avuncular!

this pups met her first uncle this past weekend, and it was a smashing success. matthew and isa visited. they really only needed to bring their delightful selves, but they also thought to bring finger puppets. apparently, finger puppets are the greatest invention in the history of baba-hood. eve laughed and giggled and made eyes for her new two favorite people. when they left, she went into a pups coma and was sad all day on sunday. she seems to have recovered, but continues to optically search the house for her new faveys.

you got no secrets to conceal

well, the pups can't keep secrets. for example, it seems that she's been working on rolling over in private because we weren't totally aware of her efforts in this arena until today. her fans at daycare told me that 1) she got mad because they couldn't feed her cereal fast enough this morning; and 2)she almost rolled over in her crib two times.

so i put her on her back when we got home, and there she went. again. and again. and again.

then her papa came home and stripped her down to her diaper because she's happier that way, and then i caught this footage on camera. please notice fledge, the ever present and hardly impartial observer in the background.

spring cleaning

eve used to love 3 things and 3 things only -- smiles, hugs, and milks. her rapidly expanding palette now includes easter ('eve'-ster), having her nose cleaned out (doesn't the blue of the syringe bring out her eyes?) and spring afternoons on the porch. it seems this pups has an eye for the finer things in life. lately, she has also enjoyed sleeping in her crib for long stretches, and eating sweet potatoes. being 4 months old seems like a pretty sweet gig.

this one goes out to the one i love

sometimes, a solid dose of rem is exactly what the doctor ordered. this is true in two ways right now: evesie pups went to daycare today for the first time. therefore, i was thinking most of the day about this little one that i love to ridiculous excess. i spent more than a few minutes scrolling through the 776 pictures i have of her on my computer. at daycare, the pups had a good time, so good in fact that she only napped for about twenty minutes in the six hours that she was there. this puts her at a pretty huge deficit on sleep, which is why she's conked out on me right now and giving me a full-body nap-snuggle-hug. so, while i relied on rem's lyrics to sing my thoughts throughout the day, the pupster is currently relying on that more scientific valence to the band's name and catching up on some big time babski dreams.

now i realize that much of that previous paragraph makes little sense. that's because i spent much of last night missing out on rem sleep. was it because eve was up all night? nay, friends, quite the opposite. she was sleeping so soundly in her crib that i thought she surely couldn't be breathing. so i spent a lot of time trying not to sneak into her room to check on her.

so enough about michael stipe.

the above pictures are some of my current favorites of the pups. she's making so many new faces all the time, along with lots of new sounds, some sweet and cute and some just darn loud and funny. goodness she's great.

darling, darling, this is an infamous gift.

early on, i realized that evesie-pups and i were meant to be best of friends. to my continuing disbelief, this has occurred and continues to be true. i have realized (life-lesson) that preferences can become permanent, with unforeseen consequences. ANYWAY. this little pups and this guy were hanging in a sunlit-room in southern mississippi, discussing various new orleans scenarios and their various consequences, when PUPS NUMERO UNO let me know exactly what she thought. i'm still waiting for the exact transcript, but i got the point pretty swiftly.

she's leaving home, part two

so eve is at it again with getting bigger and doing more things on her own. while this is fascinating to participate in, encourage, and watch, i've realized that it's also a slippery slope from here. now that she can tripod, she'll be wanting to walk soon. and once she can do that, and talk, she'll be able to reason or maneuver her way out of any situation she doesn't like, and let me tell you, this kiddo has opinions. that sounds entertaining and challenging. let's hope it will be more of the former than the latter.

we're off for the gulf coast tomorrow. i can't promise a post while we're gone, but you never know what ted and eve will get up to when they're left alone together.

papa don't take no mess

so this video post has been about a month in the making. evesie pups has discovered her voice, and boy does she put it to good use. however, as soon as we attempt to document it, record it, or let anyone else hear it, she shuts up like a clam. while she doesn't display the full range of her grammar in this video, she does give you a taste of what it's like to live with this increasingly loud creature.

i think there are several highlights to this video. one of them is that you can hear ted blowing his nose from across the house, and that when he does, eve gets startled, and her eyes get huge. it's also worth considering the choreography of this number. ted got underneath the arches that cross over the lovely play mat on which eve is depositing copious amounts of droll. ted has a large head and a very big halo of hair, so this was not easy or comfortable, but we all emerged unscathed (though ted was awash in drool), and the playmat remains structurally intact. i imagine christine and erik, to whom the mat belongs, are pleased with that news.

now, the video is long, and the pups doesn't really start talking until about 4 minutes in, but you may be hopelessly in love with her at this point, like her 'rents, which means that you'll wait through the first four minutes to fully enjoy the last minute and a half of talkiness.

soul power

we've been exposing this pups to some mad culture. above, eve-sie sports her easter hat, generously given by my mother. you will also notice that she has recently discovered her hands. she will hold them out in front, look at them, crack a huge smile, make a sound very close to a seal bark, and then jam as much of both of them into her maw as possible. she then proceeds to suck and slurp them, dripping drool everywhere. it's much more adorable than it sounds. last night we all 3 went to see booker t. jones and maceo parker play. it was a little loud for the pups, so e-$ and i took turns in the lobby. booker t. sounded fantastic, playing a vintage organ through a leslie speaker. pups loved it. she promptly fell asleep during the intermission and missed the entire maceo show, somehow. this pups is immune to funk. it seemed like thousands of folks goggled over her and then remarked on what a good baby she was. and also a funky baby (blue-eyed soul, i guess). the 3rd photo shows this pups completely at home in front of the television. i rationalize this by stating that the program was educational -- anthony bourdain's 'no reservations,' a current complete addiction in this household.