New skills

It's been a BIG week here for Evan. As you all know from the last post Evan started walking independently last week. It's amazing to me how fast he gets better at things once he's done it once. He's now walking across rooms, and attempting the uneven terrain of the back yard. He still likes to hold onto the walls and crawl quite a bit, but he's much less afraid of falling, much better at catching himself, and getting more steady at walking.

The best news however has nothing to do with his walking. (insert suspenseful pause) Evan ate an entire feeding last night by mouth!!! Stephan fed him a jar of baby food (bananas and strawberry something) and afterwards Evan drank an entire cup full of milk!! I was at work so I missed the excitement, Stephan and I are just floored. This is the first time he's taken a full feeding by mouth in a year. Of course we don't expect this to happen all of the time, we know we have a long way to go before we can be rid of his feeding tube, but it definitely is encouraging to see him making so much progress with his eating lately.

Evan also had his first ECFE class yesterday. It was a pretty low key session, kids just played while parents visited and filled out paperwork. It was fun to see Evan interact with so many kids in one place, he's never done that before. He was a little shy at first, but then jumped right in. He was quite polite, when the other kids took his toys, he didn't yell and throw a fuss, he just found another toy to play with, or he would find another toy, bring it to the child who had taken his toy and say "was dis" to them, they'd take the toy he'd offered, and he'd take his toy back. Stephan said "that's my little stewy" when he saw him. When he found a phone (he loves to carry it around and say Hi into it) all the kids wanted it, and he quietly said "no no" to one of the girls who tried to take it. The teacher said he was handling it so well and being so nice she couldn't let his phone be taken and she brought out a bucket of phones so the other kids could have one as well. Stephan and I were a bit worried because I stupidly did my math wrong about Evan's adjusted age. He's in a class of 1 1/2-2 1/2yr olds. Evan is 20 months old, but he's at the 16 month old size and development, so we were a bit concerned he'd be ok in the class, would fit in alright, and wouldn't be too far behind all the other kids to enjoy his time there. You could easily see he was smaller than most the other kids, and I think the teacher was concerned as well when we first got there. When we asked her if she thought he'd be ok after class was over, she said she thought he'd fit in just fine! Hopefully next week goes as well as this week.
We had been torn about weather or not to enroll him in the first place because of the upcoming RSV season and of course how prevalent influenza is this year. We're happy that they have a "don't come if you're sick" policy. We are cutting back our trips out with Evan though...no more runs to target or the grocery store with him. We're debating some of our other outings, but we just felt the benefits of interacting with his peer's in this setting are worth a little risk. Rest assured, if we see anyone sick there when we arrive, we will turn right around and head back home.
Here's way too many video's of Evan walking....I couldn't pick, they go from shortest to longest : )

Defcon Walk

What fun what fun. Evan took his first steps tonight in the bathroom of all places. We have seen him walk between gaps before where his fingers couldn't reach the extra couple of inches but tonight he took the plunge for at least a few feet. Of course we have the obligatory video to show off



I know it doesn't look like much, but we've been watching him walk along the walls with one finger touching something all the time. He even chased a neighbors dog at a pretty good clip with a hand touching the wall of the garage. Maybe it will change later but I have had people tell me that once he starts walking the real trouble starts, but right now I see a flaw in that. When he walks holding onto the talbe he's always dangerously close to stuff like end tables with water glasses (not empty ones) that need to be stirred with the TV remote, at least that's what Evan thinks.

Of course as I was writing this post Becky took a video of walking the way we're used to seeing him walk. Voila walking with the wall:




Needless to say we're having a pretty fun night. New beginnings are pretty fun.

TOO LONG

Well it's been too long since we've updated this blog. Now the post is going to be too long as well. We've been enjoying this last bit of summer, nothing too eventful, and we'd like to keep it that way. Evan and I came down with a cold recently, we're both feeling better now, but Evan did have an increase in puking resulting in loosing 1/2 a pound. Thankfully we've put that back on now. We also had a fun time with a bloody nose. Let's just say it's not easy to convince a toddler that it's not a good idea to pick their noses, makes for a viscious cycle once it's started. Evan had a recent trip to his doctor, he agreed that Evan looks great, and has no concerns for us at the moment, LOVE IT! Evan got his first round of chicken pox vaccination, and the common influenza vaccination. He did NOT care for that one bit. Shots didnt bother him this much before, I'm counting it as a good thing that he's not so used to being poked : ) However with RSV season just around the corner he'll be getting the synagis vaccine monthly again, not looking forward to that! Evan went backwards some with his eating briefly while he was sick, partly because we were pushing food into him so heavily I don't think he had time to think about getting hungry, but it's what was needed to catch him back up. Thank goodness for pregestamil though, on average our pukes are 1-2/day, and are usually smaller than they used to be, so nice. Evan's also tollerating a night time drip of tube feeding for the past month or so. He's getting 43ml/hour of 30cal/oz for 8 hours at night while he sleeps. We're excited about this because it gets us closer to eating by mouth. Eventually we'll lengthen the times between tube feedings to encourage by mouth eating, then stop tubing him during the day, and eventually wean off the night time drip...it's a plan anyway, a fluid plan that we change as Evan needs it to, but it's nice to know he's tollerating the night time feeding. He's eating about 1 jar of baby food per day off the spoon from Stephan currently, and drinking about 1-2oz of fluid, and chewing on lots of finger foods. This doesn't sound like much but it's HUGE progress, and that makes the light at the end of the tunnel a bit brighter. He's even started putting whole chunks of food in his mouth and chewing on them, moving them around with his tongue without gagging or vomiting, and on occasion he's swallowing the chunks. FANTASTIC! He fed himself 1/2 a chocolate pudding pack with a spoon last week (he LOVES chocloate!), and ate 2 pieces of jello jigglers this week. Think that's enough of the technical stuff.

Evan sitting in a chair that Stephan's grandpa made for him. He really likes sitting in this chair, and it's just his size....maybe that's why he likes it?

Fun stuff:
Where do I start? Evan's developing and changing so fast it's hard to know. It's so fun to watch him learn and discover new things, and be able to communicate with him more and more, and play new games. His sense of humor is developing, he was laughing at me so hard when I couldn't hula-hoop, I had to laugh with him. When Stephan's parents were up and we were all laughing at his cute dancing after Lorna taught him how to pick up his feet when he did it, he started laughing with us. Not the genuine baby giggle, but saying ha ha, and making laughing noises just because he wanted to join in. His favorite game right now is to be held by one parent and sneek up and scare the other one by saying BOO. The other morning I was getting ready for work in the bathroom and he crawled around the corner and said BWAH, trying to scare me...too cute! He's learning body parts, he knows feet, nose, ears, and tummy. If you give him a brush, he'll try to brush his hair. He holds the phone to his ear (when its off) and says "hi, hi". He stirs spoons in the pot when Stephan's cooking and says "Hot" in his cute whisper voice. He's learned how to undress himself, and took everything off including undoing one of the velcro's on his diaper the other day and proceding to crawl away while peeing on the floor. He's SOOO close to walking. He'll do it if he knows I'm holding his shirt behind the shoulders, he'll walk with one hand on a wall, and will take 2 steps to get between objects, but as soon as he notices someone's not holding on to him, or you try to get him to let go of your hand, he just lowers himself to the floor, in a very controlled maner I might add, but with this look of concern on his face, and a scowl that says "don't do that". He's just my cautious little boy. Of course he has climbed on top of the kitchen chairs and his table toy....not so safety conscious move. He's going up and down stairs with no problem. He can say so many words I'm loosing track, and tries to mimic almost everything he hears. Ones I can think of off hand: puppy, mom (all versions, mommy, momma), dad, done (non), no, hi, hot, hat, hug, soft, sauce, maggie, ear (EA), pants (PTS), buh bye (while waving goodbye), num, what's that (Sthat), see, ball, bath (bap) sing, swing, wee, sock, foot, stick. He's even said his first two word sentance all done....usually comes out as al non or alda, usually while pulling his bib off. He also uses some hand motions to commuincate things, like pointing to what he wants, and then opening and closing his hand, for come here. He understands even more. The other day we were shopping and he was CRABBY, I thought he was just over tired and board. He even said his word for pants at the beginning of the fit, while pointing at underwear at lane bryant. I felt horrible when I found out he was poopy when we got back to the car. How much clearer could he have been? He said pants to me! Bad mommy.


Evan was recently given a very generous gift, check out his new playground gear for the back yard.

He LOVES the slide especially. He hasn't quite figured out how to get to the top on his own yet, but has gotten pretty fast at pushing his way down. He took a lot of convincing at first, and reassurance that we'd catch him, but now he just says "Weee" and goes down, over and over and over again. Thanks so much Fred and Gail!

We went to Gooseberry falls with Stephan's parents.

Evan thought the pine trees were especially cool that day. If you look at a lot of the pictures we take of him, he usually has a rock or a stick in his hand. He seems to have taken a fondness to them. He'll carry one around until he looses it and then usually finds a replacement, and has to show you how cool it is.

We went swimming at my mom's lake a couple of times. Evan still loves the water. He thought this board that Grandpa John found for him was pretty cool. He walked all around in the water that day, right up to his shoulders, didn't mind going deep at all, going to have to get this kid in swimming lessons quick!

We went to Gooseberry again with my mom and John, I love this picture.

We debated about ripping up all of these raspberries earlier this year. They're growing it what's supposed to be a garden. We originally thought we'd let them grow a bit and then transplant them. We enjoyed the berries they produced this year immensely. They may have earned a permanent place there. The dogs liked eating fallen berries too.

Yum!

We have a mountain ash tree near our patio in the back yard. Every year when the berries get ripe a flock of birds comes in and clears the tree of all it's berries in about 2 hours. We think they're martins? It's pretty cool to watch.

Even though our 2 cherry trees are just 2-3 years old they produced a ton of cherries this year, Loved it!

We also planted a grape vine called a valiant. It's supposed to be hardy to -50, so hopfully it can survive our winters. One of my coworkers was SO kind as to offer us some of the flowers from his wifes flower bed that needed splitting off. We took a trip over to his place and now our flower bed looks MUCH better. I'll post pictures when I can. So far Everything survived the move. Thanks Mike and Ruth! Evan likes flowers too, and has his own word for them, faff.

Whew, I think that's enough for now. Can't say I didn't warn you that it was TOO LONG! Enjoy the videos.