Friday, August 25, 2006

Evan Update

Just watching Evan is all the entertainment we'll ever need. It blows me away at what he understands. I try asking him to do things that I think are out of his understanding, and he always seems to comprehend it or part of it.
So what is he doing these days?
I taught him to hold up his index finger when I asked him "How old are you, Evan?" "One!!!"
He folds his arms and sometimes bows his head when he thinks its time to eat. I could be moving things around on the dinning table and he'll fold his arms!
He sits patiently on a chair outside the kitchen baby gate waiting for his milk. I taught him to sign "drink" while we waited for the microwave. One day he walked up to the kitchen baby gate when I was in the kitchen and he signed it to me without any coaching. It's so nice to know what he wants now!
He loves doing hand signs to nursery rhymes, and we're working on getting him to put his hands together for 'itsy bitsy spider". He just wiggles his fingers with his hands apart. Just cute.
I put new shoes on him and it was like he knew they were new and was happy to try them on. He walked around the living room for 20mins non-stop. He'd walk to a corner and turn around really quick and head off to another corner! So silly!
He loves to blow raspberries on Mark.
He'll collect toys and put them in the basket of his tricycle and hop on his bike and wait there until you push him around the livingroom on it. The other day I pushed him on the bike into Mark lying on the ground. Mark reacted silly, and Evan just erupted into laughter!
He'll start waving "bye bye" if you walk to the door with keys in your hand. And sometimes he'll want you to pick him up to take him with you.
His new thing is stacking blocks and clapping his hands when he's done. Then he knocks them over and claps some more.
On some days he just doesn't like anything on our couches and he will go around pulling all the pillows off the couches.
He loves to talk. A lot and loud.He still loves to take my cell phone when Mark's on speaker phone and walk around the house talking to daddy.

There's one thing that's been worrying me. He's hitting his head on things lately. Like the walls, the stairs, the ground, the couch, and on his toys. He'll even hit his face and head with is own hands. I've read up on it, and it's supposed to be normal, its a self soothing thing... but how's it soothing if he cries cause he just smacked his own face with his hands? Maybe there's nothing wrong with him, and maybe he's imitating behavior he's seen somewhere. I don't know...

We've finally got him back on schedule with sleeping. He'll go to bed at 9 and wake up at 8 or 9 and take naps at 12 and 4. It took a lot longer than before to get him to sleep on schedule. Most likely because he's so much more mobile and taking time out for sleep isn't on the top of his list. Now we're going to Boston and Maine for Labor Day weekend, and I have a feeling we're going to have a lot of work to do when we get back.

4 comments:

LaReen said...

Hi Bev- This LaReen, Jerin's friend from BYU. Sean and I left in April 99 so we never got to hang out with Jerin and all his new friends that he made after us. I was reading how Evan hits his head and Luke does that also. He is 15 months now and does exactly what Evan does. Christian (my first) never did that so I was surprised when Luke started to hit his head on things. It's nice to know that I am not alone with this. Hopefully the boys will grow out of this soon.

Anonymous said...

Bev,

I think Evan is either having a headache or tightening feeling as he grows. When he does it again, try massaging with your hand from his face over the forehead to the back of his head and off his shoulder. If he stopped and let you do it and seem to like it then it is reliefing his headache or just tighening feeling. If he just run away or no reaction then it is just something he would grow out of.

love

Dad

Beverly said...

I was SO glad to hear I wasn't the only one distressed over my son hitting his head on things! I hope he out grows it SOON. It's kind of unnerving.

Anonymous said...

Uh yeah so the first time I saw this head butting phase in action was when little half-brother Eric head butted me. Reaaaaallly really hard. I saw stars for a minute and he just started laughing hysterically. He was hitting all these different things with his head throughout that visit. The next time I saw him was maybe a month or so later and he had stopped that and started a shreiking phase. fun fun. Hopefully the wee Eman skips THAT one. lol!