big girl

yesterday eva had some funny milestones. first, she played along with her friends at playgroup more than she has before. they were all splashing around at a water table, and eva joined in. (for the uninitiated, this is basically what it sounds like: a sandbox on toddler-sized stilts but with water instead of sand. or, a pool that is too little and too high to get into, at least in theory, but you can imagine how that might play out.) she stood up along the edge with the boys and held on with one hand while she splashed away. it was so cute, she looked like such a kid to me. they all got totally soaked, so there was much stripping down of the little ones shortly thereafter. oh, and the other little milestone: i set her down in the yard sans picnic quilt, so she busied herself by gathering fistsful of grass and shoving it into her mouth. today i noticed she had dirt under her fingernails (they're due to be clipped and thus are a bit long). this is a first. she got dirty, from playing! i think i'm being a bit weird, but i thought it was really something worth noting.

i took some photos yesterday, and i like this one because of her eyes. she looks at me like this when she nurses, so it just looks really familiar and cozy to me.

cold cold

First Christmas
Originally uploaded by Kristy and Eva.

It's cold. I know, it's not North Dakota cold, but then again, our mass produced suburban Texas house has no insulation to speak of. Any residual heat drifts upstairs, so our living room is cold cold. I mention this because said cold was the catalyst for one of those parenting moments where you wonder if you're particularly qualified to be responsible for a small, mostly helpless human.

I was sitting with Eva on the couch enjoying some blueberry pomegranate juice, and noticed something odd. "Hey, Larry, it's weird, her mouth is all purple." (You may see where I'm going with this, what with all the foreshadow above.) For just a second or so, my brain was working on a red herring connection to the blueberry juice, but I couldn't see how it would be on *her* mouth... ohhhh, her lips are blue! Because she's freezing to death in our stupid drafty living room! Yikes. I'd read about this in books, and always wondered if it was a subtle thing when babies' lips turned blue or if it would be obvious. Let's just say it was quite clear. She spent the rest of the day in a sleep sack (Larry says they should make them for grown-ups, he's sick of being cold, too).

In addition to being cold, she has a cold -- her first one, which means we've been lucky so far. Her little cough sounds terrible (especially at night), but overall it's not that bad and she doesn't seem too bothered. She wakes up often (because it seems when she puts her thumb in her mouth to soothe herself back to sleep, she suddenly can't breathe very well), so we're all pretty exhausted and I can't get much else done when she won't sleep until 11 or so, which is why I'm writing this at 2 a.m.

To accompany the cold theme, here's a photo from Christmas in the North. And the solids update: she's added applesauce and Japanese rice crackers (thanks for the tip, Elizabeth!), and today she projectile vomited after a single bite of smushed up banana so we'll hold off with the banana for a while. She just woke up again, poor thing, off I go...

early friends

img_9112
Originally uploaded by lewing.

to go along with today's post of our group, here's a photo i came across recently that makes me smile. eva was 5 days old, and sarah and liam (7.5 mo) came to meet her. eva was smaller than her friends then and she still is, but someday she'll catch up. you know, more or less.

superfriends

superfriends

supermamas

today we had playgroup, which was also a surprise birthday party for ella. we decided to see if we could manage a group photo of all the little ones, and due to the fact that they were easily disoriented by the sudden and loud strains of "itsy bitsy spider" coming from the mamas, we were successful. i think it will be really fun to do this periodically so we can watch them grow up together. so cute!

eva had so much fun today playing with her friends, it's really a treat to watch her become more social, even though she's the youngest of this group. oh, and she had her first ride in the new car today! what a treat.

top photo, l-r: carter (13 mo), river (12 mo), ella (12 mo), ewan (15 mo), thomas (seated, 9 mo), nick (15 mo), eva (seated, 7 mo), tyler (seated in front, 15 mo), liam (14.5 mo), ashley (10 mo), and piper (14 mo). not pictured, milosh (12 mo).

bottom photo, front (l-r): wendy and ella, meredith and river, kristy and eva, sorcha and thomas, kori and carter. rear (l-r): christal and ashley, stephanie (the twins' pal) and nick, kelley and ewan, sarah and liam, alyssa and tyler, susan and piper. not pictured, elizabeth and milosh.

focus

sleep
Originally uploaded by Kristy and Eva.

[i took this shot friday with some of the new photo accessories larry bought along with my birthday telephoto lens. i like her eyelashes, and how her skin looks so luminous.]

it seems like in life with a baby, it's so easy to convince yourself (or to let others convince you) to focus on all the wrong things. examples of such things: the perpetual basket of unfolded laundry, the mess in the kitchen, your lack of ambition or lack of follow-through on what ambition you do have, all the pre-pregnancy clothes you still can't wear, and the fact that the pizza guy has been to your house so many times lately that he greets you like a friend even after your dog bites his shoe (sadly, that's actually true, it happened today). i don't know if it's the sheer weight of responsibility for another tiny human or simply the lack of structure in the day-to-day of it, but somehow having a baby around can make a person feel really buried by the details.

but here's the thing, i think, that balances it out. if you can make yourself stop, maybe just stare at that little beautiful face for a minute, that can be enough to make everything that so recently seemed important and overwhelming just fall away. it doesn't work all the time, but just often enough to keep me sane -- i'll look and i find all i need right there in the rise and fall of her chest while she sleeps. i think the most important thing i'm learning from eva is to calm down and be present. i've always been terrible at this, but i'm making progress. all those things my brain rushes about worrying over can wait when i see those laughing, wondering eyes looking back at me. and as for focus, this is where it belongs.