day portrait of my favorite little person:



What a difference a year makes! These are the best gifts ever from the best husband ever...

Every now and then, it's time to look at the then and now

Has it really been over 1 month since my last posting?! Could this be the longest I've neglected the blog? Thank goodness I don't make a living from blogging -- I'd have lost my entire readership by now (or maybe I have anyway!). Yeah, phew, thank goodness I don't make money writing about how cute and funny my child is, geez how awful that would be...

So, what does a writer do when she's short on time and creative energy (that being totally sapped by work)? I'll do what TV writers do -- have a clip show! A retrospective.

I've noticed some funny parallels in the pictures I've taken in the 21 months since Evelyn was born, and now's a good a time as any to do the compare and contrast...

In the photo on the left, Evelyn was just 3 days old! She was 8lbs, 5oz at birth and never really looked like a wrinkly newborn. You can see the yellow tinge of her skin, and if you could zoom in, you'd see the yellow in the whites of her eyes -- her jaundice had moved in and gotten comfortable, and we would remain prisoners of it and the hospital for another 3 days. My recollection is that we took this picture in the middle of the night - all was quiet on the hospital floor except the humming of Evelyn's incubator in our room and our own strung out nerves.



The picture on the right is in a nearly identical room in the same hospital where we had Evelyn - St. Luke's -- 3.5 months later. This was in Paula and Rhea's recovery room the day after Rhea was born. Evelyn was a whopping 18 or 19lbs. See how much more relaxed John looks? (though I think it was still all a facade at that point...) It was super hot in the room, so Evelyn was just in her diaper, and only after did I notice these mirror images.

Ah... swim class. In the picture on the left, Evelyn was 14 months old and it was the first day of swim class at the Janet Pomeroy Center. She gazed in wonder at what that giant blue area might be. The picture on the right was taken about 2 weeks ago, at 21 months, on Evelyn's first day at La Petite Baleen -- a swim school for babies, toddlers and young kids that exceeded my wildest expectations and hopes for a swim class.

Words cannot describe how excited I was on the first day of class as they went through 30 minutes full of activities that were not only fun and well-organized but that would really help develop skills in the water. Having no fear of water is such a gift and luckily, Evelyn probably won't ever realize it!

So you think you can dance?

This is from the beginning of our current heat wave... it's been so hot the last couple of days, that Evelyn's just running around the house naked, and she STILL feels too hot.

I actually have a completely hilarious video of Evelyn dancing completely in the nude (for obvious reasons, I'm not posting it, but maybe we'll have a screening of it for Evelyn's 16th birthday. So just stick around -- it'll be worth it!). I forget that Evelyn moves completely differently when she has no clothes on...

Pee pee in the potty!!

We've just had a monumental event -- Evelyn went pee in the potty tonight for the first time!! If you're wondering how excited we were, just imagine John and me doing a conga line around the house chanting "Pee pee in the pot-TEE! Pee pee in the pot-TEE!..."

For months now, we've had Evelyn's little pink Baby Bjorn potty in the bathroom under the sink, collecting dust. She has a tendency to pee right around bathtime, be it in her diaper, on the floor, or right in the bath. So we figure, OK, we'll break this thing out every night so she gets the idea and we won't pressure her and we'll see what she does. We knew that she understood what we meant when we said "pee pee" and she often made the "Sssssss" sound in response.

Once, back in December, when I was waiting for her to pee at the doctor's office so they could get a urine sample (she had a high fever that turned out to be roseola), I could not get her to drink anything. Desperate to get out of there, I finally said "Evelyn, do you want to go pee pee?" She responded by saying "Ssssssss" and lo and behold, the little clear plastic bag hanging out of her diaper filled with fluid. I thought, OK, this is going to be easy!

Not so much. She refused to sit on the potty. She'd look semi-interested and would lower herself almost to the point of sitting, and then stand right up, shaking her head and saying "Nooooo?" There was plenty of peeing in front of the potty, but not quite in the potty.

Then last week, we were in her room looking through one of her Baby Sign books (which she has loved for as long as she's enjoyed books) and came across a picture of a girl sitting on a potty. She said "Try it?" and I said, "Really? Try the potty? OK... " (skeptically, I might add.) She led the way into the bathroom and I took her pants and diaper off, and she sat right down! Then she looked through her book again and found the girl on the potty, pointed to it and said "Try it?"

Try it? You bet your ass you can try it!

She didn't pee in the potty that day (and in fact peed in front of it again, looking down at the dribbling puddle at her feet and saying "uh oh...") but I was revitalized with hope that we'd get this potty training going. The next day, whenever we were in the bathroom, she'd say "Try it?" and we'd try, and sit there and read her book. Yesterday, she refused to sit until we located the book, which my mom had so recklessly removed from the potty area! And today, at last, she did it! And I missed it! I was getting her clothes out while John drew the bath, and I heard him call out excitedly "She's going pee in the potty!" Never have I heard sweeter words...