Happy Independence Day to our family and friends, especially those overseas who might not experience a celebration in their current country.  We wish you were here with us – you know who you are.

This was Everett’s second July 4th.  We were reflecting on what we did for July 4th last year and discovered that neither of us could remember, which is probably a reflection of our sleep deprived state at the time.  This was also when we were packing up our house in the Cleveland for the move to Wauwatosa.  We had a lot going on.  For this July 4th we had some friends over for the kid’s festival in the afternoon at Hart Park (which is where Everett’s photo above was taken in his red, white and blue outfit), then cooked steaks on the grill and watched the Wauwatosa fireworks from behind our house.  This was followed by the Kavanaugh fireworks, which were set off by people who will not be identified in order to avoid incriminating anyone.  When I was growing up in Maryland the only legal fireworks were sparklers, so when we traveled to other states such as South Carolina we used to load up on the good stuff and bring them back to Maryland or shoot then off in Grandma’s back yard in Washington, DC.  I thought those fireworks were pretty big time until I saw the Kavanaugh show, which was truly impressive.  I have no idea where they came from, and I don’t think I want to know, but they rivaled those used at professional fireworks shows.

Everett slept through all of this, but is nonetheless experiencing his own form of independence.  He seems to go through phases every few weeks where he clings to us, then explores a bit further out on his own.  He is also developing more and more preferences about the way he wants things.  For example: Cheerios are out, Pepperidge Farm Goldfish are in; bananas are out, nectarines are in; sleeping late is something he hasn’t done in a while, and as a result our days of getting up around 6 am are in.  It is also very interesting to watch him develop new language skills, mostly receptive but from time to time he throws in a new word.  Sometimes he is mimicking us, but other times he learns something new without our help or knowledge and shares it with us when we feels the time is right.

Chris grew up in Maryland, and during most summers he would visit the beach with his family.  We occasionally traveled south, but most often we vacationed at the Delaware beaches.  This year we kept the tradition going by traveling to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

Our first couple days at the beach were pretty eventful.  We celebrated Father’s Day with Eileen and Sean and Kathy and Dillon and Connor.  For dinner we ate steak, shrimp potatoes and peppers cooked on he grill; Sean even ate some grilled veggies.  Everett got his first fat lip when he fell onto the footboard on the bed; thankfully this was almost gone in about 24 hours.  He tried beach custard for the first time, which is different from Wisconsin custard, and which he developed an immediate preference for.  He also tried boardwalk french fries for the first time but did not immediately take to them, perhaps because salt and vinegar fries are an acquired taste, especially in the concentrations used by his parents.  The highlight so far was his first trip to the beach.  After talking with other parents we knew that children can have a variety of reactions toward the water.  Everett’s was to make a beeline for the ocean, roar at the waves when they came in and wave to people while waiting for the next one.

It took a couple days for us to get into a rhythm with the kids, and to adjust to the fact that we just can’t fit as many things in a day when we are on vacation with them.  But once we figured it out the week went really smoothly.  We had great weather, and surprisingly none of the kids got sunburned.

Photos and videos of the trip are here.

Today we celebrated Everett’s first birthday.  Cress and Amanda flew up for the event on Saturday.  They traveled with Melissa and Everett, who have been with them in Cincinnati since the Clifty Falls camping trip on Memorial Day weekend.  On Saturday afternoon all of us went on the Beer & Brat boat tour of Milwaukee where Everett made some new friends:

On Sunday E started the day with a breakfast of Rosti and eggs and Goetta,

then a nap and then opening presents.

This was followed by a trip to the zoo,

then another nap and finally his birthday cake and dinner.

Looking back, our first year with Everett feels like it went by really quickly.  For some reason, time seems to elapse more quickly when life is full, and in the past year we have experienced many life events.  We hope the next year will be a bit slower in that regard, but expect that he will continue to keep us quite busy.

For Memorial Day weekend we took Everett on his first camping trip at Clifty Falls State Park, Indiana.  This particular trip is a tradition that has been going on for about 30 years with the Barbers and their longtime friends the Birches and the Singers, only now the six children who started the tradition have eight children of their own, five of whom were on this trip.  And the young ones are carrying on the traditions of magic shows, marshmallow fights, the kid parade and the treasure hunt (now the high-tech version with GPS, no longer with rhyming clues).  The grand finale for the weekend is listening to the Indianapolis 500 over the radio, which seems particularly old-school considering the campground now has wi-fi.  Probably by virtue of how many times they have held this event, and in no small part due to the number of planners and organizers among them, it was one of the smoothest run, most relaxing camping trips I have ever been on.  Reservations were made at the stroke of midnight on the first day the campsites became available.  And thanks to satellite photography and careful site selection we were able to have an entire island of campsites to ourselves.

As for Everett, there was either too much excitement or else sleeping in the tent was just too strange.  He stayed up hours past his bedtime, skipped naps and completely pooped himself out with constant activity.  Among other things, he tried out a baby pool for the first time, and after he got over the initial shock of the cold water temperature he leaned back and seemed right at home.

A photo album of the trip is here.  I will certainly add to this album if people send photos, so check back from time to time.

We had hoped that the first words Everett said consistently would be Mom and Dad, but instead they are cat and dog.  He will spontaneously point at them when he says this, and will look around for them if you ask him where they are.  Other nearby wildlife who are awaiting identification include a nesting bird outside our front door (perhaps someone can help us identify the species?) and a pair of mallards who appeared in our front yard yesterday morning.  I keep trying to capture him pointing and naming, but he will not do this on demand and instead seems more interested in the camera, as evident in the video above.

Several blog entries ago I talked about how Everett’s body composition was mostly milk and cheese, especially by the time we returned from Switzerland.  However, in recent months it has slowly changed to Cheerios, since this seems to be the only food he will eat consistently and will eat at almost any time, even when he is full or doesn’t seem interested in his regular food.  When given the chance he will grab fistfuls of them and eat them the way cookie monster eats cookies, with about half of them reaching his mouth and the other half getting dropped in all the commotion.  Once he slows down he will eat them one at a time, and his teeth have become long enough that he can carefully bite each Cheerio in half, which is curiously entertaining to watch.  Hopefully this will all pay off during his next cholesterol test.

When he is not in the mood to eat he makes it clear by turning his head and lifting his shoulder and arm as the baby spoon is on the way to his mouth.  But even at these times he is always interested in what we are eating, and he has a wide-eyed look of wonder on his face as we feed him bites of food from our plates.  In the process of doing this we have discovered two foods that trump Cheerios, something that we certainly didn’t expect, though perhaps should have suspected knowing our own preferences: barbeque pork and barbeque chicken.  This also reminded us of the time we were eating dinner with his cousin Trinity, who was about four and spontaneously declared in a deep, throaty voice: “I love pork!”  Fortunately he likes other things from the grill as well, including his veggies.  We certainly hope this lasts and that he becomes an adventurous eater.

In the last couple days Everett has developed a new behavior: pointing.  We are not sure where he picked this up because it’s not something Melissa or I have done around him, perhaps it’s something children just start doing at a certain age.  Either way, today he wanted to show us the harbor seals at the zoo.  See video below.

Last week we flew to San Antonio to visit Melissa’s family, then drove to Houston for the wedding of my first cousin Daniel to his bride Jenny.  In the course of a few days Everett met an extraordinary number of family members, too many to list here, but many who have genealogical titles that we can never keep precise track of like second cousin or first cousin twice removed, which is why the chart above comes in handy.  Those who met him can now start saying “I knew you when you were this big…”.

The trip started in San Antonio to meet with Melissa’s parents and extended family, photos are here.  Then we drove to Houston for the wedding, during which Everett met his great grandparents Bob & Birdell Butson, who now have five great grandchildren, all of whom are boys.  Photos from the wedding and from Great Grandpa’s 90th birthday party can be viewed here.  These include the dance show that Dillon put on at the wedding.

Everett’s mobility changed dramatically during this trip.  In the span of about 48 hours he went from crawling to sitting to pulling himself up to a stand.  From there he progressed from holding on with both hands to one hand, then cruising between furniture and finally he let go altogether.  See below.

Everett is changing so rapidly it’s hard to keep track of it all.  This is probably because he has become more mobile and is now experiencing the new sense of freedom that comes with it.  He is also developing better fine motor skills – one of our daily rituals and forms of entertainment is to sit at the dinner table and observe these new skills with regard to handling food.  There are a few standard tests he gives new foods: the squish test, the drop test, the smash test, the passing back and forth between the hands, then tasting and finally chewing.  In this video he is getting the hang of using utensils and demonstrating some other things you can do with food.  And as you can see he will not necessarily tolerate us spooning food into his mouth any longer.

Something else he has grown less tolerant of is being changed.  Other parents warned us this would happen, but we still weren’t quite sure what to expect.  As Melissa describes it: “It’s like trying to put a diaper on a tornado”.  I would like to hand him and a clean diaper to a pit crew at a Formula 1 race and see how well they can do.

This week we travelled to Cleveland and noted two accomplishments:

1. For the first time we travelled as a family with no checked bags, which feels like a significant accomplishment with a baby.

2. After much consternation, Melissa successfully delivered her dissertation proposal.  No revisions!

While we were in town we stayed with Marcy and Walter and their son Augie who is a little older than Everett.  It was a short but great trip.  Marcy and Walter were wonderful hosts and feted us with a dinner table full of friends both nights we were in town.  Augie crawls and pulls himself to his feet, and perhaps this motivated Everett to give some new things a try, which we first observed at the Cleveland airport while waiting for our flight home (see video below).  Everett’s attitude about crawling until now has been…unhurried.  He has been rolling for quite a while, and lately has taken a lot of interest in standing.  This time we observed him kick, spin, get up on his hands and knees, and finally scoot across the floor.