It's been 6 months since I've reported here on my fathering experience and much has happened. We moved to a nice little house in Monrovia, a small town which feels unpretentious and friendly towards kids; they're building a giant new library on the town square. There is a Friday evening Family Festival and Farmers Market that gives the week some rhythm. Evan had his 1st birthday, including a party a few days before which was attended by many great friends who hung out in the yard and ate yogurt and cake. We took Evan to Lake Tahoe for his Mom's family's annual retreat there in August and also made it to Santa Cruz to celebrate Pamela's Mom's birthday in October. The summer was long and hot, beginning the week we moved, with 100 degree temperatures in May. It's still hot in November.
Evan has been making remarkable strides in development the past few months. He's been on the verge of walking for that long, taking his time and we're not going to rush him. His vocabularly is developing almost exactly in parallel. He has always had astute vision, noticing planes in the sky and remote lights at night. He now has his own word labels for many things, some are close to our language and others are his own. Cars and trucks are "gukocks" and I think that guttoral term applies appropriately to those noisy things. The downside of our "All American" town is the large number of car and truck obsessed people who drive loudly by our house, often while he is napping.
Evan continues to love covering his face with a sheet on the bed and then going into an athletic routine of kicking and laughing or panting excitedly. He kicks with his legs AND arms and the smaller kicks build into larger full body kicks, where his legs lift way off the bed. I sometimes narrate the action to him as he goes: "Little kicky, little kicky, little kicky... Big kicky!"
He no longer has his tongue out between his lips much, but does have a series of funny faces, including one where he scrunches his nose and mouth up and breathes heavily through the nose, something my sister's girl Emily did, and then another kind of parrot like smile that I think is involved with him using his tongue to try to lessen teething pain. He has been teething for many months and has had only the front 2 teeth on top and bottom break through, several months ago now.
Evan recently started taking a pharmaceutical iron supplement because his pediatrician became concerned when his weight dipped into the lower 10%. We don't feed him red meat products, being largely vegetarian ourselves. Very important issues as he is in his great brain growth and development stage up til about 2 years old.
Evan auditioned for a Huggies commercial today. We went to a mothers group Thanksgiving pumpkin pie party at Pamela's friend Janene's house yesterday which I think was a blast for Evan, just being around other kids instead of penned up at home with his darn parents. He also attended 5 or 6 music and movement classes this fall at the town community center, met a bunch of other kids. It has been a wonder watching him grow. We get more sleep now, as he usually sleeps through from 10PM until about 5 or 6 and then might sleep for another 2 hours in our bed before rolling around to say "Get me up, I want a day!"
