8 and 9 months

Posted by E-George on June 26, 2009

The last two months have been full of changes and improvements. The number one improvement has been the quitting of my job to stay at home and be with Evelyn. My sanity and logic have returned (mostly), and the loss of income wasn’t as tough to swallow as we had expected. It helps when to have built our finances based on half of Matthew’s salary, none of mine, and entirely on the expectation that this day may come.

Life is good, especially from the height of someone’s shoulders.

In May, Matthew’s workplace had a family day. While this may seem perfectly normal, if not a little banal to most, but it was a significant event for our family and for the worksite personnel. It had been 10 years since the previous family day, so mother nature kicked in a little bit of fun by making it offensively chilly and windy and by tossing heaping helpings of gritty sand into the wind to keep things interesting. Not fully realizing the weather conditions, I dressed Evelyn in what has come to be known as the “Fruit Salad Outfit,” which came to her from her Auntie Emily. Thank goodness it wasn’t made of real fruit otherwise my edible baby would have been completely gobbled up.

Evelyn started her quest towards mobility by rolling. She’d roll from stomach to back to stomach to back to stomach, making a wide arc across the floor. One day she rolled her way over to the bookshelf and extracted a lovely volume on Indian cooking.

We seem to have overcome the issue with eating solids. As it would turn out, the type-A personality genetic code has been passed on to Evelyn in spades. In a nutshell, she had to control the spoon and its depositing action. I could load the spoon with food, but she had to be the one to put it into her mouth, or very nearly into her mouth. Also, she didn’t like the homemade baby food and preferred store bought. I think it had to do with texture and viscosity. Once we figured out this little dynamic, she’s been eating like a pro. Even better, it doesn’t seem like she’s at all a picky eater…yet. We had a small bout with constipation not too long ago, but that was quickly resolved with a lot of nursing and a little bit of prunes. Now we’re a lot more careful about the rotation of foods and the quantity she’s eating.

Part and parcel to the mobility thing was the moving into the crib thing. Shortly after we got her moved in to the crib, we had to lower the crib mattress because she was pulling herself to a standing position at the railing.

We’re still working on our project of getting to as many city parks as possible this summer. Some of our progress has been slowed since we put the house on the market.

I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to keep the house in show-ready condition. That, in itself, isn’t very difficult, but keeping the white carpet white has been the biggest challenge. Of course, within a month of having the carpet washed, a bout of stomach (puking) flu swept through the house. It was the first time I’d been throwing up for non pregnancy-related reasons in easily five or more years. I ended up having to call my mother to come up and help with Evelyn because I was in the bathroom trying to upchuck my lower intestine through my ears almost every 30 minutes for 8 or 10 straight hours. Hardly a conducive state to being an attentive parent to busy baby.

Early June presented itself more like late March in terms of chilly weather, rainy days, etc. Every time I tried to get an afternoon to take Evelyn outside to play in her pool the weather turned to crap and we had to stay inside. One day in particular, Evelyn was having attitude about wearing a diaper so she had been spending most of the day happily depants’d so I figure there wouldn’t be any harm with setting up her little hippo pool and having an indoor pool party. Easily one of my more colossally idiotic ideas that actually saw fruition. Getting it set up was easy. Getting it taken down turned out to be a wee bit of a logistical challenge.

Eventually, we did make it outside, and we’ve had a couple of private little pool parties since then.

Night time is still nudie time, and sometimes after her bath and encasement into a pair of jammies she still has plenty of energy to visit and work out a few more wriggles.

Evelyn has blossomed. She has gone from sitting up and rolling around, to sitting up, commando-style crawling, getting herself from her stomach back to a sitting position, and in the last week actually crawling for reals. Due, in part, to Matthew’s diligent tutoring.

Tons of other little things have happened in the last two months. Too many things to get into the details of here. She’s gotten two teeth on the bottom. She’s had play dates with other babies and had too much fun for words. She’s sprouted hair. Lots and lots of hair. Her legs are almost too fat for her to sit in the Bumbo chair anymore. She charms everything and everyone around her.

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