Well the first new development in our lives is that Evelyn has learned how to throw a tantrum. Every time she doesn’t get her way she has a meltdown, throws herself on the ground and cries angrily. Like just now when Dan wouldn’t let Evelyn hold the camera. It’s hard not to laugh, actually, because she’s so dramatic.

We have also started Evelyn on pacifier detox. Evelyn has already shown signs that she is outgrowing the pacifier and was able to go the whole day without using it. She needs the pacifier to sleep at night so we are trying to get her to sleep without it. I have to say it was my fault … I started her using it to go to sleep when I was terribly sleep deprived (Evelyn was 4 months old and still not sleeping through the night) and Evelyn had Jet Lag. Three nights ago I tried to put her to bed without it and she cried for about an hour. I finally gave in and gave it to her. Last night I tried again and she eventually did sleep without it, although she cried for about 45 minutes. When she get really angry and threw her carrot on the ground I came and read her 4 stories and then left her with one of the books and that seemed to have helped. Tonight she went to bed with only a short-lived whimper. I think it helped that she didn’t nap much during the day (only half an hour in the sling). It’s true what I read on web forums … the first night of pacifier detox is the hardest, then they pretty much forget about it.

We have also started very gradually the potty training process. So far we have started doing two things: 1) when Evelyn looks like she wants to poo we take her to the potty so she associates the two. 2) We encourage her to sit on the potty and give her a special toy that’s only for the potty to play with. So far it’s working well except for the fact that when she’s in the process of doing the deed she doesn’t want to sit down. I think it will come with time.

We have been very busy lately. Dan’s parents came to visit in early May and we visited Quebec city with them. Then my Dad came for a visit and we went Vermont with him and right after he left we went to Ontario for the long weekend. We visited Waterloo, Toronto and Ottawa. It was a lot of driving for Evelyn but we managed it. In the hotel in Ottawa we had a beautiful crib for Evelyn (not a playpen, a real, miniature crib) but Evelyn didn’t sleep in it because she was too scared. We turned on the GPS to get directions to the Parliament building and the voice said “Turn around when possible” quite loudly and scared the daylights out of her. So she spent the night with hear head near our knees jammed against our legs and preventing us from pulling up the sheets.

Feeding Evelyn on the trip was tricky, of course, but we made an interesting discovery. Evelyn likes hummus! More surprising still: the hummus we gave her was Jalapeno flavoured! Probably the highlight of the trip was visiting the Farmer’s market in St Jacob’s although it was far, far too busy! Anyway, I think we’re done with road trips for a while.

Also when Dan’s parents were here Dan had an intensive training course in handymanning. Dan unclogged the bathroom sink and installed the gate in front of our exterior stairs.

Evelyn is talking quite well now and says “story” very nicely as well as “up”. She says “doggie” every time she sees a dog (or a picture of a dog), which is about 30 times a day given how many people in NDG have dogs.

We decided to use part of our tax refund to buy a bike trailer for Evelyn. We have gone on several short excursions nearby and then used the newly completed downtown bike path to Park Lafontaine a few weeks ago.

Dan got food poisoning yesterday (from something he ate at a pub) so I came home early yesterday and stayed home today. Fortunately he’s over it how and based on the time it took him to get sick I think it must have been Staph. And this only 6 months after getting Norwalk at Christmas!

She’s really getting into eating food and I would say that she even enjoys it now! It’s great. She really likes it when I add pureed cauliflower into the vegetable mix with yogurt and she has developed a taste for pureed carrots. Still working on peas, though.

I have found the best way to keep her stationary during a diaper change is to sing “Old McDonald had a farm” to her because she’s always waiting for the next “animal”. Although if I stick to farm animals it gets pretty boring after a while so we have some exotic additions such as robots, monkeys, penguins, aliens and the like.

Dan’s parents came for a visit and while they were here Evelyn learned to walk on her own! This weekend Evelyn also (finally) started showing some interest in imitating what we say. I said “zoom” when cars went by and she tried to copy that. Tonight she tried to say “pears” and “wow” after I said them, which is really cool.

Despite the non-stop teething, Evelyn is developing a wonderful personality and I am finally enjoying being a mother to it’s fullest. It was a really difficult year but it’s so gratifying to see some positive changes.

We had a small party at our place and some friends of ours (and Evelyn’s) came over. We made a sugar-free carrot cake, which unfortunately, Evelyn didn’t eat a bite of. She did enjoy the party once she got over the fact that people were coming to her (our) house. We gave her a rocking giraffe for her birthday present. She is likes it but hasn’t quite figured out how to use it (yet).

Evelyn has been working on walking. If we hold her hands she takes off with one of us in tow and she has taken a few steps on her own but is still working on perfecting her balance. In the meantime, she crawls most places and can reach far too many things already.

We are working on communication but unfortunately Evelyn hasn’t quite figured out the use of language yet. She can make a lot of interesting sounds and babbles to us in her own language, but doesn’t seem interested in copying us or trying to tell us what she wants or thinks. It’s almost like she wants to master each sound first, then will start talking when she decides she’s ready … in typical Evelyn fashion.

The big news is Evelyn’s new tooth. She as two on top and two on the bottom … and two molars! Somehow her mouth has decided to skip ahead about 2 teeth and put out the first molar on the right side, both top and bottom. They are huge and it looks so painful coming through her gums. Now I understand why babies get grouchy when they get their teeth. The ones on the left side are coming out as well.

Evelyn has started to enjoy “tooth time”, i.e. when I brush her teeth, which is a nice change. Eating, however, continues to be both time-consuming and difficult. She really, really likes fresh grapes or fresh pears and will now eat an entire pear on her own!

One of Evelyn’s favourite passtimes is to take all the bowls out of the cupboard and try stacking them in different ways. She has even started to put them away afterward!

Evelyn is picky. I think her middle name should have been “fickle” instead of “Ada”. Her eating preferences change about as often as the surface of Io. Nonetheless she does get a balanced diet as long as we meet a few key criteria.

The main breakthrough to get her started involved feeding her something she was likely to enjoy to start each food group. We initially tried the recommended “cereal first” approach and it backfired … big time. We tried a number of vegetables without any success and finally resorted to fruit as a final option despite the dire warnings of baby feeding “experts”. The key fruit for Evelyn was apple and once she got hooked on very smoothly pureed apple (not too tart, please) we were able to introduce other fruit by first mixing them with apple. The big exception is raspberries and blueberries because she found them too tart unless mixed with an equal portion of something else and it just wasn’t worth the trouble. Once she decided apples and other fruit were ok I chose to go right to yogurt (the cereal was still a failure at that point) because I reasoned it would taste like milk and might be a good base for introducing vegetables and meat.

This assumption turned out to be right but it took a lot of patience to get there. We mixed apples with yogurt at first to get her used to it and soon she would eat plain yogurt. Around the same time we tried sweet potato as her first vegetable and she started to like it very quickly. So now we had fruit, yogurt and sweet potato as “safe” foods in which to mix others. So we started adding all kinds of things to these three bases and it worked most of the time. We tried a lot of tricks to get her used to the taste of other foods, for example we would start with mostly fruit and add a bit of egg yolk. Once she got used to the taste of the mix we would add more egg yolk and keep increasing it until she started to get annoyed, then back off a bit. Or we would do the “double dip” approach where we would take a spoon of meat/veggie mix and dip the end in fruit.

With respect to grains, she already had preferences for the kind of cereal we gave her so it took a lot of testing to get the right one. She wouldn’t eat cereal flakes mixed with water at first so we would just add 1 teaspoon of dry cereal to a tablespoon of fruit or sweet potato and she started to get used to it. We can now give her cereal mixed with fruit and half an egg yolk in the morning and she seems to enjoy it. Also because she wanted to have control by feeding herself Cheerios were a good choice since and she usually has some twice a day.

