Tuesday, December 13, 2011

O Christmas Tree

Our Christmas tradition has always been to have 2 Christmas trees - a fake one in the living room and a real one in the tv room. However, when we took out our fake tree this year, it didn't work anymore. So we decided to invest this year's tree money into a 9-foot tall fake tree for our living room. We are foregoing the real tree for this year only as it seemed that it might be easier to keep Evan away from one of the trees if it wasn't in the room we spend all of our time in. So our new 9-foot tree looks great in the living room. Here it is all decorated:There is a mixture of all kinds of ornaments on our tree - new and old. Brian takes great pride in his tree and especially loves all of his glass ornaments:This is an ornament taken from my tree growing up. When my parents didn't have much to hang on their tree, they took my old mobile and made ornaments out of the mobile parts. This one hangs in the back of the tree according to Brian's "law" but it's still a special one:


We have ornaments from all sorts of milestones. First below is our first Christmas after we got married:
And of course our first Christmas with Evan. Since we got these ornaments as gifts last year, they had not hung on the tree yet. When we unpacked them all, we realized we have SIX "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments. I'm hoping Baby #2 ends up with at least one :)We also collect onraments whenever we go away, that way we can chat about old trips when we decorate our tree. Here is one from our honeymoon:



And there are tons of these icicles on our tree (thanks to Brian's family for providing). This year, all of the icicles are towards the top for obvious reasons.
Two love birds:
And our last addition to this year's tree was an early gift from Santa for Evan - a "choo choo" for under the tree. Every night he will sit and watch it go around for a little bit. He is really into trains right now!
We are really looking forward to Christmas this year!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

The first . . .and probably not the last

Broken bone :(


On Saturday, December 3rd we were spending the day in NJ before heading to a family Christmas party. I decided to visit my good friend Rachel and her daughter Lucy, who his only 6 days younger than Evan. We headed to the neighborhood school to play on the playground. It was a "big kids" playground so I couldn't let Evan climb up alone because there were areas where he could have just stepped off the platform and fallen down. So I climbed up with him to the slide. My options were to (1) send Evan alone down the slide, which he was surely to fly off of at the end or (2) Sit with him in my lap. Of course I chose the safe option (#2), which ended up being not quite so safe. Going down the curved slide, Evan's sneaker got stuck on the plastic of the slide and his leg got yanked behind him. He cried for about 10 minutes and then wouldn't leave my lap to continue to play. Normally when he gets hurt, he cries for 30 seconds is off and running again. When I tried to put him down, he would just say "no" and stand like a flamingo on one leg. We quickly left the playground and headed home to Brian, who cautioned me on over-reacting and said we should continue with our day and re-evaluate in the morning.


We drove back home that night after the Christmas party and Evan woke up in no better shape (though he did, shockingly, sleep through the night). We headed to the ER at Dupont Childrens' Hospital on Sunday morning, where Evan was taken great care of. I'm not sure we'll ever take Evan to Chester County hospital, despite it being 1 mile away from home. Dupont had a tv in every ER with a choice of movies to watch. When you are there for 3.5 hours, this was crucial. And they are so great dealing with kids - it's just what they do.


After seeing an ER doctor, they figured he probably had a "toddler's fracture", which doesn't immediately show up on Xray. They gave us a walking boot for Evan and said he needed to see an orthopedist the following day for a definitive diagnosis. Here is in his ER room right after the boot got put on:

The next day, we headed to the orthopedist at Dupont. He took one look and feel of Evan's leg and confirmed the toddler fracture (officially known as a torus fracture of his tibia) and could even pinpoint where the fracture was along his shin. Our little man is now in a walking boot for 3 weeks before he goes back to get re-evaluated. We sent him off to daycare on Tuesday unable to put any weight on his foot and, by the end of Wednesday, he is now starting to walk on it. It's an awkward and cautious walk, but what progress in 4 days! Here he is tonight walking around on it. And no, Evan does not have a second job as a painter. This is what happens when he paints at daycare:As of today, it's not really impeding his ability to shoot baskets either:And this is a random picture to throw in, but our perfect sleeper has not been affected one bit by these events. In this picture, he is sleeping with the boot on and is sleeping better than ever. I had to capture this photo the other night while he was dead asleep because he likes to put his "lovey" over his head when he sleeps. It's just one of those cute things I wanted to document.Hopefully our little trooper will continue to make a speedy recovery!

Vernon Christmas Party

This is our second annual trip up to Vernon, NJ. It's 3 hours away but our close cousins' neighborhood throws a great Christmas party. Santa comes with presents for all kids, there is a craft table for all kids, a DJ, a potluck dinner, a wine-tasting contest and an ornament exchange. Since we grew up visiting these cousins, we know their neighbors too so there are a lot of familiar faces. There is a LOT more to talk about this weekend . . . which will come in my next post.

Here are Brian & Evan in a very happy mood to be at the party:
This is Evan's "cheesey face". If we ask him to make his "cheesey face", he always obliges. And it is pretty cheesey:

Here is the adorable Claire with her mommy:


Cousin Matthew sitting so nicely on Santa's lap - he was not afraid at all: Unlike Evan. This is what happened when we started to walk towards Santa (and were probably still a good 15 feet away). I said it would be considered child abuse if we had tried to actually put him on Santa's lap, though it probably would have made for a great picture:

My next post will contain the more eventful part of the weekend . . .

