Travel and Pumpkins and 15 Months

I took my first post-Evan solo work trip this week. It was a 3-day trip to Los Angeles. I psyched myself up ahead of time about the relaxing and the things I'd accomplish. I'm trying to work on a major picture organization project (because, as you might guess, I have a bajillion of them), so that was on the top of my list. The plan was to spend the whole time in my room except for the meeting. Well, the plan worked but only because I was sick as a dog. It was a miserable trip. Nothing like extreme sinus congestion on an airplane. Four airplanes, actually. Plenty of cabin pressure changes to make me think my brain was going to explode. I didn't get anything productive done and I didn't get any good rest either. Luckily, I was too busy being miserable to be missing my boys too much.

The plan for the weekend (besides continuing to die from this head cold) was to carve the pumpkin we got a couple weekends ago. It was a total bust. It was really cold outside so we had to do it inside. I put the pumpkin in the middle of the kitchen floor and tried to get Evan to sit with it. He was scared. He got up, pointed at it and ran away. He finally got close to it when I added the baby pumpkins. He wouldn't have anything to do with the guts and, of course, I handled all the cutting. So I carved a pumpkin this weekend. I even put the candle in it and had Evan join me in the dark bathroom so he could see it glowing. He looked at it, said "no" and ran away. What a turd...ruining my Halloween fun!

I even put his monster pants on him for the occasion!
And no shirt because I was sure he was getting messy.

That's as close as he got to the goop. 

Our My Masterpiece

Evan turned 15 months yesterday. Each month he gains so much more personality. Let me just list off the month 15 highlights.
He loves books.
He runs.
He's currently working on jumping, which is so adorable.
He's not climbing yet, but he lifts his leg like it's coming soon.
If we do the stabbing, he can feed himself with a fork. He's about 50/50 on doing the stabbing himself.
His favorite food is still Daddy's spaghetti, which we have every Sunday.
He had my lasagna for the first time last week; he ate an obscene amount.
He takes his dishes to the dish bucket at daycare.
He likes putting smaller things in containers and has recently gotten the hang of putting things away. (Woo!)
Unfortunately, that means we've found remotes in his drawers and toy bins and found toys in the kitchen cabinets.
He has a weird mix of words, signs and sounds. He moos, baas, and makes elephant sounds. He makes signs for and says duck and dog. He says bear and purple. He signs and says red and brown. He makes wings and says "waddle, waddle" for a penguin. He acts like a monkey and says "hoo hoo ha ha". That's on top of the oldies-- more, all done, milk, water and the ever popular "NO!"
He understands the things we say, like breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, bath, put it away, sit down, stand up, diaper change, everybody out, come here, and luckily "no".
He's become more social at daycare but still prefers his alone time.
He's awesome in public. Contrary to what you might think, if he's having a cranky day at home, we take him out in public. He just likes the stimulation.
He's become a champion fit-thrower. Not exactly a milestone I'm happy about.
He loves all animals. We're going to take him to the zoo if we get a good warmish fall weekend soon.

Most of all, he's just awesome and fun and smart.

Parent Teacher Conference

We had our first ever parent teacher conference today. Yes, for a one year old. Have I mentioned that the USAF is serious about it's childcare?

It wasn't super eventful. We (unlike a lot of parents I've noticed) hang around at drop-off and pick-up to chit chat with the teachers so we know what's he's up to. Granted, it's usually totally chaos with all the other kids there. That's why we took them up on the offer for an uninterrupted chat.

The teachers had been telling us about his reluctance to join the other kids for activities. They never make any of the kids participate in any of the activities. They just make the activities available. Evan has been choosing to not participate. We're seen this for ourselves when we show up for pick-up and all the kids are playing at the sand table but Evan is sitting in a corner looking at a book. But seriously, he's the kid of two engineers. What do they expect?

Anyway, at the conference, we learned that he's getting better. She brought photo evidence. She had a bunch of pictures of all the kids, including Evan, playing together. We also got copies of his artwork, which I'm going to start scanning and make a book out of!

Overall, she said he's doing well. He's the youngest book-obsessed kid, he loves outside time, he plays well by himself, he's pleasant, he's super observant and soaks up everything they try to teach. She specifically said, if he starts pointing at things that are piled or stacked, it's because he wants you to count them with him. Well, okay.

And a few pictures from the weekend...

She didn't mention that he's a daredevil. 

Or that he's a genius. 

You're Gonna Need Tissues for This One...

Because you'll be laughing so hard you're crying.

This kid is committed to eating his lunch. Nap time be damned.

Pumpkin Picking

We went on a pumpkin adventure last weekend. I was looking for a pumpkin patch but those all seem to require an expensive hayride, which I'm not interested in. So, we found a pumpkin barn. That was a slightly better choice than the already-been-picked pumpkin patch at the church down the street (sorry, I don't want a church in the background of my pumpkin picking pictures)... or the ever famous Kroger Pumpkin Patch.

I picked the place because they advertised some farmyard animal petting too and I thought Evan would like that. We saw a goat, a sheep and two little horses. The shock and then excitement on his face when the horses neighed was priceless.

And, we picked out some pumpkins for relatively cheap. David's not a big pumpkin carving, or Halloween in general, fan so we got two small ones for decoration and one big one that I'll carve while Evan watches and I'm sure David will ignore the pumpkin action. Or maybe I'll enlist him as the photographer.