For lunch and supper she usually as a mix of vegetables and meat (with yogurt or fruit added as required) followed by fruit puree with or without the rest of her egg yolk. Today she ate puree zucchini, potato and sweet potato mixed with cooked whole green lentils and small pieces of beef. Yes I know that sounds revolting… but she happily ate it as long as there was enough yogurt mixed in! This was followed by pureed peaches mixed with half an egg yolk and then some cheerios and slices of grape. Ending the meal with finger foods is nice because I can relax and let her do the work and if she doesn’t finish them they can be saved for later.

At first I felt really guilty giving her these mixes since I felt like I was giving in to her demands and that she was eating too many sweet things. However after a few weeks of self induced purgatory of trying to give her vegetables and meat without either yogurt or fruit, I have decided that it’s ok to respect her preferences (to some extent) and that I also need to preserve my sanity. So maybe by giving her apples first in the beginning we have developed her sweet tooth but I think it’s more likely she already had that preference and wasn’t willing to budge. Evelyn’s doctor is very impressed that we have managed to get her eating the foods and portions she is supposed to have for her age in only 2 months so I would say it has been a big success.

Evelyn has been pretty good lately I am happy to say. She has been much less difficult at mealtimes. I have found that if I mix yogurt into vegetables and / or meat she is quite willing to eat it. And I also found out she just doesn’t like the barley cereal I was giving her and is quite a fan of oatmeal. Also after a month of working on it she will now let me brush her teeth! She has also stopped rolling over during diaper changes (for the most part) which is a relief. She still really likes to eat crunchy things and isn’t interested at all in trying to eat pieces of food that are soft (e.g. strawberries, steamed carrots, rice, pasta) so most of her food is still puree but she will eat pieces of grapes, cheerios and sometimes toast. And she’s totally hooked on Mummums so I have to ration her to only a few a week. She screams when she sees them.

We switched to flat diapers a month ago and now that they have been washed about 6 times they are working very well. The fitted Kissaluvs were indespensable before she was eating solid food but now the flats work quite well for the job, which is great since they are 1/3 of the price! Evelyn is getting some bad diaper rash though and it’s been hard to clear it up. Attempts at giving her “diaper free” time have generally ended in disaster!

We have finally got most of our place sorted out after the move and it’s quite well babyproofed so we can relax a bit (just a little bit) with Evelyn tearing around. Evelyn is still crawling at the speed of light and pulling up on everything. We have practiced walking holding her hands and she is getting better at standing up on her own for a bit but she isn’t ready to walk just yet without us. That’s ok by me, there’s no rush! Her cousin Zoe just started walking from what I heard which is great!

This winter has been horrible, just horrible. We are close to breaking the record for snowfall and it seems like it snows twice a week now. Unfortunately this is the time we decided to finally get a car and it has been a lot of trouble to move it when they are plowing the street, which is … at least once a week. So we are constantly digging out the car, moving it and moving it back again. Plus there are not enough parking spots on the street. It’s a real pain in the ass. And we have had two parking tickets already although I am going to contest one (long story). BUT - having it to get places with Evelyn has been really good. We just can’t wait for summer!

We went to the Old Port for the “Montreal En Lumière” festival last weekend and took Evelyn on the ice slide! She enjoyed it. It has been a Montreal tradition to have the ice slide since 1885!

So I made the appointment in January for insurance reasons and had two appointments. First I think they examined the tooth and killed the nerve and the second appointment they put supports in the canals of the tooth. The first appointment was very stressful because the endodontist had to clamp the tooth to isolate it (the tools they use are veeery small and you don’t want one of those going down your throat by accident). The only problem was that there was only 1 wall left on the tooth and he tried for about 20 minutes to clamp it without success. Finally after about the 10th different clamp he was able to isolate it well enough to do the surgery but I know they were getting ready to extract the tooth if the couldn’t get something to work. I think he had to either clamp on the gums around the tooth or way under them because it really hurt after the freezing wore off. After that the rest of the first appointment went quite well and I was quite relived how easy it seemed.

