Evelyn

Year One! + 4 months...

Eric

18 Oct 2014 • 4 min read

I had prepared a big Year One post at the first year and started writing before my schedule kinda went to crap. I never got the chance to finish the post but I will post what I had written so far and update it with with the last 4 months. This is going to be a long post! Here's what I had:

— YEAR ONE DRAFT —
Anyways, as for Evelyn, there has been some significant milestones that we hit in this last month of her first year.

Locomotion - Evelyn took her first steps! We were so ecstatic that we were both there to see it. She was holding on to her toy station and wanted us to pick her up. Instead of just picking her up on the spot, we motioned for her to come our way, just out of reach for her hands. She took 3-5 steps before collapsing into our arms. While it was a short walk, it's one small step for Evelyn, one giant leap for progress. Since then, she has been happily pushing her cart around the house and have even figured out how to get unstuck when its rammed against the wall. It's amazing looking at her and seeing how quickly she is growing. It's hard to think that a year ago, she was just a baby swaddled in a crib that could have fit 9 of her!
Weaning/Eating - The journey continues to get her off of the breast milk. We weren't quite sure how we would do it. Would we go cold turkey? Or slowly ween her off of it by eliminating feeds one by one over the course of a month. We still haven't really decided yet, but the goal right now is to get her to sleep through the night without waking up and wanting to feed. She tried organic whole milk this month too, and she hates it. The first sip was ok, and then the aftertaste kicked in and she refused to take any more. I ended up drinking the rest of it. It was really good and I was surprised how good local organic milk is. It was totally like the scene is Ratatouille when Anton Ego went back to his childhood. For me, I remembered back in the day when the milk came in jars at school, it was so yummy. Anyways, I guess the challenge now is to see how we can sneak it into her diet and slowly cultivate the appreciation for this kind of milk.
Daycare - Daycare has been great. When we pick her up, we get these report cards that talk about what they did, and it seems that she is interacting more with her teachers and peers.
First illness - I think she has more or less fully recovered from the actual thing that she was sick from. She has been energetic, expressive, and continues to challenge our limits, in terms of having to chase after her and making sure she isn't getting into trouble. The only thing that doesn't seem to be going away is a runny nose and, likely due to the runny nose, a lingering cough in the morning. We are still trying to get her used to having her nose wiped and not smearing that stuff everywhere as a reflex.

— YEAR ONE DRAFT END —

Now for the last 4 months, we had some of the coolest developments from Evelyn yet:

Locomotion - Evelyn can now just about walk around everywhere and quickly too. It is sometime startling to turn around to do something, like preparing her food, and then look back and have her all the way across the other side of the room. It's funny seeing her walk around now and interested in looking at things that she hasn't seen before. She will want to explore and then hesitate or turn around as she doesn't want to wander into an unlit region of the house.
Eating - A lot has changed since when I started writing the Year One draft, she loves milk now. Can't seem to get enough. She easily downs 5 ounces without trouble. I think we are getting a little concerned about her diary intake. She loves cheese, which she lovingly calls cheeks and points to her cheeks whenever she wants cheese. It's adorable. She eats just about anything, though we are still embargoing pineapple and seafood, just in case of allergies.
Daycare - Daycare is still awesome, she loves going and likes interacting with all of her friends and teachers. That's one thing that we noticed, once she started going to daycare, she was growing up and learning everything so fast. From walking to baby sign, she seems to pick things up pretty quickly once she sees it. She is getting ready to move to the toddler room and we look forward to her moving up to the next grade and the lessons and challenges she'll face there.
Communication - Baby Sign is a series of hand signals that can be taught so that you can communicate with your child before they can talk. There is some controversy with it as some people think that it will make the child have a delay in speaking as it removes the need to communicate vocally. For us, it's just another method of communication. She is beginning to actually say the words that are associated with the sign. The ones she knows are, "More", "All Done", "Eat", "Waiting", "Milk", and "Bed". In terms of speech, she is currently trying to mimic what she hears and repeat words like "Apple", "Diaper", "Cracker", "Cookie", etc. She can say and understand, "MaMa", "DaDa", "More", "Hi", "Bye", "Nose", "Mouth", "Ear", "Knee", "Toe" and "No". She also knows how to enthusiastically nod her head to say "Yes" and gives high fives, hugs, and kisses (Cheek and Flying Kisses Variant). She can say and understand various Chinese words. Furthermore, she seems to comprehend a lot, as we are telling her to do certain things like "stand up", "sit down", "bring this to mommy or daddy", etc. She would also respond to our instructions and questions as if she fully understood the meaning behind them. I have caught her responding without fully understanding a few times, but I think for the majority of the time, she seems to really understand.
Scaredy Cat - There was this one time that I turned on the Roomba and it totally scared her! She had seen me vacuum before and I thought that she would be fine with a robot doing what I do. But wow, was I wrong! I think it is because she doesn't see anything attached to it, and it's just a free-roaming large black puck making lots of noise going up and down the halls with no discernible pattern. To this day, whenever she walks by, she still quietly tip toes around the Roomba in it's dock, staring to ensure that it will not suddenly roar to life.

Here are a few of the pics from the last 4 months.

That's all for now.

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