i love weekends

What a great weekend we had! Joshua worked from home on Friday, which I love. We spent a little time with friends on Friday and then Mom took Evalana while I did some grocery shopping. Saturday my mom came over to spend time with Evalana again while Joshua and I went to a homeshool workshop. Grandma Moser took Evalana to Gymboree. It’s nice being able to leave for several hours at a time now and know that Evalana is well taken care of and won’t be hungry just because I’m not there.
Joshua and I learned a lot at the homeschool workshop and were thankful to be able to go. We’re excited about homeschooling and are trying to learn as much as we can to get prepared before Evalana’s ready to start preschool in a couple years. I am very excited for all the opportunities homeschool will give our kids.
Saturday afternoon Joshua’s dad, mom, sister, and nephew came. It was great to spend time with them. Evalana had such a good time with them. Today we went to the zoo, which Evalana loved. Joshua and I bought a FOTZ pass so that we can go as many times as we want through the end of March. Evalana resisted taking a nap for a couple of hours this morning (because who wants to go to sleep when you’re seeing gorillas for the first time in your life?) and then finally, thanks to Daddy’s good skills, fell asleep. When she woke up half an hour later, she popped right up in her stroller and started waving at everyone. It was a perfect day to be there with a high of 70 degrees today. Noah really seemed to enjoy the animals, too--especially the tigers, although I don't think we even saw any there.

We went home for a very late lunch, and then hopped back in the car to head to the 5pm church service. Evalana sobbed the whole way there. I think she was just so tired and needed some home time. I spent the first half of the service walking her around outside and looking at the fish tank. Then she had a couple minutes of milk and was ready to go to her classroom for the last little bit of the service time. She really enjoys going to Sunday school, which is wonderful. After church, we said goodbye to Papa, Gigi, Aunt Kristen, and Noah.

Gymboree

This week Evalana started Gymboree classes. They have it set up so that anyone can take the child to any class her level, so Tuesday I took her to her class, Wednesday I took her to open play time, and today my mom took her to her class. Here are a couple of pictures my mom took this morning.

freckle

When Evalana was a couple months old, a freckle appeared on her right knee. It’s her only freckle/birthmark. This morning she just noticed it. Last night she was working on stamping my leg with one of her stamps, so maybe that’s what made her see her freckle this morning. She was sitting on her potty, and then pointed to her little brown freckle and tried to scratch it off. I showed her a freckle on my arm. She went back and forth between pointing to our freckles. Then off to the next thing.

cow's milk

well, after a year's worth of testing out foods, i think we've finally decided that evalana has a problem with dairy. she was okay for our first three weeks of reintroducing it, but then she started having diarrhea and nighttime tummy pains, so we eliminated her dairy and reduced mine (since she's breastfeeding). Things improved but not completely. We tried giving her dairy again, and all the problems came back. Now we've eliminated dairy from both of our diets, and she's back to happy Evalana. It's so nice to see her sleeping well and feeling better again, even though I was really hoping we wouldn't have to limit her foods. At least we've finally figured out that she right now only has a problem with dairy. She's already outgrown many of her newborn food problems, and hopefully she'll outgrow the diary intolerance as well. Anyone have any tips for us?

Back to school

Although Evalana’s only one, knowing that we’re wanting to homeschool makes me think about what I can do to help her learn—or maybe I’d be doing that anyway. It’s amazing to me how quickly she learns things, and I want to make sure she has some experiences outside of our living room. With all the older kids around here heading back to school last week, I was thinking about helping Evalana to learn, and I started getting things set up, so we’ve been keeping busy!
Sunday was church, where Evalana is learning new things about Jesus. Hopefully she’s learning from us, too, but it’s fun to see how well they teach her there. And she loves it! The last few times I’ve picked her up from her class, she then tries to run back in. After church, Evalana went over to Grandma’s while Joshua and I got some projects done. Monday we went to Toys R Us to get her new car seat, and Evalana got a chance to play with toys while we were there. Tuesday we went over to Tompa and Grandma Lauerman’s. Wednesday Evalana’s friends Lilly, Jolie, and Alea, along with their moms came over to play. That evening Uncle Alex and Bridgett came over for dinner. Thursday we went to La Leche League in the morning. In the afternoon we hung out with Aunt Mimi and then met up with Jennifer and James at Deanna Rose. Friday Grandma Moser came over and helped us go shopping at The Children’s Place for some of Evalana’s fall clothes. Last year we were thankful to get many of Evalana’s clothes as gifts. My current strategy on clothes shopping for Evalana is to buy the biggest size she can fit into, hoping that it might fit her for a little while. We’ll see. I’d be so excited if she could wear her fall clothes again in the spring. 24-month or 2T is probably the size that would best currently fit her, but we bought things from 2T to XS children’s (size 4), and they all fit her pretty well. The weather has been beautiful here. Friday evening Joshua, Evalana, Samson, Abner, and I all got to go to the dog park. The last time we went was in March. All five of us loved it!
I absolutely love our time with our little girl. We are so thankful for her. It is quite a joy to be parents.

dinner time

Mommy: “It’s time to eat!”
Evalana: Makes the sign for “eat.” Goes down the hall, to her room, into her closet, pulls off the kind of diaper we use for her meals, brings it back down the hall, spreads it out onto her highchair, asks to be picked up.

We love our smart cutie! Lots of fun over here.

Corn on the cob is one of Evalana's favorite foods, and she's pretty good at eating it.

New car seat!

Evalana’s first ride in her first car seat

Evalana’s last ride in her first car seat

Evalana’s ride in her new car seat

I had been dreading switching car seats since I needed to spend time figuring out which car seat to get and also because I loved our infant seat, especially because I could carry her inside when she fell asleep on the way home. But, after plenty of research, talking with people, and trying out seats, and with some of Evalana’s birthday gift money, we bought Evalana her new car seat this week! I had been waiting for her to grow to 32 inches or 30 pounds to outgrow her infant seat, but then I learned that really her head needed to be more than an inch from the top of the seat, and we no longer had that, so we headed to Toys R Us and got the new Graco My Ride 65 seat. So far so good! Evalana likes it, especially the cup-holders on it! She thinks it’s pretty comfy. It has side-impact wings, which are actually perfect for napping pillows. And I set up a fan and baby monitor in the garage so that she can finish out her naps in the car after we run errands. This seat should keep her backwards until she’s about 2 ½ or 3 (40 pounds or too tall), and then we can either turn this seat forward or pass it on to a future younger sibling and get Evalana a new seat.
Anyone want to borrow a Graco Safeseat or base? I need to clean it, but it's not been in a wreck and it has three years left on it, if it could help anyone out. We got it from our nephew, Noah, and we're so thankful for that! We will need it back whenever another baby comes, though.

our little reader

Posts aren't as much fun without pictures. We will find this camera cord. Evalana is the cutest little book lover these days. Many times a day, she grabs a favorite book, brings it over to whoever she feels like cuddling with at the moment, climbs onto their lap, and makes the sign for book. Then she leans back and listens to the story (kind of), and turns the pages (her favorite part). It really is cute, so someday we'll figure out how to upload video from our real video camera or find our other camera cord.
She doesn't say many words, other than dada, momma, and ba (dog), but she likes the sign language. She currently can say milk, more, all done, eat, drink, help, book, and music. I'm so glad she's been able to learn some sign language because it's very helpful for her to be able to tell us when she wants a drink, although she does a pretty good job of communicating her wants even without English. One of her favorites is to pound on the front door because she loves being outside. At least the weather will be getting nicer during the day soon. I don't know what we'll do this winter.

Reading with Dada last Saturday morning:

paradise

Friday I had a lot to do for Westside work, so Evalana went to Grandma Moser’s for the afternoon. I got lots done at work, picked up cutie head, and was headed home about 6pm. Joshua had an amazing steak dinner all prepared right when we arrived home. What a perfect Friday evening with my sweet family! I put Evalana on her potty, she went, and I went to the bathroom to wash out the potty. When I came back, I saw she was pooping on the floor. I got closer and saw that she had poop on her hand and her hand in her mouth. Ugh! I said, “Honey, help! Evalana’s eating poop!” Joshua stared at me. “Honey, seriously, help me; Evalana’s eating her poop!” He helped me contain and cleanup the poop. He went back to trying to put dinner on the table, but Evalana was upset and needed some milk. Joshua got a phone call from someone who’s having a hard time. More and more kept going on. So joshua’s yummy and perfectly ready dinner had to wait. Finally we got to it, and it really was tasty. The whole evening, though, reminded me of the Phil Vassar song “Just another Day in Paradise”. I am so thankful for all the moments I get with my husband and daughter.
This weekend we had some delightful moments with our cutie. Evalana has started signing “book” and “music,” and she’s so proud of herself when she does it, too. Evalana loves being outside. She pounds on the front door when we’re in the living room. When we’re upstairs, she runs to the back door, takes the locking stick out, opens the sliding door, opens the screen door, and runs out onto the deck so quickly. She has an inflatable baby pool on the deck. Joshua turned on the hose to fill it up so it could warm up and she could play in it later. She got in that pool right away, picked up the hose, and started swinging it all around—getting everyone (in our clothes) so wet. The whole time she was giggling and making kind of a growling noise. So funny. I have a video I’ll post once we find our camera cord. She’s a very sweet and fun little cutie.
The last several nights have been kind of rough. She keeps waking up crying and having tummy problems, so I haven’t been able to get much sleep, and I’d love for her to feel better. She’s also been having diarrhea. At first I thought maybe it was leftovers from her virus, but now I’m wondering if maybe, now that she’s had cow’s milk for a few weeks, it’s affected her digestive system enough that she’s now showing a reaction to it. Of course she's also working on several teeth, so that always complicates things. She’s been eating cheese and yogurt, so I think maybe we’ll try no milk again and see if that helps. I’d love for us to be able to get good sleep and for her to have a happy little tummy.

