Evan Updates

The summer has come and gone and Evan has gotten so much bigger!  He will be one on Saturday and it seems like time has just flown by.

In July we did a family photo shoot with the Vogel side of the family.  This picture captures Evan pretty well!

Evan is now crawling and cruising around the house.  It is getting difficult to keep track of him since he is moving with some impressive speed.  He is also working on climbing which was not on my list of skills I was hoping for him to accomplish early.  However, he is pleased with his mobility and his ability to make progress in going directions that he is interested in going.  This video is from shortly after Evan started crawling - he is quite a bit more speedy now :)

We got his first haircut about a month ago since his hair was getting ridiculously long, but it was still hard to see him go from the baby look to a more "little boy" look.  However, now Madelyn no longer suggests we help keep Evan's hair out of his eyes with barrettes or ponytails.

What is going on here?

Look at how long his hair was!

You know, this is kind of fun :)

Big Boy Haircut!

Evan also spends most of his awake time babbling and saying the few words that he can.  His repertoire includes "mama," "dada," "poppop,"something along the lines of "papa" for Grandpa, and "es" for yes, and his current favorite words of "uh-oh" which frequently follows the throwing of his pacifier and is accompanied by a huge grin, and "all done" or "ah-dah."  We are pretty sure that he has determined that he is not going to let his sister speak for him, so he is working on his vocabulary.

He really loves his sister and likes to play with her.  He also now follows her around the house if she leaves the room that they are playing in together.  Most of the time they play pretty well together, but Evan has definitely not mastered the art of sharing and Madelyn still has some room for improvement in that area as well.

pre-haircut :)

hard to read the 11 month old sign - Evan wanted to hold it

We took a couple of trips in August.  First Evan flew to Michigan with me and my sister to go to my cousin Sarah's wedding, and then right after that we went up to Breezy Point, MN with Mommom and Grandpa and Grandma for a week of family vacation time.  We spent some time at the resort and also went to Paul Bunyan Land as well as Itasca State Park.

At Breezy Point Resort

Hanging out with Aunt Becci at the Flint, MI airport

Hiking to the fire tower

Headwaters of the Mississippi

Overall it was a pretty busy summer (which is somewhat responsible for my lack of blogging) and Evan is changing from a baby to a toddler before our eyes!

Vacation!

2 weeks ago I celebrated my 30th birthday.  I was not terribly excited about turning 30 and I told Justin that instead of a party or anything along those lines I would prefer to go on a trip and spend some time together without Madelyn.  After some consideration and taking into the account that I was already going to be well into my 3rd trimester of pregnancy prior to travel, we decided that we would probably be best off staying in the country.  Justin's grandmother has a beach house in Ocean City, New Jersey so we worked out a plan involving dropping Madelyn off to spend some quality time with her Mommom and Poppop, seeing some friends in Philly, and then heading to the beach where my sister Becci and her husband Micah were going to meet us.

The beach house has some history for Justin and I: the first time that I went there with him was the weekend that he proposed.  Then, when we lived in Philly we spent a lot of weekends and random middle of the week days driving down to spend some time there.  So, almost 9 years after we got engaged (we actually got engaged on Labor Day weekend) we were back there spending time together and enjoying some of the same things that we had done early on in our married life.  We didn't take a lot of pictures before Justin's mom brought Madelyn down at the end of the week, but here are a couple:

To cap off a fabulous vacation which included a lot of really good food (Italian at Franco and Luigi's in South Philly for my birthday, cheesesteaks at Pat's, Manco & Manco Pizza on the boardwalk, seafood at the Lobster House...) Justin's mom brought Madelyn down to the beach for her first real experience at the Ocean.  Justin and I did take her to the beach when she was 4 months old, but that isn't really quite the same.

I think that Madelyn would have done a little better with some more time at the beach, she needs a good amount of time to warm up to new things, but since then she has been asking when she gets to go back to the ocean so I think we have planted the seeds for many excellent trips to come.

A Day on the Lake

On Saturday, to celebrate my birthday, we spent the afternoon on Lake Minnetonka with my parents, Justin's mom, and my aunt, uncle, and cousin.  Madelyn's biggest frustration with being out on a boat is that she is not in the water.  Her second biggest frustration is that we make her sit down while the boat is moving.  Even with that, everyone had a really good time and Madelyn was a good sport.

For a while in the afternoon we beached the boat at a sandy cove on one of the islands in the southwest part of the lake.  Here are a couple of pictures from our afternoon.

Madelyn and Daddy had a fun time swimming in the lake and blowing kisses.

 

Walking in the sand and in the water with Grandpa

Playing in the sand

 This picture is my favorite from the day:

Being out on a boat encompasses so many of my favorite things about summer - sun, water, relaxation...but by the end of the night there was a definite chill in the air which reminded me of how my birthday signals the beginning of the end of summer.