Obsessed with pictures

It's not a surprise to anyone that it took us a few years to get pregnant with Evan. And I know that, for us, it's no guarantee that we'll be able to have another baby. As a result, I'm obsessed with getting pictures of Evan at every age as I never want to forget him at this size. So, right now, we are frequent customers at Picture People. Our neighbors have a wall in their house of pictures of their children from 3, 6, 9 & 12 months and I would like to do the same. Evan is Mr. Photogenic so we usually end up with too many good shots. But that's not a bad problem to have . . . though it does end up costing us :)

For Christmas, we pooled all of our gifts to buy a very nice digital SLR camera. I hope to be able to take my own great pictures of Evan in the near future and I've even signed myself up for a basic photography class this spring. Of course, in order to take that class, you have to actually know HOW to use the camera. So Brian and I will be starting to tackle that this weekend. In the meantime, we'll have to rely on Picture People to do it for us.

Let the crawling begin . . .

Evan crawled last night (February 22, 2011) for the first time at 9 months old. He was too shy to do it on camera, though. But we were able to catch it tonight! He only crawls when there is a "carrot" dangling in front of him (i.e. - the remote control in this video). I'm sure it'll be no time before he is all over the place. I think these are truly our last few days without having to baby-proof!

Future NBA Star

Looks like the steroids are helping to improve Evan's athletic ability! Not only did he crawl for the first time last night, but he also learned how to dunk a basketball. We hope to catch the crawling on video soon but here he is showing off the skills that his father taught him while I was caught at work late last night.

First trip to the ER . . .

I hear that having a little boy will mean many trips to the Emergency Room. Our first trip to the ER with Evan resulted in 2 long days and one very long night at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, NJ. In the last 3 months, Evan has had two allergic reactions. The first one happened after Evan's 6-month vaccines. It resulted in two trips to the pediatrician, a trip to the allergist and a trip to a rheumatologist. Because he had received 5 vaccines in one day, there was no way to determine which shot was the culprit. So we now have to see the allergist to get each vaccine in the future.


The most recent event was likely due to amoxicillin. Evan developed a rash on Thursday morning (2/17/11), six days after starting the antibiotic for an ear infection. We took him to the doctor, who said it was an allergic reaction and told us to stop the amoxillin. Two days later, we were in NJ visiting my family when Evan was getting much worse. His entire body looked like one big hive, he was not getting better with benadryl and he was in complete misery. This picture was taken a few hours before going to the hospital . . . it got worse from here.



We took him to the ER and he was seen immediately. Getting the IV was really tough - they couldn't find a vein on his very swollen body. I had to pin him down while he screamed for what seemed like an hour (which was probably 10 minutes) before they could find a vein in his foot instead. The ER doctor was great and told us he needed IV steroids, IV benadryl and needed to be observed due to some unusual blood test results. We were moved to pediatric ICU (though Evan was technically not an ICU patient) and we were quickly reminded how lucky we were to just be there for an allergic reaction.


These pictures below are two taken in the ER about an hour or so after Evan's drugs started kicking in. The picture on the left shows how he had almost NO clear skin on his legs. All of his legs were some shade of pink. The wrist and hand were also swollen, which was one of the main reasons I was freaked out enough to take him to the ER in the first place. The picture of his back is actually to show the best part of his body from this event. It was pretty crazy to think this was the best part of his body.




















After being told mid-day on Sunday that we'd have to spend a 2nd night, the doctor changed her mind at 6:00 PM and we were released by 7:00 PM. I was so happy to be going home. A trip to the pediatrician today confirmed that we need to see the allergist again (no surprise there). Evan hasn't returned to his normal, happy self just yet. Supposedly one of the side effects of the steroid is irritability and, after spending President's Day alone with him, I can declare that yes, he is having that side effect . . . despite how he is looking in this picture. And isn't that little hospital gown just the cutest? :)

Filling in History

I keep holding off from blogging because I want to try to play "catch up". I am going to use this blog to document our family's life and I want to start from the beginning. But given that Brian & I met almost 12 years ago now, it seems crazy that we could attempt to document our life together. So, as time goes on, I may try to post some pictures/anecdotes from the past. For now, I'll give the short summary. Brian and I met at Lehigh University in my senior year and his junior year. He likes to remind me on a daily basis that I am "significantly older" than him (as in, 9 very long months older than him). We had our first date on March 30, 1999. We rented the movie "Six Days, Seven Nights" and watched it together. Brian graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering while I graduated with an undergraduate degree in Mathematics and a graduate degree in Economics. We dated for 2.5 years before getting engaged on November 8, 2001 and were engaged for 1.5 years before getting married at Lehigh on May 24, 2003. Here are a few pictures from our early years together. When I think back to the idea that we got married when we were 26 & 25 years old, it seems crazy to me - we were so young. At the same time, I love that we have known each other for so long and have these pictures together from our college years. We have had years of adventures together and I hope to scan more pictures from the past and post them over time. We've been together since before the days of digital pictures, so there is a lot of scanning to be done!

First time blogging!

I'm going to give this blogging thing a try as I try to document my family's adventures over the years. This picture pretty much sums up how we like to live our life. More to come in the future.