it was a normal day

evesie pups was hilarious and wonderful and great and raging today. mostly, she was really good, but goodness must always be punctuated by minor meltdowns. the pictures are from tummy time on the boppy (please note the long thread of drool--both gossamer and viscous at the same time) and her evening bath. lest you think that she sported that amazing electric blue robe all night, i must confess that she was immediately changed out of it after the pictures were taken. she is currently milk-sated, sleeping in her papa's arms and showing off her meaty thigh because her gown has, as usual, gotten hiked up to her waist. goodness, i love her.

she asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere

so, a friend recently told me that once you have daughters, you lose your toughness. i appreciated the insight but also realized that i was never tough to begin with. i know i'm biased, but i'm also jelly when it comes to this baby. seriously. i go all wicked witch doused with a bucket of water when she looks at me like this. i gush with disgusting papa love, particularly when she holds her little purple elephant. that's right. i have a complete weakness for elephants. eve-sie and i share a fascination for this noble animal. what's more, we both really like purple. baby girl plus elephant plus purple equals complete pushover willing to blog about how lame he is.

no more sweets for the sweet

CAUTION: this is an epic post that speaks mainly of fussy babies and their drool, vomit, and poo. many, nay, most, of you will probably be bored to tears by this, so i recommend just staring at the pics if the text makes your eyes cross.

well, i was some kind of a mama yesterday. it’s only proper to begin at the beginning, which means thursday night, when evesie pups was a crazy baby. she had short periods of unprecedented adorableness, followed by long periods of whimpering, whining, wailing. she slept very little during the day, so this compounded the issue. the only times she wasn’t a sad little pups were when she was nursing, dancing to emo (matthew, your emo lyrics are way funnier than deathcab’s), or having a bath. a day like that guaranteed that i needed a beer with my pizza and duke basketball that night.

while we watched coach k’s boys TROUNCE those va tech giants, eve found peace on her papa’s chest in these amazing pj’s (thanks, amy, mark, and audrey!) and i found mine in the two chocolate chip cookies that ted brought home from his evening meeting.

now, some of you know that i suspect eve has an allergy to chocolate, just like her papa. i stopped eating it altogether a few weeks ago. they say (you know: ‘they’) that the way to find out if you’re allergic to something is to stop eating it for awhile and then eat it again b/c that way, your reaction will be stronger. i didn’t intend to make yesterday that testing day, but the cookies were awfully good and I was in no state to resist sugary temptation.

so. eve was in a much more fabulous mood all morning on Friday, which allowed me to make some zuchinni bread and shower between morning nursing sessions. this was amazing. the little pups sung to me while i was showering, and then as soon as the water was off, she was getting a little fussy. inspecting the baba for what the problem might be, i noticed that she was sporting a pretty enormous spread of drool on the front of her shirt. impressed with how much she had managed to produce in such a short time, i didn’t even consider that it could be baby vomit. i have no idea why.

telling her that it made more sense for me to get dressed and then change her out of her drooly clothes (this follows the oxygen mask argument on airplanes, as hillary and greg noted), we made our way to the bedroom so that i could do just that. she got increasingly fussy with the passing of each second, which was puzzling.

i finally picked her up out of her bouncy seat and noticed that she felt a little damp on her huge diaper butt. it was at this moment that i noticed the huge wet patch in her bouncy seat. when we arrived at the changing table, i realized that this little pups was on her third epic grump (our word for poop) of the day, and this one, due to my callous disregard for her comfort, had managed to run up her back and down one of her legs, soaking her and the bouncy seat in which she was festering in her own filth.

poor kid.

once everyone was clean and in dry clothes, she decided to switch from foamy epic grumps to throwing up everything she ate at every nursing session until late afternoon. through all these post- (or would it be anti?) digestion periods, she was sweet and cute and wonderful. this picture sequence captures one of those moments in which she was making eyes at her papa. i dressed her in her fab bodysuit from Kirsten because i thought it was a nicely ironic counter to her vomiting, grumping physical state. ted thinks she really looks like a boy in this get up and calls her evan luke, or steve, or kevin, depending on how she’s acting at the moment. in addition to her lovely smiles, please notice the long train of still-wet baby puke running down her left sleeve.

we did change her out of this bodysuit shortly after she puked on it. again.

she's about a mover

so far, eve is one happy little girl. she likes nothing more than eye contact and talking. she likes to hear about anything, really. she particularly likes it when e-$ recounts the day's adventures, or when someone tells her dog jokes (jokes that don't make any sense at all). she starts smiling and baby-squeaking when you talk to her, giving a strong impression that she really wants to talk back (and she probably thinks that she is talking back). on an unrelated note, she also loves sticking her small hand in her huge mouth. i think this photo shows some definite baby blue eyes, though.

she's leaving home

eve shocked me last friday during the day's session of tummy time. (note: ask ted what he hates about the phrase 'tummy time.' he's quite eloquent.)

she rolled over. since then, i've been trying to get her to do it again with varied success. this video captures one such attempt. i confess to helping her a little, but it wasn't too much cheating.

