July and still going…

Evan’s birthday was June 28rd. We celebrated Evan’s birthday on July 2nd with a big Thomas the Tank Engine party. He had so much fun. Mommy made him a 3-d Thomas cake which was very yummy and we had Train shaped PB&J sandwiches thanks to the cookie cutter that Aunt Carol gave Evan on our visit to PA. Mommy painted a choo-choo train on paint cans and filled them with sidewalk chalk, crayons, a Thomas cup, Thomas stickers, and a conductor hat for everyone to take home. Evan’s favorite gift was his guitar from Momi and his fishing pool from Mark, Paige, Abby and Anna.

Typical Boy…rough and tough...
July 13th…Evan is curious about everything that he sees and has no fear at all so when he saw a wasp he thought he should check it out even though we have warned him many times about bees. The wasp didn’t think it was such a good idea and stung him on his arm. Evan cried hard for about two minutes and then was back to playing like nothing had happened. Of course without us knowing family history, I was very nervous about the possibility of him being allergic.

July 16th…We took a trip (and hopefully our last, though I have been told by many experienced Moms of boys that it probably will not be) to the ER on Sunday. We were at church and apparently, Evan was running full speed and ran into a Mag flashlight that was in someone’s hand. With Evan screaming Andy, who was holding the flashlight brings him to me and says, “Don’t flip out” just what every mom wants to hear, right? He was holding Evan so that I could not see his face and then he turned Evan for me to see…YIKES! His head was bleeding badly. A nurse at church told us to take him to the ER so we did, by the time we got there was so much blood even while applying pressure that you couldn’t tell where it was coming from. They took us back immediately and a nurse looked at it and said that he would probably need stitches. Our wonderful friends Chad and Lori went to McDonalds (Thanks Y’all!) to get Evan a Happy Meal and after about 20 minutes he seemed fine. The bleeding had stopped and he was busy playing with his sword that came in his Happy Meal. His friend Chandler came to see him and gave him some cookies which helped too. Thanks Chandler! We waited for about an hour and a half and started thinking about leaving since he seemed fine. A friend of mine from high school is a nurse in the birthing center so Clay went to see if she was working. Stephanie came and looked at it and we decided that he would be okay to go home. We went to the counter and told them that we thought we were going to leave, but they wanted the nurse to look at him again. She could not believe that we were thinking of leaving. When she looked at it again she said that it had started to close and was healing on it’s own that fast.

Swimming…
Something magical happened this month, Evan learned how to swim. I mean really swim with no floaties…underwater! He is so funny kicking his feet, and doing “big arms” with his face under the water, swimming like a fish! He took some lessons at the YMCA but really didn’t learn a lot there since he was already the top of his class. Yes, the top of his class! HA HA. He was the only 3 year old (who turned 3 the week before mind you) the others were 4 and 5. We played “swim lessons” in Mimi’s pool everyday and one day it just clicked and across the water he went! We couldn’t wait to show Daddy! Now he doesn’t even want to use his floaties. His favorite thing to do is to jump off the diving board and swim to the ladder…all by himself!

Love,
The Hodges…family of 3!