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: