Midnight Musings

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Little Man's First Snow

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.

posted by Jacob # 7:28 PM 0 Comments

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Christmas Photos

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.

posted by Jacob # 9:39 AM 0 Comments

Saturday, December 12, 2009

The Pain of Being Young

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.

posted by Jacob # 8:35 AM 1 Comments

Sunday, November 15, 2009

It May Be Worth It

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.

posted by Jacob # 5:14 PM 2 Comments

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Yay, Football!

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.

posted by Jacob # 11:50 AM 1 Comments

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Fun Milestone

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.

posted by Jacob # 11:07 AM 0 Comments

Monday, July 13, 2009

Evan the Photographer

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.

posted by Jacob # 7:28 AM 2 Comments