{State Fair}

Evette and I were super lucky and were able to go to Texas State Fair twice! We went once with Emily and once with the husb/daddy.

With Emily:

Evette on her first DART [Dallas Area Rapid Transit] ride. Look at those cute little concerned eyebrows

 Big Tex - can you tell that Babbs is excited about it?


Clapping for the shows... she was so cute about it! People would get excited and clap and she would join right in with them!

First corn dog.... she absolutely loved it! 

Free pumpkin for the lil punkin

 We wanted this car

Evette's favorite part of the fair was playing in the dirt while we were waiting for the BMX show to start. Silly baby. Check out my baby rocking her skinny jeans :)

With the Husb/Daddy:

We went on a discount day where you could bring an empty coke cola bottle [20oz or larger...] for reduced entry so we bought a coke bottle and chugged the whole thing...just kidding. Just a sip and then dumped the rest - wasteful but it was going to save us money. Turns out at the DART station, though, someone gave us their extra tickets. woot woot!

Do you like how we match? Evette and I wore purple shirts and Daddy wore a green shirt to match her green pants. Yes, cheesilicious.

This pig is just absurd.

Evette was intrigued but a little nervous about the horses.

Yes, that is powdered sugar in her hair. That's what happens when she sits on my lap while we're enjoying our delicious funnel cake!

Look at that face... "Please please please can we have this stuff?!?!? It loos so delicious!"

The fair was super fun! Lots of shows to see, delicious food to eat [corny dogs, funnel cake, fried oreos....], animals to see, and fun times to be had. 

{General Conference Weekend}

I feel like I haven't blogged in forever.... oh wait, I haven't. It's been 3 weeks which is equivalent to forever in blog years.
General Conference weekend was amazing. Such great messages from our modern day prophet and apostles... such a strong spirit. I'm stolked about the new missionary age. That was pretty amazing. General conference is awesome.

Evette loved it when the MOTAB came on the screen. She would stand there and do her little dance to the music.

 rocking the ponytail!

Going for a walk and collecting seeds

Don't mind my homeless appearance...General Conference means no real clothes

She loved pushing the stroller

  

Painting nails during conference.... Daddy is helping Evette pick out pretty colors.

Fake out and growing up

For a while now, Evette has only been given a pacifier for naps or when she's driving us loco in the car. So, whenever we come to get Evette from a nap or in the morning when she first wakes up, she plucks her pacifier out of her mouth and reaches it out for us to take or to drop it in the jar that holds her pacifiers. It's her way of saying she's ready to get out of bed - if she's crying and keeps her pacifier it is often a message that she needs something else, like a diaper change. So clever.

On Monday afternoon she played a trick on me. I went in to her room to get her out of her crib following a nap, she reached out like normal and I took her pacifier. Her face then lit up with a laugh as her other hand popped out from behind her back and plopped a second pacifier in her mouth. Her eyes stayed wide, knowing the trick she'd played, as I laughed - partially in shock. She is so smart. I love seeing her grow up and learn new things.

Some other fun things Evette has learned recently:

• "All done!" - these were her first words, always said with her hands going up with palms upward. Often sounds more like "ah duh" but it's pretty consistent - said whenever she's done eating or sometimes when she's doing with a toy or game. She's been saying this for about a month now
• "Daddy"- her second word. More like "Dah" or "DaddAh" but I can tell when she means me and not just a word with a hard consonant at the beginning. Melts my heart. She started saying this about a week and a half ago.
• Walking backwards. This came out of nowhere, she just started doing it this week. She does this with her hands above her head and a huge cheesey grin to show how proud of herself she is. 
• Spinning. She sometimes mixes this in when she's showing off her backward walking skills. Her spin is more of walking in a circle, but you can tell what she's trying to do. 
• Pray/hungry. Whoops. Who knew saying a prayer before every meal would result in her thinking that every time she folds her arms she can expect food? Which naturally resulted in folded arms = hungry in her version of sign language. We're trying every way we can think of to reverse this understanding but nothing's catching yet.
• Clapping - She picked this one up a while ago - but probably later than she would have if Heidi or I ever clapped. 
• High five - She's also been doing this one for a while. She gets really excited when we say "yeah!" every time she gives the high five.
• Blowing kisses - She finally started blowing kisses about a week and a half ago. The funny part is she often blows kisses at people/cars/dogs/trains as they're heading away from her so few people actually see it.
• Waving - She's been doing this on and off for maybe a month now, but she's been doing it more frequently lately. Again, though, she often waves at people/inanimate objects as they head away from her, so its a rare sight for most people.
• Teh! - This one was a complete surprise. Last week I was pushing Evette on the swing and found out she finds it's hilarious if I blow my toungue at her right as she comes close to me (make the sound "Pleh!" and just imagine doing that quickly with extra spit). She immediately started imitating me and now we play this silly game where I nod my head quickly and say "Teh!" and she copies me a few times.
• Dancing. Either bobbing from side to side or head-banging, she loves dancing. Especially for her side-to-side dance her eyes light up and she gets the cutest smile...
• Throw away her own diaper. This morning when I finished changing her diaper as I got her out of bed, she rolled over, took the wrapped up dirty diaper and ran straight to the trash can in the kitchen, where she opened the lid and threw the diaper away. She started doing this just a few days ago and I find it pretty incredible. One downside: we've caught her trying to throw a couple of her toys away in the same manner...
• Giving kisses and hugs. She's gotten really good at giving kisses/hugs and it's just plain adorable. She gives them to her dolls, stuffed animals, nearby smaller babies, and to us sometimes as well. She likes to carry her dolls around, hugging them, patting them on the back, and giving them kisses - so sweet.
• Grunting, working hard noise. This one's pretty new - just a couple weeks old now. She grunts and her face goes red whenever she's physically trying hard at something - or at least wants to convey the message that she's trying hard (how much actual effort she's putting in is questionable...). This is usually associated with her trying to open her toy box or open drawers or something. We probably taught her this one as well while she's sitting on the toilet and we're trying to get her to go to the bathroom. 
• No! Thankfully she doesn't know how to say "no" yet, nor has she learned to shake her head. What she has learned, though, is the swing her arms back and forth and hit/knock away whatever is in front of her. That's her version of no. Thankfully, she's a champ eater and loves most foods so it's not often a problem.
• Head banging while walking. We haven't figured out why she does this, but sometimes when walking she'll start nodding her head, which given her head-to-body ratio, throws off her balance pretty dramatically. She's not falling over from this any more but it's pretty funny to see either way. 
• "I'm gonna get you!" She's understood the game of chase at least since she could crawl, and the phrase "I'm gonna get you!" has always been her trigger to start running and shrieking. Now that she can walk quickly (almost a run, I swear) it's even better. My favorite part though, is when I catch her,  and scoop her up in my arms. Her laugh at that moment is priceless.

 Pretty impressive huh? And some pictures to make your heart happy.

Gotta love bath time!

  

Reaching around for some kisses!

We like to read books together on my phone

Eating a Halloween oreo... yes, we are the best parents [Thanks Grandma, Laurie for the deliciousness]

Giving hugs to her friend Alice

 Library visits

Eating the free samples while grocery shopping at our favorite Central Market [notice the cookie smeared on her teddy bear, too....she was feeding some of it to her. Clever/Sweet baby.]

Six months with Oliver Wyman

Time flies. This was my last post, but I feel like that was yesterday. Then I think about all that's happened since then and I feel like it was a year ago. Crazy

