Recently in Second Year Category

Time to add a new category to the blog, because Evan turns two today! I can't wait to get home and show him his present: a train table and wooden train set. And his birthday party tomorrow is going to be train-themed as well, complete with another one of Lisa's epic cake creations.
Happy birthday little guy!

I haven't had the chance to update on the fun things that Evan is doing. Maybe that's because he constantly attacks you by throwing rocks, or headbutting your thighs, or worse yet, biting. But he does have his cute moments. We're not entirely sure where he got it from (maybe Discovery Channel's "Ready Set Learn"?), but his favorite thing now is to warn you when he's about to attack:
"Ready? Go? Set!"

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!"

My goodness, this poor kid gets the shaft for being second-born, and he's barely a year old! This time, I has been remiss in mentioning that Evan started walking. He's been doing it for a couple of weeks now, and the official "10 steps" moment came last week sometime. Now, he tends toward toddling everywhere, which makes it harder to keep track of him. When he was crawling, he was very noisy (thud thud thud across the floor). Now we have to rely on him vocalizing the fact that he is walking and use the doppler effect to pinpoint his location.
It should be a lot of fun seeing him and cousin Sam toddling around after each other this Christmas.