Author: David

Evan LOVES blueberries. Blueberries for breakfast, blueberries in Jam, and blueberries as a snack anytime of day are all good as far as he is concerned. Toast in the morning with Blueberry Jam is a favorite at the moment!

Hard to believe that it is already January 14th. Evan turned 19 months old yesterday! After both kids being sick at the beginning of the year. Sophie continued to get worse until she had to go into the hospital last Friday. She had bronchitis, and needed to be on oxygen in order to maintain a good blood oxygen level. Her daddies stayed with her the whole time, and Daddy Joseph stayed over night with her each of the three nights she was there. Sophie is fine now and came home on Monday night.  Evan got a hair cut yesterday—he wasn’t very happy about it, but we think he looks pretty darn cute.

We left Fair Play on Tuesday to head back to the city.  On the way home, Sophie threw up three times. We knew we were in for something – but weren’t sure what. Turns out, there is some ‘bug’ going around the Bowik house. Though Sophie seemed to be fine after those episodes—Evan and Joseph both got sick as well. Joseph also throwing up, and Evan with pretty bad cough and fever.  David worked on Wednesday and came home to the three of them in pretty rough shape. Needless to say, our New Year’s Eve celebration…wasn’t.

The picture below shows Evan with his blurry eyes – he basically just sat on my lap and napped all day.

Post Christmas week was especially special because the MacCloskeys joined us for a few days in Fair Play. We had an amazing 2 hour lunch at Bocconato, went on a beautiful (though short) hike, and had the first of what I hope to be many “Fair Play Olympics”! The idea came from a game we played last year with the our parents (sort of a shopping competition) during a weekend we all spent together. We expanded on that idea to include a cooking competition, two athletic competitions, and two card/board games. Teams were chosen at Random. The favorites going into the weekend had to be the beauty, brains and brawn that the Jennifer/Ella/David/Evan team possessed. However, the scrappy team of Jim/Adam/Joseph and Sophie had their eyes on the prize from the beginning! In the end, the underdogs came through with a 15-10 point victory highlighted by a very serious soccer game that ended in penalty kicks!

It has become a tradition of ours to leave the city and go to Fair Play the day after Christmas. We find it is a good way to leave the craziness of season behind, and to really focus on each other and  our time together. We arrived this year to find just a bit of snow cover. Santa came on Friday night to leave things in the kids stockings, and the weather turned out gorgeous after the snow melted!

Santa was good to all of us! We had a wonderful day that both Evan and Sophie enjoyed a lot. Many highlights, but the play kitchen was one of them! According to Sophie, all the presents from Santa “tasted” great! We are heading up to Fair Play on Friday morning for a few days of relaxing and to open more presents – apparently Santa has left our filled stockings up there since we have no fireplace in SF!

Chistmas Eve is here! A great visit to the Cleary’s house. Evan spent from 7 to 10 pm (way past the latest he has ever been up at night) following the big kids around! He loved it! Dads got home kind of late which meant there was preparing to do to make sure everything was in order for Santa’s visit.

We have been anxiously waiting for Sophie to get to the age where she can interact with Evan in a meaningful way and “co-play”. A few mornings  before Christmas we found them playing on the floor together. They were both amazingly content—and this went on for about 15 minutes before intervention of any kind was needed!

David is on vacation now until the 31st! Yippee! Saturday was predicted to be the only sunny day between now and after Christmas, so we decided to spend the day outside as much as we could. Playground in the morning, lunch out, and then naps. After naps, it had started to get dark and cold, so we stayed in and played around the  house. Evan’s new word today was his cousin’s name “Maren”. Very clearly stated when he saw the Cleary Christmas card with the three cousins on it. (Dalton and Kendra got big smiles, but he couldn’t quite seem to make the names come out!).

And of course… Evan had to play “Airplane” again!

A lot of changes recently. It seems like every day at least one of the kids has a major breakthrough! Since this is not only a blog, but also a place for Evan and Sophie to look back on one day, I thought i would take time to talk about some of what’s new. Today was Evan’s 18th-month check up—which also reminded me that I need to track some of the things that are happening to them both.

Sophie

Sophie has started to eat, and loves it. Probably more than she enjoys drinking her bottle. She went quickly thought the stage one foods, and is now on stage two. In the picture below, she is enjoying her first cracker. Despite still not having any teeth at 7-1/2 months, she is very happy to chew on a cracker!

Below is another cute picture. Sophie is definitely Daddy Joseph’s little girl—Joseph has the patience of a saint—and Sophie has required most of them over the first 7 months. Even as she grows into a sweet, smiley and much quieter little girl, they still have a very special bond and nothing can be better than a little time together. Manicures are already a favorite passtime for both Dad and Sophie.

Evan

Evan is talking up a storm. We haven’t really kept track of words that he says, so I thought I would make note of them here. Now, not all of the words below are said correctly, but he definitely has a word that sounds liket the real thing, and we can tell the difference between them.

Below – kind of in order of when they were learned, and not necessarily a complete list, but those that I can  think of right now…

Dada, cat, light, apple, banana, bottle, bird, bath, lion, plane, pirate, giraffe, no, yes, mama, water, Sophie

LIGHTS, and anything that flies have been favorites of Evans for long time. He also loves to fly in the air, which is why I am posting the picture below.