Developments

This week has been major in Evie's life. On Thursday morning, Evie finally rolled onto her tummy! Of course, Todd and I both missed it (Todd was practicing his trombone, and I was getting dressed) but John watched her do it. She was playing with her toes, started rolling, suddenly whipped her arm out of the way, and found herself on her tummy with a really surprised look on her face. Once the shock wore off, she was thrilled with herself and looked around at all of us with a proud little smirk. I still haven't been able to catch her in the act, but Todd has.

Saturday, we went to the Aurora Reservoir for our niece's birthday party. We slathered Evie with sunblock and then took her to the beach to play in the water. I dipped her toes in the water and she immediately started crying so I pulled her back out. I dipped her back in, up to her ankles, and she started crying again. When I put her feet back into the water, though, she was fine. She squished her toes in the wet sand and splashed in the water. Our pool closes this week, and we didn't think it was worth it to find swim diapers for Evie for such a short time, so her feet was the only part of her that got wet while we were at the beach. Even that much was fun for her, though. She kicked hard at the ground so I would help her bounce and she just jumped and jumped in the water and sand. We only stayed out there for a few minutes before we headed back to our pavilion because my legs were cramping up and we didn't want the baby to get sunburned. When we got home that night, I gave her a bath to get rid of all of the sunblock gooping up her hair. For the first time ever, she really had fun in her bath, splashing and playing the whole time; she thought it was funny to splash water on Mommy's clothes. She would kick so hard that her little bottom would almost scoot past the seat ledge and she would almost go under the water. After her bath, the water was murky from all of the gunk that came off of her, but she was clean and sparkly.

Sunday evening, I propped Evie up in the corner of the couch so I could have my hands free for something. When I looked back at her a moment later, she was leaning forward instead of back against the couch. A thought suddenly occurred to me, so I sat her down on the floor and, sure enough, she was sitting up by herself! She was a little wobbly, but was able to sit up completely unsupported. Margot got a few pictures of her, both by herself and with the two little kids.

For the past couple of days, Evie has been playing a new game with her Mommy. She'll grab my glasses and deliberately pull them off (good thing they're sturdy plastic!). Then, for several minutes, she'll look back and forth deeply into my eyes one at a time, with her little hand placed softly on my cheek. Sometimes she laughs, probably because she can see her reflection in my eyes. Other times she tries to grab them out of my face so she can play with them. I don't know if it's just me, but it seems that Evie has been even more cheerful this past week than ever before. Maybe it's because we're feeding her more at each feeding so she feels more full, or maybe she's just learning new things and is excited about sharing them with us. Either way, I've really been having a blast playing with her lately, and I'm hoping that one of these days while we're playing I'll actually be able to witness her new-found ability to roll over onto her tummy!