I just had to share this. Evan got these tub crayons for Christmas and the first few times I showed him what to do, he didn’t really get it. But this time he did! And so here is his artistic debut in the world… WOO HOO!! I am so proud! (wiping away a little tear) 
I even made Mike come up the stairs to see him coloring for the first time… I don’t think he was nearly as excited as he should’ve been. Pppbbbbtttt! 
I did not expect to be up at the same time
this year as I was last year…right around 5:50am! That was when Evan finally decided to join us in the outside world (after 32 hours of trying to stay in!). This year I am up b/c Evan had a fever last night and so Mommy is on high-alert status. He made a very small sound at 5:30am on the monitor, which is behind a closed door with the volume turned up only slightly higher than normal, and b/c of my high-alert status…I’m insta-up. That’s ok…I thought it was kind of neat to lay in bed as the time ticked closer to the actual moment I became a Mommy and Evan changed our world forever. That is such a cliche thing to say I know, but is there really any other way to describe what happens when you go from your regular everyday self you’ve known your whole life to this new person? Sides of me came out in those first few weeks of Evan’s life I never knew existed. It is such a crazy time. I have two friends going through that time right now and reminding me just how emotional it can be.
Reflecting on this year (wondering if this will now become my new New Year’s Day…until the next one comes along)… it has been both warp-speed fast and agonizingly slow. Every age of Evan, like any baby, has had both its challenges and its sheer joys. I’ve never been so happy and in love with my family and so exhaustingly tired at the same time. If Evan slept well at night, which he still doesn’t, I think he would probably be too perfect. I think all babies have to come with some challenges just so you can learn what true, unconditional love really is. I think they also come with challenges so you finally realize just how much of a pain you were at multiple points in your life so you can finally thank your parents properly… thank you mom and dad!!
Evan, despite his sleep issues, is an easy baby. So easy, that the next one is probably going to sleep like a rock and be a complete terror. Let’s hope not, but it seems to work out that way sometimes. 
Anyway, I have had so much fun watching Evan’s little personality emerge. I remember being caught completely off guard one day when he was only a few weeks old. He had just had a bath and I was drying him off, when he looked up at me with this little glint in his eye and just grinned from ear to ear. And I don’t care what anyone says about how old they are supposed to be the first time they smile…this was a REAL smile, meant just for me, and that was the beginning of our happy go lucky little guy! By two months he was cheesing for the camera and I have a ridiculous number of photos to prove it! By the way, I know all of you already know we have a ludicrous number of pictures to prove every moment of the past year, and I will take the time now to publicly apologize for our blatant new-parent photo-taking and sharing mania. I’m sorry!! Just ignore us if we get too annoying. I will have to say though that I think all of my friends babies are just as adorable and I always look at every single picture they take with delight, so maybe it’s just a mommy thing and I’m only annoying my single and dual-income-no-kids friends.
But getting back to Mr. Social… I know I am lucky because yours-truly, Mommy Social, would not have survived the first year of SAHM-ness without being able to drag him all over the place to meet new friends and participate in all manner of activities. But I don’t think “drag” is really the right word. The older Evan gets, the more apparent it becomes, that the more days we have to stay at home by ourselves, the crabbier we both get. So many babies thrive on routine, but for Evan, variety is elixir of life. This in itself can be a challenge for me as I constantly need to come up with different things for him to eat and do to avoid the crankies…but given the alternative, and my own personality and need for creativity, I am extremely grateful.
Evan the baby is leaving us for Evan the toddler. Just writing that sentence creates all kinds of emotion in me…happy, sad, proud, amazed. I love you Evan! Happy Birthday!
BTW, in case you missed it and are interested, here’s a link to E’s birth story!
