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!

There and Back Again (Part 2): Homeward Bound

Our family has mostly recovered from the trip to New York.  In fact, Madelyn has already been talking about doing it again, although she has told us that maybe we should take a plane next time.  "Driving takes a long time."

After probably the worst night ever in Chicago on the way there it was a relief to make it to New York and the kids actually settled in pretty well there.  It helps that Mommom and Poppop are there...some of their favorite people.  When we arrived in New York Madelyn started out telling Poppop that they did not need to have a pillow fight, but 10 minutes after we got there she said something to the effect of "well, Poppop, if you really wanted to have a pillow fight we could probably do that..."  It was really funny (although maybe you had to be there).

We spent Tuesday out at the farmhouse with Justin's extended family.  I think having the kids around was a good thing, and although Justin's grandmother was having a hard time it seemed like she was glad to see them.  Madelyn loved running around outside and playing with Justin's cousins and Evan did well with being social.  Later in the afternoon Justin took Evan back to be with Mommom so he could get a nap and some quiet which was good for him.

Wednesday was the viewing and the funeral which was a tough day for everyone.  Madelyn had a lot of questions about her Great Grandpa.  At first she asked why he was sleeping in a crib at the front of the church, but then had a lot of questions about why he died.  She also wanted to know how he got to heaven and when she would get to see him and play with him again.  She told us that she didn't want him to have died, and asked how he got to heaven.  She definitely had some struggles with death and some big questions that we found difficult to answer and also found that our answers did not seem to be able to satisfy her questions.

Thursday we had the burial and said goodbye to most of the family who packed up and began heading home, except for one of Justin's aunts who was staying to help pack things up before heading back to Ohio with Justin's Grandma.

Friday we began the long drive back home.  This time Madelyn knew what she was in for and told us right away that she did not want to drive.  She let us know that Chicago was a long ways away.  We did pack up the kids and get in the car anyway :)  It ended up being our longest day of driving for a couple of reasons.  1) I think Madelyn figured out that if she told us she had to go potty we would stop the car.  However, she did go every time we did stop and she didn't have a single accident any day of driving, so maybe she really did have to go every hour and a half or so.  2) We noticed that as we got up to cruising speeds on the highway that the car was a little shaky and finally, about a half an hour outside of Toledo we stopped and took a look at the tires and the rear passenger side was flat.  When we tried to put air in it we could hear the air coming back out and could see that the rim was bent.  Although there seemed to be enough air in the tire at the moment to keep driving we figured we better stop and get the tire checked out.  There was a place right off the next exit that we stopped at (the had a card at the travel plaza) and they looked at the car right away, took a sledgehammer to rim and pounded it out, checked again for leaks and told us we were probably good for a while.  They only charged us $20...and it was a pretty fast stop for needing to have a car looked at, so it was a good experience.  Then we continued on our way.  However, it had gotten late enough in the day that we decided we needed to stop for dinner before getting to Chicago...just adding more time.  In all that day it took us 10.5 hours...it was long.

Friday night actually went smoothly in Chicago.  Whew...

Saturday we got up early so that we could try to make it back to Minneapolis for a grad party.  We got on the road.  The kids were pretty unhappy about the car by this day and it was a rough day in the car with them.  Madelyn finally fell asleep when we hit the state of Minnesota...bummer for us.  Justin actually stayed in the car with her when we got to the grad party so she could get a little more sleep.

All in all we survived it and found out that it could be done.  4 days of travel to 3 days in New York isn't a great ratio, and we probably wouldn't choose to drive it again if there was a reasonable alternative, but it is nice to know we can do it if we need to.  And, maybe when the kids are a little older the drive wouldn't be quite as tough.  We are so glad that we were able to all go as a family and spend the time together.

There and Back Again (Part 1)

Justin's grandpa passed away on Friday, May 31 and after a little thinking and planning we packed up the kids and the car and began the long drive to western New York on Sunday.  We haven't done the drive with the kids before, but we anticipated that it would be a little tough on them and us.  The important thing was for us to get back and be with Justin's family and driving seemed to be the best option.  Fortunately for us (although potentially not for them) Justin's brother and his wife live in Chicago and we decided to crash there for a night to break up the drive.   It meant two days of 8+ hour drives, but we didn't think that 15-16 hours was really doable in one shot with the kids.

The drive to New York was filled with memorable moments.  Madelyn played a lot with the iPad, her dolls, and listened to music. Along the way to Bemus she was singing along with Daddy and blowing him kisses.  It was a pretty sweet moment :)

Saturday night before we left Evan came down with a pretty nasty cold and basically didn't sleep from about 1-5 am, so Justin and I were both pretty tired and thinking that Evan might not travel very well.

Sunday night at Aaron and Lauren's was also pretty memorable.  After finally getting Evan to sleep around 10pm he started screaming hysterically around 11.  Justin decided to take him out to the car so that he wouldn't wake everyone up and drove around with him until about 12:30am.  We finally thought we were going to get some sleep but then at 1 am Madelyn starting crying and calling for me.  When I went to see what was up she had thrown up all over herself and the bed we had made up for her.  Justin and I scrambled to take care of her and thought we got her resettled, only to start a 4 hour long battle with her throwing up which ended with her sleeping in the bed with us because it was the only place left for her to sleep.  Evan finally passed out at 3 am for a stretch and Madelyn conked out at around 5 am.  Evan was pretty much up for the day by 6:45, although after I fed him he did doze until about 7:30.  Madelyn slept until 9 and seemed no worse for the wear.  We did manage to get all packed up and back into the car to continue the trek east.

The kids were both troopers about getting back into the car.  For Evan sitting more upright in his car seat seemed to help with the cold, although his carseat over 2 days of travel with with a cold became  progressively more disgusting.

We did eventually make it to Bemus Point late Monday evening.  After a quick stop by the Olive Garden where Justin's grandma was having a late dinner with two of Justin's aunts, we headed to Justin's mom's house where we were happy to finally crash with the kids.  The kids were really happy to be out of the car and really happy to see Mommom and Poppop.  And, that night of sleep did go better for all of us.

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.

The Great Adventure

A few weeks ago Justin, Madelyn, and I all piled in the car and went on a road trip.  Crazy, you say?

Maybe a little crazy, but we wanted to go visit friends of ours who live outside Louisville, KY and with the current cost of airfare and the requirement to purchase 3 tickets instead of only 2, we decided that it made the most sense to drive.  Closer to the actual drive we started to have doubts, but by then it was really too late to fly.  So, we decided that driving through the night would be the easiest on Madelyn since hopefully she would sleep for most of it and the two of us could trade off driving.

Sidebar: Originally, we were going to drive halfway early Thursday, take a break in Chicago with Justin's brother and sister-in-law, and then arrive late Thursday/early Friday in Kentucky.  However, the more we thought about it, the more we thought that driving straight through would be better and that driving through the night would have the best chance for success.  We made the decision to change our plans on Monday (a few days before leaving), and we decided that we should leave Wednesday night, arriving in Kentucky at our friends' house a day earlier than we had initially told them.  Our friends graciously accommodated our last minute change of plans.

Justin's family has been known to make last minute changes of plans, or even plans mid travel, so this is pretty much par for the course for the Howard family.  Since our friends are not as used to the Howard family ways as we are, we are glad that they still invited us to come back.

We survived our drive to Louisville with only one meltdown in the middle of the night (it did last 2 hours, but out of the 13+ hours we were driving that is a a pretty small percentage of the time).  After lunch at a fabulous place called Lynn's Paradise Cafe where Justin, Madelyn, and I experienced our first ever 'Hot Brown" sandwiches, we crashed at our friends' place for the rest of the day and recovered from our drive.

Friday we took the kids to the Louisville Zoo (where our Minnesota Zoo membership got us 1/2 price admission).  It was beautiful sunny weather and the kids all had a great time seeing all the animals.

On Saturday our friends got a babysitter for the kids and we went to Keeneland, a horse race track in Lexington.  The big race of the day was the Bluegrass Stakes (with a $750, 000 purse to the winning horse) and is known as one of the lead up races for the Kentucky Derby.  It was all the more exciting because we had a horse to cheer for, Scatman.  The trainer for that horse is the father of a friend of our friends, so we practically knew the horse :)  Although we cheered, things did not come out well for Scatman, who finished near the bottom.  The winner of the race, Dullahan, will be running in the Derby this weekend.  He's not a favorite, but you never know.  The horse that came in second was Hansen, who is also racing in the Derby this weekend.   If either of them wins we could say "we saw him race..."

Sunday we kept things much more low key, and we all got in naps before we hit the road in the late afternoon to head home.  We made it home a little before 6 am on Monday and even got in a couple of hours of sleep before Madelyn decided it was really time to get up for the day.

We had so much fun we are thinking this is going to have to become an annual event for us.  Maybe some year we'll go to the Kentucky Derby, but we aren't ready for that yet!

Birthday Celebration!

This past weekend Madelyn and I, along with my mom, sister, aunt, cousin, and Aubrey went up to Fosston, MN to celebrate with my Grandma for her 83rd birthday.  It was really great to be with family and have relaxed weekend spending time with Grandma, playing games, watching movies, and enjoying SNOW!

We haven't seen much snow this winter (it has been the complete opposite of last winter) and Madelyn has had very little opportunity to play in it which has been a bummer for her, although excellent for my commute to work.  There actually was snow for this weekend in Fosston, so we went out and enjoyed it.

Merry (Belated) Christmas :)

The last two weeks of December were a whirlwind of family and Christmas activities, which is my excuse for not posting anything new...I don't have one for the last week though.  My camera battery and charger went missing right before Christmas and so until the very end of the week we were in NY when my dad had a battery shipped to my sister's apartment for me, I couldn't take any pictures.  However, Justin has some on his phone that I will try and get posted at some later date.

We had a really good time seeing family this Christmas.  On Christmas Eve we flew to Buffalo and made it to Bemus Point just in time to have Christmas Eve dinner with Justin's family.  Last Christmas on Sunday we couldn't get ourselves together enough to get to church on time, but since this is the one time of the year when Justin's mom gets to show off Madelyn we went for the end of the church service.  In keeping with that tradition (who knew it was going to become one) we attempted to do that again this year when it became apparent that once again we were not going to get our act together in time to make it for the start of church.  We arrived at church an hour after the service started just in time for the scripture reading prior to the sermon...who knows what next year will bring.

Although there were a lot of highlights from our time with Justin's family, one of the biggest highlights was going to the fire hall and sitting in the fire trucks.  Madelyn's Poppop is a volunteer fireman and so he gave her the exclusive behind the scenes tour.  She thought that it was pretty great to pretend to drive the big trucks and was a huge fan of having the lights on.

On Wednesday we made the 6+ hour drive across New York from Bemus Point to Troy to spend the second half of the week with my sister, her husband, and my parents.  Wednesday while we were driving was the only time we saw snow around Christmas.  We took Madelyn ice skating for the first time, and although she couldn't actually skate she thought that having Aunt Becci take her around was a lot of fun.  She also discovered that her Aunt Becci is a lot more fun than Mommy...and so it begins :)

Madelyn traveled really well.  However, on our Christmas Eve flight there was a 4 year old in the seat in front of us who kept looking over the seat and talking to Madelyn, hanging her doll over the seat, and generally keeping herself entertained by watching what we were doing.  Madelyn was trying to take a nap, but under those circumstances it was relatively easy to understand why she wasn't successful.  The flight was less than two hours though, and Madelyn didn't get cranky, so while it made the flight seem longer to Justin and I it wasn't that big of a deal.  On our drive back to the Buffalo airport we talked about how much easier it would be to have Madelyn take a nap on the flight back, she was tired and saying she wanted to nap, and we figured a New Year's Eve flight would be pretty quiet.  After we got on the plane who should arrive in the same seat right in front of us...you guessed it, the same 4 year old.  There was no napping.

We made it home with significantly more luggage than we started with (and although Madelyn was mostly to blame I did get the ice cream maker attachment for my KitchenAid which took up a lot of suitcase room too) and spent a quiet New Year's Eve in.  After all, there was no sleeping on the flight :)

I'll try and get more pictures posted soon, but here are some I got before the battery was lost and then  once the new camera battery arrived.

A Story I Meant to Tell

If we ever travel internationally with a child in diapers again (although I am not sure what circumstances would result in that happening) there are two things that I will definitely remember to do.

1) Bring a diaper changing pad - it should be on the list of things that must be packed.  It should not be assumed that it is in the diaper bag.  That is not a safe assumption.
2) When changing a child in a public restroom in another country it is best to bring someone for support if possible.

We realized at the MSP airport that the diaper changing pad was not in the diaper bag.  It turns out that at no airport that we went to can you purchase one, and the only place we were where there were stores that might have had a changing pad was in Rome, but everything was closed on Sunday so we completely struck out on purchasing one on our trip.  Fortunately, I brought my raincoat and so that was our makeshift changing pad for 10 days.  Also fortunately it did not rain, and after several runs through the washing machine I am willing to use my coat again.

Unsurprisingly, outside of the airports and the Colosseum, none of the public restrooms that we went to had diaper changing stations.  So, I become quite adept at changing Madelyn on the floor on my raincoat. 

On our tour in Turkey we had a lovely lunch at a resturant overlooking olive groves.  By the time we got to lunch we had been on the tour for 4 hours and Madelyn's diaper was not clean any longer, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take her to get it changed.  I followed the plan that I had used up to that point in the trip, which was to pick the biggest stall available and then use the floor.  What I had not counted on was that the lights were motion sensitive and turned off every 30 seconds if motion did not continue.  And, being on the floor I was out of the range of the sensor, wherever it was.  There was almost no natural light in the bathroom so it was very, very dark when the lights turned off.  Which, in addition to being a challenge for diaper changing when you can't see, also scared Madelyn, so she would cry every time the lights went out.  At which point I would need to stand up and wave my arms until the lights turned back on.  This is where the plan of bringing a support person comes in. That way, someone could have kept moving and kept the lights on while I changed the diaper.  And, who knows what else could go wrong where it would be a good idea to have some help along.

Lessons learned :)

Crete and Home Again

CHANIA (SOUDA), GREECE (CRETE)

Our final port of call was one the island of Crete - at the main port in Chania.  The first place that we went was up in the hills surrounding the port which made for some stunning pictures.  The ruins of the wall were from back in Roman times, although there were a lot of ruins from different periods since the port has been overrun by several different empires in its history, and near our first stop was a current excavation site and so some of the information about which ruins were from which time period got a little jumbled for me.  Crete engendered some good feelings for me because after several days in mid-90 degree temperatures the low 80s that we experienced on Crete were a relief!  However, retrospectively 3 straight days of bus tours was pushing Madelyn's limits.  The beaches (at which we were only able to stop for about 15 minutes) were amazing - the sand was soft, the water was clear...I could have easily spent a good long week vacationing there.  Maybe another time...

We stopped in a village where Mom, Becci, Micah, and I had some coffee at a local cafe.  Becky and Micah ordered Greek coffee, while Becci and I thought a Frappe sounded pretty safe (of course there weren't any descriptions so we really had no idea what we were ordering).  Becci and I got sweet iced coffees with some sort of foam that were really good.  Micah and Mom got very strong hot coffee that was sweetened as well...Becci and I were pretty happy with our choice. The tour ended with some shopping time in the main shopping area of Chania which our tour guide called the "Venice Without Water."  With the narrow crowded streets and stalls and shops on top of each other Justin and I both agreed that we could see some resemblance.  The port did undergo a period of rule under the Venetians, so it isn't surprising that some influence was evident.  We did manage to buy some local olive oil in while we were in Crete - it is one of the four largest olive oil producers in the world.  The others being Italy, Greece (mainland), and Turkey.  Becci and Micah actually got olive oil in both Turkey and Crete, so it will be interesting to hear from them if they noticed any difference.

ENDINGS

This trip had a good mix of busyness and relaxation.  We always were back on the ship for some relaxation time, and we had 2 at sea days that were a much more low key pace.  One of the things that was nice was that we had formal dinners every evening in the main dining room.  Although only two nights required actual formal attire, every night you "dressed" for dinner - something we don't really ever do at home.  2 hour formal dinners were a bit long for Madelyn, so Justin and I, but mostly my Dad, took turns walking around with Madelyn between courses.  Dad and Madelyn met a significant number of other people that way (other cruisers and the majority of the waiters in the resturant).  On the last night many of them stopped by to say goodbye to Madelyn.  I think she really enjoyed those times with her Grandpa and was pretty sad the last few days when Grandpa wasn't around to take her places and explain everything to her.  I think she misses everyone being together in general - she keeps asking me where everyone is :)

The last formal night I got a couple of pictures of my parents, dressed up to celebrate 30 fantastic years of marriage.  Congrats Mom and Dad and thank you!

Jet Lag...

I don't think I have ever truly appreciated the difficulties of jet lag until dealing with jet lag in a toddler.  Usually coming back I have done pretty well, just sleeping an extra few hours the night that we get back and then getting back to a pretty regular routine, however Madelyn has had more struggles today than anticipated.  We all crashed when we got back from the airport at about 8:30 last night and all was well until 2:30 am when Madelyn appeared to think "it's 9:30 am in Italy - isn't it time to get up?"  After getting her to go back to sleep off and on I finally gave up at 6:30 when Justin left for work and figured we were probably both most awake in the morning so we should try to get laundry and grocery shopping done early before we crashed.  I think in part her difficulty adjusting was because she slept so much of the flight home - she slept for about 5 hours, but I figured that it was easier to deal with her asleep on the plane and cranky and awake at home, and retrospectively I still think that was the best solution.   As well as she handled the long flight on the way to Europe, she was even better on the way home.  She was happy and engaged while she was awake and she slept for a lot of the flight.  She had about a 5 minute meltdown about 7 hours into the flight but then decided to go back to sleep, and then again cried for about 5 minutes when we began our initial descent and her ears hurt.  She was so tired that she wasn't accepting anything we gave her to swallow to help with her ears, but as she woke up she calmed down.   Overall we had less then 20 minutes of real fussiness on the flight, which is pretty good for a nine hour flight.  I let her go to bed about an hour early tonight - she wasn't really functioning any longer and just kept pointing to her room and saying "night night."  She made her desires pretty clear.

To combat the very strong urge to go to sleep I thought I would post some of the other pictures from our trip.  Hopefully this will help me reach my goal of making it until at least 8:30 before I crash tonight.

I only managed a post after Messina (in Sicily) and I will post pictures from our other stops, but with the time crunch this picture of Becci got left out and I thought that it captured her feelings on all of my picture taking well, besides having a nice glimpse of the area surrounding the port.

ATHENS, GREECE
After stopping in Messina (in Sicily) our next port was Athens, Greece.  I was really looking forward to Athens - the Parthenon and the Acropolis are things you grow up seeing and learning about in history books and it was pretty amazing to actually see it in person.  Madelyn had a somewhat rough morning in part due to the fact that we were up and off the ship by 7:30 for this tour and also in part because it was over 90 degrees and humid that day as well.  Then, my parents were going to head back to the ship with Madelyn and Becci, Micah, Justin and I were going to get off the bus to do some shopping and exploring of Athens on our own, but somehow we missed the opportunity and ended up back at the ship with everyone else.  It ended up being nice to spend the afternoon relaxing with a pool and air conditioning instead of out in the heat of the afternoon.

These two pictures are of Dad, Madelyn, and Micah on Mars Hill (which is incidentally actually a hill) where Paul gave his famous sermon where he referenced the idol to an unknown god.  The guys and Madelyn took this side trip without Mom, Becci, and I.  It was hot and a long way up...

EPHESUS, TURKEY
I had the fewest expectations about Ephesus I think, maybe because I didn't really know what to expect.  However, it was definitely my favorite tour and made me very interested in getting back to Turkey some day.  Fortunately, Justin is pretty sure that we need to go back as well.  In the morning we saw the ancient ruins from the Ephesus of Biblical times (the city has actually been moved several times; it was near the sea when it was built but is now five miles away)  Then we had lunch and went shopping in a village near Ephesus, and finally ended the day at a place where they make carpets by hand.  We found out that for a mere $35,000 we could own a silk handmade Turkish carpet that would be big enough to cover the floor in a large room.  We didn't come home with any carpets.  That is also where we got to have Turkish coffee which was amazing.  The day was a good mix of relaxing and sight seeing.  Here are a few pictures from Ephesus.

This was a symbol that was used by Christians to signal houses where other Christians were welcome to gather.

 In the upper left of this picture you can see what is left of the library of Celsus, which was one of the great ancient libraries.

The morning light made it tough to get a picture of the ampitheater, but hopefully this captures it a little bit.

This is already a pretty long post and my ability to keep my eyes open is rapidly dwindling.  I will finish posting about the trip another night when my eyes aren't so heavy and hopefully we have all readjusted to Minnesota time :)