Evan is getting quite the vocabulary. Not complete sentences, but many words which convey his feelings and/or desires.
No, go, down, more, mine, bana (banana), bana bread (banana bread with chocolate chips: do NOT get in the kid's way if it's in the house!), baby, and many more including the old standbys Mama and Dada. Can you guess which words are heard most often in our house?
Update: Of course, everyone got "no" right, but the most popular word is "Mama," not "mine." Mama is his go-to word for when he doesn't know a word, or just wants your attention (yes, even dad's attention). Many times, we turn it into a Marco Polo game. "Mama!" "Evan!" "Mama!" "Evan!" "Mama!" "Evan!"
I remember, after Evan was just born, watching our neighbor toddler Henry, who was then about as old as Evan is now, and thinking, "That's a scary preview of what Evan will be like in a year or so." And sure enough, everything prophesied is coming true.
The climbing on everything: The other day Lisa was vacuuming the dining room and moved the chairs into the kitchen, and was a little slow moving them back. Evan, in the meantime, climbed up one of the chairs, pulled open the oven door (much like he does with the play kitchen), and climbed on top of the stove and was pressing all the buttons, including self clean (aka really freaking hot oven!).
The escape artist: Yesterday, I was pulling weeds in the front yard, and Ellie was helping me scour the lawn for the occasional dandelion. One minute, Evan was pressing the horn on the toy car, and the next, he was halfway down the sidewalk (not the street, thankfully!) to the house next door.
And pretty much all you can say is, "Oh, boy!"
As previously promised, some pictures of our climbing boy.
Climbing up on a chair so that he can reach and play with the deadbolt. The irony being that I used to love to play with locks myself, just like him.
Little devil.
An ingenious little devil though. Notice how the dishwasher door is open so that he can use it as a step up to the top.
Proud as can be. We're not so brave (or stupid) as to let him climb up on top of the fridge though.
Evan is babbling away these days. He really thinks he's saying something, as he looks at you expectantly after finishing a "sentence." About the only things we can understand him saying are "Mama" and "Dada." And yet, these do not mean what you think they are. Just now after dinner, Evan was reaching for his sweet potato puffs, saying "Mama, mama, mama." Interpretation: "I want, I want, I want." Then, he pulled down the plastic bins in which we store toys, climbed up on one and said, "Dada, dada, dada." Interpretation: "I'm doing something dangerous! Look at me!"
Then he fell off, and cried. No interpretation necessary.
From the moment we first set a car in front of him, and he grabbed it and pushed it back and forth making "Vroom vroom" noises, we've known Evan is a full-fledged boy. He also knew exactly what to do with a ball: throw it (though he may have picked that up from watching Ellie). While visiting his cousins in Michigan, he had fun playing with the boys, especially when he tried to take Colin down, WWE style.
We finally got batteries for his newest toy, a ball spitting train contraption, and I set it down in motion to see what he did. He started cracking up laughing when it would run into him, and he'd back up a step, it would hit him again, he'd laugh and do it all over again. But the key point was when the train stopped moving. He looked at it for a moment, and his index finger IMMEDIATELY went right for the button that started it again. It's like his brain is hard-wired for this stuff.