The project I alluded to in that post, the one in San Francisco, kept me very very busy for five weeks. During the course of those weeks, I became Oliver Wyman's leading expert on water treatment chemicals and equipment used in power plants. Seriously. I also did some work understanding water treatment chemicals and equipment used for oil and natural gas pipelines, but as you might guess they don't use much so there wasn't really much to learn. That project in San Francisco was grueling: 7:30 AM to somewhere between 11 PM and 1 AM daily, with an additional 4-6 hours every Saturday. That said, I absolutely loved it. Much was demanded of me and I felt like I grew a lot to meet the demand. My team was fantastic - I loved my boss, Jessica, and the two other consultants on the team, Aaron and Abbie. We had a great time together. We also made sure to treat ourselves well by trying every highly rated restaurant we could get to - which, being in downtown San Francisco, did not leave us short of options. My personal favorites: La Mar, Don Pistos, Frog Hollow, 25 Lusk, and Kokkari. At Frog Hollow I learned that tofu can be good - I returned for the braised tofu sandwich a number of times and can't wait to get it again (soaked in oils and spices, so it's a long way away from the bland, mushy, white stuff I usually think of when I hear "tofu"). I loved that project and very much miss my team. I don't think I could have worked on such an intense project and survived without them.

My next project, which ended last week, was notably lighter. I worked in Houston and Dallas for three weeks on an internal project, helping my firm understand a particular market better. The team was just me and a manager, Alex, with whom I worked at my previous Houston-based project. The hours were pretty easy, and when I was working in Houston I'd commute in and out of the city with my Dad, so that was a great chance for us to catch up and chat a lot - especially about politics and tech. :-)

And now I'm "on the beach" - which means I'm not assigned to a client and am free to catch up on doctor's appointments, baby time, etc., which has been awesome. Not the doctor part - I haven't done that, but being home to play with the family has been awesome. I've loved it. Evette is definitely a daddy's girl and I'm just soaking it in.

So, now that I've been with Oliver Wyman for roughly six months (I joined May 21st), how do I feel? I love it. I love the people, I love the work, I love the diversity - and by that I mean both of project types and hours. I like that variability - comparing my ridiculously long hours in San Francisco to my unofficial vacation (still paid, don't worry) to my 9-5 work I just wrapped up. It keeps things interesting. Like I've said, the job is hard and I often have reason to beat myself up for silly mistakes, but I'm learning and I enjoy how quickly I see myself improving.

Heidi is enjoying it as well - she worked well with me being "on the road" while I was in San Francisco and she's been able to make a smooth transition to having me around the house this week. Perhaps most importantly, she knows I'm happy with my job. Evette is loving having me home. Last week, when I was still on that internal project, I was working from home and had to hole myself up in our guest bedroom to get some quiet, but Evette learned how to knock on the door and oh man... how could I possibly resist opening the door for that cute little sound? Like I said, definitely a Daddy's girl. She seems to do fine when I'm "out of sight, out of mind" though.

{Pigtails, Pumpkins, Poop}

What a great great weekend! It was General Conference weekend which meant staying home all weekend and listening to our modern day prophets. Amazing spiritual messages - more on that later.

On Saturday we had our friends Emily and Jared hang out with us while we enjoyed conference and some delicious food.
After the sessions we all went to a local church's pumpkin patch. They use the money for youth mission trips so we decided that was a worthy cause plus we needed some pumpkins.

 All of a sudden Dallas decided to get cold and Evette hardly has any winter clothes in her size so we made her this little cape out of her blanket  I think she's totally working it [work it work it work it yeah...]. [we're going shopping today for jackets/pants/warm PJs...]

Please notice those adorable little antenna pigtails atop that adorable head. This was the first day she's worn pigtails. Amazing. I cannot get over how sweet they are. This is going to happen on a regular basis.

 She was a big fan of the pumpkins. She had a great time running around and checking all of them out.

Evette with her favorite Miss Emily

We came home with 4 awesome pumpkins. Now I need to start sketching out my jack'o'lantern ideas.....

Sunday was also a day of firsts for us. For Evette's birthday she got a potty seat so we could start on the potty training. I know it's pretty early but I figure we might as well start now and see how it goes. Practicing couldn't hurt anything could it? No. So this last week we've practiced sitting on it and reading books. She's been great. On Sunday while watching conference and playing with her blocks I could tell she was working on going to the bathroom so we rushed off to the potty and made it! Hooray!!! Later that day it happened again! Woot woot! Twice in one day! Amazing. Great start to potty training.