Evie's 50th Week

It was good to be gone and see friends and family, but it's also good to be home.  I think we all enjoyed our rest on Sunday night, sleeping in our own beds.  Evie slept through the night again for the first time in two weeks, and she slept for a 10 hour stretch, from midnight to 10 am.  I think we all needed that.  On Monday night, she slept 13 hours straight, but last night, I don't know what was going on.  She woke up every hour and a half from 10:30 until 8:30 am, and then apparently slept until noon.  Her schedule has been quite off this week so maybe that's the reason, or maybe she's got a molar coming in... I don't know.  But it was a long night.

During one of her awake times, I was changing her diaper and she looked me straight in the face and said, "Hi."  I tried to get her to do it again, but I guess she wasn't up for an encore.  She has been acting a lot more "grown up" lately, so I suppose this doesn't surprise me much.  She seems more independent than she was when we left two weeks ago.  She's content to crawl around and leave things on tables alone (for now), and it just seems to me like her manner of playing is different.  She entertained herself flipping through a book for about an hour yesterday, not something she did before we left.  So maybe the traveling and seeing new people and places was good for her, or maybe it's just that she's almost one (eep!).

She's also started drinking out of her sippy cup (with a straw), and doing very well at it.  Mostly.

And, to share some pictures from Oregon and California:

 

Here she is with her great-great-uncle Roger.  This is Seth's Grandmother's younger sister's husband.  We enjoyed meeting him very much and he and Donna entertained Evie a lot during our stay.

 

Practicing walking with uncle Roger

 

Here she is with Donna, Seth's grandmother's younger sister.  She loved Donna!

 

On the way to the fish ladder

 

Showing off those big eyes

 

Making faces at her Grampa

 Our day trip to the beach.  This was Evie's first time to a beach at all, and, of course, to the Pacific Ocean.

 

Here's Evie with Gram.  Gram got to feed her almost every bottle, and I think they both enjoyed it.

 After our drive down to California on Monday, we met with Madi and Grammy on Tuesday for dinner.

 Evie's first experience actually getting in the sand.  She's not real sure what to think about the stuff. When we put her down on the towel, she set off like she was about to crawl all over the beach but the second her hand touched sand, she sat back and examined it.

 And then she pretty much stayed put on the towel.

 Here's our attempt at getting her to walk in the sand.  She tolerated it, but was glad to be back on the towel.

 Here's Evie and our friend Matt.

 And with our friend Wolfie.

 We went to visit our friends Dan and Tisha and their son Dante.  Dante is the 9 year old who shared his stuffed animal collection and who may have inspired Evie to say, "carrot".

 We went to Santa Barbara for a day and walked around.  They had a dolphin statue, so of course Evie had to ride it.

 We met up with my friends from UCI for dinner on our last night in town.  From left to right, Toby (the production manager), Evie, Matt, Michelle, Ashley, Jenny (they were stage management grad students while I was there), and Jenny's fiance Mark.

 We stayed with Jill our last night and went out for pho with Jill and Eric before we got on the plane.  

And, back home, getting into trouble in the kitchen.