'One month' Appointment

Frankie had his one month appointment today at six weeks because they didn't want us coming in with H1N1, go figure! He is good on all his milestones and got his shots today, which has him mostly tired but he was not happy about it!

He weighed 11.5 lbs and was 21.5 inches long. Pretty good growth especially with all the weird sickness and extreme spitting up that he does all the time. He is 90% weight and 50% height but he doesn't look too chubs, so not sure how that works. His doctor was very happy with his growth, and he showed off his skills at holding his head up during tummy time for her too.

Evie weighed in at 37.5 lbs and 41.25 inches, so she is about average for weight for her age and a bit on the tall side, but we kind of had that figured out. She is still loving being a big sister and has been a good helper:). She did not like getting her regular flu shot--but good news Evie, since we had H1N1 no need for another vaccine this year. What a favor, right?

Other news since last post:

• we are all healthy--hard to believe but true!
• Frankie is very aware of his surroundings and has started to smile
• 
• I am allowed to try eating milk/milk products again per Mr Man's doctor. It has been kind of nice eating dairy free because I can always share with Evie...but I miss cheese. And cream pie...and ice cream...and all that other good stuff. Hopefully his stomach can take this better than it takes everything else. He is such a spitter!

We're just excited to be back on track health-wise so we can all enjoy this time--before it is gone since it goes so fast! Here are more fun pictures:

visiting with Great Grandma Tin cutie bear ear coat that Evie picked out for him
listening to Evie read him a story

Introducing... Frank August!

T2 is here...

Frank August
born August 22, 2009 @ 1:35pm
Weight: 6 lbs, 14oz
Height: 19.5 inches

After last Monday's fake-out, we were a little hesitant to head back to the hospital again, but Friday night at dinner, Amy's water broke. She wasn't sure if this was the real deal or not, but we had to head in to be safe. Both of us were feeling like we'd just be sent home again, so other than the pre-loaded car, we didn't even do much prep - after all, she wasn't even in labor.

But it only took a few minutes into the triage room to confirm that it was the real-deal, and we weren't going home this time. We got moved into the Labor & Delivery room, and they got started inducing labor.

Things were fairly slow going at first, but by late morning things were well underway, and Amy & I were both thrilled to meet Frank when he finally arrived!

Happy Mommy & Baby

The whole experience was much better for Amy this time - no preeclampsia, so no magnesium sulfate - she was aware & bounced back after birth MUCH faster without all that crap in her system.

Frank with his namesake - his grandpa Frank!

Happy to meet big sister!

Because of his timing, we still wound up staying until Monday, but we were able to head home fairly early Monday morning.


More pics are at Nana's site, and on Facebook (under my (Max's) account - visible to friends only).

Evie Goes To The Dentist!

Evie had her first real appointment with the dentist today (Dr. Mary, our family dentist), and she did GREAT! She was so excited, that going to the dentist was the lure actually used to get her up and going this morning!

Mommy & Evie arrived in time to watch them working on me, and Evie watched attentively, then jumped right up in the chair when it was her turn and did great. She cooperated with Dr. Mary through the exam, the brushing (Evie chose bubblegum flavor - despite never having HAD bubblegum. She loved it), and even flossing! During the brushing Evie even did the "rinse and spit" - she took the whole thing very seriously, and did so well, Dr. Mary told her she could pick TWO prizes from the chest afterward.

Halloween to now

Evie was Tinkerbell for Haunt the Halls when we trick-or-treated in the residence halls at OSU. Here she is with cousin Melissa in Siebert:
The following day (on actual Halloween) she was a spider. She loves her spider costume (with pink bow here to try and help people figure out gender). She has asked us to put it on her many times since Halloween--I had to hide it yesterday!Her hair is now long enough to do pigtails in the back. Here she is yesterday in her cheerleading outfit and lucky socks. Needless to say we no longer feel the socks are lucky, but the hair is cute!
Evie has really been into my dancing hamsters lately. I will try and figure out how to get video on here so you can see her dancing to 'Tequila'. Slightly inappropriate, but she loves it!

She has had a bad stomach virus for the past few days including lots of early morning bed clean-up. Hopefully we won't catch it and she will get better soon. What a way to spend a 3 day weekend (or 4 since we split time off on Friday to stay home with her).

I also forgot her stats from last doctor appointment. At the time she was:

• 32 and 3/4 inches tall: 90%
• 24 lbs: 40%--but on Friday she was 24.5 lbs.
• Her head is still enormous: 97% at 19 and 1/4 inches

Evie also said her first 'real' sentence this week. When looking at her animal sheets on her bed she looked over at me and said: 'This is a lion' and pointed to one of the lions on the sheets. Pretty nifty.

15 month appointment

Evie had her 15 month Dr appointment yesterday. She did such a great job and the doctor commented on her good naturedness and ease with strangers since she let Dr Gray poke all over her:)

She is growing like a weed. She is now:

• 22 pounds (40%, up from 25% at last visit)!
• 31 inches (75%)
• 19 in head circumference (96%, up from 85%)

So she still has the super ginormous noggin'. She also knows plenty of words and can identify lots more stuff than the minimum they look for at her age. Even funnier, daycare did their monthly newsletter yesterday and it talked all about how so many kids are walking now but for Evie it talked about her talking! She is super chatty and really starting to get stuff (mimics most things we say, so we have to be careful). They said she talks in sentences to them and when they can't figure out what she wants she gets pretty upset. The newsletter predicts she may be the next President!

She had a little trouble last night/this morning being tired and crabby from her shots but it was weird. She would be playing and having fun one minute and then seconds later screaming and having a fit out of nowhere. We put her to bed a little early and I hear she took a nap this morning for grandma because she was still so zonked. Poor thing!

One fun thing we did yesterday was make the coffee table into a 'fort' by throwing a blanket over it. She thought that was a riot.

So here are some of her new, fun words!

• no--and she shakes her head and sometimes does a whole body shake to signify NO
• uh-oh--still a favorite even when it is an 'on purpose' where she says uh-oh and THEN something falls to the ground and also 'Oh no' as a new one
  
• apple, eat, juice, water, waffle, more, yum-yum (sounds like num-num), cracker, 'Os' for cheerios, cheese, spoon (which she is pretty good at using)
• mommy, daddy, nana, baby, nita and geon (from daycare), bubba (all dogs and PQ), emma, ally (cat and dog and grnadparents' houses), woof-woof, quack, ooh-ooh (monkey), moo, vroom-vroom (like every car we pass! plus strollers too), fish (and I swear she is starting to get the hang of saying Allison from playing with her pictures from her shelf most mornings)
• she can identify (and say for some of 'em): eye, ear, nose, teeth, mouth, hair, toes, belly button, shirt, sock, shoe, glasses
• outside, light, seat (for chair), ball, bouncy, rock-rock, bumpy, down, up (although she MUCH prefers to use down for both up and down), done, bye-bye, see-ya, off, book, that? (almost always said as a question with finger pointing), please, thank you, eewww (when something is yucky)
• she also plays 'give me five' and 'peekaboo'
  

Daycare says she is doing colors, like red, blue, green, yellow but she has been a little resistant to say them for us. I am sure I missed tons of things but this is a pretty good start. She says a lot of babble stuff that could be something but is still a little too unintelligible. If I missed one and someone wants to chime in, go for it!

Happy Birthday to Evie...

Today was Evie June bug's first birthday. We can hardly believe it is already here. We spent the morning together, mommy made dairy-free pancakes and we played until Evie took a nap and then Nana and Grandma came over and we opened presents and thenwent to lunch and to Franklin Park Conservatory to see the butterflies. Here are some pictures from the conservatory:They have a great new kids room which she loved playing in! Then we watched the new butterfly release before heading out:After that we picked up grandpa and all came back to the house for dinner, present opening and the first birthday cake fiasco. Evie did not really like the cake--she got upset when the icing got stuck on her fingers and she flung it everywhere trying to get it off. Eventually most of it ended up mashed in her hair!

And finally, here 1 year card picture. Note how different it is from the days old version:

Happy Easter From Evie!

Amy took Evie to the mall to get her picture taken with the Easter Bunny today!

As you can see, she had a great time.

Evie is Sick:(

Evie has her first real yucky nasty illness (more than a bad cold and cough). She has her first ever ear infection which has also turned in to pink eye. I noticed her eye was all crusty and gross yesterday when she woke up but she wasn't running a fever and her eye was not red...so she went to school and I panicked and called the doctor and took her in. Good thing I did!

Her left ear is infected which caused her to get pink eye in her right eye (a little all over the place but oh well). She is on antibiotic and we caught everything really early so she should be good. She was so cute for the doctor and then I brought her to work for a few minutes to show her off and she charmed everyone here too. She was in her pout/quiet mode and looked adorable.

She weighed in at exactly 20 pounds (with clothes and shoes on) and is 29 inches long!

First Pairs of Shoes

Evie got her first shoes this past weekend from Stride Rite. Since she has a super chubby foot I wanted to make sure we got her fitted for the first time by someone who does this for a living. She has a pair of brown leather mary jane's with flowers on them and some white bootie/sneakers which have 3 very discreet little flowers on them as well so between the 2 pairs she can wear them with everything she owns, including her red Valentine's Day track suit. At first she was either paralyzed or very 'frankenstein-esque' in her booties but this morning I had her practice walking in them and now she is a pro!

She has also been crazy interested in the kitchen and playing around in there. Daddy took some cute pictures of her yesterday and we'll have to post those and a few shoe pictures soon. The shoe video would be fun too if she hadn't been in paralyzed by shoe phase when we tried to take it!

Last week was really busy for Buggies. She had a playdate with Glenn and at his house, then we all went to the Fishes for game night on Saturday (after going shoe shopping) AND she had her last swim lesson. She did pretty good with everything but refused to nap Sunday after swim lessons and was really crabby.

She appears to be breaking in a second tooth next to her first one and has been in really good spirits in spite of that! I feel terrible because I have been really sick all week and not able to enjoy her as much:(. Monday I started feeling yucky at work so took it easy when I got home and went to bed early, then Tuesday woke up feeling awful. I dropped Evie off at daycare and then came in to work since I was up and figured I might feel better but I just got worse--made it about 2.5 hours then went home and took a nap before going to the doctor. Here's where life gets really fun:

• the doctor did some blood work and set me up to get a CT scan the next day to check for a sinus infection. Because I just stopped taking an antibiotic to get rid of the stupid infection I got from taking another antibiotic they can't just put me on any old thing and hope it works (oh plus I was originally on a different antibiotic that I had a nasty allergic reaction to two weeks ago so this is like antibiotic nightmare for me)
  
• yesterday, my doctor called and said my CT scan was normal (no sinus infection) but my blood work was not--my white blood cell count was about 2x normal. So I went back in to have blood drawn again after work yesterday and they ran some other quick tests to see what was causing my infection. I also had to drop by this morning for more tests before coming in to work.
• I just got a call saying my white blood count came back high but much closer to normal. So now I have to go back in a week and do this all over again, plus probably won't hear back from the tests from today until next week.

Meanwhile, I feel like crap. I am super congested and a little out of it and I really don't think I can miss work since I started this job less than 2 months ago and I already took time off to take Evie to the allergist and an entire day off to get the stupid test done so I could find out I probably have Crohns. This has not been a healthy start to the year for me! Daddy can hardly believe how I got hit with the sick stick all at once, and I find it pretty incredible myself.

Meanwhile, Evie is healthy as ever. She gives germs to others but is impervious to them herself!

Toof!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have a tooth sighting. A tooth-nubbin began sticking through over the weekend (Evie's front bottom-right), and while there's been teasers before, it looks like this one is progressing to full-on toothness.

Unfortunately, Evie is completely uninterested in letting Mommy and Daddy (or anyone else for that matter) look or poke around in the mouth long enough to see if there's any other progress being made - let alone take a picture!

You didn't REALLY expect me to cooperate with documenting this, did you?

Rolling, Crawling, WALKING?!?!?

Evie June Bugger has started walking. She has been shuffle walking since this past weekend where she barely lifts her foot up or over and hardly moves but it looked like a precursor to walking and apparently was. On Tuesday after we got home from work EARLY--OSU was closed 1.5 days--woo hoo!--mommy was trying to show daddy how she could walk just barely holding onto one of my hands and she just walked all by herself instead. She has done 8+ steps in a row and made it about 4-5 feet without toppling over so far. She is still a little timid about walking and is a super fast crawler anyway, but she is really getting there. It took her a long time to learn to crawl but I guess walking wasn't that hard for some reason!

She also had her first Chris Fish's Birthday (aka Valentine's Day to the lay person) and we spent almost the entire day together since OSU had a snow day (can you tell I am still jazzed about that--we never get off). She had a special outfit for the day which started with:

her special v-day tiarathen moved into cutie -patootie work-out suit with onesie and heart front...and a heart butt! Which is how mommy got sold on it:)

Stair Climber Evie

Nana and Grandpa live in a split-level house and today Evie learned how to clim stairs by following Nana up the 2 stairs from the family room (aka Evie's playroom) and the kitchen. She has done it several times now and is already really good at it! It's really cute too because she takes off to go up the stairs and turns around to make sure someone is following her (as a spotter).

She also had her 9 month pictures taken today. She was supposed to have them done weeks ago but she had the big cheek bruise from taking a header into the coffee table so we waited until that went away. It was a fairly awful experience and I feel really bad--we invited Nana and Grandpa to come with us thinking it would be fun, but it wasn't so much.

