Camden Aquarium

We are trying to get some quality time in with Evan before our new arrival, so we headed to the Camden Aquarium on Saturday. Evan is very into animals right now and he loved seeing some of his favorites up close, including this alligator:Up close at one of the many fish tanks:Trying to touch the fish:
Very happy to be up close and personal with the fish:

And a close up as he walked down the stairs near the hippos:

Getting any pictures of Evan where he is even remotely looking at the camera is difficult these days, which is why my blog updates have been few and far between. There is no sitting still and certainly no cooperating with the camera/mommy for the time being.

Evan's Got a New Room

In preparation for the new baby, we made the big move this week into Evan's "big boy room". We worked hard over Christmas vacation to get this room together and the furniture was delivered in mid-January. After a week of doing the bed-time routine in the new bed (but sleeping in the crib still), we thought he was ready. The first night was easy - a few tears but slept through the night. Last night, he cried a lot at bedtime and woke up crying 3 times during the night. We've got at least a month to get him adjusted before the new baby arrievs and hopefully each night gets better. Of course, he hasn't realized he can get out of his bed yet and it'll be a whole different story once he does. For now, he has this huge bed and sleeps like a frog on top of his pillow - using no more than 2 square feet of the bed space.

Here are some pics of the new room. The first looking in from the doorway:This is taken from the closet looking at the bed. And yes, we do need to work on artwork for the walls:

And finally from the windows looking out:

I think we are really on our way to being as ready as possible for baby #2 to make his/her appearance in the next month or two.

Let it snow . . .

Our first snowstorm of the season happened this past weekend. We bundled Evan up and took him outside to play:
It took a couple of tries to get the mittens on (which didn't easily stay on):

And here is Evan a year ago playing in the snow (oh how nice it was when he used to smile for the camera):He's not quite sure what to make of it . . . but at least he's not crying:With his daddy:Love this photo:And the neighbors came out to join in the fun. Notice Evan has fallen over here and needed some help to get himself up:And why not play football in the snow?
We spent much of the rest of the weekend inside, happy to be cozy and comfortable in our sweatpants :)

Another trip to the Please Touch Museum

We headed to the Please Touch Museum on January 7th with a large crew (7 adults and 6 kids). Evan has been there twice before but long before he could appreciate it. Here is running into the musuem:

And here I am trying to get in a photo with him:

He could have stayed at the "duckies" for the entire time. After a half hour, we had to drag him away crying. But we could play with ducks at bath time and it was time to move on:

We headed to Alice in Wonderland downstairs:

And over to the big truck, which he was happy to pretend to drive:

And onto the mail truck next:

Probably my favorite part of the museum is the miniature grocery store. Evan had a blast pushing around his own cart:

He didn't want to put too much in his cart and usually immediately removed whatever was put in there:

Still pushing around his empty cart:

He loved this exhibit where the ball is being held up by forced air:

And an attempt to get a good number of kids on the mini train. Evan wanted nothing to do with this:

All in all, it was a fun trip. But Evan really does not enjoy having his photo taken right now . . . which is why these blog updates are few and far between.

The rest of Christmas vacation . . .

. . . was spent like this: Evan was sick and spent much of our week off in bed.
He had a 103+ fever for 6 straight days. On top of his hand-foot-mouth disease, he came down with a nasty cold which turned into an ear infection. While it put a damper on Christmas, it was nice that we were both able to be home to care for him. And it gave us ample time to get Evan's new room ready. It is painted now, the carpet comes in on Friday and the furniture on Saturday. We shall see if we are able to move this 20 month old into a bed before his baby brother or sister arrives.

Christmas Past & Present

Since this blog wasn't around last Christmas, I feel the need to post some pictures from last year. This picture below is probably my favorite one ever taken of Evan . . . back in the days when he would actually sit still and smile for the camera:How different does he look?Happy, happy baby:Fast forward to one year later . . . and this is what it looks like when we try to take a picture of him:Unfortunately, illness put a BIG damper on Evan's Christmas. But I'll start with Christmas Eve, which was day 1 of his hand-foot-mouth disease. It was not too bad - fever started and some sores started appearing. Evan got to go to Aunt Karen & Uncle Cliff's house for Christmas Eve and got to see their horse, Chief. Evan is loving horses right now and was just staring in wonder when he saw Chief for the first time:Here he is helping feed Chief

Afterwards, he jumped onto the tractor with cousin Morgan:

Family photos:

Happy baby with mommy (only because I'm tickling him):

Or he'll smile for the camera if you put him up to touch the ceiling:

Uncle Brian with Morgan and a running-away Evan:

Brian in one of our "ugly" sweaters. The sweater Janet is wearing won me 2nd place at an Ugly Christmas sweater party a few years back . . . though she thinks it's just beautiful:

Morgan & Evan playing with Uncle Cliff's train under the tree:

And here we are with our baby girl, Lily:

The rest of Christmas vacation . . . not so enjoyable and no more pictures. More on that later . . .

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!