One other thing. Please remember Kathy and Eli in your prayers today. Kathy is physically doing better, but this afternoon is their baby Ella's funeral.

birthday cake

Evalana had three cakes at her birthday party—and they were all delicious.
The first one was the cake I made for Evalana to eat. They were basically healthy muffins. I took this recipe from Maleah and switched it up a little. The recipe I made was probably:
2 cups oats
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup oil
3/4 cup shredded zucchini
1/4 ripe banana, mashed
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
About 2 T. agave nectar (since I can taste the baking soda without it)
1 t. ground flax seed
1 egg
About 2/3 C. chopped cherries
Bake mini muffins at 400 for about 12 minutes
Then, for the frosting, I don’t remember any measurements, but I mixed some plain yogurt with agave nectar until it wasn’t so tart, added some cherry juice for flavor, and then squeezed in some beet juice for color. It was thinner than I wanted, so I mixed in some gelatin. This made good consistency, but the texture was a little grainy, so it’d probably be better if I dissolved the gelatin first or something.
Evalana got a heart-shaped muffin with pink yogurt icing on top for her “cake,” and she loved it. Oh, and a breastmilk ice cube for her “ice cream.”

Joshua made her a really great cake. It turned out so pretty and very yummy. He cut the middle slice of a seedless watermelon and cut the rind off so that the piece was a circle. On top of that he put a smaller piece of yellow watermelon. I just happened to see yellow-flesh watermelon at Walmart that day, so I grabbed one. It was pretty for the color, but we ended up throwing it away because at least the one we got didn’t taste very good. on top of the yellow watermelon, he put a smaller piece of red watermelon. On top of that another smaller piece of yellow. And on top of that half a peeled apricot. Then around all the edges, he made it so pretty. He put half slices of banana around the pink melon and little champagne grapes around the yellow layers. I loved looking at it and eating it. I highly recommend this cake.

The third cake was the adult birthday cake. Joshua loves strawberry cake, so I made some really good strawberry cake. I used the Better Homes and Gardens recipe for white cake (I think the same as this one), except that left out about 1/3 c. milk and put in about ¾ c. or so of chopped strawberries and juice.
For the frosting for this cake, we made seven-minute frosting, which turns out more like marshmallow fluffy. Joshua prefers regular icing, but I like this shiny fluffy stuff. We added some strawberry juice for flavor and beet juice for color. It turned out a great pink color! I’ll be making this cake again, with different frosting, for Joshua’s birthday in December.

While I highly recommend cakesbycombs for pretty, yummy cakes in the KC area, I loved the cakes we made for Evalana’s first birthday! Someday Evalana will have sweets, but, for now she loves healthy food, so we’ll stick with the low-sugar, low-salt foods as long as we can.

I’ll upload the cake pictures to this post as soon as we find our camera cord. It was misplaced in the pre-party cleaning.

first birthday

Saturday was Evalana’s first birthday, and we had a wonderful day! Joshua and I had discussed a lot about what we did and didn’t want to do for our family birthday celebrations. God blessed us with a perfect birthday celebration. We wanted to make sure the focus of the celebration was on giving thanks to God for our Evalana rather than on giving her lots of gifts. Saturday afternoon Joshua’s parents arrived. Then my family came over. Evalana loved the attention!! Grandma Moser, Tompa, Grandma Lauerman, Grandma Kidd, Papa, Gigi, Aunt Mimi, Patrick, Uncle Alex, and Bridgett were all here just for Evalana. We had streamers, bubbles, balloons, gifts, cake, flowers, great weather, and lots of love.
The bubbles were probably one of Evalana’s favorite parts of the day. I was very excited about our cakes. She actually had three birthday cakes. I’ll write more about those soon.

As our sweet little girl is getting older, we’re discovering more and more that she seems to be strong-willed. This will make for interesting parenting for the next 20 years! There are many really great qualities about having a strong will, but it does make parenting challenging, so I’m sure we’ll learn a lot. She is also very giving and has always loved to share her toys, food, kisses, and hugs. Today Evalana had her 12-month check-up. Here are her big-girl stats: weight is 26 ½ pounds (99%), height is 30 ½ inches (90%), head is 19 ¼ inches (over 99%). Our doctor was okay with our not wanting to do any more vaccinations at this point, so I was thankful for that. While Evalana was crying at the nurse, I did see that she has a bottom tooth ready to come through on each side.
I’ll post pictures as soon as I find the cord I need to upload the pictures. The videos will be a little while longer, though, because we used our real video camera rather than our little digital camera, and I don’t know how to convert the videos to what we can post on here.

Celebrating last year’s birthday!

Lots to do today, so just a little update for now. Some of the new things Evalana’s been doing the past couple of weeks—she likes to grab my face and give me kisses. She loves carrying things—anything she can pick up, and lots of times it’s heavier than what I would expect her to be able to carry. She’s not nursing as much during the day now, but when she does want milk, she’ll walk up to me, make the milk sign, walk over to the couch (where we usually sit), and pat on it where I should come. If she’s trying to do something, and it doesn’t work out the way she wants it to, she gets very frustrated. She still loves being outside as much as possible. She likes sitting and reading (turning the pages in) her books. She loves music. Anytime she hears the slightest little jingle or chime on the radio or anywhere, she dances. I love my sweet one-year-old girl.
Remembering what we were doing a year ago this morning.