8 months old! (and many other updates)

As my dad reminded me this morning – it HAS been a while since an update.  Only about a week, mind you, but it has been one heck of a week.  Apparently June is not our month.  We brought home a souvenir from Luke’s trip to the Emergency Room – in the form of Swine Flu.  At least I’m sure thats what it is.  First Kyle, then me and the kids all developed this awful flu with fevers and chills and coughs and lots of congestion.   So we’re all exhausted, and life is pretty hectic these days.  Hopefully this rounds out our month of medical misery, and we can move on to a healthier safer summer!  We also took Luke back to the Dr. this week, who decided NOT to x-ray his ankle as Luke is putting more and more weight on it – its likely (hopefully) just a really bad sprain.

So – today Evelyn is 8 months old!  She is 19.5 lbs and 29.5 inches tall.  Apparently in the 70th percentile for weight, and stretching OFF the charts for height – the nurse was so amazed she measured her twice to make sure!  She seems much leaner than Luke was at this age.  Even her leg rolls are almost completely gone.  She hasn’t grown much in the last month – her clothes all seem to fit the same way.

She is an avid eater, basically eating pieces of whatever we are having for dinner.  I’d like to try to maintain that diet for her, as it is far easier than always preparing something separate, as we have to do for Luke.  She still – shockingly – doesn’t have a single tooth (or even a hint that one will emerge sometime soon) so it’ll be a while before she’s eating things that don’t mush in her mouth.  But she honestly does really well with everything we give her, so I’m not worried about her lack of teeth!

She is – like her brother – an absolutely terrible sleeper.  An average day includes a 1.5 hr nap in the morning, around 8-9am, and another 1.5 hr nap in the afternoon, around 1pm.  Then she goes to bed at 7:30, wakes up once half an hour later for a readjustment, then sleeps until 10.  After that, she’s up every 2 hrs until 3 or 4 in the morning when she just decides to wake up every hour, or – even better – every half hour.  That’s when I go in and sleep with her, just to get some rest.  Then she’s up somewhere between 5-7am for the morning, which is a real treat.  Its definitely not ideal.  But this time we do know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, as Luke has evolved into a relatively good sleeper.  So I think we are more willing to just put up with Evelyn’s issues, knowing that it will one day get better.  And for now, we’re coping.

Evelyn’s big deadline is coming up in 3 short days – will she or won’t she walk in time to beat Luke?  I don’t honestly think she will, but then again, I said the exact same thing in Luke’s 8 month update, and he proved me wrong.  Evelyn definitely has all the parts of walking – she can pull herself up on anything,  is very sturdy on her feet, will stand unassisted playing with a toy, will transfer her weight from one object to another while cruising, and can sometimes take a couple steps in the direction of someone (although she isn’t as confident with that as Luke was at this age).  However, I really do think that her crawling is going to slow down her walking.  If she sees somewhere she wants to go – even if the gap is inches beyond her reach, she’ll immediately drop down on her knees and crawl over, rather than stretching to walk.  Luke wasn’t crawling at this stage, so he thought walking was the only solution.  Anyways, we’ll see what happens!  She is still on the verge of walking, I just really doubt she’ll take those first steps before Tuesday!

Evelyn is a very vocal little girl, always singing along with music or chattering to herself while playing.  I’m certain she says her own version of “Hi” when she hears other people saying “Hi”.  I keep working on Mama – but she just looks at me strangely, then tries to bite my face.  We’re trying to teach her sign language for more, water, food, nursing, – all the basics in her life.  So far Luke thinks they’re just hilarious, and loves using them.  Evelyn hasn’t really gotten it.  The Itsty Bitsy Spider is her all-time favourite song, if we’re talking to her or playing with her we’ll catch her climbing her hands above her head – as if she’s asking us to sing it.  Then when we do, she gets so excited, jumping up and down and – shockingly – getting most of the hand movements for the song right.  She’s so cute, I’ve got to get a video of it.

She is a really loving and snuggly baby, who will happily play for a while then come sit quietly with me to watch for a few minutes.  She rarely nurses throughout the day, apart from at naptimes, but she does love to bury her face in my neck or give me ‘kisses’ on the face, which are far slobberier than they should be!  She is a terribly charming baby, reaching out to everyone she sees in the grocery store, cooing and giggling at people on the street until they come to see her, then grabbing them or raising her arms to be picked up.  And with her huge blue eyes and her gorgeous, blond, curlier-by-the-day hair, she’s sure to be very popular once we move to China.

And at 8 months old – today – she had her first helicopter ride!   I thought it would be a fun idea for Luke – who loves all things that fly – and Kyle to do for Fathers Day.  But then I found out the Helicopter sat 3 people, and that they would let me bring Evelyn along on my lap, so we decided to make it a family outing!  We booked it through the Aviation Museum, and it was such a cool experience for everyone.  Here are the pictures to show you our adventure!

Luke wasn’t really a fan of the microphone thing…

His favourite part?  Watching other planes – from the sky – circling and landing at the airport below us.

The Ottawa River- looking toward Parliament

Parliament Hill, from the River

Evelyn’s favourite part of the day?  All those fun helicopter parts to chew on!