Evan's first play date

Evan and his friend Apollo had their first play date. They were born two weeks apart and could almost pass as twins. More excited about this meeting these two could not be!

My friend Pam and I, two professionals recently turned into moms. (We didn't coordinate our outfits.)

Father's Day

For Jeff's first Father's Day we invited the family to our house for a BBQ. The ongoing weather that forecasters nicknamed "Juneuary" caused us to move the party inside.

We had a little pre-func (above) before settling in for some chipotle steaks, spicy shrimp kabobs, jalepeno cornbread, and green salad to cool things down (below).


Is grandma celebrating with a brewski?!


Some of dad's presents. I'm not sure what inside joke prompted the "D" Scrabble letter keychain from Lance and Weesh. We guessed a number of things for which the D could have stood. (Like the grammar Jeff??)


You must be a family man when you get this excited about a Shop-Vac!


Brad got to feed Evan. Little does Brad know he's being groomed for a baby-sitting position (one which pays better than his Fred Meyer career...)!


Dessert. Red velvet cake and ice cream.

You'll notice that in a lot of pictures Jeff is wearing a navy blue sweatshirt with paint spots on the front. (The paint is from his garage remodeling project, the only room in the house he 'decorated.') He calls it his Work Shirt, and he wears it both while working around the house and even when he's not doing any work. In the debate between fashion and function, as an engineer Jeff proudly leans toward function. However, this piece is only marginally functional as a shirt due to the expanding holes in the elbows. (He rejected my suggestion to craft it into a fun summer tank top by cutting off the sleeves.) I took this opportunity to buy him a new one under the guise of Father's Day. This is the moment Jeff realized that I actually bought matching father-son Work Shirts for him and Evan!

There's lots of garage fun ahead for these two.

Jeff's birthday

We celebrated Jeff's birthday earlier this month. (I'm a little behind posting these things...) His birthday was mid-week, so not the time to get too rowdy Jeff.

We went to dinner in Suburbia at Jeff's request. The eatery of choice was Outback. I hadn't been there in years, but it was surprisingly good. I sometimes forget there are restaurants outside downtown Portland, and one can only have so much American Bistro anyway. (Speaking of American Bistro, one of our favorites Castagna just won Restaurant of the Year. This will make it harder to get a table, but it's well deserved.) This is us at dinner:

Here's a close-up of Evan sleeping through dinner:


We came home and opened presents.


Jeff got tickets to the Rodrigo y Gabriela lawn concert at Edgefield ...


... and with his allowance money Evan bought Jeff some Smartwool socks, books, and finger puppets. (Evan assumed Jeff likes the same books and toys as him!)






And a final picture of Jeff and Evan at the end of the day:


Happy birthday Jeff!

Outings

Jeff went back to work after being home 3 1/2 weeks, leaving Evan and I to hang out together. After the three week deluge that set Portland rain records almost daily, we were ready to get out of the house! Jeff and I had taken Evan to the St. Honore bakery here in Lake O, and we had been to our favorite Mexican restaurant Aqui, but other than that we had spent most of the time at home. It was high time for me to show Evan the town.

Our first outing, just the two of us, was a walk around the Pearl District in Portland. I called it an urban hike. I dressed Evan in a warm outfit (the temperature was still in the 50's) and off we went. This was the first time trying out the new stroller - a pricey piece of equipment, but middle-of-the-road in these nouveau riche quarters. It worked great, and the shocks were especially nice over the cobblestone streets and bumpy sidewalks. Evan slept most of the time being less than four weeks old, but when he was awake he looked up at the buildings and rows of trees. We had lunch at Pearl Bakery:

We took more walks when the weather was good. One day we walked down to Quiznos to meet Jeff for lunch. This is Evan on the way home:


Evan and I have since put many miles on the stroller. We go lots of places, but most often we walk to one of the cafes down the hill.

Evan on a cold day, wearing his puppy dog hoodie and matching sweat pants:

Evan on a warm day, sporting a Puma onesie and baggy cargo shorts:

Last week all three of us went for a walk around the neighborhood. Evan decided he was hungry, so we pulled over to give him a bottle ...

... and then we were on our way once again.

