November 28, 2002

Our second month with Evan was filled with visits! We had weekend visits in Palatine with "Nana" and "Papa" Dundas, Aunt Katie and Uncle Skyler, and Great-grandma Priestley and the Priestley clan. Evan's baptism also brought many friends and relatives into town. And we had Thanksgiving in Michigan (today!) with Grandpa Liming, Grand-grandma and Great-grandpa Liming, and other relatives in the Liming family.

Grandma ("Nana") and Papa Dundas visited in late October, just before Halloween. We had a nice visit with them. Evan greatly enjoyed Papa's attention and Nana's cookies. We visited the Garfield Conservatory with them and saw the "Chihuly in the Park" glass exhibit. On Sunday, we took Evan to our church's worship service for the first time, where he was greeted enthusiastically by members of the congregation. We had a nice brunch at a nearby restaurant to send Nana and Papa off.

Leaves were falling quickly all through our neighborhood. Evan and Dad spent one morning together using the leaf blower to blow all the leaves off the front yard. Evan sat in the Baby Bjorn while Dad ran the leaf blower, and Evan seemed fascinated by the leaves as they blew away toward the street. After about an hour of that, Evan had no problem at all going to sleep for his nap! Later on, Evan enjoyed being outside in the fall air, running along the sidewalk and chasing leaves, or sitting on the driveway and playing with sticks. It wouldn't be long before winter set in, so we let him enjoy the time outside while it lasted.

The next weekend, Great-grandma Priestley came with Aunt Anne, Uncle David, and Adrienne, Aunt Jane and Uncle Tom, Tom, and Kim. We had dinner at the hotel with everyone when they arrived Friday evening. The following day, we had a nice dinner out and were joined by a couple of Aunt Jane's friends, then we had breakfast the following morning at the hotel as everyone got ready to return home. Evan received many gifts from our family and friends, and really seemed to enjoy all the attention from these new people. He even let most of them hold him!

Immediately after the family visitors left, we had a baby shower thrown by Lee's co-workers at Argonne National Laboratory, hosted by Kristin's cousins Steve and Karla Tuecke and their son Max. There were lots of kids there, and Evan enjoyed playing in Max's big playroom. We received many gifts from the Argonne crew, including a life-sized "Winnie the Pooh" stuffed animal, which Evan now cuddles up to whenever he sleeps in his crib.

The next weekend, Aunt Katie and Uncle Skyler came to visit. They stayed at our house and enjoyed some relaxing time off from work and everything, did some shopping, and spent a lot of time visiting with us. We went to the Chicago Botanical Gardens on Saturday with them. The weather was beautiful: a nice late fall day, with warm sun and wind and clear skies. It was a bit late in the season and most of the fountains had been turned off for the winter, so Evan wasn't as thrilled with it as he'd been on previous visits. The Junior Railroad exhibit was closed, so we didn't get to see that, either. But Evan enjoyed being outside and he especially enjoyed having lunch on the outside patio: perhaps the last outdoor meal of the year! Evan returned to church that Sunday for a repeat performance, and this time he was a little bit harder to keep under control. Dad and Evan spent a fair amount of the service in the nursery listening to the service over the intercom.

Evan was rapidly learning new skills all during this time. One of his favorite new games was opening the door of the cupboard in the nightstand in his nursery and crawling inside. He did this over and over, sometimes eight or ten times in a single session, laboriously pulling all of his arms and legs inside and reaching out to close the door behind him, then hauling himself out again and starting all over. He didn't seem to care if anyone was watching him or not: he was totally involved in it himself. Another new skill was stacking cups, which made Dad very happy. Until now, Evan had been able to nest cups fairly well, learning in the first couple of weeks how to put one small cup inside a larger cup and then take it out again. But now he began stacking cups on top of each other: only two cups tall so far, but a very promising step nevertheless! Evan also received his very own remote control (belonging to a stereo system that we no longer use), and he did a great job imitating Dad on the couch while watching Baby Einstein videos.

The weekend after Katie and Skyler visited, we didn't have any guests until Grandma Schultz arrived on Sunday evening for a week-long visit leading up to Evan's baptism the following weekend. Friday evening, we went to the mall for a family portrait, and had dinner at our favorite restaurant (Stir Crazy). The visit to the mall was chaotic. There were thousands of people there, probably because it was the opening of the Christmas Village. (Gee whiz, it's not even Thanksgiving yet!) Dad left early Monday morning for a conference, and returned on Wednesday afternoon. It was the first time Dad had been on a trip out of town since coming back from Ukraine, and Evan seemed happy to see him when he got back, but not overly distressed by the incident. Grandma Schultz and Evan played together a lot during the week; they still enjoyed walking over to the bridge to watch the water go by whenever they had a chance. Mom and Grandma and Evan returned to the photography studio at the mall for another set of photos, and this time Evan was absolutely fascinated and captivated by the fountains. He'd seen then before with Dad, but this time there was time to visit them all, and Evan really thought they were cool.

Evan was baptized on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. A lot of relatives returned to Palatine for the occasion, and some new people, too. Aunt Jodi and Uncle James came and stayed with us for the weekend, and they and Karrie Benjamin, a friend of ours from church, became Evan's godparents when he was baptized. Grandpa Schultz came with Jodi and James and joined Grandma Schultz. Nana Dundas and Dahna Loeding came, and Grandpa Liming came to meet Evan also. For the baptism, Kristin's Aunt Pat and Uncle John came, and cousins Jeff and Becky joined us for dinner following the service. It was a busy weekend, but it was also the last set of visits at home that we had on the calendar for the year, so we enjoyed it. It snowed that weekend and some of the snow stuck, so Evan had his first chance to walk on snow, perhaps ever! He thought it was pretty neat.

We spent the night before Thanksgiving driving to Grandpa Liming's house in Michigan. The first three hours were spent just getting out of Chicago. The traffic was terrible! We rolled into Grandpa's driveway shortly after 1:00am. We had Thanksgiving Day with Great-grandma and Great-grandpa Liming, Lee's Aunt Donna and her children, and Lee's Uncle David and Aunt Jeanne and Aunt Jeanne's mother. We had the celebration at Great-grandma and Great-grandpa's church, and Evan loved being able to roam around the very large Fellowship Hall without any obstruction. We stayed at Grandpa Liming's the weekend, and visited Nana and Papa Dundas on Friday and Lee's Aunt Jane and Uncle Tom and Great-grandma Priestley on Saturday on the way home to Chicago.

Evan is now pretty settled into day care during the week, and we're looking forward to some quiet weekends at home before the big trip to New Mexico for Christmas!