Midnight Musings

Another post so soon? What's wrong with me? But this was hilarious and I couldn't help but to post the video. Evan did this for almost 15 minutes straight. He's jumping about six inches down onto a mattress, by the way, so no real risk of injury was involved.

I haven't posted anything in about a month and Evan has probably hit the most benchmarks (at least interesting ones) in this time period than in any other of comparable length. His vocabulary is markedly larger. He now says mama, water, bath, ball, milk, snack, flower and a couple of other words I'm forgetting in addition to the dada, dog, duck, and Bubba that he's been saying. He understands a good many more but just can't say them.

In addition to new linguistic mastery, he's also learned to climb. He was quite proud of himself the first time he climbed into this rocking chair. He gets jealous when Kim sits in it now. He was also climbing onto his Papou and Yiayia's coffee table and jumping off of it when we were visiting last week. He's a bit of a daredevil.

During that visit to Kim's parents' house, we went to a hockey game. Parking around Phillips Arena can be difficult and expensive and there's a MARTA station right at the entrance to the arena. Parking at the North Springs station is free, so we took the train into the city for the game. It was Evan's first experience on public transportation. I try to take MARTA whenever it's reasonably possible in Atlanta just because it's cheaper than paying for the gas and parking for any event in the city. I just wish they'd expand rail service so that more places are accessible from the train.

The actual Thrashers game was excellent. I love hockey, especially live. Football is probably actually a better sport to watch on TV than it is live (if you take away the atmosphere of actually being there). Hockey is the opposite. It's an okay sport on the small screen, but incredibly fun when you're actually there. Plus, the Thrashers won 7-4 against one of the better teams in the league to start their season.

Evan actually loves sports. He paid attention to most of the game and clapped every time the crowd cheered. The experience was memorable enough for the kid that one night the next week I was watching a game on TV and he walked into the room, looked at the screen, and started clapping. He was sitting next to me while I was editing the photos for this post and started clapping when I opened the photo of the players on the ice for the face off.

The Thrashers were giving out these really cool logo knit caps at the game. Evan decided to model them for us during one of the time outs. He was really well behaved even though the game didn't end until three hours past his bedtime. He got a little fussy in the last few minutes of the game, so I picked him up and walked him back up to stand at the edge of the tunnel so I could see the game. He was happy to watch the drunken guys in the upper deck behind us and glance down on the ice as long as I was holding him.

The next day we took Evan to the Georgia Aquarium. I love this place. We had annual passes during the first year after it opened, but since then we've moved away and can't go enough to justify the passes. We've known Evan really liked fish from the way he acted around aquariums we saw in stores and restaurants. He was amazed by what we saw in the aquarium. I was a little worried it'd be too much for him, but he loved every minute of it.

Here's Evan rehydrating and watching one of the beluga whales.

The tropical fish reek tank may have been a bit of a sensory overload. I put Evan down and he ran from end to end of the acrylic wall trying to take all of the fish (and people) in.

Evan and his great grandmother check out the potato grouper and whale sharks in the Ocean Explorer exhibit. If you haven't been to the aquarium in Atlanta, this is its most amazing feature. I've been a little critical of their lack of information about the species the display (they've actually done a bit to improve this), but the huge deep sea tank that you can walk under and then sit and watch through an acrylic wall the size of an IMAX movie screen is an incredible experience. They have a few species (like the whale sharks) that you'll likely never see again in your life.

Oh, and Evan can eat with a spoon now. He's really good with things that stick to the spoon like yogurt and pudding, but he can manage other foods with just more mess. This spoon is actually a little to big for his mouth, but the ones we keep at our house are more his size.

Evan's grandparents found this little car at a yard sale or something similar. He really got a kick out of riding around the driveway in it.

A week later, we're back at home and the eggs I'd been incubating for the last three weeks have hatched. Just like with the aquarium, Evan is excited to see other living things. Here he's looking down on the pen to see the day old chicks.

Did I mention that he's learned to climb? It's not in the photo, but I'm standing behind him to catch him at the first sign of trouble and I snatched him off the ladder just after this photo was taken because he decided to keep climbing up the ladder past the point where I still felt comfortable.