16 Already?

Evan has been obsessed lately with trying to drive Jill's car. When she opens the door he runs as quick as he can to climb in. He puts on her glasses, turns on the radio, and plays with the steering wheel saying repeatedly, "Evan drive Mommy's car". Much to her surprise the other day he actually put the keys in the ignition and went to turn the car on.

August in Cape May

Jill, Evan and I just returned from a relaxing week at the Jersey shore. Looking back at the trip we did a lot but it still was very restful. Evan had a great time relaxing on the beach. He played in the water a bunch and in a "puddle" we dug for him. He loved playing with his shovel and buckets.

Every time Evan and I go to the grocery store I show him the live crabs in the tank. Grandpa decided to show Evan a real crab and threw a few crab traps in the water alongside his boat. Within a few minutes we had a crab. Here's Evan petting him.

There was a little carnival in the center of town one evening that had a bunch of kids rides. I took Evan down the big slide and he said "weeeee!" all the way down.

Evan also took his first pony ride.

He got a chance to pet a sheep at Cold Spring Village.

He never forgot about Seattle though. Here he is checking in on Blue Hippo and the Snoedel in his crib at home.

We had a wonderful time playing, relaxing, and hanging out with the grandparents. Here's a parting shot of Evan relaxing on the porch in a rocking chair.

Daddy back riding

Every so often Evan decides he wants to ride around the condo on my back. I think it's a riot and just wanted to share.

Volunteer Park with Vincent

As if Bubblefest wasn't enough, Evan met his friend Vincent (and Anny) at the Volunteer Park wading pool today after his nap. Evan ran around filling buckets and cups with water and dumping them back into the pool.

I showed up to the pool a bit later and saw him playing with Vincent. Evan was dumping water into Vincent's bucket and Vincent was emptying it out. It looked like the two of them were having a blast. Evan seems to be real into wading pools this summer so we'll undoubtedly be visiting more of them before it starts to rain again.

Bubbles Everywhere!

Today Jill and Evan went to Bubblefest at the Pacific Science Center. Evan met up with his friends Josie, Anna and Charlie and all four of them had a blast playing around with all the bubbles. The science center had big bowls of bubble solution and tons of bubble wands of all shapes and sizes. He must have loved it because I heard about Bubblefest directly from Evan on the phone today after he woke up from his nap. He said "Daddy! Bubbles, bubbles. Pop!".

Loving the water

Today Jill took Evan to meet his friend Lucy at the Madison Park Beach. As I hear it from Jill, the second Evan got to the park he ran into the water and stayed there for over an hour. He spent his time standing, sitting, splashing, throwing rocks, and putting rocks into a little sifter that Lucy brought. I bet the water felt real cool on today's hot 85 degree Seattle day. After hearing how much he liked it, I can't wait to take him there again one fine weekend day.

Almost as good as the hippo pool

Last summer Jill and I took Evan to swim a bunch in a nice big wading pool by the Space Needle (see our posts from last year if you don't remember -- Evan in the wading pool and Our Little Hippo). We hadn't taken him this summer yet so Jill suggested I take him this evening. Evan was saying "hippo pool! hippo pool!" for an hour. To our horror when we got there it was fenced off and empty for some repairs. We were both very disappointed. Instead of giving up we decided to go to the Centennial Fountain and check it out. There were tons of kids running in the fountain so Evan decided to give it a try.

He would run up towards the water and as soon as it turned on he'd turn around and run back out of range. He got hit a few times by the water on his back and he loved it. Evan took a rest part way through playing and posed for this shot:

On our walk back to the car Evan decided to climb all over a bunch of red benches. He climbed from bench to bench and seemed to love that almost as much as running in the fountain.

While we were upset the hippo pool was closed, we made the best of it and decided that this was almost as good as the hippo pool.