Three days later I ended up with an infection but fortunately they were able to prescribe a prescription by fax and it worked to clear it in 2 days. It was incredibly painful. So I went in for the second appointment and I realised that the first one was a cake walk to what happened in the second one. He had to put so much freezing that it actually made my left eyelid numb! I saw the X-ray afterward and it was very high up and right below my sinus cavity so it was really, really hard to reach. Anyway lots of funky stuff went on and it was pretty tense there for a bit. Afterward the assistant told me that most dentists wouldn’t have even tried given how difficult it was, so I am very, very blessed to have had such a good dentist for that part. They put in a temp filling and so far it has felt fine.

Now I am waiting for the post and crown which will cost $1300-ish dollars but unfortunately most of my dental work quota is used up so it’s going to come out of my pocket. But it’s worth it to keep the tooth!

Let this be a lesson to you all - take *very* good care of your teeth or it will hurt a lot and cost you either a tooth or lots of money (or if you are really unlucky, both). Also get yourself a good toothbrush, one of those ones that cost $6 and have the raised bristles at the end to clean behind your molars (between them and the gums at the very back) since that’s where the infection came from in the first place for my tooth. These have small heads to let you brush far back since the larger ones won’t fit there.

The good news: Evelyn is finally eating solid food. It took a lot of work and it’s hard to say exactly what happened to get her out of that rut, but we’re there. Her favourites are yogurt, fruit and sweet potato but she has had a number of other vegetables, cereal, beef, chicken, egg and chickpeas. She also likes fresh pears cut in cubes and has tried some other fresh fruit. She likes cheerios and these “sweet potato stars” that we bought and will eat bread and crackers sometimes.

The bad news: she’s a *really* picky eater. Sometimes she will taste something during a meal that she doesn’t like and get furious and then it will take 5 minutes just to get her calmed down so she can try again. We always have to mix the egg, beans or meat with a vegetable, fruit or yogurt and sometimes the vegetable has to be mixed with something too or she won’t eat it. She also prefers things that are crunchy so if I try to give her something soft (e.g. cooked rice, steamed vegetables cut in cubes) she usually squishes it and throws it on the ground. Most meals are very taxing for us. She refuses to drink water most of the time so we are really worried she isn’t getting enough fluids. We will talk to her doctor about it tomorrow.

Evelyn has 4 teeth and lots more on the way so I am trying to brush them at night but it isn’t very successful. She cries and turns her head away from the toothbrush and it’s very hard to get the brush in contact with her teeth. I have been doing this for over a month now with very little success.

She went through a phase where she wouldn’t hold still for diaper changes and would flip over on her tummy almost as soon as she was set down. Now she usually gives us about 20 seconds before trying to turn over so we are able to do things more easily now but it’s still tricky.

Sometimes I feel so frustrated and I really wish that Evelyn would give us a break. Pretty much everything has been a big trial with her and it’s hard to be optimistic about the future. I don’t want to sound overly pessimistic here because she’s really a wonderful baby and very clever but I just don’t have the patience for baby tantrums some days. She gets upset about so many things all the time and is REALLY LOUD. If this is what she’s like now I wonder what the “terrible twos” will be like. Best case will be that we don’t really notice the difference, worst case will be unbearable.

I haven’t had a chance to blog in a very long time because we moved two weeks after we came back from our Christmas holidays and I am back at work full time. We had to buy a washer, dryer, fridge and stove for the place, bought a car (long story, more later) and I had a root canal. Things have slowed down a bit.

It snowed the week before we left Montreal and the snow still wasn’t cleared from our street the night we left. There was a “no man’s land” of snow in the parking lane (with a buried car in it) and the traffic was a mess. We booked a taxi earlier in the day and it didn’t show up at the time we requested it. I called the company and the line was *busy*. Ok, so much for that. Fortunately, living on Sherbrooke street a lot of taxis pass by so I flagged one down. He had to park on the corner due to the aforementioned sea of snow and we ran back and forth with our stuff. The poor guy didn’t know what he was getting himself into. Yes, we wanted to go to the airport and yes, we had to strap in that baby car seat. Poor Dan struggled for about 10 minutes to get it hooked in. I think part of the problem was that the bars were stuck under the cushions and we just couldn’t get the clips to go in far enough. He had actually started driving when we got one clip in place but he offered to stop before we got onto the highway so that we could get the other one in place. The 20 was really backed up with cars and it took about 35 minutes to get to the airport. The taxi driver played a Leonard Cohen tape on the way and unfortunately Dan just can’t stand his style of singing so he was talking about it the whole trip.

When we arrived we had planned to buy a nice sandwich at MBCo only to find out that they had no more food. So we went through security but then found out there was only one restaurant! Fortunately we were able to get a table and hand just enough time to eat before we had to go to the gate. Before that we tried to buy a book at the bookstore but had out typical Montreal lack of customer service problems so left without the book.

The flight itself was fine although it’s a very long 4 1/2 hours when you’re holding a sleeping baby (it was an evening flight). Dan’s parents picked us up at the airport and we got to their place really, really late. Our visit at their place was good for the most part, save the puking. Yes, there was puking and I will get back to that in a moment. We roasted chestnuts on the fire, cooked and ate some nice meals and generally had a good time. To make a long story short our niece picked up some gastrointestinal virus from a family that babysat her (they thought it was food poisoning when they got sick) and she passed it on to almost everyone except Evelyn. First Zoe got sick herself, then Dan’s sisters. We didn’t stand much of a chance of avoiding the illness since it started out with us overhearing the phrase “Oh no it’s all over their stuff” on the baby monitor when Zoe threw up on our toiletries bag. We were still feeling fine 2 days later when we left for my aunt and uncle’s place but at Christmas dinner it became increasingly obvious that something was amiss by Dan’s trepidacious table manners. After supper Dan spent most of the evening trying (or trying not to) throw up in the downstairs bathroom. Finally my cousin took him to the hotel and Evelyn and I joined a few hours later. Not too far into the night we experienced what could be caleld a spectacular show. I will skip the details but let’s say it wasn’t pleasant. Fortunately my microbiological training kicked in and I knew that bleach is the best way to kill viruses so I called my aunt and she sent some bleach based cleaners and cleaning cloths over so we could disinfect the bathroom as needed. The night followed a predictable routine of “throw up, wash hands, disinfect, wash hands, repeat” for both of us. Somehow Evelyn didn’t get sick, and I’m tempted to chalk it up to our disinfection protocol although I am sure part of it was due to breastfeeding.

We spent boxing day recovering and sleeping in the hotel. Unfortunately we had requested a playpen for her and first there were none available and then they brought it to the wrong room so we didn’t have any way to contain her most of the day we were sick. We did our best to keep her safely on the bed, mostly thanks to Treehouse kids TV. By the afternoon of the 27th we started to feel better although we were not really able to eat until the 30th. My aunt suggested we go out and shop for boxing week deals so we went out with our cousins and a momentous event happened. My aunt offered to babysit Evelyn and I warned her about Evelyn’s fear of being away from mom and dad. She said she would give it a try and would call if there were any problems. Well we were gone for 4 hours and Evelyn really only got upset during the last 10 minutes or so, so it was a great success! In general she became more socialized during the trip although it was pretty hard on her at the beginning. She also took a great liking to my cousin Anna, perhaps because she kept showing Evelyn shiny silver coasters. We also learned Evelyn likes to “head bonk”. Basically you make eye contact with her and tilt your forehead toward hers and she does the same until the heads are touching. It’s pretty cute.

On the morning of the 28th Dan’s parents came to pick us up for the trip to Kananaskis. We were very happy that Evelyn still was healthy although a bit concerned when we found out Dan’s mom was still sick from the virus that morning. We all decided to take a chance on it and went to the hotel. We arrived just before check in and total chaos was happening in the lobby. I guess everyone else decided to take a weekend vacation in the hotel too so it was packed and our room wasn’t ready until half and hour after the “guaranteed” check in time. Worse, the kettle in the room wasn’t functioning (I needed to boil water for Evelyn) but when Dan’s parents got their keys we swapped and all was well. Ok, yes I know that Kananaskis is a bit of a mountain wilderness cop-out, but with an 8 month old baby we wanted something that was family friendly. And boy were there ever a lot of babies there!

