Mother's Day

What a day.

First, Evie June slept in a bit--6:30--giving me an unexpected Mother's Day gift. The fun continued after I returned from my run to find a bouquet of flowers containing blooms selected from our front jungle. Jimmy swears that Evie picked them herself, pointing at each and exclaiming "Dat!" I don't doubt his story, but I'm pretty sure if he put in everything she pointed out, the vase would also contain some rocks, the neighbor's cat, and one of our cars.

I was also presented with a homemade card--the product of Evie June's first experience with crayons. I never cared before that crayons were non-toxic or washable, but after seeing the teeth marks in them, I realize my gratitude means I'm really a mom now.

After breakfast and church, we headed home for a quick lunch and another dose of tylenol to dull the pain from the 19 teeth Evie June is cutting at once. We gave our daughter some too. Then we hopped in the car to celebrate another great happening: Gotcha Day. Many of our long time readers will recall that Evie's finalization day was a big deal for us last year, and we hoped to celebrate the event in a small family way for years to come. We've been anticipating the 12th of May for some time, and made plans to take Evie to the aquarium in Seattle. No matter that her teeth have been making us all crazy for the last few weeks. Gotcha Day waits for no one.

Oddly enough, we didn't wait for it very well ourselves.

AFTER we'd called our moms during the hourlong drive to wish them the best of the day . . . AFTER we'd paid $15 for parking, $25 for admission, and wrestled our waterbaby away from the open top river otter exhibit that she kept trying to climb into . . .

. . . AFTER we'd settled down halfway through for a snack where Evie decided to show off her Janet-Jackson-Rythym-Nation knee walking routine that ended in her doing a faceplant and getting a little bit of a bloody nose . . .


AFTER we missed the octopus feeding . . . we got a phone call.

JImmy's mom: "Does Evie have two Gotcha days?"

Me: ???

Jimmy's mom: "Because I was just looking back on the blog and her adoption was finalized on June 12th."

Me: (Whimpering sounds)

Yeah.

So just this year, Gotcha Day came early. Once we decided that our mistake did not mean we needed to repeat today's misadventures one month later, we did our best to enjoy the rest of the afternoon. Here are a few highlights.

Evie loved the fur seals. Especially when they burped.


And she couldn't get enough of the underwater view. There was a lot of pointing, reapeated exclamation of "Dat!", and constant testing of the glass to try and find a way inside to swim with them.


She even tried to crawl through the chain link to get a closer look at the harbor seals.


She enjoyed talking to the fishies . . .


. . . and high-fiving the star fish.


And even though she's a lot smaller than a six-gill shark, we're pretty sure her bite is worse than his right now.


Whaling. Or Wailing. Or, "Thar she blows!" You pick.


At the end of the day, she did pick out a new friend in the gift shop--a harbor seal pup--to remember the occasion of her almost-second Gotcha day. She named him something like "Glarpgargarhrrrup." I'm not certain, but I think when roughly translated using our local native dialects as a guide, the name she christened him with means "Teething sucks and my parents got hosed today."

We'll be picking out a suitable old-man name soon so he can join Al, George and Howard for league night. We're open to suggestions, so if you have ideas, leave them in the comments.
Happy Mother's Day,
Jen