Bully of the Nursery?

Apparently Evy and her friend Colin are the bullies of the nursery. I was told today that Evy and Colin like to pick at the little babies, constantly touching them, bopping them and pulling their hair! What? In a previous post I mentioned that we call Evy a maniac because she is constantly in motion. Even when getting her bottle she kicks her legs and pounds her hands. I had no idea she would be pounding on the other babies. Good thing they don't give detention in daycare.

8 Months

Wow! 8 months old. We affectionately refer to Evelyn as a "Maniac." She's kind of wild, constantly on the move! We love her personality, it leaves us laughing. Evy has been crawling for about a week and is pulling herself up to standing. She's sure to get a huge smile on her face if you hold her hands and let her "walk" around. She loves to snuggle her face into her brown teddy bear from Grandma S. and her pink bear from Grandma C. We're really original and have named her bears Brown Bear and Pink Bear.

In addition to 4 bottles a day Evelyn is eating cereal and all kinds of other baby foods. She likes all of the foods and has only rejected Gerber Puffs. She also isn't a fan of Cheerios...the drama queen gags when they touch her lip. All this eating leaves her weighing about 20 pounds. She is a very good sleeper at night, but will often only sleep 30 minutes, an entire day, at daycare. This leaves her pretty cranky in the evenings and I've resorted to taking the long drive home from daycare in order to get her to take a snooze in the car.

Evy loves stoller rides and gets big smiles on her face when she sees her neighborhood friends Ellie, JJ and Gavin. Gavin can't understand why Evy doesn't have any teeth, hopefully those teeth will show up some day. Evy also loves drinking out of her sippy cup and it serves as our "go-to" form of entertainment when she gets cranky.

She has been battling ear infections for the past two months with 4 diagnosed infections and 4 rounds of antibiotics. We visit the Ear Nose and Throat specialist later this week to see if she's a good candidate for tubes.

We have our hands full but don't mind the load.

Beach Babe

Evy had her second boat outing on Saturday. It was the first time she got in the lake. Before Evy got in the water a debate took place between her mom and dad about the amount of bacteria likely to be in the water, but mom realized Evy needed to cool off and gave up on her argument. I closely supervised to make sure none of the poo-water got in her mouth. She was worn out from all the activity and slept on the boat ride back.

Kelly--sorry about the Jay-Hawk hat!! We forgot Evy's and borrowed this one from our friends.

King of Pop

It seems weird that Michael Jackson is dead. He's been a pop star as long as I've been alive. How is it possible that he was 50? When did he get so old? I remember getting his Thriller album (yes, the vinyl kind) as a gift....must have been in 1982. How did I get so old? In elementary school I had a purse with his picture on it, I think I bought it at a gas station. Hot!

White socks with rolled up pants, one gloved hand, hair catching on fire, marriage to Elvis' daughter, sliver of a nose, the Thriller zombie dance, moon walk, sketchy relationship with Macaulay Culkin, sketchy relationship with children in general. Odd duck, but a musical legend nonetheless. What "memories" did I forget?

Family Night Out

I've been trying to get some household chores done during the week so that I don't spend my entire weekend running errands and catching up with housework. Thursday nights are now grocery shopping nights and they've turned in to our family night out. We eat at the Hy-Vee buffett and then do our grocery shopping. I'm actually looking forward to the outing tonight. If you would have told me a year ago that one day I would look forward to eating at the Hy-Vee buffett and grocery shopping I would have thought you were nuts! But, I would have also thought you were nuts if you would have told me that baby poop and vomit wouldn't bother me....oh, the glamour of parenthood.

8 Years

Happy anniversary to me. I have been at my current place of employement for 8 years. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

On The Move

Evy became a professional crawler over the weekend. She's already moved on to trying to pull herself up. On the docket for this weekend: baby proofing the house.

This is my first attempt at video on the blog. I hope it works!

Like Mother...

Like daughter. Except that Evy's earphones plug into an iPod and mine plug into an eight-track player. Oh, and Evy is much cuter.

Food For Thought...

Before Evy arrived I brought my lunch to work almost every day. Now, I rarely make (find) the time to pack my lunch and this leaves me grasping for a quick and healthy option each day at noon. I've been going the sub route on most days, thinking it's one of the healthier options available on the run. However, I just looked up the nutritional information for my sandwich of choice (The Beach Club from Jimmy John's..wheat bread, turkey, avocado, tomato, lettuce) and found that it packs 838 calories! A Quarter Pounder with double cheese from McDonalds is 510 calories. And I wondered why the scale just keeps inching upwards.

Luscious Locks

Finally, something that keeps Evy's hair out of her face!

Race for the Cure

Saturday we participated in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in celebration of my friend LH, who was diagnosed last year. More than 10,000 people participated and it was a sobering reminder that breast cancer affects all of us. Hopefully, this post will remind you to perform your self-exams on a monthly basis and get your regularly scheduled mammograms.

Total Gag

For the past few weeks we've been putting some Gerber Puffs on Evy's high chair tray and encouraging her to try them. She has no interest at all. Everything else she grabs (paper, kleenex, toys, etc) goes straight to her mouth, but she will not put the puffs anywhere near her mouth. When we try to put one in her mouth she clamps down and starts making gagging sounds if the puff touches her lip. Drama Queen.

No Hablo Ingles

In the last few weeks I have toured and researched nearly every daycare center within a 20 mile radius of our home. I've come to the conclusion that they are all pretty much the same and I've decided to stay where we are. Evy has 3 good teachers, she seems to love going to daycare and the facility is excellent. I've been mostly happy, until this week. The center is struggling to find a 4th full time teacher for the nursery. There's been a revolving door of unqualified candidates who have not made it through their "probation" period. But the most recent hire takes the cake. She can't speak English. Yes, you heard me right. WHAT?!? You'd think that speaking English would be a minimum requirement. I've even brought in reinforcements by requesting that Scott (the reserved parent) speak to the director as well.

Scare Bear

Last week, while in Grandma Joan's care, Evy was patting the foot of her bear and caused him to "jump" off the shelf and land on her. It scared the heck out of her and she's been scared of the bear ever since, whimpering when she gets near it. We've been bringing the bear near her to try to get her over the fear. As you can see in the picture she's over it. He's one of her best friends now.

Real World

Back to the real world today. Here's a shot from the 50th floor of the Rio at VooDoo Lounge (it didn't scan very good, the color looks a little off). We had some good pool time, a big night out and I even came out $40 ahead at the roulette table!

Viva Las Vegas

At 9 p.m. tonight I will be on a flight headed for Vegas. Elvis will sing me into the sunset:




12 of us are going to help my friend,JP, celebrate her upcoming marriage. Sin City will never be the same.

Ear Infection # 3

I picked Evy up last night from daycare and noticed she had green mucus in both eyes. My friend, Andrea, recently told me her son had the same mucus eye and he had an ear infection. Andrea is my hero. Based on her story we took Evy to the doctor last night and sure enough....ear infection. Why do I sound so uncharacteristically positive, you might ask? Because I leave for Vegas on Thursday and I am so glad we caught this one early and could get Evy on antibiotics before it turned into the 5 days of diarrhea and vomiting that we had last time.