At supper Evelyn was especially grouchy and we all debated about the reason (”maybe she’s getting sick?”). For about the millionth time since Evelyn was 4 months old I wondered if she might be teething so I stuck my finger in her mouth … and sure enough, there was a sharp bump on the bottom gums! Oh boy! The following night was very long, likely a combination of her teething, her congestion (apparently that comes with teething) and my inability to produce milk (since I had hardly eaten since the 25th).

The following Day we wanted to take it easy and try something fun, so Dan signed us up for a sleigh ride. Nice and simple, a good thing for people recovering from being ill. We were in a red wooden sleigh pulled by two white and brown horses which were humongous. We followed a path in the trees with a cross country ski trail on one side. We pulled up to a gorge with a river in the bottom. It was beautiful. On the way back we encountered a few cross country skiers on the track. Unfortunately some of the skiers didn’t stop when they encountered the sleigh and the sound frightened the horses. The first time wasn’t too bad and the driver was able to get them calmed down quickly but the second time it happened they broke into a gallop. Dan thinks it lasted about a minute but it felt like forever. Yes, Evelyn was on the sleigh ride with us and I was really frightened that she would get hurt. Fortunately the horses calmed down and we finished the ride without incident. Well I don’t know who had the bright idea of putting the sleigh ride and ski trail on the same path but it clearly seems dangerous to both the skiers and the passengers!

After our adventure filled sleigh ride we went for a dip in the pool. Evelyn came along for this part and I have to say she did much better than our first swimming pool adventure. I’m sure it helped that the water wasn’t as cold. She didn’t cry although she was quite nervous and clung to me like a monkey. I have never been hugged like that by her before! She wasn’t even secure enough in Dan’s arms - he was holding her and when she saw me she practically climbed over him to get to me!

Supper that night was more teething drama and another sleepless night followed. We checked out and headed up to my Dad’s place. My Dad bought a Wii so Dan burned his mind playing Mario Galaxy. We had lots of good food and a great time. We cooked a small ham and had a nice salad with lots of avocados. We stayed up for New Year’s eve and Evelyn did too. She was totally wired all night and it was pretty tiring.

The following day turned out to be “beat up the baby” day. We met with my master’s thesis supervisor in Red Deer and had a great chat. Unfortunately Evelyn was sitting in the high chair and decided to hit her head on the table. Then I was unclipping the pacifier from her clothing and by freak chance I managed to let my grip slip on clip (say that fast 20 times) and the clip caught her on the lip. Well everyone in the restaurant watched as I took my screaming, bleeding baby to the bathroom to clean up her lip. Fortunately the damage wasn’t too bad but we decided to throw out the clips and buy something with a weaker hinge to prevent that from happening again. Afterward we met up with my high school friend and her family and had a nice time. Again, Evelyn manged to find new and exciting ways to hurt herself - on the rocking horse toy and by catching her fingers in a spinning wood block alphabet thing. We had a great visit and returned to Dan’s parents place later in the evening.

We spent the next day trying to pack and last minute shopping at the Superstore in Airdrie (which as really nice super cheap baby clothes) and watching a Bollywood movie. The next morning we were off for our flight home. It was even longer than the flight out since Evelyn was awake for most of it and holding a bouncing, squirmy baby that drops her toys every 2 minutes is even more tiring than holding a sleeping baby.

When we arrived I waited for a very long time for the stroller and car seat to come through the oversize luggage belt because apparently everyone decided to go skiing in Calgary and there were about 50 pairs of skis to be sorted out before our stuff came out. Then we got in line for the taxi and discovered that there was a line of hundreds of people! Even with about 10 taxis coming in every few minutes it still took about 30 minutes before we got into one. And the roads were not even bad, it was just because there were so many people coming back from Christmas trips. But we made it home in one piece and the only thing we lost were a pair of mittens and a pair of earmuffs. Not bad considering all things.