Three Months Old and going strong

Now this is definitely coming late, as Evan's closing in on 4 months now, but we did have a little 3 month old photo shoot on September 11th. Of course, as planned photo shoots go, he was an angel the day before and the day after, but was a total Cranky Pants the day of. Dave managed to distract him enough though to get a few cute shots. And hey, that's life, right? Here's our little man at 3 months old:


It reminds me of a couple of weeks earlier when I wanted to get a picture of him in his really cute church outfit...cute outfit, but happy boy? Not so much.


He did much better when we got a "plug" in him to stop him up, though he still looks none too pleased. =)

Random Acts of Friendship

Time to play catchup yet again...

I have a friend name James, who is the most random person I think I've ever met. He's really pretty great, and ever so interesting, but ever since I've known him he seems to pop up in the most random places, at the most random times of my life. Like when I did a study abroad in London and he happened to be passing through on his way to Africa, or when he decided to hop on a plane at the last minute to come to my friend Shannon's wedding, with no actual plans on how to get back. So suffice it to say, I wasn't all that shocked to get a text from him one day in August asking if he could stop by and meet Evan on his way through Phoenix, as he'd stopped going to school at Berkley to take a job in Lousiana to gain experience for a grad school program at Yale. After which he will proceed to save the world, starting in Peru. Yeah, follow that one.

In any case we were quite happy to have a visitor, and had quite a nice morning catching up. James was very tickled to see that he and Evan randomly matched, Go Berkley Bears, Go.

And they all rolled over...

Hooray, Evan hit a milestone today! He rolled over for the first time this evening, making for one very happy Mommy because I was the only one there to witness it. He'd been getting reeeeallly close for a few days now, especially when he was getting ticked off after he decided he'd been on his tummy for too long. One of the moms at work told me angry babies make the best roller-overs, conceivably because they're worked up enough to start pushing around, and voila. So this gave me encouragement to keep plopping the poor kid on his belly to see what would happen. And Ta-Da!!...

Just for kicks I put him on a blanket tonight in his nursery for some after-dinner tummy time, and before I knew it, he rocked...rocked...rolled! I don't think he actually knew what he did because he had this look of "Now how on Earth did I get here?" when he suddenly found himself looking up at the ceiling. 'Course it didn't help that I let out a great whoop and holler and jumped up and ran to get Dave, leaving the poor kid by his lonesome. =)

Then Dave came running, video camera in hand, and we tried it again and again and again. By the fourth again Evan'd had it and let us know he was d-o-n-e with rolling for the night, which was fine because he'd already totally made my day! I've been so worried that I would miss all the good stuff, being away at work and all, but at least I got to see this one first! What a big boy I have.

Growth Spurt

I do have to say, returning to work has it's certain perks.

Evan has been going through a bit of a growth spurt we think, and as such has been more voracious than per his usual. Oh, I remember the days when 4 oz. of milk before bedtime would ensure that he would sleep through the night snug as a bug in a rug. Not so anymore! Lately he's been wanting 5 or 6 oz., and then is still waking up in the middle of the night with his "Feed me NOW NOW NOW!" cry.

Prior to me going back to work, Dave and I came up with the deal (more like I came up with it and poor Dave was obligated to agree) that if Evan wakes up in the middle of the night, Dave now has to get up and take care of him. I think it's only fair really, since if I'm a zombie at work I'll be completely useless, and Dave really can take a quick nap during the day if he needs to. But it's not the nicest thing for him really because he's realized that middle-of-the-night feeds supremely stress him out. And as such I am entirely grateful that he's actually willing to take this on.

So is it payback for the first few months of me having to wake up with Evan while Dave peacefully slept? Maybe. All I know is that it's such a guilty pleasure to hear Evan wake up at 3 a.m., watch Dave leave, and then turn over, snuggle in, and float blissfully back into Dreamland.

Cry Baby: Mommy's return to reality

I have discovered that we have a definite cry baby in the family. And it's not Evan. And not Dave. Nope, it's me. It's funny because I always thought I wouldn't have that hard of a time returning to work post-baby...you know, the whole "I-don't-think-I'm-cut-out-to-be-a-stay-at-home-mom-I-need-adult-conversations" type of thing. Well. It turns out that returning to work was much harder than I'd thought. I had worked a couple of days here and there in August, but it wasn't really that bad, since I always knew I could spend the whole next day with Evan. Then at the doctor's office, two weeks before I had to go back, I overheard a mom saying "I cried every day in the two weeks leading up to going back to work", and I have to admit I thought "There's no way I'll do that!" I was right...sort of. I did not cry every day in the two weeks leading up to the end. It was a week out before it hit me but good.

All of a sudden, when I realized my maternity leave really was truly coming to an end, and that I didn't in fact want to go back to work at all...then I turned into a mess. Every day, multiple times a day, I started crying like a baby. Probably worse than a baby. Inconsolable, Oh-woe-is-me bawling. Not sniffles, SOBS. Poor Dave was at a loss for words, as he should've been because there was really not much to say. I did get a promise that he and Evan would come visit me for lunch some days, which made me feel minutely better.

And then the day came (this past Tuesday, in fact), and I got up and cried in the morning, packed up, and went to work. I think I only called home a couple of times that day too. Since then it's gotten easier day by day, much to Dave's delight. It certainly has helped that everyone wants to see Evan so I get to show my "Mommy Brag Book" of pictures around many times a day. But Oy! What this kid does to me.

At work, happily, I've had an easy transition getting back into the swing of things. And Dave is having a fairly easy transition into being a Full-Time-Stay-At-Home-Dad-Extraordinaire. So life just keeps on truckin'. Reality has definitely set in.

Attack!...

...of the Ikea frog!

Just wanted to share this funny picture...I was trying to convince Shannon how cute the Ikea frog is (all my therapist friends know about the magic of this frog), and how much kids like it...and this is the picture I got of Evan! He looks ever so happy to be hanging out with Frog, don't you think? It looks more like Frog's about to jump him, poor kid!

A visit from Aunt Shannon

Two weeks ago we had our last visitor for the summer arrive, in the form of Aunt Shannon! Shannon is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and her visit was the perfect way to end (**sniff, sniff**) my maternity leave. She also happens to have a 9 month old boy, so I get a little glimpse of my future each time I talk to her. It's pretty amazing to me that two girls who met as kids are now comparing stories about their own kids. But enough of the sappy-ness. =)

Shannon's visit to us had a two-fold purpose: #1) to come and meet Evan of course, and #2) to go to the Dave Matthews Band concert! It's a bit of a tradition. Last year Shannon came, and we went to see Dave while we were both pregnant (though I didn't know it yet), and now we're two Mamas. Oh-oh...sappy again. Dave was excellent this year as he played lots of older stuff that I recognized and I could belt out the lyrics with the best of them. Fun fun.

I can't believe how fast Shannon's visit came and went though. I felt a little bad since we basically sat around and did a whole lot of nothing, but good ol' Aunt Shannon said she understood (and she does) what it's like to have an almost-three month old. It also didn't help that Evan was supremely cranky for a few days of her visit, and so was out of sorts and not his usual happy self. (Turns out that not poo-ing for a few days could make anyone grumpy. Once he got it all out of his system, literally and figuratively, I had my happy babes back). We did watch a lot of movies though and Dave (my Dave) was absolutely wonderful in taking the bulk of the Evan-care so I could get lots of Jenny-Shannon bonding time in.

Evan was pretty taken with his Aunt Shannon, too:

All in all, it was a fabulous visit, and it meant so much to me that she could make it out to visit us. We're already scheming up a time when we can get our whole families together...wow, how weird is that to say?