Friday, August 31, 2012

No!

This word is a current favorite...

Thursday, August 30, 2012

15 Month Appointment

We had Evelyn's 15 months appointment last week, but I forgot to post her stats. 

Weight: 16 pounds, 11 ounces (3 ounces since 12 months) - not on the chart anymore 
Length: 27.5 inches (1 1/2 inches since 12 months) - back on the chart!, 1st percentile
Head Circumference: 45.5 cm (1/2 cm since 12 months) - 39th percentile


Her pediatrician is still concerned with her lack of weight gain. She has only gained about a pound since she was 9 months old.  I'm still not worried about it - she acts happy and healthy and is hitting all of her milestones.  I do get sick of hearing everyone comment on how small she is.  Yes, she's 15 months old, I'm sure.  No, I'm not starving my baby.  Yes, she's sure tiny.  Ugh.  I would like to get my hands on some older growth charts - from like 25-30 years ago, before obesity became commonplace in our country.  I read an article the other day that said the average 5 year old is 7 pounds heavier today than 20 years ago.  That's crazy!  When I look at the WHO (World Health Organization) charts instead of the CDC (United States) ones, she's totally on the charts.  Granted, still flatlining a little, but staying around the same percentiles.  I think we just have an active little one (I would sure love her metabolism!) who burns off everything we feed her.  She also chows down on vegetables, she loves them.  And frankly, I'd rather her be cramming down the green beans! 

Head circumference curve
 Height curve (she was pleased with this growth - so that's good!)
 Weight curve - or flat line in Evelyn's case

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

It's Just Hair!

Had a little adventure with my hair this past week.  Adventure might be too positive of a word - it was more like a nightmare!  I decided that I didn't need to be spending almost $200 on my hair to get it cut and colored by the stylist that I LOVE (but who is one of the teachers at one of the beauty schools, so she's the most expensive at that salon).  So I decided to go to the Aveda Institute here in town.  I had gone to the one in Indianapolis almost the entire time that I lived there and had zero problems.  For those who don't know, at the Aveda Institutes it's students who do your hair under the of their educators.  It's fairly cheap because it's students, and I've always been happy with how they've done my hair.  Everything seemed to be going fine - I asked for my normal hair color/style - some blonde highlights (really fine, not chunky) and some copper brown lowlights (again, really fine, not chunky).  Both the student and the educator seemed to understand what I wanted, and even commented about being able to see what I had done in the past.  So I settled in to read some Jane Austen (getting ready for this month's book club) and let them get to work.  

Side note:  I love getting foils put in my hair.  It's one of my favorite sensations in the world. 

I knew things were starting to head south when we went back to shampoo.  As she was taking the foils out of my hair, she commented on how she had to hurry because she didn't want the blonde highlights and my normal hair to soak up the brown.  (I now think back to my real stylist, who would rinse the brown out first, then take out the blonde).  Anyway, it got worse when I hear her sighing - loudly - while she is rinsing my hair.  She then went to get someone else and I hear them whispering back and forth.  Never a good sign.  It was clear when we went back to our station and she says, "Now, before I take this [the towel] off, know that we give free re-dos."  Great. 

She took off the towel and it was dark brown.  Like as brown as my sister's hair.  They then 'stripped' my hair to get the brown out, which turned it into more of a reddish brown (more red, than brown).  It actually was kind of a pretty color - just NOT on me!  It was awful.  I was trying so hard not to cry there - mostly because I felt really bad for the student.  She was clearly on the verge of tears, too.  I wasn't happy, but they were trying to make it right, so I was trying to give them a chance to.  From the whispers with educators, it sounds like she did two things wrong - first, she should have rinsed the red/brown out before taking out the blonde foils.  Second, she mixed the toner too dark.  So the combination of those two things created the nightmare that was my hair.

The pictures below don't really show how dark of a red it was - only the few people who got to see me during the few days it was red got to see how really red it was.  You can compare it to the picture at the top of this blog to at least get a feel for how much darker it was.


Dan took me to Olive Garden that night for some salad and breadsticks therapy.  It sort of helped.  In the 4 days between red day and re-do day, I tried some home fix its.  A couple of hair stylist friends (who don't live here!) gave me a couple of strategies to try.  First, it was crushed up vitamin C tablets.  You crush them up and make a paste with water.  Put the paste in your hair for an hour, then rinse out.  The vitamin C is supposed to help lighten the color - and it's non-chemical, so it's supposed to be easier on your hair.  
My vitamin C paste masque...
After the vitamin C masque, I tried their second strategy.  Washing your hair with laundry detergent.  Apparently Tide is the best brand for this, but we use Gain, so I tried it.  It's hard to tell which of these lightened my hair, but the combination of the two did help some.  It was still way red (especially outside in natural light), and way too dark for my complexion.
Better...but still terrible.
So I went in on Saturday for my re-do appointment.  They basically did very heavy highlights, bleaching the red back to blonde, and leaving some fine streaks of the red to make my lowlights. 
It's still a little too bright for me - but I'm hoping over the next couple of weeks it will tame down a bit and be close to my normal. 
I was impressed with their re-do - I really didn't think there was any way to change what had been done because it was so dark.  I have to use a deep conditioner on my hair over the next couple of weeks to keep it from getting dry and brittle.  I think if I go back there, I will only do highlights and stay away from the red/copper brown.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Bike Rides to the Park

We have a park about a half mile away from our house, and we like taking Evelyn there to play (mostly in the evenings because it's too dang hot!).  Some nights, if we get dinner done in time, we'll ride our bikes there to play.
Dan leading the pack!
Hey guys, check out my ride!
She's getting mad at me here because I'm trying to get a picture and she wants to play.
Her current favorite is the slide.  She can go down the ones at this park pretty much unassisted - we just have to get her started.

