Shopping and shopping and shopping, oh my!

This weekend was the Shopping Weekend. E's birthday is coming up so we had to get a few things for her party. Then at Costco we saw a bunch of those cute foam block letters and numbers that you can put on the floor, so we got those. Then we started thinking, "hey, E is almost too big for a lot of her clothes!" so it was off to the Outlet mall for shirts, mostly. Oh and while we were there the Coleman outlet was having an uber-sale on camping tents, so we got one of those. Phew! Shop 'til you drop, indeed!

We still have a long list of things to do before the party. Like...well, I won't get into the details, but suffice it to say that it will be a busy week. Just getting the house ready is a huge chore unto itself. Whenever the house gets to a certain level of disaray I think I need to do a serious deep clean. Um, yeah, when do I have the time for that? Evelyn is a mess maker, a destructive bobbler (baby/toddler), and just keeping things tidy, let alone clean, is nigh unto impossible. I could live with tidy. Clean is like imagining you won the lottery: nice, but not gonna happen. Except, before Saturday, it must happen! Ack!

Oh and I need to bake a cake and decorate the cake and buy balloons and...the list goes on. I did, thankfully, finish the cardigan I knit for E. It is cute. And it fits! (Mostly.)

And, to top everything off, I lost my keys. Like LOST lost my keys. Neither Jon nor I has seen them since I drove home Friday evening. I didn't use them at all this weekend (Jon and I went everywhere together and he did most of the driving), so when I tried to leave for work this morning I realized they were missing. GONE. I called around to the shops we frequented this weekend, but nothing. *Sigh* I really really really hope we find them. Replacing keys in this day and age of computer chips and remote locks is no cheap endeavor, and I'm not even sure how to go about getting some of the things replaced. YMCA card, King Soopers card, library card, etc. What a pain.

Final thoughts

One more note on the whole "it's been a year since Evelyn was born" theme.

You know how pregnant women are all hormonal and crazy and cry for no reason and can't stand even the idea of a puppy going hungry or a baby getting bonked on the head? Yeah, that doesn't go away.

I made Jon turn off "Pinocchio" the other day because it was just too sad and I couldn't take it. PINOCCHIO. Don't even get me started on the ASPCA commercial with Sarah McLaughlin singing about the arms of the angels and the dogs looking SO SAD as they stare out from between the bars on their depressing kennels. Ugh. I can NOT watch that commercial without crying. Even watching it as I fast forward on the DVR does me in. Ridiculous. And news stories about children being harmed in any way bring such a torrent of anger and sadness that I can hardly contain myself. I wonder if this will ever go away?

Do you also know how when a woman is pregnant her uterus is getting all the useful blood and the other parts of her body--say, her brain--is sore out of luck?

Well, when I was preggers I had a wicked bad case of "I can't think of the right word" syndrome. If I wanted to tell Jon to pick up the laundry, I would instead tell him to pick up the groceries. If I was asking if I should make chicken for dinner, I would instead ask if I should make chicken for doughnuts. The synapses in my brain were just not firing quickly, or they were getting rerouted to a different place. Well, that hasn't gotten any better either! I still talk like the stupid foreign person in a bad movie who says all the wrong things to great comic effect. I wonder, too, if this will ever go away.

Tom and Jerry

One week until Evelyn's first birthday! I can hardly believe it. This past year has felt equal parts interminable and lightning-fast. Evelyn has been in our lives forver, but her birth feels like yesterday. I guess that is just the way it is.

A few observations about our sweet girl over the past few weeks.

• Eating with utensils is right out. No more jarred baby food on a spoon. No more samples of mom's food off her fork. The only good way to eat food is with your fingers. At least she'll still take a bottle!
• Evelyn is not all that interested in TV. It is on in the background and she doesn't pay any attention. Until, that is, a very old Tom and Jerry cartoon came on. Old Chuck Jones Tom and Jerry. She was mesmerized. I think the combination of the animation and the music really caught her attention. She watched for a good 3 to 5 minutes, clapping her hands and really enjoying it. So funny.
• Also TV-related, Evelyn loves horses and cows on TV. She was shrieking with delight when Jon was watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain in Montana. I wonder if she would like horses and cows in real life...
• She still loves dogs. LOVES dogs. It is really the only word she knows and it might be the only word she ever wants to know. This weekend in Estes Park we were walking through town and she would point and say "Dah" every time a dog was anywhere nearby. Dah. Dah. Dah! "Yes, I see the dog. Ooh, look, there are two dogs! Two brown dogs!" That is how most of our conversations go.
• Carol taught Evelyn how to make a pig sound. Only...not really. It is hilarious. You ask Evelyn, "What does the pig say?" and she makes this sound like she is clearing her throat. Close enough!
• Evelyn is so freakin busy both Jon and I are exhausted. She hasn't taken more than two steps at a time, maybe five times total. She isn't really interested in walking. And THANK GOD FOR THAT. Because once she starts really walking we will never get a moments rest ever for the rest of our lives. Busy. Baby.
• She still loves stairs. Now she also loves pulling the blankets out of her crib from between the slats, trying to crawl up the steps Sophie uses to get into our bed, pulling stuff out of the bathroom trashcan (ew, gross), and any general mischief you can think of. Yep, that's our girl.
• My baby loves bacon. And I love her (even more than I love bacon).

Crafting bug

I got the crafting bug and put my mad skillz into these very cute birthday party inviations.

OK, so my skillz may not be so mad, but it was fun anyway.

A very sleepy baby

It is 8:30 am on Friday morning. I am working in the living room, Jon and Evelyn are still asleep, and Tucker is nestled right next to my chair. Evie woke up this morning around 6am, a little earlier than usual, and not in her normal, bright, chatty, happy way. No, she was still tired, crying, rolling around. Jon decided it was too early and she was too cranky to be waking up, so he gave her a bottle and she fell right back asleep. Two and a half hours ago. NICE. I guess this counts as her morning nap!

Now we just have to keep her awake until we leave for Estes Park this afternoon. Oh, did I mention that already? We are spending the weekend in a little cabin at the foot of Rocky Mountain National Park. Kind of "pre-camping" to get Evelyn some nature without hasseling with a baby in a tent. We're taking the dogs and taking our food and heading out at the crack of COB. I am hoping for a nice, relaxing weekend, even though the realities of sleeping in a one room cabin with a husband, baby, and two dogs will likely not be relaxing. But I'm taking my knitting and starting a new project (ooh....elbow-length fingerless gloves for when the office gets chilly...and I'm knitting them in Noro!). Jon is taking a book (what?!). We will relax, gosh darnit!

I'm thinking....yes...I believe this is our first "Lew family" mini-vacation without going to see family. How lovely! What a nice way to end the summer, Evelyn's first year, and Jon's (hopefully) soon-to-be-over stay-at-home dadness. (No real updates on the shop. The permit application is in the hands of the city. And so we wait.)

I think we will be grilling pizzas. And I think one of those will be a s'mores pizza. And I think if you haven't tried it you MUST DO SO. Melt some chocolate. Add a pinch of salt. Grill some pizza dough (we bought ours from Whole Foods) on one side, then flip it over. Smear the chocolate over the dough. Add some peanut butter chips. Add mini marshmallows. Grill until the marshmallows are fluffy and melty. Cut it up and eat it! Soooo delicious.

In completely unrelated news, Evelyn must be going through another growth spurt because she is getting all tall and thinned out again. She grows out, then up, then out, then up. Never at the same time. Now she is growing up...and up and up! I am so curious to find out how tall she is at her next ped visit. She nearly comes up to her grandma Lew's waist! That is one tall child.

My mom told me last week that if Evelyn is going to be tall like I was as a child, I will have to keep reminding her how smart she is. Because people that she encounters are going to assume she is 2 years older than she really is and expect her to be able to things two years ahead of what she can do. And when she can't do those things, they will wonder why she is so dim-witted. But no! She is not 6, she is 4, s0 back off! I was really tall as a child. I remember having or going to a birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese-type place and being too tall to go into the ball pit! I also remember people asking me if I was too old to be trick-or-treating when I was like 10. Boo.

And so to sum up, Evelyn is still asleep, we are going to the mountains this weekend, and my child is tall. The End.

Steps

Evie took her first steps this weekend! One half-shuffle step on Saturday, and two full-on steps on Sunday. I'm not sure she knows she's doing it. It isn't planned. Just the necessary thing to get from the wall to the toy, or the chair to the toy. If I try to coax a step out of here she says "no way" and sits down to crawl. Headstrong child! Show us your new skills!

More videos!

My mom said she liked the last video, so here are two more.

First, Evelyn in a REALLY good mood the past couple days so we spent a lot of time outside just playing in the front yard. Here is Jon helping Evelyn chase Sofie, her favorite thing ever. She is also getting pretty good walking while holding on to something with just one hand. You know what the next step is...



And here is a video of Evelyn "playing" the piano. She can reach the keys on her own now. She is tall.

Evelyn eats and shares

Evelyn likes to share with the dogs when she eats.

Books!

This weekend was packed. Saturday was the usual: errands, shopping, laying around, going to the Children's Museum. Evelyn was interacting with the other babies a little more on this trip to the museum. She pulled one kid's pacifier right out of her mouth, and yanked on another kid's shirt! So yeah, that's great.

Sunday was a trip to Greeley for a joint birthday party for Jon and his siblings. Aw, the family photo.
Evelyn doing one of her three favorite things: crawling up stairs. She is action-baby!

My daughter is so cute. (Do you see that adorable dress? Thank you, Baby Gap! I am such a sucker for their clothes.)

Evelyn also loves flowers.

And finally, her #1 love: Books!

That is the sad puppy counting book, her favorite favorite favorite. We read it probably 20 times a day. Evelyn will, from time to time, scream when I put the book down. That's fun. Carol had two copies: one small one that she gave us, and one big version that she keeps at her house. It isn't a board book so it is getting pretty torn up. Aside from reading the sad puppy counting book, Evelyn also likes to throw it around, sit on it, eat it, bend it in half, etc.

We went to a garage sale and bought a cute little (slightly damaged) bookshelf for Evelyn's room. The way she loves books she'll fill it up before long. We are also starting to plan her first birthday party (can you believe she is almost one?) and the theme will be Books!

We aren't going too crazy for Evie's birthday. I mean, she's only one year old. So we decided NOT to rent out Coors Field and instead decided on Elitch's. We're doing pony rides and hot-air balloon rides, but we had to draw the line at an Air Force fly-over. I mean, some things are just too much.

Ha! I kid. Of course. No, we are thinking BBQ pizzas in the backyard with family and a couple friends that have kids. I am going to attempt to make a cake in the shape of a book. I am going to channel my innner Duff Goldman (the only time I'll do that!) to carve a cake that looks like an open book. Oh, sure, Wilton makes a cake pan in the shape of a book, but that is too easy. Why spend he $20 on a cake pan I'll only use once! Madness!

So that was our weekend. And scene!