Some Eve Pics

To make up for the fact that I took no Christmas pictures, here are a few that were taken by a photographer in Lehi. She needed a baby girl to model some hats and hair thingies she makes and sells online. We got the pictures in exchange for the use of Eve's head. I think they turned out pretty cute:

She also let me have a few in an outfit of my choice:

Christmas, Eve, and Christmas Eve

I'm a really big loser and didn't take one picture this Christmas. I know other people took pictures, so perhaps I will obtain some pictures from them and post them later. I have never been good about taking pictures, but...I actually feel quite lame about it this time.

Keyvan's family came to our home for Christmas this year and we had a splendid time. Here is a rundown of our festivities:

We went to Cafe Rio (Keyvan's family always

goes to Cafe Rio when they visit Utah). This is always a funny experience because the employees always speak to Keyvan's family in Spanish, resulting in some confusion during the ordering process.

We went to see the movies Tangled and True Grit, both of which I would give an enthusiastic two thumbs up (disclaimer: I think True Grit should have been rated R, but it was still very well done and quite funny)

We went to eat at Five Alls (an old English restaurant in Salt Lake) to celebrate Heideh's (Keyvan's mom) birthday. It was divine. Simply divine. Five Alls is, incidentally, where Keyvan proposed marriage for the second time, and where we almost lost my engagement ring because it rolled under someone else's table as he was pulling it out in the midst of the proposal.

We went to a Merrill (my mom's mom) family Christmas party. We came home and ate chocolate cake in honor of Mama Nasi's (Keyvan's grandma) birthday.

We ate dinner with the Wise family (the family that introduced Keyvan's family to the church).

I made my first Christmas dinner, including a brined turkey and homemade cranberry/pomegranate/orange sauce. I was a little bit proud of myself.

We received lots of presents. Our favorites were probably the presents from "santa" (a.k.a. Keyvan's parents). Mine was the first 2 levels of Rosetta Stone's Farsi. I hope to get through them fast! Keyvan got an iPod touch. Eve got a crib for Christmas/Birthday. It is beautiful and Keyvan is looking forward to her sleeping in it. Eve and I...well, we are enjoying our last few weeks together in the parents' bed.

Eve got the stomach flu :( but is doing better.

I wish we would have spent more time thinking about and celebrating Christ. I was so focused on all of the other things I wanted to do that I forgot to make time for even a little devotional. We had a meaningful Christmas, full of good times and people, but it wasn't as meaningful as it could have been. This is the story of my life. I am going to try to do better, not just at Christmas, but especially at Christmas.

Here are a few pictures taken the night that we went to eat at Five Alls:

The things babies find hilarious...

Sometimes Eve finds the most random things to be funny. I love when she totally catches me off guard by cracking up at something unexpected. For example, an empty yogurt container:

Blast from the past!

So, I probably should have uploaded this a few months ago, but it's still cute. This is Eve learning to sit and stand, and it also has a bit of footage of her most recent achievement: walking!

Eve's new language

Eve has decided to pass on both English and Farsi. Instead, she communicates via an interesting combination of yodeling and sticking her tongue out.

Eve's first steps

I don't know how it happened, but Eve grew up :(

Soon she will be a toddler, and then she will move out and go to college. Sniff.

Look who can climb the stairs!

Sometimes I am too lazy to be a good mother. For instance, for the last few weeks, Eve has been climbing down the two stairs that separate our kitchen and family room head-first, and I haven't made the effort to correct her. Instead, I just put a bunch of padding at the bottom of the stairs and watched as she landed on it. She didn't get hurt...very often.

However, I decided that I had better not let her get too attached to this bad habit, so the other day, Keyvan and I spent about 20 minutes teaching her how to go down the stairs by herself. I was amazed by how fast she caught on. She still doesn't do it right every time, but I think she did pretty well:

The mystery of the killer comforter...

It all started with Keyvan leaving town for a 4-day trade show in Minnesota. I thought to myself "what a perfect opportunity to redecorate our bedroom!" (not only because I thought it might be a fun surprise, but also because I have learned that redecorating is one of Keyvan's least favorite pastimes, so it is best done in his absence). You see, I don't keep our bedroom clean because I don't think it looks good clean or dirty...so I figure why exert myself when it will be ugly either way? But that is beside the point. The point is, I decided to redecorate the bedroom.

So, Keyvan left town early Tuesday morning, and early Wednesday morning Evejuice and I arose and ventured off to Orem for a long day of shopping with my good friend and sister-in-law, Stephannie. We perused a variety of home decor stores (only the cheap ones, of course): Tuesday Morning, Ross, JoAnn's, Burlington Coat Factory, and TJ Maxx. I made several purchases, among which was a comforter set from TJ Maxx. As soon as I arrived home, I removed the comforter set from its plastic case and excitedly arranged it on our bed, so that I might scrutinize it. I decided it was pretty cool, and left it there on the bed and went downstairs to eat dinner with Stacie, who had come over to keep me company. After dinner, Stace and I drank chocolate peanut butter shakes and put in a movie.

Now, this is where things start to get ugly. Evejuice began complaining loudly and interrupting the movie, so I, being a conscientious and knowledgeable Registered Nurse, gave her a few sips of my shake, which contained both peanut butter and chocolate soy milk.

In my defense, I had accidentally given her a lick of peanut butter before and had noticed no negative reactions. As for the soy milk, I have no defense. However, I do not believe the events that transpired a few hours later were a result of this careless culinary mistake, and I will tell you why.

After Eve ingested several highly-allergenic foods, she and I wrestled for another 30-45 minutes as I tried to get her to fall asleep. (At no point during the wrestling did I notice any sort of allergic symptoms). Finally, I took her up to our bedroom, she drifted off, and I came back downstairs to watch the movie.