  Swinging with Daddy

Monday, August 27, 2012

Some Days in the Life of Evelyn

This is just a hodge podge of pictures and videos over the last few weeks...she sure is fun these days!
Playing hide the shoe from Mommy...one of her favorite games.
This is also the day of the first Broncos preseason game.
She wore this same shirt last year on the day of the first game (see here).  I can't believe how much she's grown - yet she's still so tiny for her age!
Helping Mommy clean and she put me up on the chair like a big girl!
Hey cool dude!
I was emptying the dishwasher one day, and she was "helping" a little too much.  So I gave her a snack in a bowl to eat on the floor while I worked.  This usually will distract her for 3-5 minutes, but today - the clean dishes were too tempting.  She grabbed a spoon and started eating her Teddy Grahams with it.
Every night when Dan comes home, Evelyn pitter patters over to the door to meet him.  On this particular day, she hadn't seen him in two days (he leaves before she wakes up, and had an event one night where he didn't get home until after she was in bed).  Needless to say, she was excited to see her Daddy!  He had a water bottle, so they played bang Daddy on the head with the bottle for a good five minutes.  Evelyn liked it...not sure about Dan!
Hey guys, like my hat?
The downside of putting a bowl on her head as a hat is now she does it with her bowl at dinner.  Oops.
She is all about her baby these days...
She uses this part of our sound system as her changing table.
Every fairy tale need a princess with a backpack...and a pinwheel wand...and a sippy cup with water...

Waiting for our turn at the doctor's office!
Our little Cindy Lou Who...

 She figured this one out all on her own...
We have a little musician on our hands...she loves playing her drums, singing, guitars...everything musical.  When we play worship music on our phones, she'll carry them around and dance and clap.  Here, she's enjoying the opening credits to a movie.  Extra points to whomever can name the movie. :-)
While I was getting my hair re-done (see tomorrow's post) - Daddy and Evelyn enjoyed watching some Toy Story 3.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

We Have a Reader

Evelyn has really taken to books in the last couple of months.  We have ready to her since pretty much before she was born, but now she insists on holding them herself when we read.  She also curls up in her chair to read - where she'll babble away as she turns the pages.  

I decided to take her to the library to get a library card so we could replenish our book collection regularly.  It's partially because I want her to be around all of the books, but partially because I needed some new options to read every day! :-)
She loved the library!  She was like a kid in a candy store running around from book to book.  She also loved sitting at the little tables with chairs her size!


I love love love to read.  It's one of the few "pre-mom" things that I really miss - being able to curl up and get lost in a story.  I hope she catches the same love of reading!

Saturday, August 25, 2012

New Outside Toys

We have been wanting to get Evelyn a water table for a while.  We needed to go to Toys 'R Us to get a birthday gift for a party, so we decided to take a look at those as well.  Evelyn loved playing with all of the toys in the store (we were "those" parents).
She loved this Dora guitar - she was dancing and clapping (of course, we didn't catch the funniest of it on video!)
After Toys 'R Us we had to run to WalMart to get her little vegetable packs.  She wanted to help Mommy.

 Evelyn helped Daddy put her new water/sand table together!
 Then we had to play with it!

 She wanted IN the water part...



 You knew this was coming after the soaking diaper...
The downside is I think she may have a grass allergy.  Every time she has been in grass the last couple of months or so, she comes out with red dots all over her legs.  They look almost like mini-mosquito bites, but they aren't.  Poor girl!  Fortunately, they don't seem to bother her much!

Friday, August 24, 2012

Eating Adventures

Don't worry...I'm not going to complain about how hot it is here, or how much I am ready for a real fall, today.  But I do have several pictures of Evelyn eating various things, some for the first time.  So we'll take a break from complaining about the heat and Texas and look at these instead!
She loves apples - especially when she's teething.
 First oatmeal cookie - and first real cookie, as well!

 I just love chubby little fingers eating corn.  I have about 17 pictures of her like this!
First peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 
Being a first time Mom, I waited until after 15 months to try peanut butter.  She loved it!
 She liked the peanut butter and the jelly separately - but she mostly ate around the edge of the sandwich.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Too Hot to Be Outside

Today was the seven million and first day that it's been hotter than 100 degrees outside here.  It's hard to go play at the park when it's still 100 degrees at 7:00pm.  We opted for the indoor play place at the mall this evening.  Since Daddy was with us, I actually got to take some pictures of the fun!  They have 5-6 little structures to climb on, slide down, walk through, and tumble over.  They also have a big aquarium with fish in it that she loves!





Ready for fall.  Yes, I know, I have mentioned that previously on this blog.  But for real this time.  COME FALL!!!