All these recent toy recalls due to lead are making me think ahead to the upcoming holiday season. Evan’s birthday is in October and Christmas is shorty there-after. I know that many people, from friends to grandparents, are already planning to buy presents for my little cherub.

Giving a present is very personal, and we’ve had some great ones over the last two years, from hand-made belts and sweaters from great-grandma, to imagination based toys from his grandparents. Not the mention the books and clothes that we got at his last birthday. So, I hate to make suggestions about what people should be giving my son… but, here goes.

(You might want to come back to this post in case I update it)

Bedroom Furniture: We’re moving out the crib and changing table, and we need bookcases and a night stand. For now, we’re keeping the futon, but we may get a more traditional twin-size bed in the future.

Hand Made: I ran across this great post about a hand-made art smock. The crafts-person put up a pattern for it here.

Imagination Toys: I love toys that are powered by the imagination rather than batteries!

I’m just waiting for these jobs to finish… and I’m just waiting because I can never find anything to do while I wait… except waste time!

I’ve put a bunch of photos up on flickr. You can visit the collection here.

We’ve been going to the beach a lot these last few weeks. I have a couple of videos that show Evan playing in the surf.

The first video was taken on August 12th and was taken at Half Moon Beach in Gloucester. This place is great, because it’s sheltered and shallow… no waves, unlike this next video, which was taken at Salisbury Beach on August 2th. Here, there is no shelter, so the waves can get pretty rough. So rough, in fact, that our friend Ken didn’t want to take his kayak out. Evan didn’t mind taking the kayak for a little ride… and he even got a little action when Ken and Jon carried it up the beach.

Anyways, here’s the first video.

And here’s the second video.

Whew! I am blogged out! Good thing Evan is awake from his nap!!

Photo Shoot
Originally uploaded by alisajon

Around this time six years ago (I’m writing this post at 1:30 pm), Jonathan and I were waiting nervously. Jonathan might have been at the front of the church, and I might have been heading over there from his parent’s house. We were married at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Derry, NH.

We went out to dinner last night at a nice Italian restaurant in our town. We even brought Evan with us, seeing as we were having dinner at 5:30 pm and the stars were not aligning for a romantic dinner with just the two of us.

Well, let me just tell you: my anniversary dinner with “not just” my husband was romantic, lovely and fun. Evan was so well-behaved! We kept him entertained with stickers and the wait-staff kept US entertained by bringing out our dishes in an extremely timely manner.

First, we had fried mozzarella and Evan had Gnocchi. Then our meals came out: my salad and baked haddock and Jonathan’s Veal with mushroom sauce. By the time we finished Evan was getting antsy… but in true Alisa fashion, the meal wasn’t over until the Creme Brulée. I asked our waitress if we could please have it quickly, and zoom… minutes later I had my dessert and (decaf) coffee! Evan dove into the Creme Brulée. He enjoyed it so much, as did I!

Thank you Jonathan, for a great six years and a lovely anniversary dinner!!

Wedding Photo
Originally uploaded by alisajon

And here we are…. six years ago!!

It’s official, Evan is no longer a baby. Last night we tried to transition him to his big bed… but he wouldn’t have any of it. You’d think that because he falls asleep in Mommy and Daddy’s bed pretty often that this wouldn’t be any different. Maybe he thought that this thing in his room was supposed to be a laundry pile… because that’s where ALL of his clean clothes ended up. (They remain clean until the dog decides to dance and sleep on the bed…)

Laundry pile no longer. Today, Evan fell asleep on his bed for his nap. Once I made it clear that this bed was for sleeping, and I knew he understood, I shut the door to his bedroom (sitting directly next to his bedroom at this computer), and waited.

First, I received a phone call, and as I was talking he somehow opened his door and walked out into the hallway. Let me just take a moment to say that I chose not to put a gate at the door and leave it open because last night, he got very upset when I did that… and I didn’t want to put any obstacles in my path.

So, I put him back in his bed, told him to take his nap, and left him again. He might have walked around his room a little bit, but shortly thereafter, I heard him talking to himself. Since he turned 18 months, he has consistently chattered and sung to himself while falling asleep, so I took this as a good sign. About 30 minutes later, silence… I waited a few more minutes and peeked in.

Success!!

He’s clutching his little pillow and I think his little blue dolly is somewhere under that.

He’s almost 22 months old… can you believe it? Since I don’t want to waffle on this, we might move his crib out this weekend, if he successfully sleeps in his bed tonight. Am I moving too quickly?

UPDATE: (9 pm) Jonathan successfully put Evan to sleep in his big bed. Yeah!!! One more night and I’m moving the crib.

Evan picked out the pattern on his t-shirt.

Our friend Jen, of recent ParentDish fame, has posted an accounting of our visit two weeks ago. The most memorable moment was when we drove up to their house in the middle of a thunderstorm. Chuck came out onto the porch to greet us… he waved, and there was a lightening strike behind the house! He disappeared back into the house, and I could see him peering through his windows with a worried look on his face. We waited a few minutes, and I unbuckled Evan from his car-seat (from the front passenger seat), and with my trusty LLBean umbrella, I ran to the porch with Evan dangling from my arm. Jen greeted me on the porch, and I threw Evan into her arms and we dashed into the house. I temporarily forgot about Jonathan…. he entered the house a minute later… soaked, because he didn’t have an umbrella to withstand the deluge.

Anyway, the rest of our day is described in Jen’s post.