Oh, the places you'll go

Just a quick look at some of the adventures Evan's had since becoming mobile (all taken back in March)...

A new take on the exersaucer:

Earning himself his own shelf on the bookshelf:

How Mommy and Daddy realized they needed to get a baby gate ASAP:

Nakey library time (this was so cute...until we realized that he was happily peeing on and under the bookshelf while he was sitting there):

Big boy at 9 months old (a rare moment sitting down...though notice the pacifier living up to its name):

Frisbee in the park:

Swingtime with Daddy:

and finally, some family fun time at the zoo:

Moving on Up

A few days after mastering crawling, Evan decided being mobile was just not enough. Indeed, simply crawling over to his toy box just would not do...standing up to look into it would be much better...and so he did. One day Daddy looked over to see this:



Then, once standing by the toy box was mastered, the next hurdle was pulling to stand in the crib. And a couple of days later, I looked into Evan's room to see this:



And now nap time and bedtime is not so much fun...I mean really, why would anyone want to waste their time sleeping when you can practice standing and sitting and crawling and standing and sitting and crawling again and again and again? Duh, Mom. Another fun trick is to bang on the wall repeatedly while he's supposed to be going to sleep..."Helloooooooo, Mommy and Daddy, don't you want to come play with me?" We've also moved into the multi-paci stage - throwing multiple pacis in the crib at night so when Evan wakes up he can find one and plunk it back in without screaming the house down, thereby letting Mommy and Daddy continue their beauty sleep.

Evan doesn't use pacis hardly at all during the day anymore, but we do still give him the beloved sucker at night, and when he needs it during car rides or plane rides, or in church. (Otherwise he will sing to the rafters at inopportune times). We're okay with his paci use though, and I have a feeling it will continue for awhile, mainly because we're not all that excited to break him of it. Heck, I sucked my thumb until 6th grade...I think I can give my poor kid a break! But I digress....

A couple of days after standing in his crib, pulling to stand and staying stationary was just no fun, so the cruising started. Evan started out fairly tentatively, gingerly sidestepping along a table or couch, but at this point has mastered the one-handed cruising, as well as the all-exciting one-hand-stays-steady-on-the-couch-while-squatting-down-so-the-other-hand-can-grab-something-cool-on-the-ground. Now we've starting standing on our own, at first for just a few seconds at a time, and only when so engrossed in a toy we haven't realized we've let go of our safety net, but quickly progressing into the "Hey Mom, check this out, I'm as solid as a rock, standing by myself like I was born to do it!" Not too shabby...

Crocs

This is out of order, but I have to post this as I find it to be so cute. Gramma got Evan his first pair of Crocs, and we tried them on him today. Poor little guy was just beside himself, he was so confused! "What on earth did you put on my feet, Mommy?" It totally set him back on his motor skills - all of a sudden he crawled funny and couldn't stand up anymore!

He acted like his feet were literally glued to the floor, despite Daddy's best efforts to get him to move. So cute. Enjoy!

Funny enough, Dave also noted today that while most kids have a security blanket, ours has a security shovel. He takes that orange shovel with him everywhere he goes! Maybe someday we'll go to the beach where he can actually put it to good use.

On the Move

Next up in Evan's milestone development was a big one...crawling! Our little guy is now mobile, and oh, does it make him happy.

He started to figure it out in the beginning of February, but as it always happens, made huge strides once big cousin Landon came to town. As luck would have it Steve was TDY'd to Luke Air Force Base here in Phoenix for the whole month of February, and Amy and Landon came to town for about a week and a half of it to join in the fun. We had a grand ol' time hanging out as a family, and Landon really helped Evan get a move on. Literally the day after Landon arrived Evan went from crawling only a few paces before collapse to crawling clear across the room...and into the hallway...and into the kitchen...

Here he is learning the ropes from big cousin Landon. Landon is so great with Evan, very sweet. Evan is completely enamored with everything Landon does.

I know it won't be long (at least the time will pass very quickly) before we see Evan enjoying the playground with such a sweet smile as this:

Of course, maybe he also learned to crawl from the monkeys...

We took a family trip to the Phoenix Zoo, where they have an excellent "Monkey Village" to walk through. You can see how much fun the daddies had with their boys, and the looks of wonder as the monkeys bounded about.

Who's the monkey now, Daddy?


Later on in the month, Gramma and Grandpa Charlie came to visit too. Gramma was in Gramma Heaven with her boys around!

Lastly, truly on the move, Evan completed his second 5K - the Phoenix Heart Walk. My company had a team walking, so Evan sported his Banner bandana to support Mommy's work. Granted, he did sleep for a good bit of the walk, but we were still very proud of him! And you have to love that it was warm enough for shorts in February!

More fun discoveries

First, here's a "Happy Superbowl" wish from Evan, who apparently didn't get the memo on who was playing in the superbowl, and like Mommy, is always just rooting for the Bills. Mommy was sad to see her secondary team, the Cardinals (yes, I am a fairweather friend), also lose in the superbowl. Go figure.

February 11 Evan turned 8 months old - a whole 2/3 of a year! Crazy how time flies. In the beginning we had difficulty getting him to stay propped him up for a picture, and now we can't get him to sit still for two seconds!

Also in mid January Evan's first two teefers finally broke through! Ever the precocious one, he broke two at a time, quite the double whammy. For the most part he took the pain in stride and now he's enoughing his newfound skill of digging into his food in a whole new way. This also makes for a slightly more relaxed Mommy, who is getting slowly less and less worried about him choking now that he can chew at least a little bit. Smile, Evan!

Growing Up

In the last couple of months, Evan has made huge strides on all those fun little developmental milestones parents love to fixate on so much. It has been such a joy to watch him explore and learn to do new things...though of course it's even more exhausting now that we have a bustling baby boy who is curious about everything and gets into lots of things he should and more things he shouldn't.

But first, here's our Evan at 7 months:

At the end of January he really started to come into his own with his babbling. This, as you can imagine, was music to my speech pathologist ears. Oh, consonant strings and vocal play, how I love thee so. My favorite thing is when he mutters, oh so softly under his breath, "ah-dah, ah-dah, ah-dah" when he's concentrating on something really hard or is about to get into something fun, as if in anticipation of the excitement to come. And once, just once, Evan turned around and happened to look directly at Dave, and said "Hi Dad!" - no lie. Obviously that was just a fluke but it was nice to pretend he knew what he said!

This was taken one day at the zoo, as Evan was exploring his new world of finger foods and the pleasure of feeding himself, when apparently the excitement overcame him and he burst into babble.

Stay At Home Mommy

After a long hiatus, I'm finally getting some time to sit down and update our blog - hooray!

Back at the end of January, Dave had his annual guys' snowboarding trip to Salt Lake City. It's only the second year they've done it, but as all the guys except one are daddies, and two (including Dave) are stay at home daddies, they've come to cherish the trip and are hoping to make it annual forever and ever. So Dave hauled off to Utah for 5 days, which left me at home, being a stay at home mommy! And I just loved it. Sometimes it feels like Dave is the primary parent as he spends so much time with Evan during the day, and with my long hours at work I often get to see Evan for only a couple of hours at night before bedtime. This was my opportunity to be with Evan 24-7, and it was amazingly fulfilling and fabulous. It really set me up in a much better place to go back to work again when Dave came home.

So, while Dave was doing this:

I was hanging out with this:

All that, and I cleaned the house top to bottom too! What a good five days it was.

