Milestones: Three Months

Evey's first 3-6 month outfit... the pants were a little big (aka: she completely wiggled
out of them when she napped) but she still looked adorable!

Wow! I can't believe how quickly three months has passed.

My little girl gets to be more not-so-little every day. She learning so many new things and she changes every day. I love seeing other people's reactions to her. Most say she looks like her Papa, but those who knew me as a baby say she looks just like me. Some days I'll swear she is Christopher's clone. I tell him it's a good thing I went through the pregnancy otherwise no one would believe she's really mine. But sometimes she makes these faces and it's so evident that she's my daughter.

We compared her baby pictures to ours and that girl has an amazing mix of both of us.

She's so independent and that makes me both happy and sad. She loves to play on her playmat and loves to chill on her own. She grabs the links and bats at the toys like a pro!

She still loves Secondand Serenade more than any other music. Her favorite of their songs is still "Fall for You" and if I sing the chorous more than three times, it can calm her down from any tantrum. She knows their CD so well that if I turn it on, she's happy after two bars.

She found her hands and feet and they're her favorite things to watch. She loves when I pull her feet to her nose and mouth. She smiles so much and has giggled a few times.

She's starting to teethe already. I researched online and she was exhibiting every symptom except restless sleep and that little white bump keeps swelling and going down, swelling and going back down. We had a few days where I cried as much as she did because I couldn't console the pain. I thought seeing her get her shots was hard, but it's nothing compared to teething. At least the pain from the shots only lasted a few minutes.

The good news is that she's still a mommy's girl, and I'm not complaining! She loves her Papa, but Mommy has the "magic bottles" and she knows what that means! She recognizes faces more and more and she loves to see her Mimi. Mimi & Auntie Ali picked her up from daycare one morning for a playdate and the staff was shocked at how much Evey recognized her already. She still loves daycare and hasn't gotten sick from the other kids yet (knock on wood).

She's been to three states: Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee and she travels really well. She slept almost the entire 6 hour drive home from Gatlinburg, which includes around two hours of stand-still traffic trying to get onto I-40.

She's still congested and hates when I use the snot-sucker and the Little Noses saline drops. She loves the hum of her humidifier, almost as much as she loves her tunes.

She still sleeps through the night and loves to be woken up in the morning. If we're there when she starts to stir, it starts the day off great! If she wakes up on her own and gets to the point where she cries a little, she's much crankier during the day.

She squirms in her sleep. I lay her down so she stretches from side to side in her crib and in the morning she's rotated 90* so she lays from end to end. She loves her monkey crib toy. It changes from blue to orange lights and has a swinging "hypnosis" monkey hanging from a vine. I spent $4 on it at Once Upon a Child and it was the best $4 I've ever spent.

She still loves her baths and we took her swimming and she loves that too!

She's spoiled, rotten... but there's nothing wrong with that. She knows what she wants and she understands so much. She already does the opposite of what I say (which I still think is funny... for now).

What's in a name?

Christopher and I always laughed at how many nicknames our cats and dogs have. We hardly ever use their real names... so we should've know it would be the same for our kids.

We love Evey's name - and we obviously put a lot of thought into her name when we decided on it back in February, but she has nicknames for every aspect of her life and some of them are definitely creative!

When she eats, she gets so excited. She knows when we're getting ready to nurse and she holds her mouth open wide and nods her head back and forth. It cracks me up.

Sometimes, she gets over-excited and I tell her to "Slow down, Trigger". Yes, I call my baby girl Trigger. It's just so suiting. If she gets on Trigger mode, I can't let her latch on until she calms down, otherwise, I'll be experiencing some pain. I always crack up at her Trigger mode. I also call her Chomper and Nommer (which has evolved into Nominator). The older she gets, the messier she eats... ergo, I call her Squirt.

Every night, she sleeps in a swaddler (aka a straightjacket) that's made by Kidopotamus. So Squirt transferred from dinnertime to bedtime and as I velcro her into her blanket, Squirtopotamus emerged. Unfortunately, that's quite a mouthful for such a little girl, so it got shortened to Squirtopot. I realize it's not the cutest name in the world, but Evey makes anything sound adorable!

When she gets a dirty diaper, I clean "Her Highness" and she's so funny when she gets her diaper changed. Since day one, she pulls feet up to her belly and then thrusts them out as straight as they can go. We started calling her Frog Legs because of this. The older she gets, the more she wiggles and squirms, so she's added on a couple more names: Squirminator 2011 and Squirmin' Merman. I love the way her belly goes so flat and rounds out into a circle, like a beetle. I call it her Buddah Belly.

She's got a lot of gas... I've heard breastmilk fed babies are gassier than formula babies, but Evey has a lot of gas! I call her my "rootin', pootin' cowgirl."
We love the little ring of dark hair that underlines her cute bald head. We think it resembles Friar Tuck, so that's what we call her. Although, I must say that her hair is growing out nicely on top and everyone said that her Friar Tuck hair would fall out, but it's still holding on strong!

When we wake her up in the morning, we always say "Good morning, Starshine! The earth says 'Hello!'" and she just smiles at us!

She's such a happy girl and making her smile is so rewarding, as a mom. I call her Gummy Smile because when she really, really smiles, you can see her entire gums. It's adorable. She has another smile where she doesn't open her mouth and it just goes straight across her face. Her Nana says she looks like Charlie Brown!

