Evelyn the Tyrant

Evelyn is 17.5 months old now and OH, don’t we know about it. She has WANTS and NEEDS and LOUD OPINIONS that frequently see her throwing herself to the floor to screech about the unfairness of it all.

Last night, Amy curled up on my lap for a snuggle while I read a book. Evelyn noticed, and looking determined, she climbed on top of her sister. Using feet and elbows, she wedged herself between us, screeching at Amy the whole time.

WOE to anyone who dares touch me. Evelyn will be there, pushing them away.

It’s both cute, and frustrating. Usually we just pull her into the middle of whatever cuddle we’re having until she fights free.

This morning Isaac was playing Minecraft on the computer. Evelyn climbed up onto the chair with him, and carefully, using her feet, began pushing him off the chair. Isaac, being a decent big brother, went and got a second chair for himself. Eve crawled onto that one as well and kicked him off.

At which point I intervened and took her away, but OPINIONS and NEEDS and WANTS.

She’s full on, exhausting. If I sit down at my computer, she pouts. If I keep working, she turns the computer off. I moved to a new desk to make the computer tower higher, out of reach. She gets a step stool. If I switch to the laptop, she shouts and pushes the lid closed.

Needless to say, I haven’t been on the computer much at all.

Eve’s eating has picked up a little bit. I’m hesitant to hope too much, as her eating has always been peaks and troughs, but for now she’s eating. I mostly weaned her too. She’s having a breastfeed at 4am, but isn’t interested during the day. And HALLELUJAH she’s taking a bottle of pediasure before sleep now.

We’re working on finding new things that she’ll happily eat. She likes well seasoned food, preferring curry to plainer foods, which is nice. It’s nice to have one child who likes curry – the older two mostly just eat the rice.

But she isn’t talking yet.

I hesitate to say she isn’t talking “at all”, because when pressured, she will say Mumum, Da-da and something that sounds close to “MeeMee” which I assume is Amy. But she’s mostly a silent child, using various inflections of screech to communicate. She wasn’t a babbly baby, and she still isn’t now. It’s strange for me, even at the peak of Isaac’s ASD regression, he still had around 10 words.

Our speech pathologist is a bit concerned, because it’s clear Eve understands well.

But it’s another wait and see thing. In the meantime, I think I’d best start learning some simple sign language to teach her. It might curb the angry frustration we’re seeing a lot of.

And that’s it from me. School holidays have left me with hardly any free time. Three children mean it’s rare that someone isn’t speaking to me, climbing on me, or needing me immediately for something. School is back in another three weeks. Isaac turns five on Saturday.

Life is good. Busy, chaotic, exhausting – but good.