she's now one step closer to growing up and heading out the door for college. or perhaps we'll let her leave home earlier if she gets accepted to a magical british boarding school located in the scenic scottish highlands.

boy i wish i had teeth sometimes

this morning we concluded a casually conducted experiment involving the baba and chocolate peppermint stick luna bars.

i was first introduced to luna bars by anne gulick at the lucinda williams concert in 2003. i was a first year grad student--terrified and naive in the ways of the world--and anne, a year ahead of me and wise in so many ways, told me that she had a luna bar for dinner. though even now i can't imagine surviving an entire concert on a single bar (but then again, i lack anne's impressive stamina), i will say that they've sustained me remarkably well every morning since eve has been born. if i don't eat one when i wake up, i quickly become a non-functioning zombie of the lowest state. it's pathetic really--my dependence on these overpriced 'health' bars. thank you, anne, for ensuring my survival, and consequently, eve's.

while we were in chicago, i cracked open my first chocolate peppermint stick luna bar (hereby known as cpslb). eve was getting ready to nurse, but she suddenly turned her head and started giving me ginormous gummy-mouthed smiles. guessing that she was excited about the smell of my fragrant breakfast, i told her that she could have the luna bar through breastmilk. this made her even more happy. it was amazing. we've repeated this scenario, minus being in chicago, two times since then, and she's responded the same way each time. above, you can witness this morning's photographic evidence as recorded by ted.

we have no idea why the cpslb's provoke eve in this way. perhaps it's proof that she really is elvish. the cpslb does smell like christmas, so that's possible.

monkey wash, donkey rinse

so eve experienced her first toy last night. we bought this monkey while e-$ was pregnant and s/he (still waiting on a name and gender from evesie-pups, though i am suspicious that all toys will be 'pups' named 'eve fehskens' if we leave it up to her) has been sitting patiently waiting for discovery. the monkey was a big hit -- eve ended up hugging it and falling asleep while erin and i watched 'the bourne supremacy.' not a bad saturday night -- spies and simians.

SMILE

watching eve and playing with her is a lot like listening to early brian wilson, way back before he was on a horse's dose of mind-numbing drug therapy (and this is no criticism, not a real one anyway. i love brian wilson deeply). but there are some beach boys records from the 60's that perfectly capture notions of innocence that are somehow innocent in themselves -- they don't trade on sentimentality or nostalgia in any way. rather, they just capture a moment -- and when you hear those songs, you (or, at least, me) find yourself in that moment. i'm not sure if this is eve's mentality or not (though as a self-confessed Romantic, i (secretly)(on a blog) believe it is), but the purity of her emotions astounds me. here i present to you happy-pups. we have some fantastic rage-y-pups shots that will later show up on a post already entitled "achilles -- what's he got on me? by eve fehskens."

boys on the side, please

evesie and i are going to beaufort today, and we'll be there until tomorrow evening, getting to know the folks at duke's marine lab before we head out there in april so that i can teach an intensive 3.5 week course on literature of the sea. eve has chosen to audit the course from home because she's not into grades and credits right now, but she does like stories and water. in fact, she's not even enrolled in any school as any sort of student, so i have no idea how she convinced the registrar at duke that she could audit her mama's class. anyway, here are a few pictures to tide you over until we return or until ted posts. they range from adorably awake to adorably asleep. the johnny cash onesie is a gift from e.m., who worked long and hard as an internet shopper to get that prized little thing to us before evesie was born.

this kid is objectively adorable

someone, we can't recall which person, said that eve was 'objectively adorable' at the duke party at mla. if you're reading this blog post, identify yourself so that you can receive proper credit for your statement that gets more and more true as eve meets more and more fans. this weekend, ted's dad and sister sally (hereby known as don abuelo and aunt ya-yee) hung out with eve. she also got to spend time with her relatives in burlington. we all had a blast, and i hope you like our documentation of the fun times.

have pups, will travel

ted, eve, and i drove to indy for christmas, and then we headed up to chicago for the mla. while i went to job interviews in hotel rooms, ted and eve hung out in our hotel room for hours on end. they are now the best of friends. if eve had a computer, they would instant message each other all day, and if she had a cell phone, they would send funny picture messages to each other too. as it stands, they just look at each other and smile and make funny little sounds. well, ted uses words, and eve acts like she's trying to use words. anyway, here are some pics from christmas and chicago--enjoy!

this kid knows how to party

eve had such a rockin time on new year's eve (we drove back from indy that day) that she spent much of the next day nursing and sleeping. we thought that was great. all three of us were happy to be out of the car. actually, i think we were thrilled beyond belief. so, this is a picture of her sleeping on ted in the evening, before i whisked her off to bed. the other picture captures her new favorite activity--staring at herself and making cute, adoring sounds at the pretty baby in the mirror. this particular mirror is attached to the amazing baby gym that christine and asher are lending her. thanks, guys! i keep waiting for her to look in the mirror and experience the terror of ipseity, but it hasn't happened yet. really though, i love watching her sing to herself, so we can put off the mirror phase for a bit longer.