Random pictures from the last few days

Watching the rain outside


Sick with the flu... our attempts to get Eva to puke in the tub were unsuccessful


She's learned how to get down from the couch and chair feet first, so now she loves playing on the them


Sleepy head in the morning

Our sleepy little girl loves her bottle!!!!

watching us work

Eva's new favorite thing to do is watch us work in the kitchen. She thinks she's so grown up standing by herself on the chair!

Happy 1st birthday, Eva!

Eva watching everyone as we sang Happy Birthday to her


She was pretty tired and not quite sure what to do with the cake


But she figured it out, and she loved it

cousins!

We said a sad goodbye to the Cole family... so sad. We will miss you guys!!

Tyler is an expert on the wii. Eva and Sabrina playing together in the exersaucers.


Every single time i gave Sophia a smile, she gave a huge smile back!! :)


Alex was loving the cake!


Tyler and Alex


Sabrina and Sophia

Eva's first steps!

Holly found some fun treats in order to motivate eva to take her first steps, and it worked!!!! she took three steps!!!! sadly, now that we're gone from holly's, she hasn't done it again. she's comfortable standing on her own though, so it won't be long.



look at alex in this one! so cute.

Talking on the phone

This is how Eva talks on the phone. She opens the phone, holds it close to her face, and then starts says "hi" over and over again in a loud voice.

Closing in on a year

Here's a good shot of Eva's third tooth. It just came through in the last couple weeks.


She is a chatterbox these days, and when I take notice and begin asking her what she's talking about, she'll frequently begin using her hands to help explain whatever she's trying to say.


We're leaving Portland in a week, so I'm busy trying to pack up house. Unfortunately, Eva thinks the game is unpacking the suitcase.

Missing daddy

I LOVE YOU TOO, DADDY!!!


Mom says that I'll see daddy tomorrow and that he loves me...


So sad... I miss him


Hmmmm......


WHAT???? Where's dad? He's not HERE??

This is a common face we see these days.

One last picture for grandma

Look at those cute, chubby fingers!! :)

Eva 10 months

I think she looks so old in this pictures... I can't stop looking at it. She's looking at her dad.

couch time

I spent a lot of time on the couch these last couple months, which was hard on Eva. When I could, I'd try to pick her up, and one of the ways I was still able to get some computer work done while giving her some lovin was by putting her on my shoulders. Notice that I cut myself out of the pictures... the glories of morning sickness!!! :) She finds the computer fascinating.

Mt. Hood

Nathan introducing Eva to snow at Timberline Lodge.
We drove up to Timberline Lodge a few days ago, which is a lodge located at the timberline of Mt. Hood, about halfway up the mountain. From the lodge, we walked about a mile in a very slow climb up the mountain. I won't tell you how long this mile took. :) The lodge is about 6,000 feet above sea level, so I was having a hard time getting all the air I felt like I needed for the climb.


That's Mt. Hood in the background. Eva was so tired due to missing her nap, but she loves to sit on Nathan's shoulders, and so she had fun climbing with us that way.

I thought that I'd dropped off the blogging planet forever, but as it turns out, I just had to come back. My blogging absence turns out to be temporary, and now that I'm beginning to feel more like myself, I'm happy to return to the cole tree again. The hold up these last couple months has been due to "flame," as Nathan affectionately calls our coming baby. For those who haven't heard,
yes, this is a pregnancy announcement. I am officially 15 weeks 5 days pregnant!

We are so excited and are planning for this little one to be born in Thailand, though probably in a different location from that of Eva's birth. The due date is March, which means that we won't be in Asia during the first two trimesters. This agrees with one of my life's newest promises... that I will NEVER again choose to go through an entire pregnancy in Asia. Anyhow, I digress... though Zofran has been a lifesaver in the nausea/vomiting department, I still haven't felt well enough to keep up with the blog. Hopefully blog entries will begin to increase as the n/v begins going down. :)

Meanwhile, here are a couple recent pictures of Eva. She's 10 months in these shots and looking more and more like a little girl these days.

'Mom, pleeeeeeeeease pick me up! I crawled across the room and pulled myself to standing just to be held by you!"



"What if i give you my irresistable smile?"

crawling smiling

Ahhhh.... she makes me so proud!! Look at her working so hard to crawl across the floor in her ultra slippery sleeper! The little sleepers are my absolute favorite. :)

crawling to dad!

Here's a video I took a couple days ago of the little girl crawling. She's all over the place these days, and one of her favorite things to do is crawl down the hallway towards the bedroom and explore by her lonesome in a room all to herself. Actually, mom and dad don't notice what she's doing in other rooms, so she probably gets away with a lot more. We're also probably a little on the lazy side, not feeling like following her everywhere she goes.

We haven't done much "baby proofing", though we've done a few things. Eva seems to be a fast learner when we tell her "no", and for the most part, steers clear of those things we tell her not to touch. I'd like to attribute this to our excellent parenting skills, but i don't really think that has much to do with it. :)

More videos to come... hopefully without the whine at the end that comes with this one!

California coast- Highway 101

Here are a few pictures from our drive down the coast of CA. Funny, now that I look at them, they all look similar...
"rock in the water with waves"
"many rocks in water by cliff"
"looking down on large rock in water"
I guess I found the rocks were the most dramatic part of the shoreline, and they really were impressive. Lots of cliffs and crashing waves too. And lots of fog. Just beautiful.

Indiana

From santa barbara, Eva and I flew back to indy (with a layover in houston, just to take us completely out of the way). Both flights were long, but the first was the worst as Jan's stomach decided it wasn't very happy, and she found herself puking into the barf bag while holding Eva in her lap. I have issues with the seat belt sign being on when there isn't even turbulence; it makes the hours drag by when there's a baby confined to a lap for hours on end. Anyhow, since time marches on, the flights eventually came to an end, and we crawled off the plane promising myself the whole way that this was the LAST flight i take alone with Eva!! haha! That is, until we got on the flight again a few days later to fly back. :)

We were only in Indy a very short time; I took my re-certification test for my PA license, and hooray! I passed! Eva also learned some new skills while at grandma and grandpa's house, her biggest one being that she began crawling. She'd been doing an army crawl for a while, but by the time we left, she was crawling all over the place. Again, pictures to come... haven't yet found my cable for transferring pictures.

End of August

Wow, has it been THREE weeks since the last blog entry?? Huge apologies to our readership!! I don't know where the time goes! The past three weeks have been full, as always there has been lots of travel, and Eva has many new things to show you, but for once we'll wait a bit for a post on Eva. :)

We spent the last week of August traveling in California. We drove down to Davis where Nathan went to grad school, and spent great time with some of his old friends in Sacramento and the bay area. The drive down the coast was spectacular, and we took our time and stopped whenever Eva needed a break. And let's face it, we were always more than willing to stop. We probably took a hundred or so pictures of the coastal cliffs and ocean, but we wanted to remember for the days when we're back in landlocked Laos! Eva was a trooper as we drove about four days down the length of CA. We ended in Santa Barbara, where we got to spend a few days with Joel and Marie. They had met Nathan maybe two days before our wedding, and that was all, so we really valued the time with them.

From there, Nathan and I split ways; he drove all the way back to Portland by his lonesome (which I think he secretly appreciated) and Eva and I flew on to the next destination... Pictures to come as soon as i get them off the camera!

Family

Three new things

Eva's had a big week! She is now scooting around on the floor going after the toys she can't reach. She's not exactly crawling yet, but she's been getting up on her hands and knees and swaying back and forth, trying to figure out what to do next. She can really get around the room now, so it's probably time for us to put up the gate for the stairs.

She's also pulling herself into the sitting position frequently after i lay her down on her belly to take a nap. She won't just go to sleep- she has to sit up, and then she gets stuck! haha, it's hilarious! Sometimes when i come in to help her out, she'll be sitting there, leaning forward as far as she can, trying to get her face to rest on the bed while she's still sitting. Too funny.

She's pulled herself up once from sitting to standing, and we looked over proudly to see her standing up holding onto one of her toys. (see the picture below). The last picture is Eva with the wet wipes. Twice now i've looked over to see her having a hay day pulling them all out. Why are kids always more interested in the "non toy" toys rather than the real toys?