Evan. One of the reasons I write this blog is for you to read when you get older. I want you to see someday why i love you so incredibly much. You are an amazing child full of love, patience, and caring. I love you with all my heart and hope that your life will be filled with moments like this where you delight in the happiness of others ! What you don’t see in this video is how many times the kitty has scratched you in the past. You worked so hard at getting this cat to trust you. YOU are amazing my son.
It is somewhat fitting that the second longest running show on Broadway is “Cats”. We have two cats that we have now had for over 10 years. My biggest fear is that we will have them longer then they “ran” on Broadway. It all started nicely enough – we saved two sisters from a litter of feral kittens at Petco. We always knew they were “needy” – and as a single couple were happy to oblige. Here’s the thing – the kids LOVE the kitties! The highlight of every day is seeing the cats scurry from one room to the other. Evan’s third word, and Sophie’s 9th word were “kitty”! Yet the cats are terrified of all people that aren’t “David” or “JP”. Evan has recently taken on a renewed interest in the cats. One of the reasons being that sometimes his “quiet” (ie nap) time is in on our bed with the cats. He has NEVER even been able to touch one (of ours – many strange cats gladly let him pet them!), but is determined to make friends. We have for a couple of weeks now been encouraging him to feed them in the morning and give them their favorite snack (fish flakes). Evan always amazes us with his patience and kindness, and today it was rewarded by one of our ungrateful cats! (Celie -for the record)
Max had his four month check up this week. He is doing great. Had a couple of shots, but in true Max fashion, only cried for about 10 seconds. He finally seemed to catch the cold that Evan and Sophie had earlier in the week, but seems to very mild one so far. Max is growing well. He is almost the exact same weight as Evan was at 4 months! 91% for weigth – 53% for lenght
Daily life in our house is still crazy at this point. Max sleeps through the night once in a while, but most often wakes up at some point for another bottle. Evan and Sophie are still struggling with their sleep habits – mostly at bedtime. Dad’s still haven’t had a great nights sleep since October. However, each day also gets more fun as we watch all three of them change and grow. Sophie is talking, Max is starting to sit in his bouncy chair and grab and things, and Evan knows his abc’s, sings along with songs in “Chitty Chitty”, and hit another growth spurt so he now once again stands a full head taller than Sophie. We have many wonderful moments, and bath time the other night was one of them - calm enough to get a bunch of pictures and some video.
We headed back to Kauai this year for another week at Kiahuna Plantation. We went the same week that we went in 2009, and got lucky with 9 amazing days of warmth and sunshine. A few things were different this year. We had one more child with us, so we were very happy to have Nana, Papi and Mathew join for the trip. Everything we loved about Kauai last year was still the same this year. The kids all had an amazing time, loved the water, the pool, the sand (Evan, not Sophie), and the hours running and playing on the beautiful lawns. Sophie probably wins the prize for “most changed” during the 9 days. She came back from vacation with a much expanded vocabulary, and seems to say everything now.
Evan chasing one of the many wild roosters on the island. Evan woke up early each morning and would wait for the roosters to start crowing before getting out of bed.
Sophie and Nana at the "spouting horn" viewing area.
Our beautiful little Sophie Claire.
Sophie enjoying a valentines cookie from Nana and Papi
Evan with his cookie
Max with his best friend Papi.
The Pool we went to at least once every day. Sophie would literally run around in the pool until she had not an ounce of energy left.
Evan and Sophie playing on the grass near the beach just before sunset.
Evan's 2010 pose - virtually identical to one we took last year - posted below-
Evan - 2009 - Kauai
Sunset is Sophie's best light.
Matthew and Max
The best we could do to get a picture of Matthew and all 3 kids.
Evan in Matthews Sunglasses
Daddy with Max and Sophie on the Fern Grotto Cruise
Daddy and Evan on the path to the Fern Grotto
The only picture of all 6 of us together...
Daddy and Max on the Fern Grotto cruise
Daddy and Evan playing Soccer
Max laying in the sunset
Sophie enjoys the last of our daily "picnics" at sunset.
Sophie says goodbye to the Kauia sunset - until next year!
It has been a very interesting few days. It was about Thursday, Jan 21, that it all started. It happened to be Matthew’s 21st birthday, but that comes in a little later. We noticed that in the morning, Evan would climb into Sophie’s crib, and they would play there until 7 O’clock when it was time to get up. The playing got more and more creative each morning. Finally on Friday morning, I went in to get them up, and they were both laying on their backs in Sophie’s crib. Every book, every stuffed animal, and most of the toys were in the crib with them. They also had all of the little blue “diaper bags” in there with them and were giggling wildly as they kicked and threw them in the air. Later that day and the next morning the pattern continued. We took more and more things out of the room that we thought could cause problems, and Evan continued to get more daring when in came to climbing in and out of the crib. He would now gladly demonstrate to us how he would climb on top of the changing table, along the top railing of the crib, while holding on to the wall and/or top shelf. We told him over and over he couldn’t do that, but it wasn’t seeming to have much effect.
Saturday night, Daddy’s took Matthew to dinner and drinks for his 21st birthday. Nanna and Papi came to babysit and put the kids to bed. This was the 23rd, and Max was now 3 months and 3 days old. We got home at about midnight, and Nanna reported that despite a few issues with Evan and Sophie, they were sleeping soundly in thier room. Max had drank his last bottle at 11, and was sleeping in his basinet in our room. Much to our surprise and delight, Max slept through the night silently until 7 Am the next morning!
The story doesn’t end there. Today is Monday, and the trials of bedtime continue. The positive side is that Sunday night was another full night of sleep for Max! The not so great side – it has gotten tougher and tougher to manage the Evan and Sophie show downstairs. Last night I went down to their room at 9 PM because of some rather loud giggling which had turned into tears from Sophie. I got in the room and found Evan in her crib again, this time smearing diaper cream all over Sophie’s hair – as well as everything else in the crib. UGH!! Tonight we were faced with another challenging evening. As parents we felt fairly unprepared for the situation. Evan and Sophie have been great sleepers (incidently since April 1, 2009 – when Nanny also got Sophie to sleep throught the night for the first time), so we really haven’t had to do a lot of work to get them to sleep. Faced with another evening of craziness, Daddy’s decided that perhaps the best thing to do this evening was to graduate Sophie to a “big girl bed”. She is a similar age as Evan when he demanded no more crib, and we thought that perhaps removing the main source of frustration would help the Evan crawling int he crib problem. We took Sophie’s mattress off the crib, unassembled the crib to remove from room, and waited to see what happened. NOTHING. NO CHANGE. Evan still wanted to be in Sophie’s crib, and now Sophie could just get up and walk away. (and she did -right up the stairs to find her daddy’s!) So back downstairs Daddy’s went trying to get them to go to sleep in thier own beds. after an hour or tow, we thoguth we had it and left. At 10 PM, we went to check on them and tuck them in. Sophie was sleeping on her back on her mattress, and Evan…well he was sleeping on her mattress as well, with his feet over her. Though we were tempted to leave them like that for some sibling bonding time, we decided to move Evan to his bed.
Okay, Max isn’t really a Broadway baby just yet…Wednesday was Max’s 3-month birthday. He’s really come a long way. He’s big and heavy, and is still just a perfect baby. Not much crying, just sleeping & eating, and a lot more awake time. I’ve been trying to get him to smile really big for the camera, but he hasn’t reached that milestone yet (if it is one). But I did get this one shot, smiling AND looking at the camera. Enjoy!
Evan and Sophie are great kids, and they love each other – but – I have to post this video here only so that I can show it to them years from now! The funny part of the video is that you can see neither one of them cares that much about the toy!
Christmas came and went as fast as it could. Evan seemed to understand what was going on – he knew Santa was coming, knew Santa brought presents, and kept a look out for Christmas trees in every house we went by. Sophie seemed to go along for the ride. Her language skills are progressing quickly and is able to say “christmas tree” (though it sounds like “mis twee”) Max is still a really good baby. Happy to watch everything going on around him – until he gets hungry and cries just enough to let us know he is ready to eat. Max still eats every three hours during the day, and for most of December every 3-4 hours at night.
Christmas morning was great. We did learn one important lesson that we will carry with us into next year. “Don’t let Santa put candy canes – (or any treats) in the kids stockings”. Evan and Sophie went into the living room, saw the candy canes in the stockings, and for the next hour just wanted to eat candy cane while looking around at the unwrapped presents. We only finished opening about 1/2 the presents on Christmas, so we still have a few more left for this weekend.
Evan loved picking out the Christmas tree this year.
Daddyo, Max, Matthew, and Sophie look for the perfect tree.
Matthew and Evan at Christmas tree lot
Daddya, Evan, and Sophie check out thier first candy canes
Evan gets his first taste of a candy cane - they remained his favorite food through Christmas day. (Despite the fact he only had 2. 1 on this day and 1 on Christmas day)
Evan and Sophie reay to go outside on a rainy December day.
Evan and Sophie (with colds) in thier new house that was a gift from Nanny and Poppy
