Penguin Dance

As I'm sure you'll agree, one of the most important aspects of pulling off a costume is being able to dance the part. To that end here's Evan doing his best interpretation of a penguin dance:

Penguin Librarian

Evan certainly loves to read (or at least be read to), but what he enjoys even more is unshelving all his books until he finds just the right one:

Now, why was he in his penguin costume for this? Why not?

Halloween

I mentioned a few posts ago that there would be more pictures of Evan in his Halloween costume forthcoming, and I'm a man of my word.

We tried to stick with the penguin theme and incorporate the fish from his fishbowl toy, but all of the shots with him holding it didn't turn out so well. You can see it on the coffee table behind him here, though:

I suppose if we were truly committed to the penguin photo theme this picture would have included a bowl of fish, or at least scrimp, but we already had the candy prepared. Besides, we didn't plan this shot, it's just the kind of thing kids do this time of year:

Last year we didn't even leave the house on Halloween, but since Evan can walk now it seemed like a shame not to show him off a bit. Here are he and Steph while we're out trick-or-treating:

And last, here is a shot of our little family after making the rounds at our neighbors' houses:

I Did It

Evan likes to announce his accomplishments whenever the opportunity arises, even for simple things like putting on a watch:

Of course, when you're less than a year and a half old putting on a watch is not so simple, is it?

Pumpkin Carving

We went to our friends Rob and Tracy's house today for their annual pumpkin carving party. We weren't able to make it last year for some reason (something about a 4-month old baby), and while we didn't have many illusions about Evan participating in the actual carving we knew he'd at least have fun with all the other kids. And we were right on both counts... not so interested in the pumpkins, but had a great time playing with new toys and kids he doesn't see that often.

Here he is taking a rest in a nice Adirondack chair:

Evan didn't want to help carve the pumpkins but he was curious about them:

Once the sun started going down someone broke out some glowsticks, or glowcrowns in Evan's eyes:

And here Steph shows off yet again her self portrait skills:

Penguin Costume

Steph thinks Evan's walk is somewhat akin to a penguin waddle, so when we saw a penguin costume in a catalogue there was really no question what he was going to be for Halloween:

Don't worry, there are more pictures to come of Evan showing penguins how to be truly cute.

Huh?

Evan loves his legos, and he often talks about building while he's playing with them (he'll run over to them and yell "Build build build" as soon as he sees the bag), but I have absolutely no idea what he's talking about in this video:

Your guess is as good as mine.

Kimmie Hat

When Steph's sister Kim and her boyfriend Bill were visiting last month they brought Evan a new hat, which will definitely come in handy when we visit them in New York next month.  With winter approaching (or as much of a winter as we have in Northern California) the mornings around here have been rather cool, so we've started having him wear his new hat on our dog walks to break it in.  He doesn't really like wearing hats very much, but he's awfully cute in them:

More Farm Park

Steph had been to the Emma Prusch Farm Park several times, including when she and Evan went a few months ago, but I had never been until this weekend when we all went for a visit.  Evan likes pretty much all animals, and he loved walking among all the birds around the duck pond and the stalls of sheep and pigs in the barn.  We also got to meet and pet an extremely friendly goat while one of the rangers was taking it on a walk (they're trying to "train" it to be a school assembly goat since it likes people so much), which was a kick (not literally).

Then when we were leaving the barn Evan caught sight of this feather on the ground, which was doing an American Beauty-style dance in the wind:

After chasing the feather around for a minute or two we played on the jungle gym for a while, then it was time to leave.  On the way out we came across a nice grassy hill, and its siren song was too much for Evan to resist (he absolutely loves to run downhill):

Like I said, he loves running downhill.

Wildlife Festival

We live pretty close to Alum Rock Park, which is home to a branch of the Youth Science Institute.  One of our neighbors told us the YSI was having their Wildlife Festival annual open house (Steph had noticed fliers around the neighborhood about it too), which sounded like something we all would enjoy so we piled into the car and headed up there.  As usual we didn't take any pictures of the festival itself, but the YSI web site has a link to a web gallery of photos if you're interested.  You can even see Steph and Evan (barely) in photo 193 -- proof that we attended!

We also went because we knew Alum Rock has some nice playgrounds that Evan had never been to (dogs aren't allowed in the park so we don't go often even though it's a very nice park and it's close).  As much as he enjoyed the wildlife festival I'm sure he'd tell you romping around at the playground was the highlight of the trip:


The pinnacle of any trip to a playground is some time on the swings, but they didn't have any baby swings (or maybe just not very many... I can't remember for sure) and Evan isn't quite ready for the regular swings yet.  He got to ride on the big-kid swings in Daddy's lap, though, which seemed to be even better: