-Evan turns one-

I would love to post pictures of Evan’s first birthday party but I think this blog is starting to charge me as they’re not giving me the option to post pics. So I’m thinking of starting another one, maybe in blogspot, as last I heard they never charge anyone.
So Evan turned one and we had his party yesterday. We had pizza instead of cake as Evan isn’t allowed sugar but at the last minute April brought a carrot cake which the other kids ate after the pizza. Evan also received a fair amount of presents, thanks to everyone who brought them. We got him a Little People farm set and he likes it. He loves animals and knows most of the basic ones. He loved when we sang him “Happy Birthday” and cried when we stopped, so we sang it again and he cried after we stopped that one too.
Jessica, I wanted to put that one year old candle your kids gave me when Evan was born, but I lost it when the time came to put it on, I looked through my whole closet 3 times and finally gave up. Of course I found it later on that evening in my sock bag but anyways, I had good intentions.
Evan’s official birthday is today. And I just want to say for whenever he’s old enough to read this: Evan, I love you! You’re the best thing that ever happened to me and I thank the Lord every day for bringing you into my life!

So I know I haven’t been terribly faithful with my blog and only now as I sit in the hospital with Amanda and her new baby have I decided it’s high time to update. So Amanda had her baby and I stayed the night and am spending the day with her to help. I’ve forgotten a bit how it was to be around a new born; we got about 3 hours of sleep but it’s worth it all to be around such a cute chubby little guy. I think it runs in our family to have big chubby babies.
Evan is going to be one next week. I am having his birthday on Monday and will invite all the little babies and tots from the area. I’m thinking pizza instead of cake since Evan isn’t aloud sugar and I don’t know about the other babies either. I’ll post tonight with some updated photos of Evan.

-Bath Time-

I haven’t given Evan allot of actual baths. Usually we just put him in the sink and scrub him down quickly. So he was hesitant from the start when he saw me carrying a bathtub into the bathroom. Once he gets in he’s fine but it takes him a while to get used to the water. As long as I was playing next to him he was fine but he didn’t enjoy the bath very much.

-Reunions-

So we made it here to Monterrey fine. The trip was a little rough but Evan was a real trooper and barely cried the whole time. Andrew and Amanda came to pick us up and
Paul and Beth came too. They were on their way to Canada so we met at the airport and mom got to see Evan for about an hour before they took off.
I think Evan really likes it here. There’s lots of room to crawl around and he has his two aunts and grandparents to dote on him.

-Boys-

Danny and Luchi came to visit for a couple days and brought their baby. He’s 1 weeks younger then Evan and they played so well together it was too adorable. I’m looking forward to Evan playing with other boys his age.

-Packing-

So we bought the ticket from Santiago to Mexico city at a student flight center. We leave on Tuesday the 11th. (We were able to get pretty cheap ticket, TTL!) Then we got a ticket from Mexico city to Monterrey online. We land in Monterrey at 11:00pm and the first flight out is at 7:00am so we’ll have to spend the night at the airport.
So from today till Tuesday we’ll be packing and finishing stuff up. Evan is teething again so of course he got another fever. Please pray that he gets better before we go. I’m having visions of traveling all day with a feverish baby and spending the night at the airport.
Also pray that his American passport comes through before we leave. It’ll just make things so much easier.

Updates

We’re finishing up Evan’s paperwork here. I got all my Chilean paperwork sorted, that was a complete miracle as it was quite messed up (to put it nicely), that took long enough. It’s a long story about why but the short version is that my name was spelt wrong on my passport and therefore on Evan’s birth certificate, so had to change my passport and all of my Chilean residency papers in order to change his birth certificate (this took a couple of months.) And once I went to change my papers they wouldn’t accept my passport because my middle name was abbreviated. So had to go back to the embassy and get that one changed etc, etc. All this has taken over 6 months. So now I just finished Evan’s Chilean paperwork, changed his birth certificate and got him a Chilean passport so now I just need to get him either American or Belgian citizenship here. The Belgian one is going to take a while, at least 2-3 months, the consulate told me, so we’re going on Monday to see about getting him American citizenship, which apparently takes less then 2 weeks. Please pray for that, that it goes smoothly and easily, I’ll be so relieved once this paperwork is over.
Evan turns 10 months tomorrow. He claps his hands to say please, and he waves and can pull himself up and walk along the edge of a table. He can say cat, dog, car and I think I heard him say bus once but I’m not totally sure. Whenever we do flashcards with him or the Baby Einstein video flashcards, he tries to repeat the word that we say although most of them come out sounding like “da.” I’m trying to get him to say mama but he can’t quite manage that word yet.

-Updates-

We went to the American embassy today to get Evan citizenship. It went super smoothly. We had an appointment for an interview today so we showed up bracing ourselves for the worse and got some older guy who went over our paperwork. He was really helpful, helped us with some mistakes in the forms and then told us to go pay for Evans passport and birth abroad certificate. I thought “wow, that was really easy! He didn’t even ask us any questions.” So we payed and went back to give the guy the receipt when some other guy shows up and starts asking us a bunch of questions. He had come just to do the interview. He asked allot of questions about where we met, how long we had been together before Evan was born, then wanted to see Davids proof of having lived in the States. Evan was sleeping this whole time and finally he asked “Is he sleeping? Can I see him?” So David woke him up and the interviewer looked very closely at Evan and then very closely at David and then nodded, “ok.”
So thats that and the end to our paperwork. Thank God! We’re hoping to move to Mexico sometime around the 10th of March, I’ll let you know when we buy the ticket.

-More Teething-

On the second day of the feast Evan got a fever. It’s a teething fever, whenever he gets a tooth he usually gets very high fevers of 39-40 degrees. He’s very brave about it although he gets very bored staying in the room all day. Last night he was up allot, had a 40 degree fever so David and I had to give him Tylenol every 3 hours. His teeth seem to be bothering him allot. Today is his third day of fever so please pray for him.

-Beach Trip-

Evan is in the cutest stage right now! He just turned 10 months and he’s starting to do all these new things. H e says a bunch of words and tries to do the motions to songs and lifts his arms when I say “hallelujah!” And he plays by himself so well! He plays with cars and makes the “vroooom!” noise and he loves hide and go seek!He’s very mischievous and is always looking for food. He’s been obsessed with trying to get into the formula since he started to crawl. I keep it by my bedside table and sometimes I catch him just sitting in front of the table gazing longingly at the formula.He’s very observant and whenever he is in a new surrounding he’ll just look around with this blank stare while he takes it all in. (Kind of like the look in the first photo.) So when we got to the beach he sat like that for the first while or so until he decided the sand might be good to eat and for the rest of the beach trip was trying to sneak some when no one was looking