Evan

Our Evan is three months old now!  He continues to be a big boy.  At his two month appointment he was 14 lbs 6 oz (91%) and 25 1/4 in (97%).  He is really a pretty good baby (except that some nights he wakes up more than I would like.)

 

When he was born my Grammy (GG) got to come visit us and help out.  She broke her elbow the second day she was here so we got to keep her for extra time.  We loved having GG here.  She was great playing with Claire and helping out even with a broken elbow.

 

We blessed Evan over Labor Day weekend down in Clinton, Utah.  Mark’s sister had a baby three weeks after Evan so we blessed them together.  It was nice to have family there.
 

Claire wanted to lay down for her picture too.  Silly girl.

Evan and cousin Ashlyn.

 

Here is Evan during our family picture session.

Here is Evan’s birth announcement.

I liked this one too, but Mark pointed out that it is 95% fabric.

One day Claire wanted to be “burritoed” like Evan.  It didn’t last long.

He has become a finger sucker.

Claire likes to have “tummy time” with Evan.

Halloween

Here is Claire’s pumpkin that we carved yesterday morning.  We carved butterflies in it (she likes to identify them as “fies”).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Claire was a fairy for Halloween.  I made the costume for her last year, but it was too big then so she got to wear it two years.  She loved the wings.  She thought they were butterfly wings (I don’t think she knows what fairies are.)

 

Evan was a giraffe.  Fitting since he is our tall boy (97%)!  And of course he is sucking his fingers.

We went trick-or-treating at Mark’s work in the afternoon and then to a few houses in the neighborhood in the evening.  Claire got the hang of things (at least grabbing a candy) before too long.  She understands what candy is this year.

We borrowed a few costumes from a friend too.  We didn’t wear them out anywhere, just put them on for a few pictures.

A duck:

Piglet and a sad Tigger:

Piglet and Pooh:

Evan in his ghost shirt:

Claire’s 2nd Birthday

Claire turned two a week ago.  We went to the Boise Temple open house in the morning.  (We are excited that it will be open again soon!  It has been closed for more than a year.)

Claire was looking up at Angel Moroni.

We had a party at home that evening.  She got one of her favorites, chicken nuggets, for dinner and then we opened presents and had cake.

She got a Minnie Mouse doll.  She is rather fond of Minnie Mouse since Mark bought her some Minnie Mouse puzzles when Evan was born.  We do them each multiple times every day. (They are 24 piece puzzles and she has gotten pretty good at them.  Pretty impressive for a two year old I think.)

Her cake was a blue butterfly since she likes both of those things.  If she doesn’t know what color something is her default answer is “boo.”  I don’t think that she ever ate any of the actual cake, she just wanted the marshmallows that were on top.

Our Miss Claire is a smart cookie.  She loves her puzzles, is learning her colors, likes to try and count things (usually two, tree (no one)), loves reading books, likes building with the blocks (especially towers to sit on) and is getting better at talking all the time (Evan=Eh-n, loves, sit down, help=helk, please, come, book=bik, home=hone, walk, stairs, milk=nelk, apple, mouse (for minnie mouse), blanket, pictures, etc.)

Fall

We took the kids out to a farm/corn maze last week.

They had a big slide made out of a pipe.  Claire went down once and that was enough for her (she came out going pretty fast.)

Claire and Mom driving the tractor.

Evan all snuggled in.

They had a big corn box (like a sand box).  Claire enjoyed it.

And she even got partially buried by her dad.  We ended up unintentionally taking some of the corn home with us.

 

Here are some cute pictures of Claire playing in the leaves in our backyard.

Family Pictures

We had Maddie take some family pictures for us when we were down in Utah at the beginning of September.  Here are my favorites.

Evan Franklin Salisbury

This is Mark writing this blog post (weird huh?).  Amanda does this usually.  I can type though, what do I do all day at work?

