Catching up

I guess I've been too busy living the blog-worthy moments to stop and actually document them here. Here is a quick summary of our summer fun thus far:

FAMILY! Lots and lots of family time. We went up to Maine for Catherine's graduation, hosted the family almost immediately after while they're house hunting. Oh, did I not tell you, blog world? My in-laws are moving back to town! So we've hosted a few house hunting visits. Evan has gotten no shortage of time with Papa Jon ("Bapa"), Gram ("Gigi"), Catherine ("Tat"), Joseph ("Doe"), Regan ("Ree Ree"), and Strom ("..." he can't even attempt that one yet, just rolls his eyes at you when you ask). We're very excited to only drive 15 minutes over to Waterford to see them now. Well, it's still a lot more than that to see Regan and Strom but when they come visit it will only be that far now!




Following a house hunting visit, Regan and Strom stuck around for some extra time with us, and we were so blessed to have them here. Regan graciously (like it took much convincing) used her decorating skills to help us finally decorate our downstairs family room after 3 years of using it with no decor to speak of! We now have a functional toy storage unit, some "theater" decor in the couch/tv area, and a nice mirror and table in the entryway. We went with a green/teal color scheme and I love it! She also helped us do a gallery wall which we still need a couple photos for frames, but it still looks great! Thank you so much!








We also had fun taking them out to Browns Tavern in Troy which has our favorite wings ever. We took them up to Forno Toscano Bistro in Saratoga and since we didn't have time to wait for the outside dining, we all felt underdressed together inside and had a delicious meal. We introduced them to our new favorite TV show, Community, and blew through the first season in about 5 or 6 sittings.

In the time that we didn't have them family around, we've been enjoying the heat wave and playing outside a lot. Since a critter came and destroyed my garden I repurposed it as a "beach" for Evan. Ok, it's a pretty ghetto beach. It's a tarp on the dirt with an inflatable pool and a beach umbrella. He sometimes likes it but isn't always in the mood. He has a new basketball hoop (thank you so much, Gram and Papa Jon. What a great buy!) and it goes inside and outside with us. Evan loves going for walks in the morning before it gets too hot, and we usually end with going to the park down the street. The last 3 blocks of the walk he keeps asking to go on the "bee" (slide) and every time we get to the park, he grabs his basketball when he gets out of the stroller and heads straight for the courts... not the slide! What an athlete.






What's new with Evan? Oh something is new every day. I'll try to recap. He is a CHATTERBOX! You have to know how to translate though. Depending on the body language, a word could have many different meanings.

Bee - slide (because he goes "beeeeee" when he slides down), "sliding" forward off furniture or stairs
Dis - downstairs, juice, eat, dance, cheese
Ba - ball, basketball hoop, frisbee
Bus - any vehicle with a diesel engine or squeaky brakes
Bas - bath
Byah - banana, guitar, piano
Bahp - apple, bubbles
Wiss - woods, raisins, horse
Ca-ee - Charlie (his buddy from church), or car
Wash - walk, watch (TV)
Zah - socks, shoes, snack
Coksh - crocs
Boot - book, boat
Boots - broken
Grge - George (he is obsessed with Curious George now)

He has started putting gibberish sentences together. He has so much to say, but the right words aren't there. Doesn't stop him from trying though!

He is a young athlete in the making. He is most obsessed with basketball, but also kicks the soccer ball around, throws the football, and as of a few days ago he can hike it. He can throw a ball in the air and hit it with a bat. The accuracy depends on the size of the ball. He's pretty good at throwing a ball up in the air and swatting it with his hand like a volleyball serve. He loves frisbee and I'm serious and not bragging here but you need to stand far back from him when he has a frisbee because he could take your head off! He's not only has a good arm, but a dynamite catch as well.

Easter

We made a last minute decision early last week to go up to Maine for Easter. Jack's family got a contract on their house after just 9 days on the market which is unheard of up there, so we want to get up there as much as we can before they close and then move back here! We headed up on Thursday evening with an iPad strapped to the headrest using 2 elastic headbands hoping it would keep Evan busy on the drive. He hadn't been on a road trip since Christmas and we had to stop about every hour to keep him pleasant. Well, it worked! We only had to stop once on the way there and the way back!

We had a great visit with Jack's family, and of course missing Regan and Strom terribly for our first visit there without them. The weather was beautiful for the most part and we enjoyed the outdoors. Evan loved the basketball hoop and loved stepping on the stones lining the house. He put on a dance show on the back deck.

(We missed you like crazy, Regan & Strom!)

Easter was a glorious day in multiple ways! Of course because of the reason for the season. It was a beautiful weather day. The company was great and the meal was fantastic. After Evan's nap, we "hid" the sport-ball themed eggs outside with goldfish and raisins hiding inside and he "hunted and gathered". That is until he remembered there was a basketball hoop. We had a good long skype with Regan (and Strom when he pulled his eyes away from the XBox!). Evan felt very connected to Aunt Regan through the computer, complete with fist bumping and kissing the screen! He is a bit confused now though, and wants to pound fists with every character on TV!

Sunny Florida

Jack approached me a couple months ago posing the question, "How would you feel about me going to Belize with the church?" My response? "How would you feel about me going to Florida while you're in Belize?" So that's how it worked out. Jack went to Belize with a team from our church to build a house for a needy family, and you can read about his adventures on this blog.

So Evan and I took off on April 1 on a direct flight to Orlando to visit my parents in Lakeland. He did great on the plane and being on Southwest with open boarding left us with an open seat in the middle on both flights. Who wants to sit next to an antsy toddler on his mom's lap? Clearly no one on a less than full flight!

We kept very busy! Only had 1 rainy day. We had a beach trip one day. We spent most other mornings doing an activity with Evan- 4 different playgrounds, feeding the water fowl (when Evan stopped eating the bread and threw it to the birds), had some lunches out and about. When he went down for a nap, I went to the pool. It was a pretty sweet setup! We were pretty spoiled!

It was a wonderful preview of all the fun we can have with Evan this summer. He loved splashing in the pool and wading in the shallow sandbar area at the beach. He had a blast shoveling sand and dumping it in his pail. He became very proficient at climbing the playground equipment and going down big slides by himself.

A huge thank you goes out to my parents for hosting us for 8 days, driving us to countless activities, treating to lunches, dinner, and ice cream. We can think of no better way that we could have spent our time away from Jack!











Doing the twisty slide all by himself!



Rainy Day Bubbles. He couldn't figure out why these new "balls" kept disappearing when he touched them.



He kept losing the sand he was trying to throw in the backswing!

The Great Outdoors

I'm barely able to report that we spent nearly the entire day outside today! I'm barely conscious right now, but so thankful for the nice weather that allowed us all day work and play outside. We headed out around 10am when it was a mere 38 degrees but it was above freezing, and that's all I was looking for! I brought a soccer ball and a rake out, bundled Evan up and hoped for the best. The soccer ball hardly got used, but we spent the whole morning outside until 11:30 when we came in to get cleaned up for lunch. I raked about 1/3 of the front lawn and Evan did his best to help. He grabbed handfuls of pine needles, pinecones, and acorn shells and tossed them in the bag. He tried to rake. I even got him a little paper bag to collect pinecones, which only lasted about 30 seconds! He explored so many things about the front yard: the pine tree bark, tapping acorn shells on the bark, pulling pine needles apart. It's so cute to watch him learn!

I headed back out to tackle more of the lawn during Evan's nap while the air continued to warm up to a balmy 51 degrees! I was out there in a short sleeved shirt.... FINALLY! I took a leisurely walk to the park down the street to see if the snow was melted enough to enjoy it and the snow was all gone except on the baseball field... perfect! When Evan got up we headed to the park. I have been anticipating taking him to the park so much now that he's mobile enough to enjoy it. He LOVED it. After a few lessons, he was able to climb up and go down the slide by himself (video below). He also loved the firetruck and swing.

The sponge

I'm going to take a few minutes to brag about my kid, if that's alright with you all reading. He is just amazing me with how much he learns each and every day. His vocabulary is growing, and while everyone might not be able to understand what he's saying, I can decipher more and more, and he's beginning to attempt repeating things we say. I think this has a lot to do with weaning him from the pacifier down to just naptime and bedtime. He learned how to say "hi" and "bye" today. He can say ball, bath, cat, dog, juice, sock, shirt, shoe, eye, water and waffle (which both come out "wah"), book and my favorite - poop, and attempts to say a lot more! When asked where it is, he can point out his eye, nose, ear, hair, mouth, hand, belly, bum, and toes! He knows the sign language for "more", "all done" and "eat" and uses them all properly without being prompted.

He is becoming much more agile too. He's becoming a climber, climbing all over our couch downstairs. We played at our neighbor's house this afternoon and he learned how to climb up and then go down the slide by himself. He learned how to go down the stairs (safely going backwards) this evening. He helped me clean up his toys tonight. He told us when he pooped and got out the changing mat, laid it out and laid himself down on it. Some might see this as a sign that he's ready to potty train, but I don't think any of us are quite ready for that!

He's quite the eater these days. The last time I made fish tacos, he had a fillet and a half of tilapia! That's about 6oz of fish! He grabbed a whole peach out of the fridge without me noticing, while I was getting something out yesterday and helped himself. He ended up eating about half of it without having to cut any of it up!



He's been making mental connections a lot now too. He sees a bear on his Baby Einstein DVD and he'll go get a book and open it to the bear page.

This kid is amazing, and I feel like he's grown up so much just in the last week. I can't wait to see what's coming up this next week!

Parlay!

As I'm writing this, I see a few scattered flurries outside. We're not expected to get any accumulation, but I'm still frustrated at the sight. We've had well over 7 feet of snow this season so far and we honestly can't handle any more. Jack has thrown his back out a few times from shoveling and mine is sore. Our snowbanks have gotten so high that we can't see oncoming traffic when we're backing out. Our mailbox is barely accessible. If we do have to do any more shoveling we'll have to get a ladder and climb about 7 feet up to toss each shovel load. This is what causes me to yell "Parlay!", "Mercy!", "Uncle!", "Enough!" every time I see a flurry.

Furry Friend

Ever since Evan became mobile, he has fallen in love with Bella. Well, any cat. Well, any furry thing that moves. But Bella actually sticks around to socialize with him. Before Evan was born, she was used to a certain level of attention and nothing has met her expectations since he was born so she'll put up with anything at this point! He loves laying down on her like a pillow. He also loves pulling her tail and wailing on her, which we're working on. But she usually doesn't run away so I don't feel too bad for her! There's a sweet video after all the pictures! Pay attention to Bella's face at the end... it's hilarious!