12 Months

Oh my goodness! She can’t possibly actually be one year old!
We had a very fun water party for Evie’s birthday with all of her favorites! We were outside (of course), with kiddie pools set up for the little ones, squishy squirt guns, inflatable beach balls, and a sprinkler. We ate watermelon, strawberries, grapes, extra sharp cheddar cheese, cheese balls and crackers, cake and ice cream! The cake was an incredible ocean-theme made by our very dear friends Ben and Lacey, Evie dove right into it!
Evie officially got herself off Mommy milk and has started only cow’s milk and is doing wonderfully with it! Evie LOVES fruits and vegetables, she’s not a fan of meat but will eat pretty much any fruits and vegetables she’s offered. We haven’t seen any sign of the previous “tummy troubles and she’s growing like a weed! At her one year appointment her hemoglobin was fine (no anemia), she has gained weight and was in the 35th percentile in weight, which is the highest she’s ever been! When she was born she was 6lb 10 oz and 19 ½ inches, in the 10th percentile, at one year she was 18 lb 8 oz and 29 inches in the 35th percentile!
Evie is walking/running/dancing...regularly says "Ma", "Dada", "Dog", "Go" (as in...pointing, I want to GO outside), she signs "more" all the time, is starting to do "eat", we're working on "all done", she "gives sugar" (sloppy kisses) and loves to mimic! She is becoming more and more amusing not just trying to mimic but trying to get laughs. She is quite an entertainer. One of her funniest faces is her "cheeeeese" face, a ridiculously cheesy grin where she throws her head back and shows her teeth...it is hilarious!
Thank you to everyone who has continued to prayerfully walk this journey with us!

What is that?!?

Um...why is everyone looking at me and singing?

Is there something amusing about the way I eat?

But MOOOOOOM I want to run free!!!

Haha...I got free!

Cheeeeese

It's exhausting being the center of attention!

Evie, Andy and Kinsley went to the zoo for her actual birthday!

Happy 4th!!! Look at that wild hair that's really growing now!

11 Months!

Probably due in part to Evie walking all the time, she started sleeping through the night! Since I had started working nights and she was getting older, we really needed her to start sleeping all night. She started eating much more during the day and her tummy troubles seemed to have totally resolved so we really felt she didn’t need to be waking up eating anymore. We even started giving her gluten foods without any problems! She clearly wasn’t needing the food and just started sleeping on her own all night! She did it the first time for Daddy but then regularly started doing it!
We were also now seeing a new pediatrician (who we are so thankful for! He loves Jesus and prayed with us the first time we met him!) and he has kept a close eye on Evie’s hemoglobin (an indicator of anemia) and overall growth. Evie has always been on the small side but she’s slowly and steadily going up on the growth chart! She is very, very, active so she never has time to gain a lot of weight, but she eats great and is developmentally doing wonderfully so the pediatrician isn’t at all worried that she’s a little small.
This month we also took Evie to one of our special places in TN for a mini-vacation just us three! We enjoyed taking Evie to "Santa's Land" an amusement park Jonathan loved, relaxing, some time in the pool, playing on the playground, playing in the creek…and of course for Evie…picking up rocks! Evie is a child who has never wanted for anything, she has many very neat toys...but her favorite activity is picking up rocks! While Granna and Papa were visiting Granna showed Evie how to pick up rocks and carry them in a bucket…so now, all she wants to do is pick up rocks! It’s great, cheap entertainment!

Hmm...what's so funny about this?

Haha..now that IS funny! It's playing peek-a-boo!

She definitely inherited Daddy's love of rides (and so far NOT Mommy's queasy belly with rides)

She's feeding a rock to the goats right now...

This was another trip to the zoo and of all the animals her favorite was the pot-bellied pig!

10 Months!

This month we got more visitors, my cousin Nikki and Uncle Charlie came down so he could do some hunting and she could continue her college search!
We also got to take a trip, we went to Myrtle Beach for Evie’s first hot weather beach visit! Jonathan and I both LOVE the beach and have many wonderful family memories from the beach as a child, we loved taking Evie to the beach from my childhood at Christmas and were so excited to take her to Daddy’s beach! She LOVED it! She is definitely our girl, she is wild, adventurous and always raring to be outside! We were such new parents taking her to the beach, me with a camera, Jonathan with a video camera, snapping/filming away. It took about 3 seconds for her to discover the waves and want to dive in!
Granna and Papa came for a visit this month as well! Mommy and Daddy had to go to a weekend with the army, so Granna and Papa joined us to hang out with Evie while we went to meetings. The day before our meetings we got to take Evie to the zoo for the first time!
She also discovered walking was way quicker/more fun than crawling! Although she took her first steps just before she turned 9 months, she still preferred crawling to walking until 10 ½ months, at that point she started moving and it seemed like overnight she was trying to run! She went from only wanting to walk in between two people to wanting to walk all the time…everywhere…non-stop…

Hmmm....this looks like it might feel interesting in my mouth...