Now that Evie can crawl around she is super hard to photograph because she wants to be somewhere else, duh! The photographer didn't take very many pictures--she kept waiting for Evie to smile while looking at the camera which was like asking the planets to align on cue. This of course would have been an ideal picture to have but we like the pictures of Evie where she is doing her regular stuff too--like her super chub face when she looks at something really hard or how she eats her bottom lip all the time. After about 35-40 minutes of baby torture and mommy stress, we ended up with less than 10 pictures to choose from which is ridiculous. Since they do digital photography and as a result, the images are FREE to look at, why not take a ton of pictures? I am going to write and comment on this as well.

We'll get the pictures to everyone once they come in a few weeks from now!

First Swim Lesson and First Snow!

Today marks Evie's first swim lesson and her first real snow. We are pretty sure she enjoyed both but it was a little too cold to enjoy the snow much. In other Evie news she learned how to clap this weekend and is really good at it!

Here she is getting into the pool, Audry is in the corner of the picture. We are practicing steps and she wore her new suit--the little skirt part kind of fans out when it hits the water:
Mommy and Evie--not sure what she was thinking about all this--and Allison in the corner:Evie and Glenn. We actually know all the other babies in the class which is really fun. Glenn has quite his pick of the ladies.All of us playing humpty-dumpty and helping babies fall off the wall. From L-R is Sarah and Audry, Mommy and Evie, Carrie and Allison, Alex the instructor, Beth and Katie and Bethany and Glenn.

I tried getting some cute snow pictures of her looking at me but she loved it so much we had no luck. Plus it made this really cool crunchy noise she liked when she touched it:

Now she is melting down--to much new fun stuff I think!

Evie's First Eye Exam

Evie had her first eye exam last week. She did really well and managed not to cry or scream much at all, although she did squinch her eye closed really tight when the student tried to put the second set of eye drops in. She knew what was coming then.

It is crazy how hard an infant eye exam is. They do all the same tests they would on an adult but they obviously use different methods and lots of cajoling and toys. Here's some of the stuff they did that I can remember:

• tested her eye pressure (air puff of doom test for us) by pushing on her closed eyelid
• tested vision (do you prefer 1 or 2 for us) using cards with series of alternating black/white lines of varying widths which are pre-calibrated to certain prescriptions and by holding refractive lenses up to her and watching her look around
• dilating her eyes and looking into them with a head-band microscope thingy. This looked particularly challenging since she kept moving around
• patching one eye at a time to run tests sicne she can't cover one eye or close one eye at a time upon being instructed to do so
• checking her eye muscles and movement by having her 'track' a fun toy with her eyes but without moving her head (again challenging)

And so on. They did great and so did she--it took a little under 2 hours because of all the trickery needed. The student and attending optometrist were both crawling around on the floor and holding out all sorts of toys and then picking up the equipment they let her borrow that she then kept throwing on the floor and all sorts of craziness. You should totally take your baby (if you have one) for an eye exam because it is good for checking their vision and eye health of course but it is also pretty entertaining watching doctors try to get your 9 month old to cooperate.

According to the developmental survey they did, Evie is doing really well and in most instances is at 12 month functioning:)

The bad news is that we know for sure that Evie was able to see some of the awful happenings during the very tragic OSU-Florida game last night. We are all still very sad. She even wore her lucky socks, which we will now have to retire.

Happy New Year!

So welcome to 2007! We hope yours is off to a great start--Evie's is, Daddy's is and Mommy's will be soon hopefully!

Evie spent her first night away from both mommy and daddy on New Year's Eve--she stayed the night with Grandma V to celebrate both the New Year and Grandma's birthday (which is 12/31 every year...hmmm, how about that!?). She did really good that night but has been totally resistant to going to bed the past 2 nights for us. Last night after about 30+ minutes of trying to get her to stay asleep, I finally just walked away and zonked out in less than 5 minutes. It was a total riot though because you could tell she had been standing holding on to the side of her crib and just crumbled down and fell asleep. Poor baby!

Mommy's got big news--I have accepted a job at OSU that requires no travel and hopefully will be a better overall environment for me. I was supposed to start the new job the day after MLK day but now that has been delayed against my wishes...ask me directly for details. But the good news is still that I have a new job--no travel, less craziness, slightly more $$, so it sounds like a great deal to me!