The Applesauce Experiment

In our efforts to expand Evan's culinary palate, we started giving him lots of new foods in January. So far he likes pretty much everything except spinach, though even that I can get down him if it's mixed with other veggies. He definitely has a bit of a texture issue - on certain days he won't take green beans (too chunky) or sweet potatoes (too sticky) - and on certain days only has a sweet tooth - pears, pears, and more pears please! He's also way into "big people food", and is always trying to snatch whatever Mommy and Daddy are eating. In that realm, he's now into rice cakes and pretzels, fruit in his mesh teether thing, biter biscuits, and his all-time favorite - frozen bagels. It's so cute to watch him try a new food though, as he goes through quite the range of emotions while deciding if he likes it or not. Here he is trying applesauce for the first time:

And the verdict is...he likes it!

Happy New Year!

So much for New Year's resolutions and the desire to post news in a timely manner...

Ah, well, to play catch up yet again, I should talk about how January was for the Horne family. It was a great month, a little warm for my liking (yes, I know it seems odd for me to say that, but even I think 80+ degrees in January is just plain wrong...), and as ever it just sped by.

We started out the year quite well; I had the day off on New Year's Day, so we went as a family, including Dave's mom who decided to stay with us through New Year's, to the Desert Botanical Gardens to see the Chiluly exhibit. Chiluly is the name of a wonderful artist who does huge glass installations all over the world I think. For anyone who's been to Vegas, he's the one who did the ceiling of the Bellagio. Well he has an exhibit in the DBG until May, and oh my is it impressive. I think the most amazing thing about it is how well it fits into the DBG landscape; it's as if he made all the sculptures specifically for the garden even though he didn't. Most impressive. It was a gorgeous sunny day when we went, which made it all the better! Here's what I've been blabbering on about:

I highly recommend this to anyone who makes their out to Phoenix before May...hint, hint!

December, Part Deux

Right about when Evan turned 6 months old, we also started him on solid foods. It took him a couple of days to get the hang of it, and he was no fan of the rice cereal they tell you to start with, but once we started the veggies, he was a huge fan. We started him out with peas, here he is enjoying his carrots:



The first time we tried green beans didn't go too well, though he has since come around. Now the only food he currently doesn't like is spinach. Peas, green beans, carrots, squash, rice cereal, oatmeal, applesauce, pears, and even lemons are yum-yums though.

And here are some pictures from Christmas Eve. We went to the family church service and the came home and had Evan open his Christmas Eve present. He was way more into the paper than the actual present, as per his current paper obsession.


And again with the paper on Christmas day, and enjoying his new presents with Mommy:


And just a final note to say that even Santa loves bathtime!

The Daycare Debacle

Around this time, we also took Evan to his first-ever day of daycare. What a hectic time! It turns out daycare is fabulous - we heart Miss Betty - but all the drama surrounding our first day was something for the Bad Parents memory books. Here's what I wrote on the day (which I couldn't post until now because Type A me didn't want to get things out of order...neurotic much?):

Oh, what a day. Today was not a shining star moment in Mommyhood for me. Oh, the trials and tribulations of parenthood!

Today was Evan's first-ever day in daycare, and oh, the drama that ensued! The idea of today started out innocently enough - Dave had some work to do for a client, and needed the day off from Evan. We figured this would happen at some point, and so a few weeks ago went to meet Miss Betty, who runs an in-home daycare. A friend of mine takes all three of her kids to Miss Betty's, and she's just wonderful. She's a retired NICU nurse, loves kids, just great great great.

Last night started out well enough too. We actually packed up ahead of time, remembering to count all the diapers and bottles and bibs we would need. Then 12:30 happened. And 2:30 and 3:30 and 5:30. Evan, who has not been sleeping well lately, woke up seemingly millions of times last night. So that started us off on the wrong foot. Then, because he didn't sleep well he was sleepy and cranky while we got ready for the day. And because Evan didn't sleep well, I didn't sleep well, and was running late.

So, in an effort to save time, I brought Evan in with me to the bedroom while I was getting ready. He's not that mobile yet, right? I layed him down on the bed and went about my business. Life was good until I heard a big THWAAPP, and then silence. My heart jumped to my throat and I ran to the bedroom to find Evan face down on the floor (hard floor!) next to the bed. I let my baby roll off the bed! I know they say all kids will do it at some point and you will feel as guilty as the next mom for letting it happen, but you don't really believe it will happen to you unless it does. So there, now I've officially outed myself.

I ran to scoop Evan up, feeling sure he had at least a concussion, but luckily, I think he was more stunned than anything else. He did cry, but I think it may have been because I was cryer louder and harder than he ever could, which Dave had to tell me to knock off because I was scaring him.

So that started out the morning. We finally did get Evan all packed up and I drove him to daycare, since it's closer to my work than home. All went well reintroducing him to Miss Betty and the other kids...until it came time to talk about his bottles for the day. Bottles? What bottles? Dave had forgotten to pack them up! So here I was, already feeling like a crappy mom, running late for work, with a hungry kid and nothing to feed him with. A frantic phone call to Dave had him changing plans to drive out to Miss Betty's with the bottle bag, and I left for work and left Miss Betty with our poor starving child. When Dave finally arrived with the goods, poor Evan was screaming his head off and all Miss Betty said was "Well, I guess you won't forget that again, will you?"

In the end, Evan did have a pretty good first day at daycare, and Miss Betty was right, we sure never have forgotten those bottles again!

Our December, the abridged version...oh, who am I kidding?

Okay, seriously? How'd it get to be January 18 already?!?! I've said it before and I'll say it again...Evan will be heading off to college tomorrow at this rate. Nevertheless, in the spirit of new year's resolutions and vowing to keep in better touch with family and friends, I feel compelled to at least somewhat comment about our December, lest you all think we did nothing whatsoever remotely fun or festive for Evan's first Christmas. Au contraire...as you will soon see.
We kicked off the season with my work "party", at Phoenix Zoo Lights. All 2.5 million LED lights lit-up holiday goodness of it. It was pretty spectacular actually, complete with a light show set to music and christmas lights on cacti and all. I highly recommend it, should any of you be out here around the holidays one of these years. I wish I could say Evan was blown away by the eye-tingling display, but in reality he slept through most of it. Go figure.



The next weekend we took Evan to meet Santa. The PTA at my school put on an event, "Milk and Cookies with Santa," as lots of kids in my school are lower SES and wouldn't have had an opportunity to meet Santa otherwise. I thought it was a really nice thing to do, so we went to support it. Masters of timing that we are, it was Evan's turn to meet Santa just as feeding time and nap time and feeding time were coming due, so he wasn't as smiley as we'd hoped. Still, he was pretty fascinated by Santa, as you can see with this Evan-Santa staring contest. I like to think it's a look of mutual admiration.



The very next day we went to pick out our first family Christmas tree. I suppose we could've planned better and gone to chop our own tree down or some such thing, but as it was the tree lot in the Home Depot parking lot on a Sunday afternoon was festive enough for us. =)

(Love those tiny baby hands exploring the new texture.)

As you can see, Dave was none too thrilled that while he was being manly and putting the tree on the roof of our car, I was doing this:



However, I can't be too sad about it because I did randomly take my favorite picture of Evan and I to date, which some of you will also recognize from Facebook. And as a sidenote...check out our new car.



It's a Toyota RAV4. Dave finally convinced me that bigger is indeed better (yes, well I know the RAV4 is on the small side of big, for all you sticklers out there) when you have kid to cart around town.

Then Evan turned 6 months old. SIX months old! Doesn't seem possible. He's really taking charge of that caterpillar now, and we're having to hide the sign behind him or he'll eat it.



Shortly after that, Granny (Dave's mom) came to town for a nice long visit. We took advantage of the holiday festivities and went to a thing called Glendale Glitters. Very appropo, as a city near Phoenix, named Glendale, puts on a massive light display through their quaint downtown area, so it does, indeed, glitter.



And here's Granny and Evan by our Christmas tree:



And here's Evan, already partying hard for the holidays: