Evelyn is two

My Evie Lou is now two! I guess now I can't call her Evie Lou Who, who is no more than two, but I probably will anyway. She is so silly and fun, so let me tell you about her.

At two years old, Evie:

• loves to play at the park
• plays with her stuffed animals and pretends to feed them, change their diaper, etc.
• says full sentences! 
• knows her colors and shapes, and she can count to 5!
• mimics everything we say. My favorite is "oh gosh" and  "look at that!"
• loves blues clues and "sings" along with the songs
• along this same line, she is constantly trying to "skadoo" into her coloring book
• actually kind of likes her baby brother. She calls him baby Emmett and gets super concerned when he's crying
• is still an incredibly big eater. I don't know where she puts it all. 

She is so sweet and so much fun to be around. She loves to play with her dad the most of all, and I can't say I blame her. Recently she's wanted to watch more big kid movies, so I let her watch The Emperor's New Groove, and now she says "no touchy" and "awesome". Haha. That's my girl.

She no longer throws tantrums at the drop of a hat and is actually a really great helper for me. Watching her grow up has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. How did I get so lucky?

 Opening her present from Grandma Christensen

 She was super excited about the coloring, painting, and stickers book

For her birthday dinner, we had noodles and chicken. Two of Evie's favorite things.

yummy

I just thought this was cute. She loves to talk to him.

So, this was the world's ugliest cake, but she loved the frosting anyway

"oh no! mess!"

Cheese!

Opening presents from mom and dad

 She got a dry erase coloring book and another drawing pad that uses water. She was very excited.

 She got a whole bag of clothes, but she was not as excited about that. The little bag had a whole lot of bouncy balls, which went over a lot better than the clothes.

 parent victory

I can't believe it's been 2 years already! We seriously can't imagine life without our Evelyn Louisa. She has brought so much joy and love into our lives already, so I'm excited to see what this next year brings. 

Emmett

Our little Emmett is already 3 weeks old, so I thought I should finally post about him. He was born on March 21 at 3:11pm and weighed in at 8 lbs even. He was a big boy! I remember thinking, "8 lbs!? How did he fit in there?". I was actually induced with him so that my mom would be here when he was born, but mostly so that we could get started on all the paperwork we needed to do to move to Korea. They wouldn't change Dan's orders to include us until after Emmett was born, and we were fast approaching the point where they wouldn't have time to amend the orders and we wouldn't be going with Dan at all, so I was induced. I'll omit all the things about my doctor and the actual practice I went to, because anything I say will be negative and I want this post to be positive. I'll just say this, trying to get them to induce me was more work than the actual labor and delivery. There. I'm also going to skip the story about my actual labor because, again, anything I say will be mostly negative. I will say that I didn't push long, maybe 6-7 pushes, and then he was here. He was super red and super cute. His poor little face was bruised and his lips were swollen because of the whole being born thing, but the swelling went down after a couple hours. After they wrapped him up, he didn't cry again. Even when they took him up to be circumcised, he just stayed asleep. The only thing that was a little concerning was that he wouldn't eat for almost 24 hours. I tried to nurse him every 2 hours, but to no avail. The nurses said that he was born so fast that his mouth and stomach was still full of mucus, so it took quite a while to get him to want to eat. Ever since then, though, he's been a very good eater. For the most part, he's also a very good sleeper. Most nights he will go 4-5 hours at a time, but there are also other nights when he won't go back to sleep at all and we want to die. Luckily those are few and far between. Our little Emmett is the opposite of Evelyn in almost everything already. Where Evie cried all day long no matter what we did, Emmett only cries if he's hungry, and even then he will only cry if you let him whine and grunt for too long. He is just the most pleasant, most perfect little boy and we are so in love. It's lucky that he is so good because we have to move to Korea when he's 2 months old. Phew. Also, thanks to him, we may actually have more children after this, but not for a while.

 This is little Emmett right after he was born. Swollen face. He apparently got attached to the towel because he wouldn't let it go.

 Holding him for the first time

Don't be deceived by this smile. I was very groggy and exhausted. But, happy.

 

swollen upper lip. Poor guy

My mom and Evie came to see us after we were all settled.

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I love my little family. Hopefully we can get a better family picture someday

So, so cute

Emmett and Grandma. She fell in love at first sight, as did we all.

home at last. Look at that face. Seriously.

His first bath

So, say hello to our newest edition. We call him baby Emmett, lil man, baby boy, Mr. Baggins, and our lil Hobbit. If you're wondering about the Hobbit thing, it's because he has seriously enormous feet. Not only are they like little tug boats, but his big toe and middle toe are super far apart, just like a hobbit.

Love you, sweet boy. Thanks for choosing us to be your parents.