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Longwood at Christmas

After a long ride back from Thanksgiving on Saturday, we decided to let Evan get some energy out with a trip to Longwood Gardens with the McKinnons. I was hoping to get a shot for a Christmas card here, so we stopped every so often to attempt a picture. We didn't have much luck as Evan does not stand still. This one was a cute one, though: In front of a different Christmas tree:


Obsessed with the Christmas ornaments - he actually broke this ornament:Running away from the camera:

A family shot (taken by Julie). Very good considering she wasn't looking through the viewfinder when she took this shot :)


And while we weren't at Longwood for this one, it was taken the next day after we had taken out some of our Christmas decorations. Evan calls these the "men" (as in "snowmen"). He will walk by them and say "Hi men" or "Bye bye men". And he likes to touch their carrot noses too.

We has, surprisingly, not tried to dismantle our tree . . . yet. He sits in front of the tree each night to watch his train go around but has so far been well behaved. Let's hope he keeps it up!

Thanksgiving Weekend

This post is long overdue as Thanksgiving was several weeks ago already. We drove up to Elmira on Wednesday night and headed to Aunt Shelley's on Thursday. And after a very yummy dinner, we headed out on a long outdoor walk. Evan couldn't have been happier:All in all, Evan probably walked a mile, possibly more:Running down the road with Aunt Shelley & Aunt Karen:


When we got to the point where we were going to turn around, it was time to throw some stones into puddles:

Unfortunately, Evan didn't want to walk back once he learned to throw stones. So it took awhile to convince him that we needed to walk back (often times being carried by Brian in protest). Once we got to Michele's, it was time to check out the pine trees:


He was intrigued:Couldn't be happier than when he's OUTSIDE: That night we had a sleepover with cousin Morgan and a visit in the morning from Madigan, who is ~6 weeks older than Evan. Brian and I got to do a little Black Friday shopping while these three hung out:Evan was great through all of the time in the car (~900 miles when it was all said and done). And for that, I was thankful!

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Barber Shop

To call Evan's first haircut a success, I think it would have had to have gone better than this:And that picture above was taken before anything even happened. The entire haircut was a big struggle. I don't know how she did it!Almost done and not happy about it:
I can only hope that next haircut goes better than this one did.

Friday, December 2, 2011

18 Months Old

Ok, so Evan is really 18.5 months old at this point and I am long overdue for a posting! But he had his well-visit back in mid-November and he was doing great. He grew an inch to 31.5 inches and is up to 27 pounds. That makes him 66th percentile for weight and 29th percentile for height (pretty much the same as last appointment). And his head is also at the 66th percentile. He was NOT happy to be at the doctor - you would have thought we were torturing him.

Evan continues to develop quite the personality. Right now, we are dealing with biting. He is "that kid" in school - the BITER. The school actually sent us home with a book last week to read to him at night about biting. And each day I hold my breath as I get an email from his school that will tell me whether or not he was biting that day. They tell me it is normal for his age and we just need to keep disciplining him. He tries to bite us too and our time-outs are up to 60 seconds now. At school they take him to the office, which does not make him happy. He is teething right now too, which doesn't help the situation. He's not only biting people but furniture, books, stuffed animals, etc. So hopefully once his bottom canines make their appearance (the top ones broke through a few weeks ago), we can put an end to this biting.

Evan still LOVES being outside. I have no idea what we are going to do all winter. Last night when I got home from work, he screamed and cried hysterically at the door for 10 minutes because I didn't take him outside to play. It's going to be a long winter if that continues to happen!

Evan is very into trains, cars, buses, planes - most "boy" type things. We just set up our Christmas decorations and that included getting him a train set for under the tree. He is so happy to sit and watch it go around and will say "bye choo-choo" when it goes behind the tree and "hi choo-choo" when it comes back around.

He still loves his daddy. The last two days when I picked him up at daycare, his first words to me were "dada?". If I happen to get to him first in the morning, his first words to me are "dada?". When it's my night to read books to him before bed, he'll say "dada?". I'm not going to lie - it is not fun at times. I keep waiting for this phase to end . . . patience is a virtue, right?

Evan is talking up a storm. The doctor warned me that #2 will likely not be so talkative, especially if it is a boy. I'd say he's up to ~100 words, is starting to string some words together and can mimic a lot of what we say. Last night was the first time he said "I love you" to me when I put him to bed. Apparently Brian has been working on this with him and got him to say it a few nights ago. I guess he forgot to tell me, but I was thankful for that because my heart melted when he said it last night at bedtime for me unexpectedly. I made such a reaction and he seemed so proud of himself. Too cute!

I have lots of pictures to upload - from his first haircut and Thanksgiving with Brian's family. I just need to find the time but there hasn't been a lot of free time lately. We've been home 1 out of 6 weekends in the last 6 weeks. "On the Road Again" should be our family theme song. Thankfully Evan is a travelling champion - don't know what we'd do if he wasn't. I guess he likes to be as active as his parents. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.