Week 52

18th -  25th December 2005

Emma's Entry

Soon we won't have to travel far to play on the swing!

This was Evan's last week in his first year and it's amazing how quickly time flies by when watching your baby grow into a little boy. This final week started with a birthday party for Alex - one of Evan's baby buddies. We managed to get most of the gang together for one final meet before Christmas and it was lovely. All the babies are walking now, though Evan is still very wobbly and he would still prefer to crawl at times where as the others are very much mobile and walking very steadily. We managed to capture 24 steps from Evan on the video camera and it was amazing.

I dragged Caroline along to the local park this week so that we could film Evan on the swings. We chose a bitterly cold Sunday morning and the wind was whistling loudly as we filmed. Evan loved the swings though and we got some very good (noisy) camera footage.

Caroline was looking after Evan for the first part of this week as I was still working hard at work. They had a great time together, shopping and just general bonding. I have to say Caroline is doing so much better with the whole feeding aspect of being a parent than I am. Evan has scared me so many times with choking on lumps that I really struggle to stay composed whilst feeding him something tricky. Caroline actually threw me out of the room this week because she was feeding him a cheesy omelette for breakfast and it was one of the lumpiest feeds we have probably had recently. Evan coped quite well, but every time he pulled that face with a little gag it made me panic. In the end I had to leave the room and go to work because I was unbearable. Caroline actually filmed him eating a biscuit this day (a food a struggle to get him to eat) to prove to me that Evan can now bite and chew properly...

Evan checks out his Christmas presents!

We were wrapping Evan's Christmas and Birthday presents one evening whilst watching some TV this week. I had two piles of presents, one for his birthday and the other for Christmas and we planned to just put them all under the tree for him. I am not sure what happened next (we must have been on a roll) but they all ended up being wrapped in Christmas paper and then had Christmas tags on them! I did manage to make a home made birthday tag for the present that didn't have a tag and it looked really nice.

We prepared a lovely Christmas dinner for all our visitors and we even had Evan sitting at the head of the table in his high chair with a bowl of Christmas dinner for him too. He struggled with the turkey and sprouts but loved the potatoes, carrots and gravy. We even managed to get him to wear a Christmas hat out of a cracker for about 3 seconds before he ripped it off!

I wanted to show Evan the 3 S's in his first year - (sand, sea and snow). We managed the sand and sea when we visited the beach earlier in the year and unfortunately the snow arrived a day after his birthday, but I still see that as a success. We were sitting at the table eating breakfast with Evan when the snow blizzard just hit us and Evan was truly mesmerised by these huge flakes dropping to the ground outside. I didn't managed to get him outside in time for the big flakes, but we did take him out side for a few minutes after breakfast but it wasn't as cool as if we'd been surrounded by the huge flakes dropping from the skies. Hopefully it will snow again and will be able to get some great pictures of Evan enjoying it.

I started thinking back to last year a lot from Christmas Eve all the way through to Boxing Day. I was getting vivid memories of my labour experiences in hospital and when I actually mentioned it to my mum and Caroline, they too had been remembering as well :).

We have had a fantastic and entertaining first year with Evan and I am so glad to have documented my experiences here. Evan is now a little boy and I think his growing and development will slow down throughout the coming year. As a result I plan to change his updates to be monthly to ensure that I have something interesting to write about. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Emma