Midnight Musings

Little Man's First Snow

2010-02-14T19:28:00.000-08:00

We drove up to visit my sister Courtney in Augusta Friday and were greeted by the first flurries of what would end up being about four inches of snow as we passed into the outskirts of the city. Evan was asleep when the snow began and because he'd taken too long to fall asleep in the car, he was grumpy when he woke up. All it took to raise his spirits was to point out of my sister's window and yell, "Evan, look! It's snowing!" I'm not sure the smile left his face until he realized that most of the snow had disappeared by the time he woke up from his nap on Saturday.

See that snow ball in his hand? I made the mistake of teaching him how to make one Friday evening and he made them (and threw them with deadly accuracy) until we ran out of snow. Like the hat? It's my sister's.

When we went to the park Saturday morning, another family was already there and offered to let Evan use their little plastic sled thing.

He loved it. Then he pelted their kids with snowballs.

This snowball didn't come from Evan. I think I was actually throwing it, but it's a great face.
Attack the camera person!

We actually built a couple of snowmen. We built the first one early Friday evening and it was taller than Evan, but collapsed in the Saturday morning sun. We tried a second one Friday night that was on pace to actually be taller than me, but the weight of the middle snowball (it took three of us to lift it and only barely then) caused the bottom ball to collapse after only a few seconds. This snowman was not ours. Courtney went out taking photos Saturday and found this one, the bottom ball split, but the snowman still recognizable.

Not a bad family portrait, eh? Of course, Evan promptly shoved Kim over into the snow after this shot. Then he pelted her with a snowball from point blank range.

The snow may have stopped falling during the night, but it's always fun to shake a tree to recreate the blizzard. I think Evan is like his daddy and was meant to be born in a colder clime. we both love the snow and don't mind cold weather. The kid never once complained of the cold and when we came in from hours of snow play Friday night, his legs were beet red from his pants getting wet and cold. Not a peep of complaint. In fact, he was upset we couldn't stay outside even longer. Maybe he already knows that in his part of the world, this is a very rare experience.

All photos were taken by my sister. We, the stupid parents, forgot to bring either of our cameras even though we knew it was probably going to snow.

Christmas Photos

2010-01-03T09:39:00.000-08:00

This was Evan's third Christmas, and just like last year, he made it much more fun than it would have been otherwise.

Kim got the idea from a gift she received last year to make these snowmen out of tube socks, buttons, peppercorns, dyed toothpicks, ribbons, sticks, and beans. If you're wondering where the beans are, they're inside. That's what lets these things stand upright on their own. Evan got to help make them this year. Mimi may have helped a little too.

My Aunt Kay (Evan's KayKay) gave him a really neat toy workshop that even came with a battery powered screwdriver. The set also came with a toy car that you had to put together piece by piece using the toy tools. Evan helped me build it when we got home that day.

I think we may have taken it back apart as well.

Here's a better shot of the workbench and the picture frame Evan and I built.

Of course, with a two-year-old things aren't always perfect. Here's a picture of "The Lip".

Kim and Evan built a gingerbread house, although the icing that came with the kit didn't seem to do much good and it promptly collapsed under its own weight after they finished. Evan had fun building it anyway.

This is Evan and his horse Kellen. We're not exactly sure where the name came from. Evan made it up a couple of months ago for his pretend horse. The horse got a physical entity when Yiayia and Papou (Kim's parents) came down a couple of days before Christmas.

Evan's eye-hand coordination seems unusually fine for a kid his age. He's actually able point at what he wants to shoot, press the shutter button, and has even started framing his shots so well that all of what he wants in the picture is well inside the borders of the image. He takes better photos than some adults I know, although he has a tendency to touch the lens still. Now if we could just transfer this skill to catching a ball.

Another shot of the master photographer in action.

This was the first time Evan was old enough to ask Santa for something and for the past two months his request was specifically for a "train set." Santa brought this little wooden set. Obviously Evan was pleased.

He'd play with the train set, open another present, and then come back to play with the train set. That's his Aunt Kimberly (my Kim's sister-in-law) and his Grandma (Kim's grandmother) in the background.

That is until he opened his gift from Grandma. Her train set was battery powered and remote controlled. Santa just got out train-setted this year. It happens.

The cool thing this year is that my mom's dad, Pa-Pa, decided he felt good enough to make the ride down to spend Christmas day with us. He's not been feeling well for a couple of years now and this was a pleasant surprise. I don't think I've seen him as happy as he was Christmas day in a very long time. It was pretty cool that Evan got to spend Christmas this year with two of his great-grandparents.

The Christmas Treasure Hunt is a tradition in my family and Evan was finally old enough to provide his own locomotion this year. He was able to keep up with us as we ran from clue to clue around my parents' house and yard. Unfortunately, at this stop, the present for Evan was a little kid-safe mp3 player. Once he got this, he was kind of done. He'd walk slowly, head cocked in the direction of the speaker, occasionally stopping to serenade us with poorly enunciated versions of the music playing from the little red cylinder attached to his belt loop.

The Pain of Being Young

2009-12-12T08:35:00.000-08:00

Evan's currently working through a bout with Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease. Not only is this one of the very few diseases that come with their own set of commas, it's pretty painful as well. Kim had noticed a rash so faint that I honestly didn't even think it was a rash earlier this week. I told her not to worry because she's always noticing little bumps and rashes that never amount to anything and then worrying about them. The kid has no fear and he plays outside a lot during the day. He's going to get bug bites, smalls scratches and allergic reactions from the grass. This time, however, the rash turned out to be something. By Thursday, he'd stopped wanting to eat and getting him to drink was difficult, so we took him to the doctor to find out that he was likely infected with a strain of Coxsackievirus. I think the name of that virus is pretty funny, but the results, tenderness in the hands and feet and painful sores and ulcers in the mouth and throat, are definitely not funny. We've had to really work to get Evan to drink and eat anything, and so far we've been moderately successful, but the little guy will often ask for something to drink then look at his cup and start crying instead of drinking because he knows it's going to hurt.

Also, because of the fact that this is a viral disease, there's absolutely nothing for him to take to get him well sooner. We were prescribed a Lidocaine gel to rub on his gums when he needs it and we're feeding him baby Tylenol and Motrin, but we basically just have to wait it out.

It's too bad you can trade in kids when they get sick. It'd save a lot of stress and strain on the parents. Unfortunately, for some reason our culture has decided that children do not belong in the same class as household appliances and cars.

It May Be Worth It

2009-11-15T17:14:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has kids knows that having a two-year-old isn't always fun. In fact, I'd be willing to say that the annoying parts like tantrums, and cramping the parents' style are about equal to the fun parts. Of course to talk about this both sounds like whining and it's stating the obvious. That doesn't mean the fun parts aren't enjoyable, though. Evan's at the age where he pretends, but a lot of this pretending involves one animal eating another. For example, lately he's been telling me to pretend that I'm a caiman and that he's the otter. Then it's my job to pretend to catch and eat him. It's violent, but he enjoys it so I'm willing to play along.

Actually, a lot of his play involves the chase. It's rare that a day ends without our taking a few laps around the living room fire place punctuating the exercise with a few body slams and tackles. In fact, I finished chasing Evan around the house today just before Kim put him to bed and I started writing this post. Some may call this winding him up so he won't go to sleep, but Evan doesn't really work that way. I can get him wild and nearly incapacitated with giggling (just like he was a few minutes ago) and then he'll practically put himself to bed when we say it's time. That almost makes up for the fact that he'll probably spend most of tomorrow morning crying while we get ready for work. Those mornings (most of them the past month) are pretty tough, but pretending to be a family of monsters growling at each other on the couch later in the day almost makes up for it.

For example, I spent most of today writing a research paper in APA format for one of my Instructional Technology courses. This kept me locked away in the office for most of the day except for the Falcons game, which he mostly slept through. Just as I was starting to finish, he went up to Kim and said, "I need my daddy," so they came in for a visit. He asked me to chase him, so off we went. I could put off the references page for later. I've been a little grumpy today and a little annoyed at the frustrations of having to write a four-page paper in a format I'm not familiar with, but after about 30 minutes of running, hopping, bulldozing, flying, tickling and bridge climbing, I feel refreshed. Now he's asleep and I'll get to do the same in another hour or two. I'll just have to go to bed pretending not to know what's coming in the morning when the smiling face is likely replaced by the contorted grimace of a crying child. It may even be worth it.

Yay, Football!

2009-09-05T11:50:00.000-07:00

Evan really gets more first-hand experience with tennis given that his daddy both coaches and plays that hallowed sport, but his dad's viewing passion is much stronger with football, the traditional sport of the Southern swamplands. Given that Evan seems to be mildly influenced by his father, Evan's favorite team is Georgia Tech. In fact, just look at his response to even my saying "Georgia."

Of course, he doesn't really understand what the deal is yet. He likes to yell, "Go Tech!" whenever my dad says "Go Georgia," but when I tried to get him to do it on video without my dad around, he just copied whatever I said. I've still got years to finish the job, though.

Fun Milestone

2009-07-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

This isn't perhaps the most interesting post for many Evan watchers, but this was really cool to me. Evan has been able to count to 10-15 for months now and even picked up 1-5 in Spanish back in June, but he's never really been able to count things.

Today, however, during lunch Evan picked up two plastic knives and said "I got two knives." I didn't recognize the significance of this to start with until it suddenly hit me and I was shocked. To make sure it wasn't just a lucky coincidence, I handed him a third knife and asked him how many he had. This time he said, "three knives." Pretty cool that he's now able to recognize that basic mathematical rule. Of course, he got a little iffy once he got past three, but he's barely two, so I'm okay with that.

And about the whole knife thing. They were plastic and aren't sharp enough to even handle a piece of ham efficiently. He'll be okay.

Evan the Photographer

2009-07-13T07:28:00.000-07:00

I know it's been more than a month since my last post on Evan's site, but part of that reason is that we've been a-wandering for a significant portion of that time. It's been the summer break and as Evan has learned over this two years on Earth, when Daddy doesn't have to work, Daddy doesn't like being anywhere near home. He was less than two months old for his first trip to Cleveland. His second summer involved another road trip to Ohio. This year we decided it would be a good idea to pack a two-year-old off on a camping trip to Wyoming. Turns out that it wasn't as dumb of an idea as it sounded. We took a portable DVD player with us and stocked up on Go, Diego, Go!, Dora the Explorer, and Wonder Pets DVDs and planned our trip out pretty carefully with stops a couple of times a day that would give Evan some running room outdoors. Evan ended up being a great travelling companion. He'd give us a good couple of hours on the road before he'd get a little whiny from being cooped up, at which time we'd take a short break and then put on a DVD when we got back on the road. We made it to the Western border of Wyoming from Georgia in about four days. Once we got to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, Evan didn't have to ride as much, but he did end up being really clingy with Kim. He was out of his routine and away from comfortable places, and he left Kim a little frazzled at times because she was the only one he wanted. I tried to help and keep him distracted, but it rarely worked. Still, for a two-year-old racking up more than 4,000 miles in two weeks, we can't really complain.

In addition to travelling, Evan's been hitting a few cognitive milestones as well. Early this summer he started to string together grammatically correct simple sentences like, "The ants hurt my toe," "I am running," and "I need cheese." He actually has the conjugations of the verb "to be" down pat, which is pretty impressive for a two-year-old.

Another skill he picked up during our vacation is photography. We took both our new digital SLR and our old digital point-and-shoot. The SLR is just too big for hiking, so we packed the much smaller camera to take with me on hikes. At some point in the trip, Evan picked up the point-and-shoot and started snapping photos, some of them actually pretty good. He actually got his start by pressing the button on our bigger camera, but he did the little camera all by himself. Here are a few photos he's taken over the past month.

This is our friend Courtney. We went out to Wyoming in part to visit Courtney and Mickey, friends of ours from college. Mickey is a park ranger at Grand Teton. This isn't from one of Evan's entirely solo shoots. I'm actually holding our big SLR for this shot, but letting Evan aim and press the shutter button. He took a whole bunch of shots of Courtney, but I really like this shot. We were waiting for one of the geysers to erupt in the geyser basin near Old Faithful when Evan took this shot.

We hadn't really planned on Wyoming being quite so cold in the middle of June, so when the forecast for the low on one night was 29, we got a room at a lodge in Yellowstone. We just didn't pack enough cold weather gear to feel comfortable keeping Evan out in a tent in that weather. Evan entertained himself that night by taking pictures of the room and his new favorite toy, Baby Bison. He named it himself. We bought it for him after he kept asking to "pick it up" every time we saw a bison herd in Yellowstone. Baby Bison didn't get far out of Evan's reach for the rest of the trip.

A few days later in a campground in Grand Teton, Evan's photography skills have obviously improved. This is actually a really interesting shot. Kim was the center of a lot of Evan's photos.

I call this photo "Feet and Camera Case" because that's pretty much what it is.

The sizzling bacon at breakfast that morning caught Little Man's attention and therefore was immortalized in a series of zeroes and ones.

I'm actually not sure how he got this close to this bird. It's out of focus, but he's two so I'll let it slide.

In this shot I can only assume that he was experimenting with composition. I like the artsy tilt that creates the feeling of motion in an otherwise static still life.

Another feet and camera case shot, although this time Evan compares his toes to those of his mom.

Evan actually crawled behind the end table next to our couch to take this shot of our living room. He's really working to get just the shot he wants.

This shot is really neat looking, although I don't know how he took this shot. It looks like he's sitting on the end table he was behind in the previous shot although this was taken the next day. From the darkness of the shot, I kind of wonder if he got out of bed one morning, got out the camera, and took the shot before coming to wake us up. I doubt that's what happened though. The first thing he always does when he wakes up is to come and get Kim out of bed.

Now I just need to work on Evan to get him to bring a little more variety with his photography. Kid needs to realize that vertical shots make a shoot a little more interesting and sometimes do better justice to the subject. I'm sure he'll have that mastered by three.

Of course, I know most of you come here to see actual photos of Evan and not photos he took, so I'll back-date some photos from our trip after I post this. Just scroll down and you can see some of the better shots from the trip below.

Photos from Our Wyoming Trip

2009-07-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

Feeding geese in Tennessee for a break from the car on our first day of the trip.

Looking down on St. Louis from the top of the Arch.

Camping in Yellowstone. Our first mule deer sighting.

Eating in front of the tent.

Yes, there really was snow in June.

Checking out the mud volcano.

Bison herd in Yellowstone.

Evan hiked back up from the bottom of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone all by himself.

Taking a nap during a hike at Colter Bay in Grand Teton.

Posing with Mickey's headlamp a few minutes before he broke the strap.

Family photo on a rock in Jenny Lake in Grand Teton.

Best way to cheer up a grumpy Evan is to get him to throw rocks into a lake.

Just a face.

Kim and Evan in front of Mount Rushmore.

Riding the giant jackalope at Wall Drug in Wall, SD.

Hanging out in Badlands National Park.

Evan the Toddler

2009-05-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

Evan's at an interesting age. Sometimes he looks almost like he's still a baby and then another moment, with different light and a different angle, I look in his direction and standing in his place is a little boy. Sometimes, as in the following photo, it feels almost as if I'm getting a glimpse into his future as a man.

Maybe that ephemeral appearance is part of what causes the toddler mood swings. There are times, common occurrences, actually, when it feels like the kid hates me. If he's the least big grumpy (tired, sleepy, emotionally frustrated) he does not want me. I can't even put him to sleep anymore. Then an hour, or seconds, later he's climbing Mount Daddy and asking me to go outside to feed the chickens followed by snuggling on the couch to watch Go Diego Go. He says "I sorry," "please," and "thank you" without being asked and thirty minutes later turns belligerent and demanding. It must be tough being a toddler. In no other time in your life, except maybe puberty, do you change so dramatically so quickly. Your brain power explodes. Evan's up to complete sentences and pretending to be things he isn't. He can identify letters, count into the teens, and memorize simple songs, but there are times when can't even explain why he's angry. Your physical abilities improve in sudden jumps that leave you able to run and jump but unable to easily take off your own shirt.

There's probably a reason humans aren't usually allowed to remember being a toddler. That wild swirl of unadulterated joy, selfish anger, raving independence, and frustration at not being able to do what you so clearly understand is possible for everyone else would be a much too confusing memory for an adult.

Evan Is Two

2009-05-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

Evan actually turned two just over a week ago on May 15, but we had his birthday party this Saturday. Kim's parents came down and her dad cooked souvlaki, a Greek pork kabob that's marinated overnight in a mixture of olive oil, lemon, garlic, and oregano. Good stuff. It was a hit, but then Mr. Knuchel makes this stuff the best of any I've ever had.

Mr. Knuchel works the grill. Well, he's not actually in the photo, but the food is the important part. The souvlaki takes the heat while the vegetables wait their turn to sear.

Evan has been talking about his "Choo Choo Cake" for a week now. Kim bought a special pan that bakes the individual cars of the train and decorated the cupcakes the night before. It looked pretty cool and Evan was thrilled about it.

After cake and ice cream (and baklava and other Greek pastries for the adults), Evan finally got to open the presents. This was his face when he opened his present from his Aunt Kay. She bought him a sit-on-top train engine that makes noise. This was definitely one of his favorite gifts. He kept leaving new presents to go back and look at this one. Evan is fun at these things because he gets so excited about all of the presents and wants to linger on each one, even the clothes, instead of rushing to the next gift to open.

He also got his first tennis racquet. I bought him a little 19" racquet that he'll be able to use in a year or so to start playing. Right now he does a pretty good John McEnroe impersonation with it. He even knows what to do with the racquet and ball from watching so many tennis matches for my high school team, but he currently lacks the coordination to do much with it. The USTA is really pushing Quick Start tennis for young kids, which uses smaller courts (basically playing on the court width-wise) and larger foam balls instead of the normal felt and rubber balls. He's too young for that now, but it'll be good for him to get used to the racquet so he can pretend to play like daddy right now.

Gabe helps Evan with another of his presents, a battery powered train that speeds around its track.

This was another of Evan's favorites. Aunt Coo-Coo (my sister) ordered Evan a bunch of ducklings and he was excited about those. She ordered a mix of breeds so we have a few runner ducks, a couple of crested ducks and who knows what else.

This is a shot of the ducklings, or at least most of them. There are twelve in total. The yellow one at left-center with the afro is one of the two cresteds. There looks to be at least four different breeds represented, but only the cresteds with their puffball tops and the runners with their extremely upright posture are obvious enough to identify.

After the party, we finally got out train he had been so obsessed with while opening presents. The steering wheel actually works to steer the train, but Evan hasn't grasped the concept of steering yet. He also got his first big wheel type tricycle, a Cars-themed one, but we don't have a photo of it yet. We had to buy a new screwdriver that was long and thin enough to put it together. It also makes a lot of noise, and Evan, being a two-year-old boy, is thrilled about that.

Did You Know...

2009-04-15T06:23:00.000-07:00

That Evan's favorite food is cheese? Seriously, the kid would live off of the stuff if we'd let him. Sure, he'll eats cooked greens, green beans, potatoes, chicken and ham, but the only thing he ever asks for is cheese.

That he went to sleep with a wooden duck last night? That's right, he somehow found one of the carved ducks I have in the computer room and he wouldn't let it go when it was time for bed. He went to sleep with his arms wrapped around it and when Kim went to wake him up this morning, he was petting it.

That he's already learned what half of the letters in the alphabet look like? He won't be two for another month and he can already correctly identify the vowels and several consonants like Q, R, W, B and others. Apparently, he learned this by playing with the foam letters he has with him when he takes a bath. It was a bit of a shock when Kim rolled this talent out for me a couple of weeks ago without any hint that he knew this stuff.

That Evan can count to 10? He's been doing 1, 2, 3 for a few weeks now (about the time I found out that he recognized a lot of the letters), but last night he was counting the bite-size pieces of pizza his mom gave him for supper. We've been giving him hints to get him up to 10 for the past week, but he did this on his own and unprompted. I don't think he really has the concept of one number to one item down pat, but he did point to a new piece with each number last night.

That Evan's favorite song for me to sing is "Malaika," a Swahili love song that I learned in college? If he's fighting sleep and I break into that song, he's almost guaranteed to to quiet down and start to nod off. I've sung it to him since he was born, but it doesn't work when Kim sings it. She has her own repertoire to make up for it, though.

That Evan's favorite song for him to sing is "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"? He's got most of the first verse down pat, but it gets a little mumbley in the last two lines. He also started singing "Rain, Rain, Go Away" while it stormed on Monday. He probably learned that one from Gaa, the lady who keeps him while we're at work.

That Evan was so badly traumatized by the sand gnats at the beach back in January that he claimed he had bugs in his hair for months after? "Bad bugs. Go 'way bugs!"

That Evan's two favorite games are Tent and Night-Night. With Tent, Evan pulls a blanket over his head and yells "Daddy, come on!" or "Mama, come on!" for us to join him underneath and then pops out of the tent and giggles. Not exactly the most complex of games, but it works. For Night-Night, he yells your name then "night night" and you're expected to pretend to go to sleep. When he calls your name, you're supposed to pop awake and tickle him.

That when Evan says, "Boot frog," it's time to go outside. It's been wet down here lately so we've had to put his galoshes on every time we go out in the yard. The galoshes look like little frogs. He and I go out in the afternoons to feed the chickens and collect the eggs.

A Rainy Weekend

2009-03-29T11:14:00.000-07:00

My sister Courtney, Coo-Coo to Evan, drove down from Augusta for a visit this weekend. It poured on Saturday. We got about four inches of rain after lunch that day. The first few pictures are before the bottom fell out. Kim had a class to attend Saturday, so Courtney took Evan over to my parents' house and they played out in the fields and on the railroad tracks. The second set of photos came from this morning as we ran through the flooded section of our back yard. Evan really dug running through the water.

A future John Henry.

Or a future hobo.

I wasn't there for this picture, but I'm going to guess that he's begging for a piece of cheese. The kid is practically French.

I just thought this was a good photo.

After a few sprints through the flooded back yard, you get a little dirty.

Running through the water is fun. I went out to unclog the pipe that drains my back yard and Kim and Courtney brought Evan out to watch. This is what the task turned into.

Running through water is still fun. We probably spent 30 minutes doing just this.

Stomping the giant puddle is fun.

2009-02-22T16:03:00.000-08:00

Evan has turned into a little parrot lately and has even started to string together words into rudimentary attempts at complete sentences like "Choo choo gone" and "eat food" (his demand to his mother this morning when she asked him if he wanted any milk. I finally got a few of his trick sayings (along with his first song) on video.

A Camping Thanksgiving

2008-11-30T18:17:00.001-08:00

Before we left town for Thanksgiving week, Evan and I cleaned the chick cage. After I caught the first one and moved it to the holding pen, Evan kept trying to help me catch the others. His arms just weren't long enough.

He didn't fail from lack of trying, though.

He did at least get to pet the last one before I moved it to the holding pen.

Evan's just recently taken a shine to coloring (or duhlor as he says). This is his and Kim's first day at Amicolola State Park passing time coloring while I'm off wandering around somewhere.

This was one of his favorite tricks at the camp site. He'd crawl up on this tree stump and then squat down like he was about to jump off and then just stand up really quick. He thought it was hilarious.

Here he's playing with his cousin John's basketball set. It looks like he actually knows what he's doing, doesn't it. That's pretty good form for a 1.5-year-old.

Wednesday night we played football. Evan got a kick out of it. He actually did catch and throw the ball a little bit, but honestly, he spent most of the time just running around in circles and randomly tackling me and his granny.

He also gets a big kick out of running between my legs, which is kind of an odd trick if you ask me.

This is cousin John and cousin Cali. John is my cousin Tara's little boy and Cali is my cousin Heidi's little girl. Heidi is just a few months older than I am (and Tara's younger sister) and Cali is just a couple of months younger than Evan. The three spent a very long time spreading gravel on a piece of plywood and then dumping it on the ground.

I know this isn't Evan, but I thought it was a really good shot of Cali.

This is me and Evan coloring after I got back from hiking the ten-mile round trip to the Len Foote Hike Inn on Friday. We ended up going home early because of weather (and I had tickets to the Georgia Tech game at UGA), so this was our last night in the mountains. Evan had a blast.

Fall and Halloween

2008-11-16T11:17:00.000-08:00

We took Evan to a pumpkin patch in Odum back in October. There was a lot of stuff for little kids to play with and we took a hay ride out to the actual pumpkin patch to get our pumpkins.

But first Kim wanted to get a photo with the sign.

There was a petting zoo, although you couldn't really pet a lot of the animals unless they came right up to the fence. There was a really cool bridge over part of the grounds that the goats used to walk around over our heads.

Here Evan points to the ducks after petting the donkeys.

Evan tries his hand at roping a steer. I don't think his coordination is good enough for this yet.

After all, steer wrestling is more his style anyway.

Evan really loved the cow train. After his first ride he signed "more" and cried when we took him out to go get some lunch.

We let Evan choose our pumpkins for us. He had a kick bringing up pumpkins and handing them to us. Just don't tell him that we were only able to keep three of the twenty he collected.

He really did try to pick this one up. He just couldn't get a good grip.

He already knows tractors, but this is a little larger than the one his granddaddy takes him on.

This photo is from a week later getting ready to go out for Halloween. We decided to dress him up as Baby Einstein. He had little suspenders (you can't see them here) and we styled his hair up and back to get Einstein's famous shock of hair and then used that colored spray to dye his hair white for the night. Kim even painted his shirt with "E=MC²" so the lack of mustache wouldn't confuse people.

More of the styling process. Evan's eating a sour straw. We don't usually let him eat candy, but we made a small exception for Halloween.

Not many people know that Einstein had a thing for chocolate cupcakes. To make sure Evan's costume was as realistic as possible, we had to let him eat a chocolate cupcake too. That's a look of satisfaction (and sleepiness from being up and running around an hour after his bedtime.)

2008-10-20T17:54:00.000-07:00

Another post so soon? What's wrong with me? But this was hilarious and I couldn't help but to post the video. Evan did this for almost 15 minutes straight. He's jumping about six inches down onto a mattress, by the way, so no real risk of injury was involved.

Long Time No See

2008-10-19T11:05:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted anything in about a month and Evan has probably hit the most benchmarks (at least interesting ones) in this time period than in any other of comparable length. His vocabulary is markedly larger. He now says mama, water, bath, ball, milk, snack, flower and a couple of other words I'm forgetting in addition to the dada, dog, duck, and Bubba that he's been saying. He understands a good many more but just can't say them.

In addition to new linguistic mastery, he's also learned to climb. He was quite proud of himself the first time he climbed into this rocking chair. He gets jealous when Kim sits in it now. He was also climbing onto his Papou and Yiayia's coffee table and jumping off of it when we were visiting last week. He's a bit of a daredevil.

During that visit to Kim's parents' house, we went to a hockey game. Parking around Phillips Arena can be difficult and expensive and there's a MARTA station right at the entrance to the arena. Parking at the North Springs station is free, so we took the train into the city for the game. It was Evan's first experience on public transportation. I try to take MARTA whenever it's reasonably possible in Atlanta just because it's cheaper than paying for the gas and parking for any event in the city. I just wish they'd expand rail service so that more places are accessible from the train.

The actual Thrashers game was excellent. I love hockey, especially live. Football is probably actually a better sport to watch on TV than it is live (if you take away the atmosphere of actually being there). Hockey is the opposite. It's an okay sport on the small screen, but incredibly fun when you're actually there. Plus, the Thrashers won 7-4 against one of the better teams in the league to start their season.

Evan actually loves sports. He paid attention to most of the game and clapped every time the crowd cheered. The experience was memorable enough for the kid that one night the next week I was watching a game on TV and he walked into the room, looked at the screen, and started clapping. He was sitting next to me while I was editing the photos for this post and started clapping when I opened the photo of the players on the ice for the face off.

The Thrashers were giving out these really cool logo knit caps at the game. Evan decided to model them for us during one of the time outs. He was really well behaved even though the game didn't end until three hours past his bedtime. He got a little fussy in the last few minutes of the game, so I picked him up and walked him back up to stand at the edge of the tunnel so I could see the game. He was happy to watch the drunken guys in the upper deck behind us and glance down on the ice as long as I was holding him.

The next day we took Evan to the Georgia Aquarium. I love this place. We had annual passes during the first year after it opened, but since then we've moved away and can't go enough to justify the passes. We've known Evan really liked fish from the way he acted around aquariums we saw in stores and restaurants. He was amazed by what we saw in the aquarium. I was a little worried it'd be too much for him, but he loved every minute of it.

Here's Evan rehydrating and watching one of the beluga whales.

The tropical fish reek tank may have been a bit of a sensory overload. I put Evan down and he ran from end to end of the acrylic wall trying to take all of the fish (and people) in.

Evan and his great grandmother check out the potato grouper and whale sharks in the Ocean Explorer exhibit. If you haven't been to the aquarium in Atlanta, this is its most amazing feature. I've been a little critical of their lack of information about the species the display (they've actually done a bit to improve this), but the huge deep sea tank that you can walk under and then sit and watch through an acrylic wall the size of an IMAX movie screen is an incredible experience. They have a few species (like the whale sharks) that you'll likely never see again in your life.

Oh, and Evan can eat with a spoon now. He's really good with things that stick to the spoon like yogurt and pudding, but he can manage other foods with just more mess. This spoon is actually a little to big for his mouth, but the ones we keep at our house are more his size.

Evan's grandparents found this little car at a yard sale or something similar. He really got a kick out of riding around the driveway in it.

A week later, we're back at home and the eggs I'd been incubating for the last three weeks have hatched. Just like with the aquarium, Evan is excited to see other living things. Here he's looking down on the pen to see the day old chicks.

Did I mention that he's learned to climb? It's not in the photo, but I'm standing behind him to catch him at the first sign of trouble and I snatched him off the ladder just after this photo was taken because he decided to keep climbing up the ladder past the point where I still felt comfortable.

What's Wrong with that Kid?

2008-09-17T16:26:00.000-07:00

I was on single parent duty yesterday while Kim did the open house thing. It wasn't a big deal. After Evan got over a 30-minute screaming jag because I had to use the the restroom, he was actually in a grand old mood, except that he kept wanting to bite me. We're trying to break him of that particular game, so I held him back and said, "Do you want to go to time out?"

He instantly shook his head "no," which is interesting because he's been doing that motion, but never before in response to a yes or no question.

Of course, then he paused, looked down to where he had bitten me earlier, looked back up at my face, grinned, and lunged in for another snap. Of course that meant he had to go to time out.

I'm not really sure how effective time out is. He actually will stop crying when you put him in the playpen we use for time out if he's upset. I picked him up, stuck him in timeout and he grinned at me as I walked back to the couch. I looked over about a minute later to see him looking at me over the top of the playpen grinning. He quickly ducks back out of my line of sight before slowly peeking back up at me, the grin still on his face. When I went to get him out of time out a short while later, he flopped down to the bottom of the playpen and pretended like he was a sleep and then started giggling when I picked him up.

This kid is weird.

Evan at 16 (Months that Is)

2008-09-15T19:45:00.000-07:00

I realized that I hadn't posted here in a while last week but couldn't find the camera to upload any new photos. I finally found it lurking behind a picture frame on the mantel (we have to keep anything fragile out of Evan's reach) so I thought I'd take this time to give a little update and post a couple of photos.

Evan's pretty much given up the pacifier. I'm not really sure how it happened. He'll still go for it when he finds one (and he'd been stashing pacis in all sorts of weird nooks, crannies, and shoes for a while there, probably preparing for just this sort of crisis), but he no longer needs one. We started off about a month ago by just not offering him one until it was time to put him down for bed. After a week or so of that, I couldn't find a paci easily, so I just didn't bother. He went to sleep fine that night. After a couple of nights of that, we just stopped bothering with the things altogether. He doesn't seem to care until he sees one and even then when you take it away he doesn't seem too stressed out about it. I'm taking this as a sign that the kid doesn't have an addictive personality and we'll have to worry less about him developing drug and alcohol problems as a teen and adult.

He's also started taking more interest in other kids than he does us. We actually have to chase him down at daycare to get him to come home and he's always unhappy about leaving unless none of the other kids are there. He's definitely got a bit of an independent streak for a kid his age, but he's definitely a social kid. That's good. I'd be happy if he turns out more outgoing than I was and am, but I'd hate to see him be needy turn into one of those kids who can't manage to leave home when they graduate high school. If he doesn't attend college at least 100 miles from Kim and me, I'll know I'll have failed as a parent. That's mostly tongue-in-cheek. Mostly.

Finally, he's starting to really show signs of understanding what you say. If you ask him to hand you something or to pick something up, he usually does so pretty quickly. In the past couple of days I've discovered that if he has something he shouldn't have (a regular occurence) that if I ask him politely, he gives it to me without hesitation and doesn't get upset about it. Pretty cool. His spoken vocabulary is a little smaller, though. It's basically "dada", "mama", "duck", "dog", and "Bubba" (the name of one of our dogs).

Speaking of Bubba, Evan and I actually went out to play in the yard today. Evan had been looking out of the window when he saw his Aunt Kay driving by the house in her Gator and he got excited. By the time we got on his shoes and went outside, she was gone, but we went and looked at the mockingbirds that were noisily swarming the trees in our front yard, petted Bubba for a while, and walked back to look at the chickens, before coming back in to sit on the couch for a little bit before bedtime.

Here's those photos I promised.

Evan had a ball climbing into the laundry basket and getting us to push and spin him around. If you notce his attire, Evan's a huge Georgia Tech fan. His favorite player this year is Michael Johnson. (He's a big Michael Turner fan too, but he doesn't dress up for the Falcons on Sundays.)

He's also training for a rewarding career as a janitor. If only he'd clean up after himself after eating. He's part of the reason we're infested with ants right now.

Evan Goes Camping

2008-06-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

This is actually the second time Evan has gone camping, but it's the first time he was alert enough to have a clue as to what was going on. We went to visit his aunt Courtney in Augusta this weekend and we camped in the nearby Mistletoe State Park. Evan had a great time hiking, sleeping in the tent and eating rocks. Sadly, we couldn't keep the kid from sticking the gravel in the campground in his mouth. I understand the first time. After all, you have to stick something in your mouth to make sure it's edible. It's all the other times he stuck rocks in his mouth that worry me. You would have thought that the first time would have been enough to learn that they were indigestible. Apparently not. I guess granite tastes pretty good.

Actually, he spent most of his time moving gravel from one place to another. A lot of that "another" place was in our tent. There's a video of this at the bottom of the post.

Of course camping isn't all heavy lifting. He also had to help granddaddy set up the camper.

Evan also helped set up Mama and Daddy's tent. Of course with the weather, we had to take a little play break when we were finished.

Of course after all that work, one tends to get a little dirty. Evan's not fond of being wiped up, but he dealt stoically with Mama's irrational need for cleanliness. After all, he's just going to get dirty as soon as she lets him down. But Evan is beneficent, so he waits patiently for her to finish.

Saturday night we went to a place in Clark's Hill, SC, called La Cantina. The food was pretty good, but it's about as in the middle of nowhere as any restaurant I've ever visited. The owners have a quirky sense of style. Obviously, Evan loved the place. He's taken up the habit of pointing at things and proclaiming "Wuh dah". I'm not sure he put the finger down the entire time we were there.

This is a hand-made clay and stone oven in which they cook their steaks. Evan was amazed by this thing. After we watch the guy cook the steaks and went back inside, Evan kept trying to walk back outside to the oven.

We also went hiking on Sunday morning. I carried Evan most of the way and he slept most of the way. Here's the picture we took about a quarter mile in with Evan conked out on my back.

Kim carried Evan during part of the trip back just to see what it was like. Evan was nice and perky for this shot. We stopped at the same place on the return trip for the Mama and Evan shot.

It was a long three day weekend for Evan and he was pretty much zonked by the end. Courtney walked him around the campground in his stroller and they found a feather, but Evan couldn't hold out for long. He fell asleep and didn't wake up until we were an hour from home.

Evan's First Birthday: Part II

2008-05-25T18:55:00.000-07:00

Evan had a little party at his daycare on his actual birthday, but we couldn't organize the family party until today. Kim started getting things ready for the party days in advance and decorated my parents' carport quite nicely for the party. It was mostly family and we cooked out and had a cake that my sister Courtney made and Kim and she decorated. Evan had a blast opening up presents and destroying his little mini-cake, but between his few sips of sweet tea, cake, cookies, and other goodies, he kept us up half the night with a stomach ache.

Actually, I just found out that Kim didn't take any pictures on our camera, so you'll have to go over to the granny blog to see those, but here are a few recent photos too keep you sated until then.

Happy Birthday to Evan!

2008-05-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

Evan likes to demonstrate his detachable head. He also turned one year old today, and actually not too far from the time this post went live. Kim took the day off from work to help with the party at the daycare and then she and Evan went swimming in the pool. Kim spent last night and this morning working on Evan's birthday cupcakes. I think they turned out pretty cool.

Evan's big party day started off with a trip to Burger King where he played in the play structure.

He was shown the cake for his approval.

I think he approved.

Mr. Evan Goes to Tech

2008-05-04T07:42:00.000-07:00

Evan went to watch his cousin David graduate from Georgia Tech this weekend. Daddy forgot to take the camera, so we're stuck with second-hand photos from Karen, David's mother. Evan was amazingly good considering the five hours we sat in the Georgia Dome hearing speeches and watching people in black robes walk across the stage (including two trips for the masters students for some reason.)

Here's Evan and me before graduation in front of the Ramblin' Wreck.

We didn't bother to take any pictures of Evan during the ceremony. Part of that was because it was a graduation, and therefore largely uninteresting visually. The other part was that Karen and her camera moved to a location where she could see David more easily. We did get a couple of pictures of the kid with the graduate on a grassy knoll near the Dome. Oh, and Evan just started walking without any assistance a couple of weeks ago. At the time of the video, he'd only walk between us, but during a trip to Brunswick where we'd left Evan with my parents, he started launching himself into open space to walk wherever he felt like. Unfortunately, his bravery outmatches his balance. Hence the skinned nose and bruised forehead.

After graduation, we headed up to 5 Seasons in Sandy Springs for lunch. I happened to mention this in passing to Karen in conversation earlier in the day and it ended up turning into where we went. I'm not complaining. It's my favorite restaurant (and brewpub), but I didn't want to tell them where to go. Luckily, everyone seemed to like their food. Evan was awesome during the five-hour ceremony, but he ran out of gas on the trip to 5 Seasons.

I don't think Evan got to eat much table food here (he did eat half of a waffle for breakfast), but he ate a couple of containers of baby food. I'm really hoping that's water Mama's giving him in the straw.

Afterward, we hung out at the restaurant and talked.

And Evan took a little walk.

A Few New Things

2008-04-09T16:54:00.000-07:00

Evan started crawling on his hands and knees instead of the old military crawl, but that's so passé . Watch this.

Quick photo post

2008-03-15T19:52:00.000-07:00

It's been a long day and I'm headed off to bed, but I thought I'd leave you a quick photo from today's drive down the Peaches to the Beaches yard sale route. If you look really closely at the bottom of his mouth, you see a glimpse of his first tooth.