I haven’t posted here in so long! Didn’t even do a post on New York (except for captioning photos posted on facebook… does that count?). But guess what?! Yesterday was my birthday and Mike got me one of those teeney internet notebooks with our reward points from our credit card!! Sweet! Free laptop! I can no longer say that reward points don’t count, I guess you really can get good stuff with them! Anyway, now that I have one, I can utilize some of Evan’s independent playtime to write! Which is great because I really need Evan’s naptime for doing household stuff and want evening down time to hang out with Mike or work on my projects! We have one small room in our house that is really babyproofed so I can watch Evan easily and write at the same time. Woo hoo! Right now he is eating cheerios and clobbering his wobbly penguin toy. We’ll see how long it takes before he wonders what I’m up to and comes to check this thing out. I know I’ll have to be careful not to let him see the screen. Lol. I also know that this is probably a short-lived treat since it won’t be long before he starts climbing up on the couch. For now though it’ll be great!
So what has Evan been up to? Evan is 10 1/2 months, 21 some odd pounds, has four teeth with two more on the way and is a total comedian. He is such a little social butterfly taking such delight in other people and kids. Whenever we go anywhere, the more people the better, he’s in heaven. And if there’s music to boot, watch out! Do we have a superstar in the making? Cool. He can support us when we’re older! My most recent amazement is with his new mimicking skills… show him how to put the man in the car, and he’s on it. Show him how to roll the ball down the slide, put the shape in the box, whatever he always tries to do it. He’s starting to copy faces and sounds we make too. He can say “Dad” with a heavy emphasis on the last “d” so it sounds like “Da-DUH.” He has lots of conversations with himself using only variations of this word. We think he knows it also means Dad. He says “Muh-muh-muh” too on occasion, usually when he’s upset. His favorite toy is his laugh and learn kitchen which he plays with everyday…especially changing the channels on the radio. Other favorites are a 99cent pinwheel and balls of all shapes and sizes (anything that rolls really). He dribbles rolling objects around the room many times a day (soccer star p’haps?).
So what have I been up to? My latest project, which has really been about 6 years in the making, has finally been started! As a birthday present to myself, I opened an etsy.com store to sell my artwork and homemade crafts! YAY!! I am so excited about this… it has been a dream forever, and I’m hoping I can build it up slowly so that by the time Evan starts school, I can work from home. Right now I only have one item for sale, but it’s a start right! More to come soon. Here’s the store website: Maker of the House Creations. I also started another blog to match the store for moms… mainly geared for stay-at-home-moms, but other moms may find it useful as well. I started it as a place to keep track of what I’ve learned about being a SAHM, housekeeping, crafting and raising kiddos. Mostly stuff that Home Ec taught our moms, but that we are having to learn on the fly! I’m keeping it a little more businessy and this one more personal, for friends and family. Let me know what you think! Here is that site: Maker of the House.
What has Mike been up to? How about being a great husband to start with. I’ll take this opp to publicly thank him for helping me get my business blog and store up and running and backing me up with “you can do its!” He is just great. I am so lucky. I’m also so in love with the fact that he loves to cook! Lately, he’s gotten re-interested in trying out new recipes on the weekend and usually ends up making two or three things that last us through several lunches and dinners during the week. Gina gave him a cookbook that he loves and I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes through it cover to cover eventually. He’s also asked for COOKING CLASSES for Xmas!! Ok, so how AWESOME is that for ME??! Yes, I don’t know how I got so lucky. He’s also a great Dad, and I’m sick of Evan going around saying “Da-duh, Da-DUH, DA-duh” ALL day. sigh.
That about sums it up for us right now. I’ll try to write shorter posts, more often now. We’ll see how it goes. Thanks for reading!
My how the time flies. I can’t believe that Evan is 10 months old. We had planned on taking him to a pumpkin patch today but he has a cold. Jess and I didn’t want to keep him outside in the cold weather all day so we’re staying at home where it is nice and warm and Evan can recover. Here is a quick video of Evan’s crawling and walking progress. He’s figured out how to crawl up stairs and is taking assisted baby steps. Hope you enjoy.
Just a quick update on Evan and medicine for colds (oh jeez, the landscapers are REALLY loud outside! please don’t wake Evan!! Grrrrr…). So Evan’s pedi said absolutely NO on benadryl for a cold, even though he already prescribed it to Evan for hives once before. He made it sound like if I gave it to him, Evan would croak and that it doesn’t work anyway. It really scared me. But at my family’s insistence, I contacted Evan’s ENT, who put in his ear tubes and saw him last week when the cold from hell started. I got a call from his nurse yesterday morning….”Definitely give him benadryl!! We don’t want him suffering when he’s trying to recover from surgery!” GAH! So, are you sure? “Yes he has five kids himself, he understands who Evan is…how old he is…all the stuff about cold meds…blah blah blah.” WHOOPEEE! Yay! So the night before last, when he woke up in the middle of the night, I gave him less than the full dose for his weight and w/in 45mins he was breathing easier and slept the rest of the night!! Of course I didn’t b/c I was so worried even still! Last night he didn’t wake up, so didn’t need any meds, and even slept 12 1/2 hours straight (he did wake up but was able to go back to sleep)!! So I think we are on the downward slope with this cold thank goodness! And with less than a week to go before our California trip! Hopefully he will start sleeping better now that his tubes are in and we don’t have to worry about constant ear pain!
Speaking of California…if you are wondering…we are going to visit Catalina Island and go to a staff reunion at the kid’s marine science camp I used to work at. You can check it out here: CIMI. This place, the job I did there, the kids I worked for, and the people I worked with all add up to one of the most memorable and wonderful times of my life! It is truly my favorite place on Earth. I CANNOT WAIT to see some of my friends from there since a lot of them are going and more than anything share this place that I talk about all the time with Mike. It really is something he needs to experience to fully know me and I can’t wait to show it to him! Hopefully we can get one of the current instructors to do some babysitting for us so I can go diving with Mike and show him the kelp forests…the best place underwater there is! We are also going to stay on the island in Avalon for two nights after the reunion so he can see the town and maybe the dive park there too. To top it off, we’ll get to see one of my best friend’s Kat, who is driving down from Las Vegas to meet us in L.A. the day before we leave for Catalina…what a great trip! So exciting!
Well I hear babbling from the room next door, so I better go
So Evan’s worst trouble (besides the reflux that lasted about 5 1/2 months) has been ear infections, starting at 6 months, he’s had two doubles and two singles, nearly back to back. So we had about 1/2 a month of good sleeping! I know….yadda yadda yadda, it could be a lot worse! Definitely I know that, and am profoundly grateful for a happy-and-healthy-during-the-day Evan (seriously, he’s like Jekyll-Hyde Junior)! Anyway, the docs all convinced us to go ahead and get ear tubes now since he’s had such trouble over the summer, and it’s only going to get worse when fall rolls around. Also b/c we’ll be flying to California soon. The actual colds that caused the ear infections haven’t been too bad, up until this monster set up camp. Poor Evan has spent the last three nights yelling for 2-3 hours at a time (all while being walked/rocked etc.) until finally, he is so exhausted he goes back to sleep and sleeps through his snorting and coughing. He is really miserable 
The worst problem seems to be a cough which he didn’t have the other times he’s been sick. Now I think I have a very small taste of what it must be like to have a colicky baby and boy those parents have it so rough…they should all win medals for survival and patience!
We went to the doctor hoping for a prescription since the nurse said if it was keeping him awake, then we should come in. I thought that meant “yes, we can help you.” Umm, no. More like a well spent $25 copay having the doctor say, “yep it’s a cold alright…have fun.” Great. Spanks a lot. Luckily, going to the doc wasn’t a total loss. We did find out that two days after Evan got his tubes in, his double ear infection is finito! So yay for that or we’d really be in trouble right now.
So yes its true…all the research I did online looking for cold remedies for babies and finding that there are none (now) was confirmed by the pediatrician who said he didn’t have any prescription remedies either. How abSURD is it, that the part of our population that has the most trouble with colds has no medical relief whatsoever?! Apparently that is thanks to a few parents who misused what drugs were out there so none of us can use them (at least that’s one thing I read, the other is that the drugs simply don’t work on infants – but I think that is what they decided to tell people to keep them from trying it). Wonderful.
Anyway, I asked for help from friends on facebook and got the usual suggestions, all of which were helpful (thanks for that) and mostly already tried. My sister and sis-n-law both said we should get a prescription. So is my doc just conservative or what? Anyone else got help from their pedi’s recently for a cold? Just wondering if there really is stuff out there, but he just wants us to suffer for some odd reason? All I know is that when I have a cold, all I want to do is sleep and take medicine. If there wasn’t any medicine, and I couldn’t sleep, I’d be screaming in someone’s ear too.
We arrived at the hospital at 6am and got checked on without any issues. Evan was up at 4am this morning but is taking a nap now. Won’t be long until we get started. Will update soon.
7:40am
Evan is in the operating room now. Everyone has been really friendly and very reassuring about our MH concerns. In fact, Evan was scheduled as the first procedure of the day so all the machines were clean and free of any possibly problem drugs for MH.
8:50am
Evan’s procedure was successful and without any complications. It only took about 15 minutes with another 5 minutes or so for observation. He returned about 7:50am. Dr. Sutton said Evan had another double ear infection and he drained all the fluid out before putting the tubes in. I really hope the tubes work so he doesn’t get infections nearly as often (4 in 3 months). Evan has been doing great through the entire process. He is trying to sleep between temp and bp checks.
Jess and Evan waiting in the pre-op room.
Evan turned 8 months old yesterday! And since he woke me up a little later than usual this morning, I couldn’t go back to sleep… so I have a chance to sip some Italian sweet cream choked coffee and record our adventures for his 8 month anniversary. Yesterday I had one of those spontaneous moments that make being a mom so satisfying (uh oh…stirrings from the nursery, may have to finish this later).
Well, so much for that idea. Evan woke up for the day, so I had to delay. Now he is down for a morning nap and I’m writing instead of doing chores. So back to our adventure. Right around Evan’s naptime we had a cloudburst come through with a heavy downpour. And since playing in the rain is one of my favorite lifelong pastimes, I thought I’d postpone naptime and take the opportunity to introduce Evan to some real rain. Up until now he’d only gotten a few drops here and there on the way to the car, but nothing like this. We looked through the windows at the different world outside, then opened up the doors and our umbrella and went out into the yard and driveway. The rain beat heavy on the umbrella, like when you’re cozy in a camping tent, filling our ears with a new sound for Evan. The street was flooded and a river appeared at the foot of the driveway. The street came alive with silvery raindrops bouncing and ricocheting everywhere. Thunder boomed in the distance. Evan helped me hold the umbrella. Looking at his wide eyes, craning his neck to see all there was to see made me really pay attention to all the details, imagining what it must be like to experience that moment for the first time! WoW! How neat! After several turns to walk up the street, changing our minds with every thunderclap, I wasn’t ready to just end the experience. The rain was still pouring down; we were having too much fun…at least I was…Evan was pretty much in awe. Finally I thought to borrow the neighbors covered porch so we could hang out a little longer. I plopped Evan down in the middle of the brick porch to see what he would do. First thing he wanted to do was play with the umbrella. Push on the handle, see how it rolled around. Then, I called his attention to the puddles gathering at the edge of the porch on the brick. He figured out how to get himself over there and to my surprise crawled out right into the thick of reflecting raindrops! He patted the puddles, got his knees wet and let the rain roll down his face. Already a spirited adventurer! That’s my boy! : )
Pretty soon I knew we’d need to go in or he would have a meltdown when naptime finally came to call. So we went in and had a bath. By the time he got dry, dressed and had his bottle, Evan became a limp little scarecrow in my arms, head and arms lolling everywhere, dead asleep! What an adventure to dream about!
That was great! This was exactly the sort of thing I always looked forward to about being a mom. Being able to teach my kids how to enjoy the world’s great shows. Nurturing a spirit of adventure in Evan that will carry him into adulthood and help him seize every opportunity to experience Life’s gifts… and most importantly, how to turn his face into the rain with a grin. I can’t wait for rubber boot puddle stomping!
Evan has reached another milestone this week. He is starting to crawl. We are so excited. Here is a quick clip of his first attempts at crawling.
Here are a few recent pictures of Evan we took the other night before getting him ready for bed.
