Pumpkin Take 2

Now there's a smiley Evie. :)

First Foods

http://youtu.be/pzvxM8bhZjA

Here's Evie's first experience with solid foods, we started with oatmeal. She did so great!!

Evelyn Clara: 6 Months

*sniff*sniff* My baby!!!!!

Okay, I'm alright now. Promise. ;) I just can't believe that Evie is half a year old already! She's such a little person now. Everyday we see her learning new things and picking up new skills, it is so much fun to watch. She's completely mastered army crawling now, and is all over the house into everything. No crawling yet- I think she's gotten so good at army crawling that she doesn't have much interest in getting up on her knees!
Evie's also babbling up a storm now- her baby vocabulary now includes "mamamama", "dadadada", "babababa", and occasionally "lalalala" (a rare but fun one!). She LOVES when we sing and dance around the house- particularly when I do crazy dance moves for her. She's only 6 months old, but she definitely already knows when I'm acting like an idiot for her. :)
We're starting to upgrade Evie's toys to more interactive ones and it's really fun to see her learn to use new things. She loves blocks now, and is fantastic at knocking down towers. She also likes cups and bowls of all kinds.
After her 6 month appointment this Thursday... we're going to start food!!! I'm really excited. :) I can't wait to watch her explore new tastes, I've been making my own baby food and keeping it in the freezer, so I'm stocked and ready. We will of course video her first experience, so stay tuned for that!
So many new things to see and do- it's a blast!

Fall Field Trip

We went to Mayer Bros Cider Mill and Bipperts Farm today with Jen and the boys, Pippa and Eli, and Aunt Allison. Miss Evie wasn't feeling super smiley, but here are some cute pics of the kids. She's still adorable! :) We got some delicious treats, and I'm motivated to try another pumpkin photo shoot before fall is over hopefully.

Road Trip Adirondacks

Well we took our first vacation with Evie- a 3-night stay in a cabin in the Adirondacks! We've stayed at Prospect Point before and really enjoyed it, the cabins are beautiful and the area is really nice, so we made the trip again this fall with baby in tow. Unfortunately it rained like 90% of the time we were there, but we made the best of it and had a good time anyway. :)

Evie did pretty well for the 5 hour rides there and back, especially for her not really liking the car very much. The roughest time was the 1 hour trip to Lake Placid we took on Friday- she was not happy there or back! But while we were there she was perfect, so it all worked out.

Evie seems to love being outdoors, she's pretty quiet and just looks around in what Eric described as "wonderment." We did a 1.5 hour hike up Bald Mountain (which turned out to be a WAY more difficult hike than we anticipated, but that's another story) and Eric had her in the Beco the whole time and she was great! Looked around and then fell asleep. :)

I was sad I couldn't get any photos of Evie playing in leaf piles.... but the leaf piles were all soaking wet, so these photos will have to do. This was our practice run for our big trip to Florida at the end of November- I think we're going to need like 26 suitcases based on how much I packed for this trip! ;)

Almost to the top of Bald Mountain- we didn't make it the whole way, because we'd been hiking FOREVER and then it started to rain and I had a mild panic attack about being trapped on a mountainside with a 6 month old and demanded to turn back and go down. Eric says he would classify my panic level as medium, not mild. ;)

Oh- and look at my wonderful husband babywearing- love him!!! Excuse the shoulder strap being off for you sticklers out there, he just moved it so we could get Evie's little face in the photo. We had her all bundled up!

Getting so big

 Evie's growing so fast we can barely keep up!! So many changes, I couldn't wait until 6 months to update- there will probably be even more things to report by then! Some new things going on for Miss Eviebean... she's out of the infant tub and taking baths in the "big girl" tub now. She's not sitting up on her own yet (she actually shows zero interest in sitting up, everytime I try to practice with her she leans forward to go straight into an army crawl. Who wants to sit still? This girl is on the move!), so I just use the Bumbo in tub. She was getting dangerous in the little tub, trying to pull herself over the edge constantly and making me super nervous. Now that we're in the big tub she can play with some bath toys too which is fun.

We also put up the Jolly Jumper to try out, and Evie thinks it's hilarious! She hasn't figured out how to jump up and down yet, but she spins around looking at everything and gabs up a storm when she's in there. Something about the jumper makes her chatty- the first time she was in there so did her happy scream for like 5 minutes straight! I love that she'll go in this thing now, it's really easy to transport so we can take it places to occupy her.

And finally, just this evening we tried a sippy cup for the first time- it went really well! We'll be starting solids at the end of this month when Evie turns 6 months, but she's been sitting at the table with us for meals for about a month now. She's getting antsy to try things, so I thought we could start on the sippy cup so she has something to do while we eat. I just put a little water in it, and it only took her about 5 minutes of playing around to figure out how to get the spout in her mouth and drink. And it definitely kept her busy while we had dinner. :) I'm so excited to start food with her!!

Games with Daddy

A conversation Eric and I had this evening while getting ready to go to meeting.

Eric: Honey, Evie and I have a new game we play.

Me: Oh yea? What is it?

Eric: It's called "Hey! Look at this little pillow!"

Me: (laughing) That's the name you gave it? What do you do?

Eric: Well, Evie lays on her back, and I say "Hey! Look at this little pillow!" and then I lay my head on her belly. And she laughs. And then we do it again. She likes it.

Then Eric demonstrates their new game. And Evie laughs. And my heart melts because he's pretty much the best Dad in the whole world and I love him. Okay now excuse me while I go bawl my eyes out- I blame the breastfeeding hormones!!! ;)

ETA: Photographic evidence of the "Hey! Look at this little pillow!" game.