Water Baby

The big new experience of the weekend, at least as far as Evan was concerned, was his first time in a swimming pool. I don't think he knew what to make of so much water, especially since it was considerably cooler than what he's used to in the bath tub. I'm sure he didn't mind having all the girls around, though:

Unsurprisingly Evan didn't prove to be the most dynamic swimmer right off the bat, so when everyone else's excitement died down a bit and they went off to actually swim he and Steph were able to move out of the wading area and really float around:

All told he was probably only in the water for 10 or 15 minutes -- we wanted to make sure he didn't get too cold. He didn't head out on his own and breaststroke around the pool, or even put his face in the water, but he didn't hate it either. We'll certainly give swimming a try again the next time we're around a pool.

Playing with Cousins

Evan had already been introduced to all of his Goetsch Aunts at this point, but none of his cousins. We understand the girls had been clambering for a chance to meet him, and we were finally able to oblige them this weekend. Of course, what is the first thing little girls want to do with a baby? They want to hold him. Luckily Evan likes being held, so we were mostly able to accommodate their requests. Here he is with his oldest cousin Delaney:

And here is is with the two younger girls Riley and Paige:

They didn't just sit around on the couch the whole weekend, of course. With all of the iPods around there was music playing pretty much non-stop, and when you mix music, Melissa, and babies you inevitably end up with some impromptu choreography:

Evan, as always, was a great sport.

G2K07

Part of the reason for Kim & Bill's West Coast vacation was to have a mini-reunion with the Goetsch clan, possibly the last time the whole family is together for quite some time (if you don't know about Jim & Sheilagh's retirement plans, check out their blog). Fortunately for all of us, Melissa's in-laws are very generous people and have a gorgeous house on a golf course in the Palm Springs area that they were willing to let us invade. So we all packed up our things and headed out to the desert for the weekend.

First, the obligatory group photos. I think this picture of our little family is pretty good, but there's something about it Steph doesn't like. I'm including it anyway, though:

Here's one of all the Goetsch girls and parents:

Not only was this a nice chance to see all of Steph's family, but we also got some practice navigating the air travel system with an infant. We've got a couple of cross-country flights coming up in the next few months, so we were looking forward to making a trial run on this much easier 1-hour route. I'm happy to report that Evan did a wonderful job on his first flights. He ate on the way up and down on both flights (eating means swallowing, and swallowing means no ear pressure problems), and he was very even-tempered pretty much the whole time. Flying to Columbus for Thanksgiving will certainly be a bigger challenge, but the experience this weekend bodes well for the future.

The golf course was closed for a few weeks while they reseeded the fairways with their winter grass, but that worked entirely in our favor. None of us besides Tim are much into golf anyway, and the whole community was practically empty so we didn't have to worry about being too loud or dodging any errant golf balls in the pool. We also got to see some native desert wildlife that might have otherwise stayed up in the hills -- coyotes and rattlesnakes!

We didn't know they were going to come to us, though (more on that in a sec). We thought we'd have to go looking for them, so on Saturday a few of us decided to climb up into the hills around the house on a nature hike of sorts. Here's our intrepid band of adventurers, gearing up to go hunt rattlesnakes:

This is Meg and Bill on the way back down. The house in the upper left corner of the frame is Doug & Kristi's, where we were staying:

Unfortunately (fortunately?) we didn't find any rattlesnakes on our journey, apparently because we were looking too hard. It turns out the way to find them is to just drive around the neighborhood in the golf cart, like Kim & Bill were doing when they made the first (and only) rattlesnake sighting of the weekend. Furthermore Tim, Bill, and I saw a pair of coyotes when we were driving that very same golf cart around the course the next day, and the girls saw coyotes (probably the same pair) later in the evening while tooling around looking at houses. Maybe the golf cart had magical animal-attracting properties?

Anyway, as you might expect we had a wonderful weekend with the family. You can look at the next couple of posts to see more details.

Information Overload

This is one of the first times we put Evan in his new ExerSaucer, and I think it may all be a bit much for him right now:

I'm not sure if the research is all in or not yet, but this may be how a kid develops A.D.D.

Ebony and Ivory

I swear a few nights ago a good story to include with this post occurred to me while I was lying in bed. I can't remember what it was, though, so you'll just have to settle for a cute photo by itself:

Roller Derby

Aunt Megan had a roller derby bout the weekend Kim and Bill were here, so on Saturday we all trekked up to Davis for the evening to see Meggy in action.

We got there a bit early -- like, before-they-started-to-lay-out-the-track early -- so we had plenty of time to explore the facility and get our bearings. This knowledge of the lay of the land proved to be useful later, as we had to take turns walking Evan around outside during the warmups. Evidently derby girls like their pre-match mood music cranked up to 11 to set the proper tone, but I think people look at you kinda funny if your kid's ears start to bleed and you don't do something about it. Steph commented several times that she felt like an old fuddy duddy (is "old" redundant here?), but I guess that's part of being a parent. Fortunately the actual bout wasn't nearly as bad. Not that Evan seemed to mind either way -- he appeared unconcerned at the prospect of losing his hearing at the ripe 'ole age of 3 months.

Here's a picture of our crew before the festivities really got started (notice that both Evan and I wore red in support of Megan -- her derby name is Red Rover):

Unfortunately this was the best picture I got of Meg actually skating. A dark indoor hockey rink and bunches of women moving fast and crashing into each other isn't exactly a recipe for high-quality photos. It's only warmups, but it's better than nothing:

We had a pretty good time, and we finally got to see Megan in action. Evan was very well behaved all night, despite not getting to sleep until 11:30 and being blasted with techno and punk music most of the evening. He got to see his first ticketed athletic event and his first girl fight at the same time (Meg said fights breaking out is very unusual, but I'm not sure I believe her), so that's two things we can cross off the list. All-in-all a pretty good evening.

Kim & Bill's Visit

Kim & Bill spent the weekend with us during their West Coast vacation, finally bringing an end to Evan's quest to meet all of his Goetsch aunts (his quest to meet all his Metz aunts won't be complete until Thanksgiving). Here's a picture of Evan hanging out with Bill:

As you can see, Evan has been into sucking on people's fingers recently, especially knuckles. And he doesn't just suck on them anymore, he really gnaws away. We'll have to figure out how to change that behavior once he starts getting teeth or someone is going to get hurt!

The kids insisted they wanted to babysit for us sometime while they were here, so Steph and I took them up on their offer Sunday night to have a little belated anniversary celebration (the 14th was our 5th wedding anniversary). We went out to a teppanyaki place we like a lot for dinner, Kyoto Palace, and had a very nice time. Unfortunately Kim & Bill didn't enjoy their evening as much. Apparently Evan started crying a few minutes after we left, and he didn't stop until we got home a few hours later. We didn't know what to say... sometimes babies cry.

First Laugh

Evan made his first attempt at a laugh tonight during his bath:

It wasn't exactly an infectious giggle, but he's got to start somewhere, right? Unfortunately we haven't had any success as of yet at getting him to repeat this feat, but we'll keep working on it.

Sierra & Max's 1st Birthday

We went to a birthday party for the Kelly twins today. This was the first birthday party Evan has ever been to, and I think he spent most of his non-sleeping time filing away tidbits about what he wants to have at his 1-year birthday extravaganza (it's never too early to start planning for these sorts of events).

This picture isn't really that great, but it's the only one we took, and if you look carefully you can see Evan's great new onesie:

Is that really Burnin' Rubber, you ask? Why, yes it is! Steph made an iron-on photo transfer and put it on a generic white onesie, so now Evan can share his love of biker dragons with the world. Unfortunately, in his excitement at displaying his new favorite outfit Evan ignored the manufacturer's prohibition against getting the transfer wet in the first 72 hours by drooling all over himself, causing some of the colors to run. He'll certainly grow out of it in a few weeks anyway, though, so we'll consider this a learning experience and do better next time.

Conversations with Mommy

Steph took these two videos of she and Evan having a little conversation. There's not a whole lot going on in them, but they're awfully cute: