Evan's Second Thanksgiving!

Since Evan made his arrival last Thanksgiving day, here are some pictures from his SECOND Thanksgiving. 

Giving Mommy big smiles in his Turkey PJ's.  After all, when you are born on Thanksgiving, you must be a turkey!

Daddy made Evan these really cool head gears for the special holiday.  Here is our little dude as a pilgrim. 

And our little Indian. 

Pilgrims ate cheese puffs at the first Thanksgiving, right???

And everyone ends their Thanksgiving meal with a pickle, right???

After his Thanksgiving meal and a nap, he's ready to watch some football and play!

My First Birthday Party

Mommy and Daddy hosted my first birthday party in my backyard on Saturday afternoon.   We had a lot of people come celebrate.  I'm not sure if it was a celebration of me turning one or of Mommy and Daddy surviving the first year!

Here I am with my cake. 

OK I'm really not sure about this.  It is sticking to my hands.

I managed to get it all over my face and really close to my eye.

OK I'm done.  I'm not a fan of cake. 

Better now. I've got Goldfish and veggies.  Who would have ever thought?  Maybe they make a giant Goldfish cake?

I'm actually pretty good at opening presents. 

Here we go....

Exploring and Playing

Evan has definitely taken to crawling quite fast and quite well.  I would say we went from army crawler to expert crawler in about 10 days.  I guess with Evan, if he's late doing something it probably just means when he does start to do it, he's going to be superb at it. 

 OK don't show this one to CPS...another thing we've figured out is that as soon as you encourage him not to do something, he is much more likely to want to do it.

He can put these suckers all down in about 10 seconds.  He can manage to get 2 of them up on a routine basis.  Still working on those fine motor skills for the other 3. 

Awww...ready for bed.

Another awwww...resting with Grandpa Max.  Grandma Candi and Grandpa Max came to spend the first weekend of November with Evan.

This book has been in the must read (and chew!) every day rotation for about 6 months now.

Grandma and Grandpa bought him these super cool instruments in Maine.  He LOVES them. They are pretty awesome!

One of his latest tricks is to get on his knees and put all of his body weight into pulling down the drill lever on his workbench. 

And he's off...he's started to follow us into different rooms and as you can see, we've moved the coffee table out of his way.  I figure we'll have fewer tears that way.

If there are any crumbs on this rug by the sink, he'll pick them off the rug and put them in his mouth.  Yummo!

The sheer joy on both of their faces in this one can't be beat.  They are doing a sprint in the house.

Pickles!

One Friday when Evan and I met Brian for lunch out, we discovered that Evan loves pickles.  He makes the funniest faces.  So pickles and lemons are added to the list for after dinner treats!

Halloween

Evan was not in the best of spirits on his first Halloween.  He had super bad allergies that two weeks later became his first ear infection.  He still managed to charm everyone in his little pumpkin costume.

My sad sad pumpkin with Ju-Ju.

OK Mom...I've had enough...and I am NOT going to smile. 

Sweet, Ju-Ju got out the egg poachers.  I can make a lot of noise with these things!  Eventually I broke down and we had to get home and get a bath pronto!

3 Firsts and a Second

Over the past week, Evan has had three new firsts and a second.

He got his second bottom tooth.  So really, all he does want for Christmas are his two front teeth (on top!).

He had his first ear infection.  He hasn't been feeling well since Halloween.  His allergies were going crazy.  A last minute trip to the doctor before they closed on Tuesday revealed he had an ear infection.  After a week and a half, his allergies found a place to land.  Poor baby!  He's fine now and his allergies have cleared up.  Still 5 more days of antibiotics to go, but we survived.  Dr. Arquisola said that we were extremely lucky to have made it this long without an ear infection, especially since I had them constantly from 6 months until I got tubes when I was 2 years old.

He had his first little fit for not getting something that he wanted.  Since Brian had Thursday off for Veteran's Day, Evan and Brian had an "Evan Day".  Evan learned how to turn on the PlayStation.  And he kept doing it and doing it.  Finally on Thursday night, I grabbed him off the floor just as he was reaching for it and he started crying.  It didn't last long, but it was still a first.  Needless to say, the PlayStation has found a new, more elevated location on the TV stand.

He put a car down his car ramp for the first time.  This might not seem like anything big to anyone but Brian and me, but we said about 2 months ago that it would be a milestone the first time he did that.  And today he did! 

I'll post new pictures tomorrow.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from our Little Pumpkin Evan.  Thanks Grandma Candi for making the wonderful costume!  Evan wore the costume at Ms Irene's on Friday and he'll get to wear it again tonight to greet our trick or treaters...at least until bed time.

Just one more funny shot.  Evan is definitely not a fan of pumpkins and hay!

11 Months!

Evan turned 11 months this week.  Unbelievable.  He also hit a major milestone of crawling on his hands and knees.  He's been rolling around to get where he wanted to be for a few months now, started to army crawl last week and is now officially crawling.  He's a little bit of a late crawler, but from what I've read, late crawlers have unusually developed fine motor skills, which he definitely does have.  So, the game has changed and even though he isn't a super crawler yet, Brian and I just know that our lives are about to get more interesting. 

So what is Evan like at 11 months?  Still absolutely the cutest and sweetest baby around.  He loves his routine, loves going to day care at Ms. Irene's, loves books (he can actually lift the peek-a-boo flaps in books now, so those are definitely his favorites!), loves everything he eats (his favorite is still cheese for sure).  He's gotten pretty good at the sippy cup, which should make the transition from the bottle much easier.  He's not really a fan of the bottle anyway, so we're sure it should be pretty painless.  He loves to play with his car ramp and loves to people watch.  He has one tooth and we think another is just about to pop in (he's been fussy and running a low grade fever today).  He's starting to realize when to clap socially and is actually really good at making noise when he claps his little hands together.  He loves to dance and still loves The Carpenters (we've recently introduced The Rainbow Connection to the play list and that's his new favorite). 

It is just so much fun to watch him every day.  11 months ago our lives changed forever...but in the best way possible!

Weight Lifting, Lemons and Crawling

Evan has had a busy week.  He kicked it off by weight lifting while sucking his fingers.  Amazing!

Evan loves lemon.  He makes the funniest faces but still goes back for more...

He's officially crawling.  He was a roller for a couple of months and then an army crawler for only one week.  Watch out because here he comes!  The only thing he's really found so far besides his toys and the remote is the computer box.  I'm sure this calmness won't last long!

Evan Crawling Video