The first few weeks

It's kind of funny how a 6+ pound little person can so completely occupy the time of two full grown adults. People warned us about this. They'd say things like, "You'll never know what you did with all your free time!" and "There will be days when you don't brush your teeth until 3 PM!" It's not that I didn't believe them; in fact, I remember telling Jeff that I didn't think I'd appreciate these sentiments until the baby arrived. Consider them fully appreciated now!

So we were busy, but it was a really fun sort of busy. (It still is, by the way.) Jeff and I were getting to know ourselves in our new role as parents, and together we got through the basic stuff like diapering a boy (yikes!) and the first bath. Day by day we saw pieces of Evan's personality. Based on these fleeting moments we tried to extrapolate what he'll be like when he grows up.

Everything Evan did seemed worthy of a picture because it was his first [fill in the blank], or sometimes he just looked so cute. Of the hundreds of pictures we have taken, here are a few.


Drying off after the first bath



First sighting of the Cal campus



Jeff and Evan crashed after a long day



Evan still likes to sleep with his hands near his face and his arms outside the swaddle



Vogue-ing



Trying to climb me Spiderman-style



Evan has the biggest yawns!



How can this be comfortable?



Looks like someone is hungry...

Coming home

Evan was born on Saturday and we came home the following Monday. I was ready to go Sunday afternoon, but we decided to stay another day since we're new at this game.

We had amassed a lot of stuff in room 408.

We packed up our things and finished checking out around 11:30 AM. Jeff had the job of taking everything to the car (this took several trips), and I got to hang out with Evan.

We strapped Evan into his carseat, the Snugride 35 Racing Edition.


In a few minutes he was asleep!

We finally left the room and Jeff got to practice his carseat carrying technique.

We got to the car, prepared to insert the carseat into the base, and decided this would be a good time to read the manual!


Leaving the hospital was kind of fun, and it was nice to go outside again. Then Jeff said something along the lines of, "Alright Evan, we're going to bring you into the big world now. You'll have a good time here. We have so many great things to show you...", at which point this activity seemed monumental. Evan was leaving the protective confines of the hospital and would now rely on us to show him everything, and teach him what he needs to know. This seemed huge. When we got home we showed Evan his room, freshly painted and full of new furniture. The next day I gave him a tour of the house. "This is the family room, and up these stairs you'll find the kitchen. We won't show you where we keep the cookies. The dining room is through this door, and the living room is to our right." He seemed to like the place.

When I was pregnant people would say things like, "You must be nesting!" or "When I was pregnant I was nesting like crazy!" This usage of the word 'nesting' has always seemed strange to me, and anyway you'd think any animal allusions would at least be to another mammal. Instead of nesting one could call it getting ready for a house guest. When you have someone coming to stay you prepare their room, clean the house, make plans for entertaining, etc. This is no different, except this house guest happens to be staying for 18 years. (He's welcome to stay longer if he stays as sweet as he is now.) Whatever you call it, we had fun getting ready for Evan. Welcome to our home little guy!

Evan is born!

Evan made his grand entrance at 2:08 in the morning on May 8th. He let out two small sounds then the loud cry, and we were thrilled! His face was squished up, his body was bright red, and his arms and legs were moving like crazy. Finally he was able to stretch! The nurse commented that he has long fingers, and we were surprised that he could already lift his head.

Here's Evan just 17 hours old:


From the very beginning Evan has preferred to sleep on his side, usually the left. He maneuvers into position by lifting both legs straight up then letting them fall to one side, thereby rolling his whole body onto the side. We watched him do this over and over again in the hospital. He's already using kinetic energy to his advantage!

He likes having his hands near his face ...

... and he also likes hanging out with dad.

This is our first picture as a family of three. Happy and healthy, if a bit tired.

I didn't spend much time thinking about labor in advance; I just figured it would be a bumpy ride for all involved. There's an assembly whose sole purpose is to hold everything in place for nine months, then in a span of a few hours (15 for me) the mission of the assembly changes and it's supposed to do the opposite. We know from various science disciplines that nature doesn't like step changes, so therefore I didn't expect it to be a particularly pleasant experience. But it really wasn't that bad at all. The time went really fast, everyone at the hospital was great, and Jeff and I got through it as a team. (Team Schroeder we called ourselves.) And at the end of the day we had an amazing baby! Nine days early, and born the day before Mother's Day no less. Incredible.