Where has the time gone?

A lot has happened since our last post. Pretty much everything has been a "first", but not all of them were good firsts. Here's the rundown:

• Evan's First Beaver Game - This was an experience. Melinda and I are used to our routines with Evan, and the trip to Corvallis with Evan was definitely not routine. We arrived to our seats late but once we got situated Evan did ok. The noise didn't seem to bother Evan; he actually took a 20 minute nap in the middle of the game! Fortunately, he didn't miss much. The Beavers played a horrible game and we actually left at halftime because Evan was starting to get fussy. Overall it was a fun experience but one we're glad to only do once this season.


• Evan is Now Mobile - We first suspected Evan's increasing mobility when he started to pull himself up on furniture and ourselves. The next hint came when he started to army crawl a foot or two and then across the room. A week or two later, while army crawling, Evan started to alternate between getting up on his hands and knees and then before we knew it EVAN WAS CRAWLING!! It didn't take long before he found the stairs and can now crawl from our family room, climb up three stairs into our kitchen and continue into our living room, all without help.
  
  Evan is now standing while holding on to objects with one hand. Just today we noticed him experimenting with standing up and then letting go. Most of the time he immediately plops down to the ground but I saw him stay balanced for about 3 seconds before falling. Wow.


• School Picture - Evan had his first official "school" picture taken in day care.


• The Pumpkin Patch - In preparation for Halloween, we headed off to a local pumpkin patch. For the most part I think Evan was a bit baffled by all the orange balls in the field but after sitting next to a few of them for pictures he started to have fun.


• Halloween - Evan's first Halloween saw him dressed as a little bumble bee. We bought the costume the weekend prior to Halloween and a few days later were pretty sure he had a growth spurt. Fortunately he still fit in the costume! For Halloween we ventured out to show Evan off to our parents and then came home. Due to our travels we didn't hand out a single piece of candy which of course meant we had to eat them ourselves.


• The Emergency Room - On Saturday, October 28th Melinda and I celebrated with the rest of Beaver Nation the win over the USC Trojans, the 3rd nationally ranked college football team at the time. (After we got through with them they dropped to 9th.) While we were at the game, Grandma and Grandpa H were watching Evan. Unknown to us, it turned out Evan was having problems breathing while we were away, at one point he had a resting respiratory rate of 80 breaths per minute (24-36 breaths is the normal range). Within minutes of us arriving at my parents to pick up Evan, we headed off to Urgent Care. They gave him a respiratory treatment to make him feel better and to see if it helped his condition. Due to the time of the day, they sent us off to the Emergency Room.
  
  Once at the ER, and over a five hour period, he received 3 more treatments and a dose of steroids. In addition to his breathing problem, his blood/oxygen level was at 93%. (90% is when organs would start shutting down.) After the breathing treatments and steroid medicine, his breathing and blood/oxygen level improved and we were eventually sent home around midnight.
  
  At our follow up doctor appointment Evan was officially diagnosed with asthma. We had to give the steroid medicine for the next 10 days in addition to a preventative medicine in inhaler form that we will continue to give to him through the fall and winter months. In the spring Evan will be reevaluated to determine if he still needs the preventative medicine. Until then, we will carry Evan's emergency asthma inhaler with us everywhere we go just in case.


• The Crawling Medicine Cabinet - Today's follow-up to his follow-up doctor appointment, Evan was taken off of the steroid medicine ...but put on antibiotics due to an ear infection. Hopefully in 10 days time he will be all better and we will have our happy, sleeping-through-the-night baby back!