Category: E.

E’s Birthday Celebration

E had a great birthday yesterday. My sister-in-law Miranda and I took the kids up to Discovery Gateway, a children’s museum in Salt Lake. They loved it. There was lots for them to do and explore.

L and E in a fire engine conveniently built with two steering wheels.

E and L at a construction play site.
(Lately E has been really into hats. If there’s one around, he’ll put it on. Last week he was wearing some other kid’s hat when I picked him up from daycare at the gym.)

Clambering around in a defunct Life Flight helicopter than was donated to the museum.

A, Miranda’s daughter, was a trooper while we were there.

After we got home I baked E some dairy-free, egg-free cupcakes from a mix by Cherrybrook Kitchen and then E and I went to the store to buy him some balloons (still one of his very favorite things). When N got home from work we had dinner and then cupcakes and presents.

The cupcake (and frosting) was well-received.

We gave E a Yo Gabba Gabba themed toy guitar. (He keeps unwinding the strings on his ukulele so we thought he’d do better with a string-less toy.)

And this toy car. Both were big hits.

E had a great day. He learned the word “birthday” and kept shouting it in excitement. It was a lot of fun.

Halloween Pics

E loved the Halloween festivities this weekend. On Friday afternoon I took him to N’s office for their party. E was a little apprehensive at first but very quickly got the gist of the holiday (i.e. candy) and would scoot up to people and mumble “icko-reet!”

E as a dog and me in my cop-out black cat costume.

N and his team at work rockin’ it out as an 80s hair band.
(Note: this is the only photo of N wearing jeans you will probably ever see. He hasn’t owned a pair since he was 14. I had to go to a thrift store and buy these especially for his costume.)

Before this weekend E had only had candy on a few occasions. But he very quickly learned how to say “candy” and has been running around the house trying to wheedle pieces from us all weekend. On Saturday evening I had planned on just taking him to a few houses but he insisted on going all the way around the block but then lost steam and I had to tow him back home.

All things considered, it was the best Halloween I’ve had in a long time.

First Snow

Even though I’ve lived in Utah for a number of years now I was still surprised when we got three inches of snow earlier this week. (Bleh.) Last year E was too small to really care about the snow but this week he was excited to go outside and explore.

E’s plucky, can-do attitude lasted all of about 30 seconds…

…or the amount of time it took him to trip and plant his hands in the frozen snow.

(I know, I know–he needs mittens and a new coat. But cut me some slack; I had naively thought I had until November to get them.)

Two Cousins at Two

My sister-in-law Miranda asked me to take a few photos of her son L to commemorate him at two years old. L’s a real cutie and it was fun to take his photo. L is two months older than E (E’s birthday is next week) and it’s always fun to see the two of them together.


Unfortunately E’s been having bouts of separation anxiety lately and he really freaked out when Miranda held him out of the way while I was taking L’s picture. He thought I was trying to dump him off for babysitting.

Miranda, unlike me, is a great seamstress. While we were at her house she presented E with his birthday present: a stylish three-quarter length coat she had sewn herself.

Unfortunately even receiving such a great a gift did not do much to assuage E’s abandonment fears.

But eventually time did. After a while E figured out I wasn’t going to go anywhere and relaxed enough to play with L. The two of them looked very dashing together in their coats.

Train Ride!

Both E and my brother Steven love trains. So last week we drove up the canyon to Heber City and we took a ride on the Heber Valley Railroad. There were two trips to choose from: a 3-hour trip and 90-minute trip. We went on the 90-minute trip and it turned out to be just the right length. The ride was a lot of fun. You could sit in the open cars or in the old passenger cars. We switched between the two.

Chugging along next to a reservoir.

E and his Uncle Steven.

E liked climbing around on the benches.

The wind gives E a stylin’ do.

The fall foliage in the canyon was a nice bonus. It was breathtaking.

The only downside to the trip was that E got carsick on the drive back home through the canyon and threw up a couple of times. It put a bit of a damper on things. But overall it was a really nice outing.

If you’re local and have avid train fans in your family I think it’s worth going once. The train rides are fairly pricey ($24 for 90 minutes, $30 for 3 hours), but kids under 3 are free which helps. I don’t think we’ll be going again anytime soon but I’m glad we went this time.

At the State Fair

My older brother Steven has some developmental disabilities and consequently lives with my parents. Last week my mom went to Korea to visit relatives and so Steven came to stay with us for a few weeks while she’s away.

On Saturday I took E and Steven to the state fair (fortunately one without an insane escaped killer on the loose). We rode some rides, walked through the midway, and petted the livestock. E loves rides and went nuts when we rode the ferris wheel and carousel. The weather was quite hot so after a while he kind of wilted, but overall he had a lot of fun.


Rock and Roll?

Thanks for all the lovely support regarding The Whole Foods Incident. E doesn’t have much of an appetite yet but is otherwise back to normal. This morning he was bopping around to kids’ shows as he normally does. E loves dancing around to music and playing his little guitar. Both are pretty cute.


This picture cracked me up. Our fondness for The Beatles and the Wiggles’ influence may have destined E to be a Beatles fan. But then again he might rebel and become a Stones man just to spite us.

Despite E feeling better I’m really dragging this morning. A few weeks ago we had bought tickets for a concert last night and when E went to bed okay we decided to go as planned. We saw three Scottish bands: We Were Promised Jetpacks, The Twilight Sad, and Frightened Rabbit.

The show was supposed to start at 9pm but the first band didn’t start until 10pm. We had snagged some seats at a table but I was kind of struggling because I hadn’t slept well the night before. I didn’t fall completely asleep but I came close a couple of times to nodding off. I felt bad because it was disrespectful to the bands playing and also because falling asleep at a rock concert is really, REALLY lame. But I perked up once Frightened Rabbit came on. They were great.

By the time we got home and to bed it was 2am. Right now I’m basically counting down the hours until E takes his nap so I can take one myself. Poor N has to work all day. But he has an office so maybe he can close his door and catch some zzzs too.

A humbling moment

This morning E asked for a drink as soon as he got up. So I went and got him a cup of juice (he still won’t drink soy milk but his doctor said it’s find as long as he takes a calcium/vitamin D vitamin). We went back upstairs to N’s and my bedroom to hang out while N got ready for work.

I don’t remember what set him off, but E shouted something and threw his sippy cup on the floor–which is definitely not allowed. So N and I asked him to say “sorry.” E wiggled and squirmed and flirted and danced around the room, doing everything he could to avoid saying sorry. We talked about how we shouldn’t throw cups on the floor. We took turns telling him he could get his juice back as soon as he said sorry but nothing seemed to work. This went on for about ten minutes.

Then a bolt of inspiration struck and N asked if maybe E had trouble saying the word “sorry.” E does pretty well with some two-syllable words but even then he sometimes drops their initial consonants. So I asked E to say “ree” and he did so immediately.

I handed him his juice and he ran around the room giggling. I felt like a bit of a dolt. Here we thought E was just being stubborn and refusing to apologize when we were asking him to do something he was incapable of doing. E sometimes seems like such a big kid when he’s being sassy or following instructions. But I need to keep in mind that he’s not even two yet.