Everest had her first staycation in downtown Carlsbad. This was her first time staying in a hotel. She enjoyed playing at the beach (eating sand), and going to happy hour, where she had braised beef, a brie pastry, and other goodies.
She also celebrated her first Easter, and participated in an egg hunt, even though she did not know what was going on.
She sits in her high chair to chow down on food, and likes to prop her little left foot up on the table while eating. She likes passion fruit and mac and cheese. She has an unfortunate tendency to eat and rub her food in her hair and face, so we call her dirty bean face when she has black bean sauce smeared all over her visage.
Judith makes her a lot of yummy baby purees and mashes, but her favorites are things she can pick up and eat on her own.
Her top teeth are starting to make an appearance, and she has started to stand more and more.
She loves her sister so much, because sister makes her squeal with laughter. If sister is in our bed next to her in the morning when she’s done drinking milk, she likes to smack sister’s face or arm, or pull her hair to wake her up. She likes Fiona too. If Fiona has the misfortune of being the one next to her in our bed, Everest will try to pet her in the morning. She also likes to give Fiona “kisses” by putting her face up to her fur (or maybe she is smelling her?)
Bath time has been a blast this past month, with Everest graduating out of the baby tub. Everest and Vale had a grand old time playing with bath toys, and splashing in the tub. Unfortunately, she did have one incident where she stood up when mom was turned away grabbing soap, lost her balance, hit her mouth on the edge of the tub, fell, and went underwater! It was so sad and scary. She even started bleeding from her mouth a little.
Everest spent the first few days of her 8th month of life recovering from COVID, but was a champ about it.
This month, she discovered one of her favorite things to do is to pull things off the shelf. She also enjoyed some tortoise visitors we had at our house.
Another fun thing she has enjoyed this month was drumming on coffee cans. Some people (婆婆) question the wisdom in giving babies large sticks to play with, but it’s never too early to start training a percussionist.
This month, 妹妹 improved her fine motor skills, and started eating chicken and picking up bread by herself. So far so good – she still loves to eat.
Right before Everest turned 7 months (early February), we visited Arizona to visit 舅舅and舅媽, to have a belated lunar new year celebration. In Arizona, we went for a hike, celebrated lunar new year, and ate lots of good food. Everest ate fish head and 油飯 (sticky rice) made by Uncle Aaron, topped with ketchup, and absolutely loved it.
She started squirming like a crazy person during diaper changes (forgot all about this), so we distract her with whatever’s in the bar area, where we change her diaper. Usually, it’s a mini bottle of Maker’s Mark or 99 Bananas, very classy. But otherwise, she has been pooping and peeing in the potty for a few weeks now, and generally goes with the flow.
Everest had fun drumming on buckets for the first time, and is having more and more fun playing with sister. She also started crawling this month. In Arizona, she was starting to roll a lot and scoot around in her butt, and seemingly overnight, she was crawling all over the place; we’re all trying to keep up now. Nanny Judith used to be able to multi-task and cook and clean while watching Everest, but those days are quickly coming to an end.
Unfortunately, we discovered Everest has a cashew allergy this month. We gave her a little bit of homemade cashew butter on toast, and 15 minutes later, I noticed hives on one side of her neck. I initially wondered whether she was suddenly bitten by bugs, but when the hives spread across the base of her head, I suspected an allergic reaction. Her eyes also swelled up and got itchy, poor guy.
By the time we went to Mexico City, we were in full-on chase mode when she was let loose in our AirBnb. She was crawling all over the place, making all kinds of trouble.
We visited Mexico City with family and Uncle Frank at the end of February (through the first week of March). This was Everest’s first flight, and she was pretty well-behaved. Mexico is a food mecca, and Everest was lucky enough to dine on local fare including tacos of all kinds, but also finer foods, such as lamb, mole, and short rib. Her first night, we had dinner at Bar Montejo, and she tried some of everyone’s food, enjoying all kinds of tacos, meats, beans, rice, and a little bit of Uncle Darren’s mole.
She pretty much enjoyed everything, including a piece of jalapeno. I came home with a small pack of chapulines (grasshoppers), and she even chowed down on a couple of those.
While in Mexico, she behaved very well while we took a tour of the Teotihuacan pyramids. We stopped at a tourist trap for lunch, and she had a lovely time watching the Aztec (other mesoamerican?) traditional dance performance.
Everest was also very cooperative as we walked through Centro Historico (on two separate occasions), visiting popular sightseeing spots, and stopping to enjoy drinks and local fare. She started getting sick early on in the trip, but nevertheless was a trooper, even when we wandered a little ways out of the city into Xochimilco to ride around on a barge.
Everest started the month not fully able to crawl, and by the end of February could not only crawl, but stand up and take some steps with assistance. She puts everything in her mouth, and her sister makes her laugh and feel better when she cries or hurts herself.
Around this wonderful time, she got pink eye and woke up with crusty, red eyes one morning, and also got COVID (we all did). She has been forced to accept that being the second child means being constantly subject to whatever pestilence her older sister brings in from school. One of her favorite foods is a guava fruit mash Judith makes her.
