Klaus' Birthday

We went to Evan's friend Klaus' first birthday party today, which was a lot of fun. Klaus has a sand and water play table (sand on one side, water on the other) that all the kids greatly enjoyed turning into a wet sand play table. Evan seemed to think the sand needed some accent rocks so he embarked on a river rock relocation project, which I think the other kids appreciated (or at least they saw fit to play with the rocks once Evan moved them to the table). I didn't get any pictures of his work, but I did get this one of him taking a break to investigate the flowers along the way:

Garden of Eden

Evan really enjoys stomping through puddles and playing around in water in general. At the end of August we realized most of the summer had gone by without giving him a chance to do so anywhere except in the bath, which seemed like a shame. To rectify this we made plans with our friends Heberly and Nate and their kids to go to Garden of Eden (a swimming hole, or actually a series of swimming holes, on the San Lorenzo River just outside Santa Cruz) on my off Friday.

Heberly and Nate live in the Santa Cruz mountains, so we first went to their house for lunch before continuing on to the river. Unfortunately we hung out after lunch a little longer than we'd planned, so by the time we got to the swimming hole it was already well into the afternoon and the temperature was starting to cool off. We also went to a section of the river Steph and I had forgotten about that was better for swimming but not actually as good for toddler walking, so Evan didn't get to do as much splashing and frolicking as we'd envisioned. He still had a good time, though. Here he is with Steph at the water's edge:

All Done

Most sign language, like any language, is primarily a form of communication. In Evan's opinion sign language can also be a form of recreation, at least some signs. Here he is going a bit crazy with the "all dones":

Evan loves telling you he's all done!

Ice Cream Truck

I don't think Evan even knows what the ice cream truck is, but he certainly knows he's supposed to be excited by it:

Self Feeding

I've mentioned before that Evan has been getting closer and closer to feeding himself with his spoon. He made it through a cup of yogurt entirely on his own today:


Trust me, some of the yogurt did actually make it into his belly. I'm not sure who he was saying goodbye to in this video, but it does show Evan working the spoon like an old pro:

Emma Prusch Farm Park

Steph took Evan to the Emma Prusch Farm Park for the first time today and he had a great time, especially checking out the old tractors:

Portrait

Steph was photographing some artwork again today, so she also took a bunch more portrait photos of Evan:

Fairytale Town

While Steph's parents are in town we all went up to Sacramento for the day to visit her sister Megan. While we were there we went to Fairytale Town, which is a park with classic fairytale-themed play structures for kids -- the kind of place that you remember from your childhood but aren't completely sure if it was real or a dream. Of course, Evan doesn't know any of those fairytales yet so he didn't fully appreciate the shoe house (where the little old lady lives) or the huge Mother Goose, but he liked helping out in the Peter Rabbit garden (actually, I guess it's technically the Farmer MacGregor garden):


And he enjoyed all the animals:



He tried to share his favorite book with some of the goats but I don't think they appreciate trucks the same way he does:


Even though he didn't necessarily get the themes he still liked playing around on the play sets:

Hoarding Towelees

I've mentioned Evan's towelees (cloth diapers) before, which are his comfort item. He almost always has at least one towelee close at hand, but he'll happily take more if he can get them:



You can never have enough towelees.

Camping Practice

Steph's parents are back in town for a week or two before they start a camping road trip up the west coast and back. They used our front yard to lay out and organize all their gear, and Evan tried to lend a hand by making sure some of it worked correctly:

Drinking from a Cup

Evan is always interested in trying to do things like a big kid, like drinking from a regular cup (as opposed to his usual sippy-cup):


He did OK, getting a lot of the water in his mouth. I think he got a little more of it on his shirt, though:

Learning to Jump

Evan likes to bounce a lot, so Steph thought she'd give teaching him to jump a shot:

You can judge for yourself how successful they were.

Nothing in Particular

I don't remember what if anything is special about these pictures, but they're awfully cute:

Feeding the Dog

Peekay is a pretty food-motivated dog, so we encourage Evan to give her treats to promote good will between them, a practice he is completely willing to participate in. In fact, it's oen of his favorite games:

Puppy Torture

In addition to dropping for for Peekay Evan is also learning to pretend to drop food:

I don't think the dog sees the humor in this new behavior, but Evan does.

More

Evan is starting to drop some of his sign language in favor of just saying words, such as "more":

As you can see, he's also taking to dropping food for the dog. We've got mixed feelings about that.

Walking

I think I've mentioned before that Evan has started to walk, but we've been having trouble catching it on video -- by the time we grab the camera he's usually gone. We finally got one that's worth sharing, though:

He's mostly walking with his alligators here, but as you can see he doesn't need them for support anymore, he just loves the sound.

Getting Bigger

As kids are want to do, Evan has been growing by leaps and bounds. He's tall enough that he can reach tings off the kitchen table now:



So much fun!

Absentee Blogger

This was originally posted 10/3/08 but I changed the date so it would appear inline with the backlogged posts I've finally got around to writing.

It took two months of inactivity, but the questions about what's going on with this blog have started to roll in. So, what's the story, you ask? I'm afraid it's not that interesting, but my home computer time has been consumed by another child-documentation project for the last few months and I've let the blog lapse in the meantime. I think I'm within a few weeks of finishing my other project, though, and then I can get to back-filling the 20 or more posts that have been queueing up while I've been delinquent.

Obviously, just because I've stopped writing about it does not mean Evan has stopped growing and developing. Evan is walking (almost running) all over the place, he can say several words and can often get his point across even when he can't say the words, he has gone totally truck-crazy, he can eat a bowl of cereal on his own using a baby spoon or a grownup spoon (and the majority of it even goes in his mouth!), Steph and I have gone away for the night a couple of times in the past month and he's done fine with that, and just yesterday he climbed up his little baby slide and went down it all by himself. Those are some of the milestones I'll be writing about... someday soon.

To tide you over in the interim here are a semi-random selection of photos from the past two months: