It has been really nice the last couple weeks - the whole family's been well. Course, Evan was getting snotty last night and this morning, so I think that streak may be coming to an end.
Hopefully he stays healthy long enough for us to go out tonight to Melting Pot to celebrate Janna's birthday. We found a sitter on the website sittercity.com so hopefully she works out well. We signed up there so that we could build up a list of good sitters so we're not always relying on one or two when we want to go out. Going to be an easy sitting job for her too, Evan will be asleep before she gets here at 7pm and he's been sleeping through the night completely for a long time now so she'll just have to house sit and listen to the monitor.
He's in a great stage anyway, lots of fun. Learned to stand up close to a month ago and now he's all over the place, crawling properly now instead of the belly drag too. Trying to talk, we think he's starting to say ba-ba for bottle and there are very distinct moments he's saying ma-ma (or even very clearly "mom!" this morning), but until he starts repeating it in context regularly I'm not sure it really counts. He (and 3 other kids) also have picked up a really funny "mean face" from another kid at daycare. He scrunches up his nose and huffs, pretty funny stuff. Got this quick video of it:
Got a few new photos up also that more or less complete the 6-7 month gallery, he'll be 8 months old in a few days. They start on page 2, so I'll just link to that.
We definitely woke to a winter wonderland around here this morning! Totals were about 6" of snow, it looked amazing!
I woke up before the sun so that I could drive downtown and take some photos. Also too some new photos of Evan to add to the previous gallery. The link below goes to Page 2 of the gallery where the new photos start:
Also took a bunch of shots of the Horseshoe on campus and the State House grounds too. Glad I got up, it was worth the drive.
Of course most all of the snow has melted at this point - we got up into the mid-40's today for temps and probably 80-90% of the snow is gone now. Fun while it lasted though, hope we get something like this in a few years when Evan is old enough to appreciate it.
Wow, did we ever get snow - and it's still coming down. We were at 5" already about 20 minutes ago, though the biggest band of snow is just about passed now. Should end up with about 6" of snow when it's all said and done by tomorrow morning.
Can't wait to go out and shoot some new photos tomorrow morning. I did get some when we got home, so here's that gallery:
Got to run around and play photographer some more today at work which is always a nice break from the grind. Our new Provost at USC is visiting each department for half a day. Most of they day he's in (most likely useless) meetings and has dedicated 15 minutes to tour the department's facilities. Well, since Public Health is so spread out on and off campus around town that's pretty much impossible. So, they want to do a photo slideshow of their remote sites.
Which, the distraction at work was nice considering how tired I've been the last couple days. It's funny (not really) how kids have a talent for waking up really early on the days when you were up really late the night before. The other night I finally fell asleep around 2am and Christina around 2:30am and then Evan decides to wake at 5:20am that day. Been trying to recover since.
But, maybe we'll have tomorrow afternoon off work - we're supposed to get snow starting around noon and some internet weather forums have these crazy maps showing 4-6" in the Columbia area. Of course I'll believe it when I see it, most sites are saying around 1", maybe 1-3" tops. I'm hoping it'll be coming down heavy enough early that USC lets everyone go at noon. Regardless, if it's snowing pretty good we'll probably just leave work anyway and go pick up Evan so we can get some photos of him in the snow.
No, RSV has not lasted this long - just haven't been inclined to sit and write a new post in a while. It's odd to write something that's not just a status update or a 160 character text message.
Anyway, I guess lots has been going on. Evan kicked the RSV pretty quickly - only had a few really bad moments like beating on his back to get him to breathe once each night for a couple nights there. Pretty bad cough, but it only stuck around for a week and a half total, only 2-3 days of which were bad.
Didn't stay well for long before he brought home a stomach bug from daycare late last week. I was sicker this weekend than I ever remember being in my life. Thankfully it was quick and everyone in the house is better now for the most part.
Work has been more stressful than what I would like it to be too. Way too busy as usual and we've had two candidates decline the position we're trying to hire. What I think is happening is I'm offering it to well qualified folks who already have good jobs, so it decreases your odds of someone accepting it. I don't know if we need to lower our goals with the position or offer more money or what, but hopefully we'll find someone soon. Interviewed another candiate Friday afternoon - we'll have to see what comes of that.
Since I do intend to use this blog as a sort of journal or historical record because it's easier to look back at previous years than it is on facebook, I have a slew of new photo and video links to update here that I have been posting over there since my last blog post.
Here's a gallery of Evan's 6-7 month old photos (all of them are 6 months old at this point, he just passed 7 months early last week):
Haven't had much time to shoot any new ones with all the sickness lately, but I'm sure I'll update the gallery soon.
Here's a few new videos of some of Evan's newest tricks. He's learned to sit up, pull himself up to his knees, and then pull himself up to stand so far. No walking yet, give him a week or two, haha.
Evan laughing again.
Evan sitting up
Evan pulling himself up to his knees. Took him about 3-4 days of that before he worked out how to stand - was hilarious watching him try though.
He finally did work it out now and it's all he wants to do now. He'll play with a toy for a little bit, put it down, and crawl over to the ottoman to pull himself up to stand and talk to us.
He is definitely getting to a much more fun stage now though. A lot of friends have said it's the 6-7 months old until 18-20 months old that is the best times, so we're looking forward to all the next milestones too like teeth popping out, walking, talking, etc.
