1 Year Progress Report

Evan just came back from his 1-year check up and he’s doing marvelous. He’s right on track physically and developmentally. He now weighs 23 lbs, 13 oz.(from 21 lbs, 6 oz 3 months ago) and is 31 inches tall (from 30 ¼). The growth of his head has slowed significantly (thank God) and measures in at a still large, but less freakish 19.09 inches (from 18.98 inches).

I know you’re all wondering how he measures up, so, in comparison to his peers, Evan’s percentiles are:

Height: 84.66%
Weight: 65.31%
Head Circumference: 94.71%

Speaking of measuring up, in case any of you are wondering, Evan is perfectly well-endowed. Much to Brad’s astonishment and horror, I asked his pediatrician.

In other news, we now have 8 teeth and 2 more on the way. The tooth invasion seems to have tapered off a bit, so we’re all doing our best to catch up on sleep before the next major milestone. Evan is talking in sentences now. Only God, Evan, and possibly Levi understand what he’s saying, but he’s definitely telling stories and talking up a storm, and sometimes I even catch him singing to himself.

Evan’s Word Repertoire and Translations:
Oh = Hello
Doe = Dog
Da = Dad
Ma = Mom
Ba = look at that
Yeah = Space filler he says a lot, but none of us know what it means

He now waves “hello” and “good-bye,” gives hugs, kisses and high fives.

Evan is still a little unsteady walking, but he’s got crawling conquered. He can even climb the stairs by himself now. Unfortunately he’s a bit like a cat caught in a tree. He can go up, but down is a bit more difficult. And painful. We’ve had a minor mishap with our small set of stairs, and hopefully Evan learned his lesson from that one.

The other day he heard Brad start to run the water for his nightly bath and Evan dropped his toy and began crawling; out of the living room, up the stairs, and into the bathroom. The boy loves his baths. And his puppy, birds (especially chickens), books and being tickled. Peek-a-boo is as always, a favorite past time, as is crawling, banging on the TV, and eating lint.

Evan is quickly growing into a little man. He is active, curious, and as happy as can be, and he's a continued source of joy and entertainment for all of us. This year has gone by so fast and being able to spend it with Evan has been such a privilege.

Happy Birthday Evan! We love you!

Happy Birthday Evan!

One year ago, Evan Arthur Lincoln introduced himself to our world, and it hasn’t been the same since.

We celebrated Evan’s first birthday at the aquarium with his Grandma & Grandpa Newhall and we all had an amazing time. Evan loved watching the fish. We stopped by Ivar’s after the aquarium and as it turns out, Evan loves eating fish too.

After the aquarium we headed up to the ranch where we’re relaxing and enjoying a beautiful birthday weekend and trying to recover from our sugar comas.

The upside of the birthday cake sugar high is that the crash is glorious. The three of us slept better than we have in 3 weeks. Evan may be eating birthday cake every night for the rest of his life.

As a side note, Evan and Levi are still thick as thieves. Not only was Evan perfectly willing to share his birthday cake with Levi, last night, when Evan and I were reading stories before bed, I patted the bed for Levi to jump up and visit us. Evan mimicked me, patting the bed until Levi was right on top of us.

Does This Diaper Make My Butt Look Big?

I was beginning to fear the return of Bulimic Baby. For about a week now it’s been a challenge to get Evan to eat. He takes a couple bites of food and then he loses interest. To top it off, once he’s done eating he shoves his fingers into his mouth and starts to gag himself. He seemed determined to get into those skinny jeans of his.

Once I realized babies often get their molars at around one year, I started rooting around in the back of his mouth and he has 2 molars coming in! That makes it a total of 6 new teeth at once! No wonder none of us are sleeping.

Mimic

Evan has started to mimic what he sees in a whole new way.

We’ve gotten used to him shaking his head “no” back at us when we tell him no, but he’s come up with a bunch of new ones...

The other day while Brad was styling his hair, he looked down to see Evan running his hands through his own hair too.

Evan also enjoys brushing his teeth with his own toothbrush, but only while one of us brush our teeth with him.

When we were up at the ranch, Evan watched Brad throw a stick in the pond for Levi and then began practicing trying to do it on his own.

He now wants to give hugs when he sees other people giving hugs, and his kisses are wet and full of teeth, but he gives them freely.

Evan is practicing talking on the phone every chance he gets. His biggest problem is he doesn’t understand it needs to go to his ear, not the back of his head.

In fact, when I took this picture, we told Evan to say "Hi Dad," and he took the phone, put it to the back of his head, and said "I Da." Evan's First words!

Tooth? Teeth...

Brad and I haven’t slept for more than a 2 hour stretch in almost a week. At first we thought maybe it had to do with Evan’s walking and crawling. We contemplated stomachache and earache. Surely it couldn’t possibly be the new tooth coming in we told ourselves. After the first two sleepless nights, I decided to examine Evan’s gums. It wasn’t the new tooth coming in that was causing all the problems. It was the four new teeth coming in at the same time. No wonder Evan’s miserable. And if misery loves company, well, Evan is determined to make sure he’s not alone.

Happy Easter!

Evan spent his first Easter at home relaxing with family and eating a lot of eggs. We all got up early and went to the 6am sunrise service our church has every Easter at Bellevue Park and even though it was raining, it felt great to be out that early. (And since Evan is going through another sleep strike, we're getting used to being up at 5 am).