Evie got loads more presents from Voellmecke family Christmas which we opted not to attend, again ask me directly if you want the full dirt, but it really isn't very juicy news. She is a very lucky baby! We plan to visit the family over MLK weekend so folks can see her since we stiffed them for family Christmas. Hopefully the weather will remain good for a quick trip to Cinti.

Evie is crawling and she is getting to be super fast--we have to really watch her now. No more 'velcro baby' as one of my co-workers calls it! She also has her very first ever eye exam tomorrow. As a plug for the students at my current job, make sure you have your baby's eyes examined. There is a program called InfantSee that is a national program (which our college takes part in) where optometrists can elect to see children for a free first eye exam (as long as you take the baby to a participating optometrist within the first 12 months--unless you are noticing a potential problem they recommend visiting between 8-12). So anyway, free is always good, making sure your baby can see is very good so what's not to love. I'll let you know how it ends up going!

A few Evie pics:Ignore the fact that we look a little weird and focus on mommy and Evie in matching coats!Evie got to hang out with Thyrone and Veronica , two very cool kids!Evie in her zebra hat from Aunt Laurie. The picture does not do this justice, really. It is very fun and is kind of mohawk/mullet-esque!

Big Girl!

Evie is such a big girl all of a sudden. She pulled herself from sitting to standing for the first time for us last week (well, first time to stay upright anyway) and now she's done it like a million times and is a super pro! Even cooler than this in my opinion though is that she can sit up on her own--she has done it a few times from laying down on her back and is really good at doing it from laying on her stomach position. This is really nice because when she does slowly veer over or fall down she can fix it herself:) She is also pretty comfortable with sitting down on her own from standing although her technique could use some work--she hits her tush pretty hard when she just lets go and bends her knees!

Evie also met Santa for the first time. Merry Moppet has a parent dress up as Santa every year and one of the daddies from her class was Santa Claus on Friday. Grandpa went in and took pictures for us and I think he had lots of fun--Evie's teachers said he was very cool and can come back any time! The pictures are cute--Evie just looks puzzled to be sitting on Santa's lap and then she had quite a field day pulling on his wig. Crazy baby! Evie also went to her first zoo lights with Nana and Grandpa...mommy and daddy went too but had been before a few times. She managed to stay awake the entire time and melted down after we had been there for about 2 hours, which was really pretty good. Then Saturday, she got her first doll house from grandma and went to the Melting Pot with the Trebonis to celebrate their 34 wedding anniversary. She did ok with the Melting Pot but was a bit fussy, horrifying daddy. She also made a huge mess of fallen puffs which she kept knocking on the floor:(. Sunday, we took her to the park again to swing--she LOVES to swing and how many days in December can you go to the park--I mean really, this weather is strange!She's still not sure about the slide, even when daddy goes down with her!

We mailed out Evie's holiday greetings last week so hopefully yours will come soon...enjoy!

Evie is 8 Months Young Today!

It is Evie's 8 month birthday! What this means is:

• she is taller and weighs more--she is over 17 pounds and just a bit over 27 inches long
• she is cuter and more huggable than ever
• she eats all sorts of crazy foods--and has learned to feed herself puffs (which were formerly too small for her to grab--look at those fine motor skills maturing!)
• we have another 'deck of cards' photo for you
  
• we are 2/3 of the way there to her first birthday!

What she's still holding out on:

• she still has no toothers
• she prefers commando crawl and rolling to getting up on all fours and using the more regularly 'approved' method
• walking, well duh, right?

But for the first time ever this weekend for her parents she:
Pulled herself from sitting to standing all by herself AND was able to remain standing (before she has slowly toppled over the other direction after pulling herself up)!Here she is on her 'learn-around' playground which she loves. As her daddy says, she is the standin'-est girl!

And here are her card photos. I can't decide on a favorite because they are all fun--although the one on the right almost doesn't even look like her to me (she looks like a doll or something I guess). Unfortunately her mobile status precludes us from getting a great shot of the cards on her chest for growth comparison, but I think these are a still fun--and of course the left-hand photo says--I'm gonna get you sucka!

Swimmin' with the fishes!

We went to the pool with Evie and lots of Fishes! Allison, Audry, Sarah, Carrie and Chris were all there and we had so much fun! We're all doing lessons together in the Winter too--and baby Katie, Glenn and Abby are joining in on the fun and Jack might come too! Basically it's like every baby friend Evie has will be there--too cool!

Evie picked out her own swimsuit--I think she enjoyed the shiny!

Evie wasn't sure at first, but then she had a ball. Allison had been before and loves the pool but Audry had only been once before I think and it had been a long time for her--she had fun too!

She really enjoyed when daddy tugged her along behind him!