Anyway, Evan was due July 15th, on his Aunt Maddie’s birthday.  We’ve been eagerly awaiting his arrival.  However, he had different plans.  He was quite content where he was.  After Maddie’s birthday went by, there was a chance he would be born on my birthday.  My birthday came and went.  I told Amanda that if he was born right on my birthday he would be named Frank ? Salisbury.  She visited Dr. Hodges on the 19th and he scheduled for her to come to the hospital (to coax baby out) on Monday, July 23rd at 7 AM.

We got ourselves ready – our primary concern being Claire – who would watch her while we were at the hospital.  A wonderful family in our ward watched – and dare we say – spoiled – Claire.  She had lots of fun with Christy, Erika, Seth, Mark and Tyler.

Monday, July 23rd.  We left home close to 6:30.  Prior to leaving I thought to help get Amanda in baby delivery mood I’d play her a song. “Let’s Get It Started”.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqV7DB8Iwg.  haha.

They started Amanda on Pitocin (oxytocin) at 7:45 AM.  Then Dr. Hodges came in and broke her water at 8:45.  They kept increasing the level of Pitocin and Amanda’s contractions continued to get stronger.  The nurse encouraged us to walk around, that that could help things move along.

Amanda’s contractions continued to get more powerful and she let me talk her into getting the epidural around 2:45.  It would seem she can handle pain better than most people, including myself.  I found just the process of her getting the epidural to be semi-traumatic.  Needles make me queasy.  The nurse told us later that she thinks Amanda was very far along and if we had waited much longer it may have been too late for the epidural.  We started with one nurse, Amy, who was later called to help patients in a different part of the hospital.  Christy then helped us out, who was the same nurse that helped with Claire’s delivery.  She was really great.

At 5:02 PM Evan Franklin was out.  The process was a bit scary to me.  The doctor originally had planned to let me help deliver the baby (I got the gloves on) but it turned out to not be a delivery 101 baby.  The cord was wrapped around his neck so the doctor had to work it just right.  Evan’s head was very purple-ish and this worried me.  His body was pretty white.  Fortunately his color became even very quickly after he was delivered.  I did cut the umbilical cord but this is no major feat as I did this when Claire was born.

In this picture Evan is about 7 minutes old (and officially we hadn’t settled on a name yet). Can you believe the smile Amanda has at this point?  Isn’t she beautiful?

Amanda is holding Evan up here for a better picture.  At this point in his life smiling is not a strong point.  Who can blame him?  He’s just getting breathing air down.

Then I took him to the scale to be weighed.  Wow.  9 lbs, 14.2 oz.  He’s a big boy.  Dr. Hodges told Amanda “Congratulations, you’ve given birth to a toddler”.  (OK, slight exaggeration but since coming home has has proven that newborn diapers aren’t big enough for him).

We were both very happy to have a healthy baby boy!

Tuesday

The next morning Claire came to meet her brother.  We had just decided his name would be Evan Franklin.  We committed it to public records shortly thereafter on his birth certificate form.

Here’s the first family picture with the four of us.

Evan at the hospital.  Not yet 24 hours old.

Wednesday

Evan is now at home.  Just over 2 days old.  He likes to sleep a lot.  Although he awakes about 11:30 at night and won’t sleep for an hour.

Thursday

Evan is awake.  Mom is now in serious picture taking mood.  The flash comes out and it makes a nice difference in the pictures.

What do newborn babies do?  Pull funny faces and play with their fingers.

He’s got a good grip on his mother’s thumb.

Claire is not to be left out of the pictures.

Evan does not enjoy diaper changes.

I’m pretty happy to have a little boy.

Mom was a little worried upon finding out that Evan was going to be a boy – she’s just grown up with girls in her family.  However she’s going to be a natural, I’m sure out it. 

It’s been a great week.  I’ve been very happy to have the week away from work and be with my family.  I’ve been able to spend lots of time with Claire and get a better appreciation for the work Amanda does every day, juggling Claire and taking care of our home.  I love her lots.