Fun Day, New Tricks

What a fun day! Alice and I bike to downtown Urbana to run some errands. I have a bike trailer that Alice rides in. Bundled up in her fuzzy red coat (hooray for unseasonably cool weather!), she nods off to sleep on the way. The bike trailer also works as a stroller, so she stays asleep the whole time I'm in the bank. Not just asleep, but snoring. Loudly. She turns a few heads.

Alice wakes up in time to enjoy the library and sharpen her daredevil skills. Alice gets a kick out of walking off short heights like curbs and stairs. She inches up close to the edge with a big smile on her face and then slowly shuffles one foot just enough to move her center of balance over the precipice. She stumbles after the jolt, but usually remains standing. Always proud of herself. The Urbana Free Library has a little room perfect for stumbling off of stairs.

At the library, Alice finds a little boy to play with. I swap some rudimentary mandarin Chinese greetings with him and his grandmother. It makes me want to learn more because it takes me 5 minutes to understand she simply wants to know how many children I have *sigh*

Then it is home for lunch---noodles and spaghetti sauce---which Alice always delights in smearing all over her face and neck. I love to feed it to her for the same reason. This time, she pops a whole bowtie noodle into her mouth, sucks off the sauce, and spits out the naked noodle. When all the noodles are clean, she eats them one by one.

Alice is coated in spaghetti sauce so I throw her in the tub. She plays for a while, I clean her all over, and then I notice she's squatting and grunting. Uh-oh, I figure she's preparing to fill a diaper that isn't there. I drain the water, pull out all the toys she isn't clinging to at the moment, and ask her if she's "all done" with the bath. Yes, she indicates she's done, but she doesn't want to let go of the bath toys. I tell her she's welcome to stay in the bathtub and play with the toys more, but the toys do not leave the tub. She finds this acceptable and sits down to play. The grunting went away...she must have been playing with her voice again.

Twenty minutes later: the tub is dry, Alice is completely dry, and she's still playing naked in the tub. I figured she would get cold loooooooong before then. Well, her lips were certainly blue and her feet were pruney from soaking up the last few puddles in the tub, but she wasn't ready to stop playing. I don't mind this because it doesn't matter whether she's playing in the living room or the tub. It's all play time. She's fed, clean, and playing. That's what I was planning on for this twenty minutes anyway :)

I pull out the camera and take a quick movie. Alice's play is so animated these days! She has a couple new tricks, too, which you can see in this video. She buzzes her lips like she's making a motorboat sound (some might say it's spitting, but there's no slobber involved), and she flips her tongue around while she "sings" to make a fun sound. In this movie I make the sounds and she copies me. Sometimes we have whole conversations like this.

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/AliceTub13mo.flv[/flv]

Makes for a fun day. Not to mention Alice pulling a few books off the library shelves while I'm distracted with anti-squirrel books...who writes anti-squirrel books anyway?! and later she figures out I'm sneaking chocolate chips and will not be fooled with a cracker instead. Clever girl.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

Much of this week was fairly uneventful.  Saturday however was very busy, but very good.  Susan had the March of Dimes walk, and has already talked about it.  We took Alice to the doctor that morning too because she started to wheeze a bit from her coughing.  She is doing fine, they gave her a nebulizer treatment which made the wheezing go away.  After the march of dimes we went out to lunch, at a Mexican restaurant.  Alice actually had a chicken burrito, her first ever.  She really enjoyed it, but spilled about half a cup of ice water on herself near the end.

After a nap at home we went to the library.  She had a lot of fun, and ended up being a bit of a dare devil walking off of some fairly high steps, and falling onto her feet giving her quite a shake but laughed the entire time.

March of Dimes

Today was the March of Dimes Walk for Babies. There was a good crowd there, but I was the only one from my team who could make it. Bobby and Alice were planning to walk with me, but Alice developed some wheezing and a horrible gut-wrenching cough last night so Bobby decided to take her in to the pediatrician this morning. I'll let him fill you in on that adventure when he writes his Sunday Summary.

So there I was, a lone walker, in the midst of some very large teams with their own t-shirts and color-coordinated banners. I felt kind of small. Then they started the opening program. We heard first-hand from two local couples who had experienced the roller coaster of premature birth. Two of the three children delivered prematurely to these families did not survive more than a few weeks. I cried with them as they told their stories. I looked around at the huge groups of people with t-shirts and banners and noticed for the first time that they were marching in memory of these babies who did not survive.

I thought of Atty. I marveled at how fortunate he and Heidi were to hold on to each other all the way to 30 weeks when survival is almost assured. I cried. I pondered. It was good for me to walk alone. It gave me time to consider these families' stories. I felt a deep respect for so many walking strangers.

Bobby and Alice got back from the doctor just as my walk was finishing up. I saw them walking towards me and I just felt love. So many blessings. So much to be grateful for. Too much love for one person.

I am reminded of one of my favorite Story People passages:

She laid on my chest & her breathing filled me to almost beyond what I could hold.

First Garage Sale

I went to a couple garage sales this morning...my first EVER. I've had a fear of these kinds of things ever since those trips to the swap meet in San Diego. There's just something unsettling about people sitting there watching you handle their personal belongings. These people take the time and effort to spread their life out there for me, and then they sit there hoping someone will buy. I feel like I must give some sort of offering just for being there, buy some little something so their time isn't entirely wasted, "How much for the box of toothpicks?"

Thank goodness for multi-family sales. Sheesh! I visited a sale today that had items from 86 families. Everything was laid out like a thrift shop, but much neater. And much better quality stuff. No pressure, no piercing gazes, and lots to look at. There were even some cloth diapers! I picked up an infant playmat (Tiny Love! It's my favorite kind!) for only $10, and a number of high quality clothes for Alice at $1 a piece. Some of you hardcore garage-salers might think I paid too much, but I was actually very pleased with myself.

Bum Shots

Bum #1

I was dinking around in the garden with Alice the other day and turned around to find she was gone. Completely gone. I experienced a brief moment of panic followed by two calming realizations: 1) our yard is completely fenced and 2) Alice won't walk on grass, so she must still be on that tiny patch of concrete. Just then the cardboard box moved and giggled. I whipped out the camera just in time to catch my little adventurer backing out of her newest play space.

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/AliceOutofBox.flv[/flv]

Bum #2

This morning, Alice ventured deep into our bakeware/cookie sheet cabinet. Deeper than she's ever gone before. She discovered much aluminum and silicone, savoring each treasure's unique properties, but mostly just dropping it to see if it made a noise.

Bum #3

This afternoon, Alice brought me my shoes and kindly requested some time outdoors. It had been a while since I checked on my asparagus beds, so I obliged. What a surprise! Almost all 6 plants had something to offer. An irregular group, to be sure, but very welcome. This marks the first garden harvest of the season and my first asparagus harvest EVER. Alice was not impressed.

Belly #1

And while this next picture does not exactly fit with the "Bum Shot" theme, I had to share it. Just before this picture was taken, she was pulling her shirt up over her face and playing peek-a-boo with me. Just after this picture, she pulled her shirt too far and got it stuck on her head. Tee hee hee.