On top of all those names, we also have names we use whenever we talk to her. She knows her name already, but she also responds to these:

Evey Monster
Easter
Evey Girl
Evey Bear
E
Miss E
Little Miss
Little Bit
Bit
Byte
Sweet Pea
Sweet Tart
Snuggle Bunny
Bunny Foo Foo
Boogin Head

Yes, some of her names are quite random (and I'm sure there are more) but that's our girl... and I wouldn't trade them for anything!

Baby Nerd Alert!

James, an old friend of ours who recently came back into our lives, sent Evey a gift that would "set her on the right path."

When we got home, there was a box that was from a company called Think Geek and on the side was a cartoon monkey that said "CAUTION: This Box Contains Extreme Monkey Awesomeness." Christopher and I were rolling. The box itself was classic James.

We opened it up and found this inside:

It's a good thing we had the onesie to match! 

Thanks, James! We all love her R2!

Pumpkin's Patch

October is my FAVORITE month! It starts to get cool and brisk, you get to pull out your sweaters and coats. The leaves changing colours and the world is just gorgeous! Plus, we're rapidly approaching Evey's first Halloween - which is one of my favorite holidays! Who doesn't have fun dressing up as something completely random and going door to door to get candy??? I wish adults could trick-or-treat, but now... we've got the golden ticket!

Evey already has costumes for her first few years and two for this year. I'm so looking forward to her costume parade at daycare on the 31st and will be scheduling myself random hours at work so I can be there!

Something else I've been looking forward to is our first trip to the pumpkin patch. I haven't been in years, but when I was little, we went every year and I loved picking out my own pumpkin. Maybe these memories were so great for me because my parents called me "pumpkin". Ali was always the "princess" but I loved my nickname. As I grew up, obviously outgrew the nickname but my love for fall is permanently engrained.

Several years ago, we started a family tradition of going to Baldwin Farms in Richmond to get Christmas Trees. Last year, on November 27th, we made the nauseating trip across the river, brought back a Christmas Tree and found out we were pregnant! Baldwin Farms holds so many great memories for us, so we decided that would be the perfect spot to take our girl. It's definitely the time to start some family traditions of our own. I want Evey to have some wonderful memories to take with her so someday (a million years down the road) when she takes her daughter to the pumpkin patch for the first time, she can be nostalgic with the best of them!

We had a relaxing morning and then made our way to the farm. When we got there, I moby'd Evey up and we found a nice shady spot to have a picnic. We expected the weather to be on the cool/warmish side, but it was HOT!

 

 

My mom found the cutest book. If you know my mom, you know that she's 100% bargain shopper. She doesn't buy anything if it's not on sale - but she had to have this book! It goes through all these foods and the art is adorable. In the end it says "I could just gobble you up!" I love it and mom loves reading it to Evey. Evey just stares at the pictures. The reason she had to have it and actually paid full price for it is demonstrated in the picture above. I was her pumpkin and Evey is her sweet pea!

We enjoyed our picnic out beside the pumpkins. We had roast beef sandwiches and even Evey got to enjoy her lunch! Ali and Christopher looked for the biggest pumpkins and we had the whole patch to ourselves because it was down in a little valley and just a little bit harder to get to, but we didn't mind it!

 

Something I've never thought about is how open a pumpkin patch is... but if you think about it - where would you put a tree if you're growing a lot of pumpkins? Evey HATED being in that direct sunlight and she just screamed and screamed. I felt so bad and just walking across the patch to get to the other side seemed as though it took forever. At least this time I remembered the sunscreen! Once we got over, my mom took Evey back to the shade and I went back in to find my pumpkin.

I had dressed Evey up so cute for our pumpkin search, but it was so hot we had to strip her down a little to make her more comfortable. Even though she's just in her onesie, she still looks adorable. I ask Christopher all the time where she got her looks from. I tell him that we don't add up to her level of cuteness!

I think Evey was the only one not having fun picking pumpkins. October shouldn't be so hot. Just saying.

It was an awesome day and Evey finally fell fast asleep. When we got home, we gave her a bath to cool her off and changed her clothes. Christopher and I decided to go on a date. Mom and dad took Evey to church with them and we wore her out so much that she slept the entire time. We went to the movies and when it was over, we called to see how she was doing. She was still asleep and was down for the night. I hated to get her off of her schedule, so we decided to let her spend the night at her grandparent's house. It was her first night away from home and even though Christopher and I had a great date, I missed her desperately. I woke up a couple of times because I "heard her crying" and we slept with her humidifier on, the iPod playing in her room and the monitor on so that it wouldn't be so out-of-the-ordinary.

Since we decided last minute that she was spending the night, we didn't have enough milk prepped to feed her in the morning. Christopher was racing on Sunday, so we woke up early and I made my way down to Nicholasville so I could feed her by 5:30am. Of course, when I showed up Evey decided she wanted to sleep until almost 9. Oh, my amazing little squirt. I was already wide awake, so needless to say I got a lot done that morning.

We spent the entire day at my parents house and dad made waffles. Overall, it was such a great weekend and our pumpkins are HUGE!

Shoes?

I've tried putting shoes on Evey before and she hated it. On top of the screaming and kicking, they were so big for her - she kicked them right off! But I finally got to put a pair on her. They were so cute! I loved seeing her little feet squirming around in her pink sparkly shoes, and then I tried to change her diaper and I decided shoes on babies were over-rated.

So it was definitely a short-lived experiment, but it was definitley fun!

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She hates tummy time and I feel like it's torturing her to do it, but it will help her grow strong and teaches her basic skills now (like lifting her head on her own) and later (like writing)! So I suppose this kind of torture will have to work for my sweetheart!

She's got such a good grip and can hold her head up so well. Even the doctors were impressed with her strength at such a young age. I love bragging on my girl!