Sob Story

Poor Little Evelyn!!!! Yesterday while at my mom's house, Evelyn was playing around and being good as gold as usual, when she knocked over a chair on herself. When I picked the chair off of her, her mouth was full of blood, and I got a sinking feeling that she was really hurt. But we couldn't look in her mouth because she was screaming too loud. So after about 30 minutes of cuddling her, mopping up blood and singing her hymns, I finally got to look in her mouth. She knocked out her front tooth. Luckily, it was a clean wound--she didn't break off the tooth at the root, but the root ripped half her gum off with it. Her mouth looks awful, but the dentist said it would heal completely, except of course for having to wait 3-4 years for her permanent tooth to come in. Her two teeth surrounding the one that was knocked out are pretty loose, so Evelyn gets a diet of ice cream and pudding for a little while.

Not only am I feeling so bad for my sweet little Evelyn getting hurt, but I'm mourning the loss of my little girl's beautiful smile. I'm sure eventually I learn to love that gap-toothed smile, but it looks so awful right now as a wound that I cry every time I look at her.

Here she is showing off her hurt. She's really swollen too: you can see it better in this picture:

And here's a tooth obituary picture. This was taken the night before the accident. Zoom up and say goodbye to that cute little toothie.

Sacramento

Another business trip-another post. Not so exciting this time though. (Who'd have thought Kansas would be more interesting than California?!).

On the 3rd of January, our little family flew off to Sunny California--only to be met with nine days of thick and heavy mist. Even though the temperature stayed in the 50's, with all the moisture in the air, it felt more like 39 degrees. So most of our trip was spent in the hotel.

While we were there, Evelyn had her second birthday. It wasn't one of those "Whoa! my daughter is two!" moments because she's been acting like a two year old for the last two months. I felt mostly relieved that her age caught up with her maturity. That way I have an excuse for all the belligerence and vocal "No!" 's that keep issuing out of her mouth. Actually, Evelyn was the highlight of my trip. She was adorable (even with the two-hour tantrum during dinner on her birthday). The week of her birthday, she decided she didn't talk well enough for a two-year-old, and doubled her vocabulary. Here's my little 2-year-old:

Evelyn fell in love with the elevator. Every time it reached a floor, instead of beeping like a normal elevator would, it would quack. So Evelyn called it "The Duck." Whenever we got off the elevator, Evelyn would say, "Thank you, Duck!"

This is Evelyn hugging her Star Kitty and her new birthday kitty "Batty." (It's supposed to be "Tabby" but she says it backwards.)

Every day we took Evelyn swimming in the hotel's indoor pool. Evelyn loves to swim and she's very independent about doing it. She gets in the pool and dog paddles away from us as fast as possible.

On our final day in Sacramento, we finally got some sun. We celebrated by going to the local zoo. It was just a small zoo, but very impressive. This was their snow-leopard exhibit. The animals were close and very active. I think they were happy it was sunny too.

Evelyn playing at the zoo:

And a family picture. (Excuse my hair and blame it on the humidity)

Sleep

At the creation of my blog I mentioned how I love philosophizing about the differences in girls and guys. Another mind-boggling difference between the sexes has been aroused by the gossipping of my sisters and I about our marriages. What is it about guys not being able to tell when they're falling asleep? There has been way too many experiences where I'm watching Michael's eyes droop and his head nod, but as soon as I ask him if he's falling asleep, he exclaims defensively, "No! I'm not falling asleep! I'm wide awake!" If I don't press him, he falls asleep within 30 seconds. Is it such a big deal for guys to admit that they're tired? I don't get it. Also, while we're on the subject, how is it possible for guys to fall asleep while talking? My journal is filled with hilarious things Michael has said when he falls asleep halfway through a sentence.

I would have a hard time falling asleep when some one's talking to me (Except for Katy, sorry again Katy!) and I could certainly never fall asleep when it was my mouth running! For that matter, I don't think I know any women who have fallen asleep while talking. Maybe we just find ourselves too fascinating.

Christmas Memories

Evelyn knew Santa visited long before Christmas came. She saw his bags in Mommy's closet. She knew she wasn't allowed to touch the wrapped gifts, or Santa (Heigh-Ho-Ho) would take them back. So you can imagine her consternation when on Christmas morning she found the bags were missing!

She signed "Where" and asked repetitively "Ere dey go??" So we brought her into the front room where the tree was all lit up and this was her reaction:

After breakfast it's traditional for my family to dance to Mannheim Steamroller's Joy to the World. My mother used to wake us up on Christmas morning to this particular song blasting out the windows. I think anytime members of my family (Or my mom's immediate neighbors) hear this song, it's instantly Christmas morning. Here's Evelyn and Michael dancing:

Evelyn was at the perfect stage for present opening. She was young enough to still be thrilled with only the boxes and wrappings, but old enough to appreciate the real toys too.

We got Evelyn a "Heigh-Ho" and she immediately started singing the song when she saw it.

Then she very properly introduced Grumpy to her new baby-doll. "Heigh-ho? Baby. Baby? Heigh-ho!"

Over all, it was a perfect Christmas. Though Evelyn didn't quite get it all--when she went in Mommy's closet later in the afternoon, she still asked "Ere dey go?"

Christmas Challenge

Growing up, my mom always strove (Strived?? Striven??? oh well) to give us a Christ-centered Christmas. We would do Sub-For-Santa's, caroling at rest homes...anything to get us more service minded and thinking about the real meaning of Christmas. One tradition that lived through every year was our scripture memorization. Mom would collect 25 scriptures throughout the standard works and write them on little 3x5 cards. Then, every day we would memorize a scripture to count down to Christmas Day. She would entice us by giving us exciting rewards like a mint M&M for memorizing the scripture of the day! Believe it or not, that mint M&M was a real motivation! My siblings and I would strive to be the very first to receive our prize of honor. I'm sad to say that usually meant parroting the scripture back and not really memorizing it. I probably memorized the same scriptures year after year and they were only semi-familiar.
When my older brothers and sisters moved out and I become sort of an only child, scripture memorizing lost it's appeal for me at home. So I brought the scripture cards and the bags of candy to school and challenged my friends! After all, it was tradition and I couldn't give it up. In college I posted scriptures on the white board on my dorm room. I don't think anyone but me looked them up, not to mention memorized them, but it was still there.
Then I married, and believe it or not, a mint M&M didn't sound too appealing, and alas! Days started to slip by when I didn't even look at the scripture cards! I started using the same scripture cards year after year, and only the short ones were getting memorized...over and over and over again. So this year, I decided my little family needed to do something else to get Christ more into Christmas...at least until Evelyn can memorize scriptures and get excited over mint M&Ms.
So I thought of a new challenge. I know December is halfway over, but there's still two weeks! Here it is: are you ready?

Write a Carol or a poem to your King!

It has to be original text, but you can set it to existing music, or simply create a poem expressing your feelings about the Savior's Birth or Ministry.
I'd write mine here, but it's not quite finished....
Anyway good luck! And let me know if you're up to the challenge!

Evelyn's Graduation

The cause:

Evelyn has never climbed out of her crib before. Unless of course you count the time in that short little hotel crib when Michael turned on the shower and the sound scared her so badly, she did a back flip over the edge of the crib. But that doesn't really count. Yesterday before her nap was the very first time. I had no idea she had climbed out, so she ended up sleeping on her blanket on the floor next to her crib. I discovered her when she started jabbering and I went in to take her out of her crib. She was so proud of herself that she asked me over and over again to put her in her crib so she could show me again how she did it.

The effect:

She was so excited to go to bed last night. We didn't hear a peep from her. I went in to check on her to make sure she wasn't getting into any trouble, but she was lying in her bed with a big smile! She knew she was a big girl!

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas!

I apologize for the blurriness of this picture...Evelyn was running around doing somersaults and all sorts of cute 0f stuff, but I couldn't get her to hold still.