Evelyn's Recent Endeavors

Evelyn has been growing up so quickly these last few months.  She has started to become a regular sign language user, uses her little pointer finger to point at anything she wishes to have or touch, has started to walk, and listens well.  It is so fun to see more and more of her personality as she is slowly able to communicate and express herself more.

A few weeks ago I had gotten Evelyn ready to go, and then had to run and grab one more thing.  When I came back, she had successfully pulled off her hat, mittens, and socks.  I guess it's much more fun to play with those things than to wear them.

 

Just a few days ago, Evelyn was playing on our bed while I was doing something else.  I wasn't really watching her except to make sure she wasn't getting too close to the edge.  After a little bit she started playing with the window.  I wasn't surprised because she often pulls back the curtain and looks out our bedroom window.  This time though, she decided to try something new - licking the window.  I think there was a little bit of frost on the glass that she was licking off, but at any rate she was really enjoying it and I managed to catch it on video. Sorry it's sideways, I couldn't get it to rotate.

Then this morning, I decided to finally sort through a big pile of beads to make some necklaces for our niece for Christmas.  Just as I had almost the whole pile untangled, Evelyn decided that she was going to help me finish the job.  In the end, I had to untangle them a second time, but it was worth it watching the fun she had playing with them.

 

Overall, we are greatly enjoying each and every day with our darling girl.  She makes everything more interesting, and definitely more entertaining.  I'm looking forward to many more fun and funny things with her!

The Wean: Week 4

As of last Monday, Evelyn has been completely weaned.  The first couple of mornings were a little rough, but we made it through.  Now she gets very excited whenever she sees her cup of milk.  She drags it around in her teeth until she's done drinking it.  I was expecting more difficulty at the end, but I think finally cutting everything completely off helped to seal the deal.  I am looking forward to growing and bonding with Evelyn in different ways now, and watching her grow in her independence. 

The Wean: Week 3

This week I have dropped the night feeding.  The first two days were a little bit rough come bed time.  Starting at around 7pm, Evelyn starts getting whiny and clingy and insists on crawling up on my lap and laying her head down on me while she sucks her thumb.  I think that the main thing for her is that she's loosing her Mommy connection time and she doesn't like it.  Even though I hold her while she drinks her cup of milk, it's not the same.  I need to make an intentional effort to do fun things with her throughout the day to make up for this time she is missing.  Even simple things like reading stories, or chasing her and tickling her tummy, or going for a walk, or holding her in my lap for 5 mins are things that I know she loves and don't take much time out of my day.

I am anticipating next week to actually be easier than this week.  With all nursing times being supplemented, she's not left wondering, "I wonder if mom will nurse me THIS time?" Because she won't be nursed at all.  I'm sure we'll probably have a rough first couple of mornings, but after that and after a few weeks, it will all be but a fond memory (if even that).

Part of me is sad to be done nursing Evelyn already.  Initially I had hoped to continue for at least a year.  I guess making it almost to 11 months is pretty good.  The other part of me is looking forward to the freedom that will come with being done.  I can leave Evelyn with others (Kevin, family, etc.) and not worry about if she'll take the bottle for them okay.  The reality is that my break from nursing will be an all too short 5 months before #2 is here and we start again.  And my body could use a break to just focus on growing this little one.

The Wean: Week 2

Well, we made it through week one and are starting on week two of the weaning process.  The rest of week one went very smoothly.  With only one feeding being substituted, it wasn't that big of a shock for Evleyn.  We've only been through one day of two feedings from the cup and two feedings from mom.  By the end of the day yesterday, Evelyn was very clingy and a little bit irritable even though she took two awesome naps.  I think it might take her a few days to adjust to mornings and evenings from mom only.  The one good thing is that now when I do nurse her, she eats really well and doesn't mess around.  This makes those feedings go much quicker and easier.  I am still anticipating weeks three and four to be the most difficult in this process, but we're just taking one day at a time.

The Wean: Week 1

Yesterday marked day one of weaning Evelyn.  I decided to take 4 weeks and drop one of her feedings each week replacing nursing with milk I have stored in the freezer.  We're just skipping the whole bottle thing this time and going straight to the sippy cup.  She took the cup just fine both yesterday and today, but I discovered that she doesn't like it cold.  I have to warm up the milk for her or she won't drink it.  I think we'll work on one thing at a time.  When she is successfully weaned, then we'll work on drinking cold milk. 

She is, however, slowly figuring out how cups work.  Up until now, she would lean her face forward and down to try and get a drink.  I've been letting her play with a sippy cup of water to learn to tip it up to get the water out.  Today she was playing with it in the hallway and I found her with a wet shirt, so she was doing something right.

House Flies

A few days ago, we decided to paint our front door.  In order to do so, we had to take the door off of the hinges and lay it outside.  While the paint was drying and we had no front door, all the flies on our block appeared to have entered our house to get out of the cold.  I've been very annoyed with the flies constantly buzzing around and landing on me.  I've killed about 25 of them, but there are still a handful that appeared to have gone into hiding when the fly massacre took place because they survived the slaughter and  are back flying around. 

That said, the other day Evelyn woke up from her morning nap, and I could hear her playing in her crib.  She has this special giggle/laugh noise that she reserves for times when she finds something really fun to play with.  Curious as to what she had discovered in her crib that could draw out this laugh, I snuck into her bedroom.  Now normally as soon as she sees me in her room, she is instantly on her feet at the side of the crib with her arms in the air wanting to be picked up.  I found her this time sitting towards one end of the crib and looking at the blankets in front of her.  There was a fly sitting on her blanket.  She waved her arm at the fly, it moved out of the way, and then come crawling back.  This is what was eliciting those joyful giggles I had heard from the other room. She sat contentedly batting at this fly for several minutes. 

It started to make me think.  Oh to have the mindset of a child.  Where even pesky flies are fun playtime pals.  To not be bothered by a nuisance, but rather enjoy watching God's creation up close.  To see even the smallest creature as a means to be joyful.

I still try to kill the flies I see flying around our house, but it does bring a smile to my face when Evelyn is sitting in her high chair and a fly happens to land on her tray.  She proceeds to ignore me and smile real big at the fly and then watch it until she can't see where it has gone.

Morning Math

I always knew that there was a trick to converting square feet to square yards, and that it wasn't as simple as dividing by 3 or anything like that.  After a little bit of Google research I discovered a very helpful math forum with a smart man named Dr. Math who explains math problems.  The picture he showed made so much sense.

3 feet = 1 yard
    ___
   | 1 |  1 sq. ft.  
   |___|
    ___ ___ ___
   | 1 | 2 | 3 |   1 sq. yd. =
   |___|___|___|   9 sq. ft.
   | 4 | 5 | 6 |
   |___|___|___|
   | 7 | 8 | 9 |
   |___|___|___|

When you calculate it out, one square yard is equal to 9 square feet.  To go from square feet to square yards, all you have to do is divide by 9.

Excited that I finally figured out an easy way to convert between the two, I went outside to measure and calculate how many cubic yards of dirt we will need to fill our newly landscaped flower beds.  Wait?  CUBIC yards?  I thought we were talking square yards.  Well, landscape companies sell dirt and mulch and things by the cubic yard, so that's what we needed to know.

Well, here's how I did it.  I calculated out how many square feet of beds are out there.  I added up 166.5 sq ft.  Then I divided by 9 to get the square yards (18.5).  Then I measured that the beds are approximately 10" deep which, with a simple calculation equals .277777778 yds.  Multiply 18.5 by .2777777778 and voila!  We need 5.138 cubic yards of dirt to fill our beds.