18 Months

It has been almost six months since my last post, so I figure that it is about time that I post some sort of update.

Evelyn will turn 18 months old tomorrow! As is every parent's mantra - Where has the time gone?? Here are a few notes on what is up in the world of our little one:

• Busy, busy, busy!! This girl is on the go! The phrase "chasing after a toddler" is what we live around these parts.
• Daring - E loves to climb and explore just about anything, anywhere. She especially loves going down the slide and exploring in our backyard. We have a satsuma tree that is full of fruit right now and she loves to graze on them as she explores.
• Talking! Lots and lots of words right now and all sorts of babble that sound like sentences. Here are a few of the words & phrases she says, off the top of my head: blueberry, get down, all done, Chai, Cole, Mike, Mommy, Daddy, pasta, pee pee, cracker, cookie, bread, bath time, ball, "rock rock" when rocking in the glider, "nini" for nursing, pants, jacket, hat, hot, cold, agua, peanut butter, all sorts of animal sounds, eye, cheese, book, outside, no, elmo, love you, "night night, sleepytime", sock, shoe, and baby. I am sure there are a bunch more that I am forgetting!
• She enjoys spinning.
• At meals, much to our dismay, she enjoys balancing/smearing food onto her head.
• She can sing some of the ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Slippery Fish
• She love so sing/hum different melodies in general, many that I don't recognize.
• She loves to dance.
• Blueberries are her favorite food, with peanut butter being a close second.
• She mostly sleeps a solid 12-hour stretch at night, with occasional phases of having one "wake-up" if she is sick or going through a developmental spurt.
• She is a one-nap girl. At daycare she naps for about 2 hours, at home 3.
• She loves her daycare (and so do we!).
• She can be stubborn, and needs her sleep and food just like her Mommy. Her most tearful and fussy times are usually when she hasn't slept well or it is time for a snack.
• She eats most anything - except potatoes. Not a big fan of the potato. Or spicy food.
• She follows direction somewhat well (she is a toddler, after all) and her comprehension is amazing!
• She does okay with a fork, and is working on her spoon skills.
• She finally will eat off a plate when we take her out to eat - instead of just wanting to dump the food.
• She hasn't had a bottle in forever (maybe since 12 months?)
• She still gets a few ounces of breast milk from the slowly dwindling freezer stash when she is at daycare (in a sippy cup).
• She nurses about 3 times a day, sometimes 4-5 if she wakes at night or asks for ninis during the day on the weekends.

As for Mommy & Daddy - we are amazed and enamored with our little one. Balancing work and home life is really challenging and tiring at times. I am not a huge fan of being a full-time working mom and hope to be able to drop down to part time work at some point in the next few years. I do, however, enjoy the work that I do, which is a bonus if I have to be doing the work for 40 hours a week, right?

Will Walk for Beer

Being a full-time working mom keeps me busy, and this blog is currently not high on my list of priorities right now, as much as I'd like it to be. So, all sorts of good stuff has happened as Evelyn rounded the corner into her first year. Here we are now, and she is 13-months old. Where has the time gone? Her newest trick? Walking! Here is the video of her walking to her Uncle Dan today:

Easter Week

This eighth month has been an exciting one for us in the Kennedy household. Evelyn's Mema and Tata came to spend the week with us this past week. We had all sorts of fun together, including an early birthday celebration for Mema, a visit from the Easter Bunny, and a trip to Happy Hollow, which is a petting zoo/amusement park for little kids. Evelyn was a bit too young to really enjoy the park, but it was still fun to check it out. Here are a few pictures from the past week or so:

At the petting zoo with Tata

Tambourine, dig it?

Checking out the Easter basket from Mema & Tata

Me & my girl!

Ultra cuteness, if you ask me!

Of course, the biggest news around these parts is that Evelyn started REALLY crawling this week! It is amazing to see her move around her little play area, pulling herself up onto her knees, and even climbing over things! Here is a little video of that first "big" crawl:

Happy Easter!

As I drifted off to sleep last night, I found myself thinking back to last Easter, and am amazed at how much has happened in the last year. Obviously, I was pregnant at this time last year. I posted a video of the baby dancing in my belly. Remember? If not, check it out here. So, we have gone from that, to this:

Evelyn's daycare had an Easter egg hunt on Friday. Both Mike & I were curious to see how interested Evelyn would be in the eggs. As you can see, she loved shaking them! She scooted on her little belly to get to them and once she had them she would just shake away! We were both tickled to see how she got such a kick out of them.

She has been at the daycare for three weeks and is adjusting quite well. I still carry guilt about putting her in daycare and of course I worry about her mental health in terms of attachment and bonding, but I think that those things just come with the territory of having your child in someone else's care.

After a bit of a rough first week (more for me than Evelyn), we are very pleased with our choice of childcare providers. We decided to go with a larger center for a couple of reasons.

• It is close to my work, so I often visit at lunch and offer to nurse Evie.
• I get a discount as a county employee.
• bigger center = lots of eyes all the time
• no TV!
• referral from a family with years of experience with the center.

With each week that passes, I am more impressed with the center. Her primary teacher is gentle and loving, and very attentive. The secondary teacher is a bit more energetic and sings and dances a lot with the kids. They balance each other out very nicely. They call me if she isn't taking her bottle, just to check and see if that is okay. The staff is very responsive and I love that we get a daily report of not only her eating, sleeping, and diapering, but also of the fun stuff she did. They have daily art projects that are displayed throughout the room. These are activities that the babies participate in, like little handprints or smashing bits of paper onto a pre-cut shape. It is pretty cute.

She has already had her first daycare-related cold. Thankfully it wasn't too severe. More than anything it was a pain to be up multiple times a night dealing with a stuffy nose. The plus side of that is that I got more cuddle time in with Evie. I miss her quite a bit during the day, and continue to grieve not being able to stay home with her. We are still nursing, even when she is away she gets Momma's milk! Pumping is going well so far, and we are four months away from our goal of one year of breastfeeding.

Here are a few of the latest pics of Evelyn, who just turned 8 months on March 31:

At daycare, playing in the ball pool

Easter egg hunt at daycare!

Eating prunes

Enjoying a warm spring day!

Miles Away

On January 29 we moved Evelyn into her crib. This was the third time that we made the move. The first was when she was small. Not like she is big and all grown up now, but at the time she was just a tiny baby still. I couldn't handle the separation. I physically ached when she wasn't in the room with us. It was like my arm was missing.

The second time she wasn't ready, and made it known to all. It was right around the holidays and we were in the process of a futile attempt to banish the swaddle from the bedroom. After night 4 it was useless. We all weren't sleeping and the entire house was just an emotional, sleep-deprived wreck. So back to the room she came, content in her nest next to our bed.

This time, though, the quality of our sleep began to deteriorate with her sleeping in our room. Each time I came to bed she awoke, crying to nurse and frantic for comfort. Maybe I've written about this already, but frankly I am too lazy to check the archives. So anyway, our sleep turned to shit. We were all waking up multiple times through the night, starting with when I came to bed. So, the move happened, and now we are one week later and things are going surprisingly well. She sleeps for a long stretch nearly every night, and when she wakes prior to that first night nursing, she resettles herself more often than not. I do realize that I just jinxed myself by saying this out loud, by the way. My point is, it is working for us right now. We are all sleeping better for the change.

I am surprised, however, at how my heart aches and misses her at night. Our little room feels like it is missing something. In an odd way, having her in the other room magnifies the fact that I no longer carry her in my womb. Women often comment on how they miss feeling their baby kick and roll inside their round bellies. I haven't felt that. Yet, suddenly, here I am missing her soft presence. You see, since October of 2008, this is the longest we have gone without sharing the quiet stillness of the night together. The is the furthest away that my girl has been from me since she was a little cluster of cells.

There are many things about motherhood that I never anticipated, and this is one of those things. I am sure that this is really the beginning of it, seeing as we have a lifetime of intense attachment intertwined with moments of letting go ahead of us.

Once, when I was living in Ecuador, I was talking with my mom on the phone. At the time, I was on a separate continent, my brother was in Boston, and my sister in San Diego - we were all far from home. She wondered aloud, as we talked, what had happened that we all moved so far away? I told her, with confidence and reassurance in my heart and voice, that it was the sense of adventure that she and my dad had instilled in us. In my eyes, they had raised us to explore; they gifted us with a sense of confidence and security to pursue our dreams, regardless of location.

Now, here I am as a mother and my heart aches knowing my own daughter is as far away as the next room. Miles away. How could I know, back then, what it felt like for my mom to have us all so far away? I too, hope that Mike & I will instill the same sense of adventure, exploration, confidence, and security in Evelyn the way that my parents did for my siblings and me. From experience, I know that it will indeed be a magnificent gift to give her. I also know, however, that it is with heaviness in my heart that I will let her go. Only now, as a new parent, do I even begin to understand how much courage it takes to be a mother.

Peas & Knees

This morning we decided to try out peas as Evelyn's second food. I made these up a couple of nights ago and froze them. Instead of using fresh peas, I used organic frozen. I strained them once pureed, to get a smooth consistency. Here is a photo of the finished product:



So, we tried them out this morning and here are the results:



The memory card filled up, which is why the video cuts short at the end. She ended up not really liking the peas at all and just clamped her little mouth shut. So, we will try again next week. In the meantime, I think tomorrow I will try oatmeal or avocado. I haven't decided yet.

On another note, Evelyn has been working really hard to get on her hands and knees. This Tuesday, when we were at the breastfeeding group we've been attending, she really started to get her little belly off the ground, and even began rocking a bit. I caught a short clip of her in action later that day:

Sweet Potatoes for My Little Sweet Potato

Yesterday was a big day for us! Not only did Evelyn celebrate her half birthday, she also had her first taste of solids. I used the Wholesomebabyfood.com website for instructions on how to prepare sweet potatoes. The process was easy and straight forward. Here is a pictorial of the process:

I started with two medium organic sweet potatoes. I poked holes in them, wrapped them in foil and put them in the oven to bake.
They baked for about 45 minutes, until they were soft and squishy when I squeezed them. I then unwrapped them and put them in the fridge to cool while we went out for breakfast with Mike's family.

When we got back from breakfast, I slices each sweet potato lengthwise and scooped out the meat. I was surprised at how the meat fell easily away from the skin. You can see the skins folded and stacked in the photo below.
I used the hand blender to puree the meat. I added breastmilk and water to get a thin puree. It wasn't so thin that I could pour it, but it was very smooth. I didn't know how much liquid I would need to thin the puree to the right consistency, so I just kept adding until it looked right. I used about 3.5 ounces of breastmilk and and additional 2 ounces of water.
This is what the finished puree looked like once I put it in the ice cube tray. Each cube is an ounce of food. I froze the cubes and before I went to bed last night, I popped them out of the tray and into a baggie that I labelled with the food and the date prepared. The little bowl on the left is what I reserved to feed Evelyn over a couple of days, so it is now in the fridge.

Once I finished the preparation process we were ready for the fun. Here is the video that Mike took for those first few bites. She seemed to enjoy it after a bit, and ate about an ounce total.

I already had the joy of changing the first poopy diaper since we fed her and oh boy, we are in for a treat from here on out!