9 month dr. appt.
Yesterday we saw Dr. Bloom again. Evan is about to get his top two teeth! Four teeth in one month! His bottom teeth are still only poking slightly (and sharply) above the surface. He weighs 21 lbs, 4 oz, putting him in the 75th percentile for weight (down from 95th) and is only 27 3/4" tall (just under the 50th percentile for height).
This morning my mom came over to watch Evan so I can study. Evan put his chubby arm up in the air to wave at her. Usually he just sticks it straight up but doesn't move the fingers (the "waving" part), but this time he moved his fingers a little by opening and closing a fist. Cute!
He also puts both his hands up near his face after Jerry plays peek-a-boo with him. We think he is asking for more.
Also, nana said hiya, and he said something back that sounded very similar to hiya. Do I sound like I'm bragging?
He's still not walking, and I think it will be a few more weeks. He loves to walk around while we hold his hands. It's the letting go part that he's not ready for.

Teefer Sutherland
The Boy cut his first tooth 2 days ago. It is on the bottom and he has another right next to it about to pop out. Right now it is barely breaking the surface, but it is there and it is sharp and the blood, meat, and spittle is absolutely revolting. Oooooh, I'm jest keeeeeding, Yimmy. He has no idea why we keep sticking our hands in his mouth, but I suspect he's had his fill of it all. I don't bame him, it gets in his way of STANDING ALL BY HIMSELF!! That's right, The Boy has taken to letting go of stuff while he's standing and giving us a very concentrated effort at walking. He's taken a few staggering steps, but I think its just momentum or it could be the Scotch. Either way, we think he's about 2 weeks away from taking off on his bipedal journey.

Under Construction

Our site was down for 3 days. The company I use, eDataRack, experienced a malicious attack on their routers. As it turned out the attack originated from the server our site was hosted on. What luck? So that server has been decommissioned and all files lost. Thank God for backups. I was able to get the site up and running again through Blogger, but that means all of the images aren't present. There is nothing wrong with your computer, the images aren't there yet and you will see X's until I load them.

As a perk for sticking with this company throughout all of this they have upgraded our package for free and now we will have first rate image gallery, chat, and bulletin board apps among other very cool backoffice upgrades. On the one hand it was a pain not having the site and email for a few days, but the upside is that now we will have a DYNAMIC website. Now I just need to find the time to implement it.

Also, if you sent an email to either one of us on our stumpvalley account over the past 3-4 days, it has been deleted without our being able to read them so don't think we're snubbing you. Just resend and we will love to talk to you. Take care.

Waving good-bye, dancing, trying to walk
9 months
Evan waved good bye for the first time the other day. My mom left after watching him for the day, and we waved and said good bye for a long time, and finally Evan put his hand up, sort of limp, and moved it around. His first wave good bye!

Oh, another first: he dances when we play music for him. He bounces up and down, almost to the beat, and then stops. He loves music.

He's close to walking. A few times he has let go of something and taken a small step, but it was sort of by accident, like he just lost his balance and fell forward, and caught himself with his foot. Does that count?

I'm still going to New Mom's Group at Kaiser, even though none of us are really "new" moms anymore. It's great. Most of the babies are Evan's age (a couple months older or younger) and it gives us a chance to talk and ask each other advice. We all bring blankets with toys and let the babies play while we talk. Evan is so active. While all the other kids play on their own blankets, Evan wants to grab their toys, sit on their blanket, pull their hair, touch their faces, make loud "eeee" noises right in their faces, and even sat on one little girl's face. It's really hard to watch him (it's much easier at home). I get tired keeping him busy and not letting him hurt the other babies. I guess in baby world this is his way of making friends.

He's getting hard to feed. He doesn't want us to spoon food into his mouth anymore. He wants to hold the spoon, but then puts the wrong end in his mouth and plays. We tried giving him chunks of veggies so that he could feed himself, but he just squished it between his fingers.

Happy Easter!
We had a great Easter. Dropped Evan off at the nursery of a huge church. I felt weird handing him over the counter to a strange lady. It was a similar setup to checking your coat. He didn't seem to miss us, though.

Our update
I'm almost done with my thesis... about a month away. I need to edit the first 5 sections, and write the last 2 sections. It seems like the more I write, the more needs to be done. My goal was to be done April 15, but I've moved it to May 15. Soon we will have our weekends back.
Jerry's still working at Jones & Stokes and then watches Evan on weekends so I can do my homework. We are ready for a vacation.

My baby likes lemons.
He sucked all the pulp off the rind. I gave it to him expecting him to make a cute sour face, but he loved it. He also likes dill pickles. I don't even like dill pickles.
We had the best day today. We went to coffee with Sara this morning, then to New Mom's Group at Kaiser, then out to lunch with the moms from group (where he took a nice, long nap, allowing me to enjoy adult company), then we played and napped at home. He was so affectionate today. I got lots of wet kisses and he's starting to make the "mmmm" noise more often. He kissed Jerry's nose, which really means he sucked on it for a few seconds.

Kramer's OK
We're still not sure what's wrong with him, but the vet said his blood work was "beautiful." He was dehydrated and perked up right after we started meds. He could have an infection. She directed us to take his temperature (to which Jerry replied, No, we don't really need to do that, do we?), and have him weighed again in a couple weeks. We're not sure what happened, but I think it has something to do with keeping the food and water away from the baby, which also served to keep it away from the cat.

We bought a security gate today so Evan can't get into the kitchen (he hates it). Now we just need to teach Kramer to jump over it so we can keep his food and water on the other side.

Still working out the kinks of being a family.

Our kitty's sick
Kramer is sick. He has been avoiding food and activity for the last few days. I took him to the vet today and he has lost 3 pounds (the equivalent of 60 pounds for an adult, according to the vet), he was running a fever, and has a heart murmur. We won't know what's wrong until tomorrow. She started him on antibiotics and injected him with fluids because he seemed dehydrated. Poor kitty!
We are keeping him confined to a room so that we can make sure he poops and pees and eats food and water. Tomorrow we'll get the results of his tests.

cute Evan stories
8 1/2 months
Yesterday I caught Evan putting something in his mouth, so I rushed toward him and pulled out... a mosquito. First the legs, then the body.
He's giving us lots of kisses. He's kissing his reflection in the mirror. He loves us.
He's started really "talking." He flaps his jaw as if he is saying actual words (very important ones), and out comes, "da da DA!" or "da wa WAG!" His voice gets louder with each syllable, and he gets a very serious look on his face (often with one eyebrow raised).
Currently he is pulling Jerry's undershirts out of the dressor one by one. Previously he was pulling the books off the shelf. I let him do this so that I can have some free time.

Sleep update
Believe it or not, it's getting better. He's sleeping for longer stretches in his crib. Tuesday night, he slept in his crib for 3 hours straight (remember, it used to be one hour max). Then on Wednesday night, four hours and 15 minutes straight. Last night, it was four hours. Once he comes to bed with us (after the first wake-up, at about midnight), he sleeps pretty well until 4:00 am. I don't know what it is about 4:00, but he thinks it's wake up time. We've been boring him back to sleep and not letting him "get up" until 7:00 ar at least 6:45. Things are so much better, but we're still tired.

Now he is pulling on the dressor drawer and making the whole thing rock back and forth a little. Better go.