[Side note: One of my biggest hopes and dreams for Evan is that he enjoys Halloween and pumpkin carving and haunted houses and scary movies and... you get the point. It's been a long time since I've had a scary partner in crime.]

Evan liked looking at the pumpkins. He wanted to pick them up. All the ones on the floor were too heavy, but that didn't stop him from trying.

This is about as "farm kid" as he gets. Aunt Suzy would be proud.

"See all those pretty orange pumpkins?
No, thank you.
I'll take this green, warty one. " 

"What's up, guys?"

"Mom! I love these guys! Can I have one?"

Mr. & Mr. Ed: "Evan, come back!"

Baby-sized pumpkin for baby-sized person

Stay tuned for the carving pictures...

Nothing and a Lot

I have a lot to say and nothing to say. Life just goes on, day by day. I think I'm a little overwhelmed by Evan's development and it's rendering me speechless. I know I want to document it all, but I'd much rather spend my time enjoying it.

Signs and Sounds
They do all kinds of crazy stuff at daycare. We don't really hear about all the stuff they do. I've said that before. Here are some examples of things we've randomly discovered.

Evan hands me his elephant toy.
Me: "What's this? An elephant? Can you say elephant?"
Evan: Arm up in the air (like a trunk) and makes an elephant noise.
Um. Yes. Exactly.

Mid-Elephant Noise

He's expanded his reading list to include some other books. Namely, all 25 of his cardboard books which I mistakenly moved to the bookshelf in the living room. A day is not complete until all 25 of those books are off the shelf. While reading about dogs, horses, donkeys and cows, we discovered some things.

Any time we see a dog, he makes a sign with his hand by putting all four of his fingers to his thumb. After questioning the daycare workers for a while, we learned that the sign for dog is a snap. Very similar to what he's doing.

When we see horses and donkeys, first he'd slap his legs and then he started rocking back and forth. When they talk about horses at daycare, they gallop in place and slap their legs to sound like trotting horses.

And when he sees cows: "Mmmmmmmmmmm..." He doesn't get the "oo" part yet.

He can say "brown bear" now (we're probably the only people who'd understand it.) He brought me another book and said "brown bear". I look at the book to discover that there's a brown teddy bear on the cover. Seriously. That was not a fluke. He's done it many times. I think that's really smart.

Studious Kid

Imagination
I'm not sure when kids are supposed to start imaginary play. This seems rather advanced though. The other day, I caught him putting something in his mouth. Then I realized that he didn't have anything. He was pretending to take things from his left hand, put them in his mouth and chew. A couple days later, he was in the bath and David was at the edge of the tub. Evan started pretending he was taking something from David's mouth, putting it in his mouth and chewing. Weird kid but cool development.

Outside Time
Since he's walking better, outside time is becoming more and more fun. The backyard is fun for him to explore. He walks all over, watches the squirrels and birds in the neighbors' yards, picks up leaves and sticks, laughs at Laika and loves on Lars. Lars is strangely mellow when he's outside. I'm not sure if it's because he's so happy to be out or because he knows he doesn't have a safe place to hide or what, but he's weird when he's out there. Evan often takes advantage of that.

The park is also a lot of fun now. I'm not nearly as worried about him falling off the elevated walkways but it's still totally stressful. It's been cool lately, but the perfect weather for a sweat shirt and some playing outside. Apparently lots of parents don't agree because the playground has been pretty empty. I like it that way because the big kids stress me out.

You know what else stresses me out? Dogs. Evan's love for dogs, and animals in general, is a little over the top. Every time a dog walks by the playground, he drops everything and starts running excitedly toward it. Unfortunately, the owners always think that is super cute so they stop to let him pet. Which is fine except he's not a very good petter. And regardless of that, he needs to learn that he can't just run screaming towards strange dogs. It's a tough lesson for me to teach at this age. And it's not just dogs. He'll also wander off following squirrels across the park.

The Backyard Adventurer

"Will you please stop it with the camera?"

*love*

Poke

He had the park to himself this morning. 

I feel like there should be some tumbleweeds blowing by...

Me: "Evan, sit here so I can take some nice fall pictures."
Evan: I'll just chomp on this stick and throw
a holy fit if you try to take it away. Mmkay?

Out for a stroll

Lastly, just what I've always wished for: a Pink Floyd fan kid. (I got the shirt at Target. How cool is that?)

Brown Bear, Brown Bear

Evan has a new obsession. A good one, I suppose. At daycare, they read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? to learn colors (words and sign language), animals and animal sounds. We've been told on several occasions how much Evan likes story time. Last Thursday, Evan and I were browsing the book selection at Meijer and I saw the board book version of Brown Bear, Brown Bear so I picked it up.

I am not lying. I read that book 17,000 times last week. And then, the book accidentally got lost. Oops.

One thing particularly notable, Evan doesn't like us to be out of the room. He doesn't necessarily want to interact with us while we're in the room, but he likes us to be near. Within sight is not enough. If there's a baby gate between us, even if we're only inches apart, that will not work. On Saturday, I was reading BB, BB to him but had to leave the room to make him some lunch. I was waiting for the inevitable tantrum because I had stepped over the gate but it didn't happen. For at least 15 minutes, he sat and flipped through BB, BB, pointed at pictures, said and signed "red" (the only one he can do), and made all kinds of unintelligible noise. I was impressed.

I also discovered that the book isn't even necessary. When he was whiney, I started reciting it from memory. What does he do? Stops whining immediately, sits cross-legged in front of me and listens to me recite. Amazing.