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 : )