A Busy December

December always seems to be quite busy, and this year is no exception!  Evelyn has been very busy the past month!

Evelyn is so good right now, just loving life, sleeping well, and so happy all the time, I'm really enjoying this time!  I know it won't last too long before we have another tooth, a cold, or something to totally trip up this great pattern!  I am really liking Evelyn's sleep patterns.  She will sleep through the night, usually 3-4 nights a week or so, and sleeps 10-12 hours, waking up around 7:30 or 8.  So not bad.  But I like to sleep in.  :)  Luckily, the nights that Evelyn does wake up in the night, I can either rock her back to sleep, or she'll take a small bottle and fall asleep quickly.  And then, she sleeps even later!  It is wonderful!  Sunday, we had to wake her up at 10:15 to get to church on time, and then Monday she slept until 10:30.  It's well worth waking up for 30 minutes in the middle of the night, especially when I'm so used to it by now!  She usually goes to bed pretty easily, with a bottle and some snuggling (which I think will always be my favorite part of the day!), but of course tonight, I'm watching her cruise around the living room as I'm typing this at 10:30!!  Silly girl, she was almost asleep, and she happened to grab my pony tail holder, and started playing with it and was laughing in no time.  At that point, there was no getting her back to sleep, so she's wearing herself out... again!

And Evelyn is napping much better too!  It used to be that she would sleep for 10-30 minutes in the crib, but would pass out for 2-3 hours in the carseat as long as the car was running.  Now, I'm able to get her to sleep an hour or more in the crib.  It is great!  I've been able to get so much done during nap times!  I haven't tried to get a nap myself yet, because the first law of motherhood is that as soon as you lay down, the baby will wake up! 

Evelyn got her first tooth, sometime in the first half of November.  She had a rough night or two, but was generally very happy during the day, then all of a sudden, there was a tooth!  It was one of her bottom teeth, so it was near impossible to see, especially when she was sore and didn't want anyone poking around in there!  And then about two weeks late, I had a very fussy baby girl.  Nothing was right.  She was fussy all the time, didn't want to eat, didn't sleep very well, and was just down right unhappy.  And it lasted for a week!  That second tooth was sitting just barely under the surface, and just wouldn't break through.  Finally, it popped through.  We're not exactly sure when, because she wouldn't smile, she wouldn't let anyone touch her mouth, and she wouldn't even want to chew on our fingers (her favorite chew toy thus far!).  One day, I got a smile, and it looked like the tooth had broken through a couple days before.   So we have two bottom teeth right now.  And Carl keeps saying "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth!", but I'm saying "All I want for Christmas is a break from teething!!"  Hahaha!

Evelyn is cruising all over the place.  I am so sure she is thisclose to walking!  She is cruising everywhere - walks around the house holding on to walls, chairs, toys, fingers, anything she can get a hold of!  When she holds our hands and walks, she feels like she is barely holding on.  I'm just waiting for it!  Just in the last couple of days, she gets behind her push toys, and almost runs behind it. 

But the real question is, will she Walk first, or Talk first?  Because she is so close to talking too!!  She just babbles all day long.  Her inflections make it sound like she is talking for real, but then it's just "ba be bo da la te ga!"  Haha!  I'm trying to get her to say "banana" since it is her favorite food and she gets so excited every time she sees one.  I'm pretty sure she said "nana" a couple times the other day, but I couldn't get her to say it again on command, or when I was holding a banana.  Oh well, soon enough I'm sure! 

Anyways, we had a very nice Thanksgiving with my family.  Evelyn was so happy all day, ate great, took a wonderful nap, and just enjoyed the day playing with my brothers and my parents!  We introduced Evelyn to most of my dad's extended family at our annual Christmas gathering, but E wasn't really feeling that shindig.  It took putting a plate of food in front of her to get her quiet! We've already been to see Santa once, which Evelyn enjoyed.  She was amazed by his beard and just kept staring at him (happily!).  We didn't get many pictures of her actually looking at the camera, because she was so interested in looking at Santa!  We've got a few fun things coming up in the next couple weeks, but I am so excited to see how Evelyn does with Christmas.  I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but I hope she enjoys it all! I'm trying to keep it simple for gifts this year, but of course it's so easy to get caught up in "Oh this is cute!  Oh she'll love this!"  I think I'm done now, and even just from us, we will have a spoiled little girl this Christmas.  Who knows what else the grandparents will add to that!!  :)

We got our Christmas tree last weekend, and Evelyn has done pretty well with it.  There aren't any ornaments on the lower 3 feet of the tree, but it looks nice still!  Evelyn really hasn't tried pulling at the tree, or any of my decorations really.  She'll bat at a branch every now and then, but I haven't seen any inclination to pulling up on it yet!  Tonight, she noticed the stockings hanging from the mantle, and just sat there staring for a while.  I wonder how long it will take her to try to pull them down!  (FYI, she can't reach them, no way no how, but that doesn't mean she won't try!) 

So there was my "short" update on us lately!  I'm going to try to put up a picture post soon.  My pictures are on a hard drive at my desk, and I can rarely sit at my desk and type out a blog AND find pictures and videos to post.  So now that I've typed out a bit, maybe I can find a few minutes to find some pictures!