During the movie, I kept feeling the need to check on her. I am a paranoid mother and tend to check on Eve several times whenever she naps, but I seem to remember checking on her every 20-30 minutes throughout the entire movie. The bedroom was dimly lit, so I couldn't see much of her features, but I could see that she was breathing, which is what I usually check for.

Near the end of the movie, I went to check on her and she woke up, so I brought her downstairs with me and nursed her on the couch while we finished up the movie. She nursed very cooperatively and then laid drowsily next to me until the credits began scrolling across the screen. In the dim light of the credits, I could see that her eyelids were sticking out in a strange way. I jumped up and turned on a light, and, to my horror, saw that my pretty little Eve resembled a bright red marshmallow. Her normally big, bright eyes were so puffy that she could barely see out of them, and her small little elf ears were twice their usual size and appeared to be glowing. Now, being a conscientious and knowledgeable Registered Nurse, I immediately remembered that I had given my child potentially allergenic foods just a few hours before and quickly convinced myself that she was beginning to go into anaphylactic shock. I announced to Stacie that we needed to rush to the emergency room, pulled a shirt on (no bra, mind you), and drove to Mountainview Hospital.

I felt a little bit stupid when the receptionist asked me if I worked outside of the home, and I had to admit that I was a nurse. Anyway,

I calmed down once I realized that no one seemed very alarmed by my daughter's appearance, and Eve didn't seem to mind either. She was jabbering, smiling at the receptionist, and scratching herself vigorously. No tears or complaints. What a funny and wonderful child.

We waited about 20 minutes to see the doctor. She checked Eve's lungs and throat, and determined that her airway had not been affected. She told us that Eve seemed to have nothing more than a skin rash, and began asking me about Eve's day.

That's when I remembered the comforter! As we inspected Eve more closely, we noticed that she had a mild rash on other parts of her body, but she had only broken out in areas that were not covered by her diaper and clothes. The doctor said the allergy could have been caused by anything, but agreed that the comforter was the most likely culprit. It seemed that Eve's vigorous scratching of her eyes and ears probably worked whatever chemicals or dyes may have been in the unwashed comforter into her eyes and ears, causing them to react more intensely than the rest of her body. They gave Eve some Benadryl and Zantec and sent us on our way at around 2:00 am.

We drove to Walmart (because Walgreen's is not 24 hours, just so you know...neither is Smith's. Plus, Stacie and I enjoy trips to Walmart because we see interesting people and things) to buy some children's Benadryl, because the ER doc instructed me to give Eve Benadryl for 4-5 days, just to make sure the reaction did not return. When we returned home, we stuffed the evil comforter back into its plastic prison, stripped my bedroom of linens, and moved my mattress into a neighboring bedroom. When we crawled into bed at 4:00 am, Eve's eyes were beginning to look a little better. By Friday morning, she was basically back to herself (minus being a little crankier than usual...probably because of the around-the-clock Benadryl?)

Anyway, I believe there are several morals to this story:

1) Never let your husband leave town

2) Never buy comforters from TJ maxx

3) Always wear a bra

4) Okay, okay...and be careful what you feed your infants, especially until they are at least a year old and wash EVERYTHING before you let your baby touch it. Oh, and have insurance.

Here is a picture of the poor Evejuice on her first night in a hospital. I am usually opposed to posting unfortunate pictures of myself, but I really feel like my face says a lot in this one:
































Personally, I thought she was beautiful even puffed full of histamine, but here is a picture of the original Eve, just so you can remember what she usually looks like:

I'm finally giving in...

Well friends, here I go with my very first blog post. My little Evie turned 6 months last Saturday. I realized, yet again, that almost everything I have been told by adults throughout my life has been correct. For instance: money doesn't grow on trees, nice guys make the best husbands, pregnancy is not glamorous, sleep is wonderful, and kids grow up wayyyyy too fast. It's ironic that I am only now realizing that the adults were right...now that it's too late to learn from their experiences because I've already had my own. I committed last night to believing everything adults tell me from now on. I wonder if that is a bad idea?

Anyway, my point is, Evie is growing up way too fast. I'm constantly torn between wanting to encourage her progress and wanting to freeze her in suspended animation so that she will never change. She can now roll over, sit up by herself, and scoot around the floor. In fact, she scooted all around the white carpet with a poopy diaper the other day. It left a few nice yellow streaks :)
She is such a sweet girl. She loves to cuddle and read/eat books, smile, laugh, growl, play with other babies, play the piano, and go on walks in her stroller. She is a good sport and tags along with most of our adult activities. The only difficult aspect she has brought into my life is the fact that she doesn't often feel like entertaining herself, which means that I either get nothing done, or must do things with a baby on my hip (which is just a fancy way of getting nothing done).

I always knew that I would enjoy being a mother, but I never imagined how much. 7 months ago I had a pretty clear idea of how I wanted things to go once the baby was here: I wanted to both work and be a mother. I didn't want my 6 years of college and 1 year of work experience as an RN to evaporate and be replaced by baby talk and housework - although, those have their place. Then Eve came along. 3 months after she was born, I returned to work. I started back part-time, then went to on-call, then went to on-call half shifts. I recently put in my 2 weeks notice and will no longer work at Timpanogos Hospital after August 6th. I'm reading a book called "Baby Signs" (how to teach your baby sign language), I subscribed to a recipe mailing list, and I started a blog. And you know what? I couldn't be happier. The adults have told me that there will come a time when I long to leave the house and my screaming kids, and perhaps then I will want to work here and there, but right now I just want to be with my daughter. I'm so glad that, for the time being, our situation allows me to do that.

So, here is a little video illustrating what I now do with my time. Happy 1/2 Birthday, Evie! (p.s. Sorry the video quality is so poor).