Evey 5 months and June at Home

Evelyn turned 5 months old on June 2nd. Throughout May, she tried several more foods (fruits, veggies, and oatmeal). She has eaten everything she's tried with gusto and loves to grab the spoon and try to do it herself and chomp on the spoon (teething, probably?). She really likes to drink water out of her sippy cup, though she struggles with being able to lift it and tilt it on her own. She is very interested in everything we eat and drink and wants a taste of anything we have. She is wearing size 2 diapers and 3-6 month clothes. She found her feet and likes to play with them, especially the left one. In early June, she really started to roll around more and by the second week of June started sitting on her own. First she did the quad-pod and tri-pod stances, but has since mastered sitting up while playing with toys with both hands and reaching out for things. She also has been trying to scoot a little on her belly around mid-month, doing the head-first inchworm movement to shimmy towards her toys. She has a hearty laugh, especially when she is tickled, and loves to pet the cat with her hands and feet. She sleeps around 11 hours most nights (7pm-6am) with an occasional wake up, and takes 3 naps most days around 9am, 1pm, and 4pm. She is almost always happy and smiles often but gets cranky when she wants to eat food faster and when she gets really tired.

Alex loves having so much attention with daddy home and visits to/from the grandparents. He's enjoyed playdates with friends, Gymboree, playing at the Y, the zoo, the pool, splashpark, hoses, and sprinklers, and the GA aquarium. We converted his crib to a toddler bed after our travels were over, on the 22nd. He did fine at night sleeping in it, but struggled with naps the first few days. He does stay in his room, whether crying, yelling, or playing and tends to fall asleep with the lights turned on (he does that after we leave). The first day at naptime, he protested for quite a while, but never came out (even though he is perfectly capable of opening, closing, locking, and unlocking his door--and all the doors for that matter) and eventually fell asleep on his floor. To celebrate the occasion, we let him pick out some new bedding. He of course chose Thomas the Train. It only came in twin-size however, so he just uses the comforter draped over his bed to sleep on and the pillow case, and still uses (sort of) his baby blankets over him. He is an endless ball of energy who never wants to go to sleep although he finally admits he is tired sometimes. He loves to read books (with us and by himself--he can recite almost all his books), sing songs (Twinkle, Twinkle and Itsy Bitsy Spider are favorites), play trains, and climb, run, and jump everywhere. He likes to play outside with water, blowing bubbles, playing baseball, basketball, catch, frisbee, and riding the slide. He's started to enjoy coloring and drawing more (sometimes on the floor, tables, couch, wall, pillars, train table/tracks, etc...). His favorite pictures to make are snowmen and fish. He wants to do EVERYTHING himself. His favorite words are MY and ME (yes, yelling them). Examples are "MY do it!!" and "ME watch TV!" He makes long phrases and sentences to tell us about lots of things like planes (fly far away), trucks (oh that's a big truck), firetrucks (go woo, woo, woo), buses (go beep beep), helicopters (whoomp, whoomp, up in the sky), clouds (gray ones make rain and thunder), and trains (choo-choo, can you see it? no, too far away). He likes to talk about what he and Evey are doing (Baby Evey sleeping, eyes closed). Curious George has replaced Thomas the Train as the favorite TV show, with Blues Clues on the car DVD ranking near the top. We finally got his hair cut the third week of June, and he looks older but still very cute, as the little curls still are there.

Andy graduated from ACSC on June 7th as a Distinguished Graduate. He was then mostly free from work obligations until SAASS--his next school--starts on July 6th. While many of our friends from Montgomery are moving to their new assignments, we are lucky to have several friends staying in the area. So we travelled to visit family for about 11 days in June, but the rest of the time we spent here at home enjoying the summertime schedule and time with our family and friends.

We had a short visit from Andy's parents just before he finished school. They joined us on our June 4th-5th trip to Macon, GA where Andy ran his first half-Ironman triathlon. That means he swam 1.2 miles (in a lake), biked 56 miles (on very hilly roads), and ran 13.1 miles (that's a half-marathon) to finish in an impressive 5 hours and 44 minutes. It was a very hot and humid day and the course was very challenging, but all his hard work at training paid off with a strong finish. We all went to cheer him on at the transitions and the finish and are very proud of him!
We visited the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta on the first leg of our travels. Alex had a blast seeing all the big fish, and especially liked the otters (like his best buddy, Ollie the Otter) and the penguins. He was intrigued by the starfish stuck to the wall of the tank, and was awed by the big sharks, rays, and scuba divers swimming over and around him in the tunnel through a tank.

slide at zoo from Andrea McElvaine on Vimeo.

I had so many pictures from this month that I had to break them up. These pictures don't necessarily all coincide with this posting, but they are the first set I've uploaded. I'll include the second set with my next post about our travels in June. So here are June pictures, part 1!