Rock Star

She was thrilled to dive into the waves with Daddy!

I love this girl!

Thanks Uncle Jed and Auntie Alyssa for these adorable matching outfits!

Gardening with Granna

First carousel ride (Papa was also hiding behind a camera...)

9 Months!

During this month Evie got to start eating food again! She hadn’t had any problems back on just Mommy’s milk. After the month, we started her back on food the way the doctors recommend starting (baby rice cereal/oatmeal then vegetables and fruit slowly, one at a time, wait a couple of days then do another one). Evie did fine for a couple of weeks and then the blood started again. At that point we took her off store bought baby food (no jars, no rice cereal/oatmeal) and put her on just fruits and vegetables that I pureed at home, she got rice cakes for snacks. Evie loves rice cakes and was perfectly content on that diet, and the blood stopped! At that point we questioned “gluten” being the problem and kept her “gluten free”. She gained weight, was taking more and more steps and talking more and more! She was still screaming “Ma” and still whispering “Dada” as if it was too sacred to say loudly!
Mommy and Daddy continued to work on moving into the new house! We also got more visitors! My cousin Charles came during one week and went hunting with friends and family. They didn't kill anything, but we loved having another visitor!

Happy Easter! Evie loves Daddy (and he is SO wrapped around her finger!)

Hard to believe how quickly these three are growing up!

Evie discovered climbing stairs and was quite proud of herself...she is also learning to entertain....the hairbow was making Mommy laugh so she was quite proud of that as well!

Still our little outdoor girl!

Okay, we're late on an update....we moved, Daddy had an army trip, and we didn't have good internet at the new house!


8 Months!
Evie got to visit with her other great-grandma this month, Gee Gee and Granna came to visit us! March 8th was our first night in our "forever home"....which also means it was Evie's first night in her own room! Granna and Gee Gee were our very first visitors. Evie also got her first tooth this month and took her first step! For Gee Gee's birthday we went to visit Daddy at work and had a picnic. Daddy took a short trip during this month with the army, he was gone for 3 weeks, we were both rather unsure what Evie would do since she had never been away from him for that long and people had warned us she might be scared. Instead she just took it in stride, she got upset a few times when he called and she spoke to him but then had to go, she was clearly recognizing pictures of him at this point too, but she definitely never got scared of him. When he came home, her only reaction was to act like it was perfectly normal, she just went to him like "hey, glad you're home Daddy!" She has become quite the little poser for the camera!

She still LOVES the dogs...

Oh ya....and her paci!

We weren't able to use a lot of pictures from this month due to me not realizing that cell phone pictures can somehow show where they were taken...

Thanks!

Thanks so much for all the prayers! Evie came through with flying
colors. Dr. Gates (the surgeon who was absolutely wonderful) didn't really find
anything to cause the bleeding so he wants us to just take her off all
food and only give her Mommy milk for a month to see what happens.
He's thinking it's not anything in my diet but it's something in her
diet that got her little colon irritated and caused fissures and now
it just isn't wanting to heal.
I think we both breathed an audible sigh of relief when we went to
post-op recovery and you could hear her ALL across that section! She
was SO mad, there were about 4 people trying to hold her down to get a
blood pressure and calm her down but she was NOT having it. Other
than being snuggly for about 30 min after we got home she has been her
normal wild self! She is literally climbing up furniture now! She
has learned how to do a pull-up and actually lift her feet off the
ground....we're so proud :)
As you can see from pictures she was perfectly content in the hospital and has been smiley playing with Daddy (and Belle the dog) this afternoon!
Thank you again, we love you all!
Jonathan, Sadie and Evie

7 Months

I realize we are a matter of days away from 8 months...but maybe I'll actually post one during that month! :)
This month Evie has been on the move!!! She is such a curious, happy baby, she gets a hilarious "mad scientist" look as Uncle Jed calls it when she really can't figure something out and she's always trying to figure something out!

This was how she crawled right after the "inch-worm", she would "high-step"

Her stroller walker is just the right size to practice walking!

We love this happy girl!

She's pulling up on everything!

Waving at Granna...another new trick!

Our outdoor girl still LOVES to be outdoors! She got to crawl on the ground for the first time and of course tried to eat the grass...

We feel like there have been so many fun new things over the last few months but there's a brief update on each of them! We are so very blessed and continue to be amazed by our little wild thing. I (Sadie) was asked today if she was "average" for her age, meaning if she had hit the milestones she was supposed to....I said, well, actually we think she's exceptional! We may be just a little bit biased though :)

Evie has to have a procedure done on Tuesday to look into some tummy troubles she's been having, we would appreciate prayers for her as well as the people that will be taking care of her, and of course for Jonathan and I to remember that she was the Lord's before He gave her to us and she's always in His hands! Thanks so much for all the prayers up to this point on this wonderful journey!