6 Months and Wanderlust!

Well, this big kid is 6 months old now, if you can believe that.  Half a year!  He has been getting around a lot and having tons of fun anyway, but we are also just back from a super fun family vacation road trip!

Kai and Everett sat next to each other in the minivan, with an empty seat on the other side to change diapers on the go and also for one of us parents to sit in when Ever needed company on a long drive.  Everett loved the set up as much as Kai and he just stared at him singing and talking and being silly and kept cracking up.  The Kai Show is definitely Everett's favorite show!

As soon as we got back from the trip, we started Everett on solid foods, as he has been showing interest but we didn't want to start while we were on the road. 

 He can now eat Earth's Best Rice Cereal, in cereal form or diluted in his formula, and I have made baked Sweet Potatoes, puree'd that he likes and puree peas.  What he LOVES though, is banana!  I mashed a banana on a whim the other day because he had finished his sweet potatoes and seemed to want to keep eating and he just smiled and wanted more more more!

 Our road trip was to Napa and then Lake Tahoe, with stops along the way anywhere that looked fun or interesting.  Everett was a champ to travel with, too! Always up for an adventure.  I think pretty much every age he has been I have said, "Now THIS is the most exciting age for babies!"  

And it is always true! Everett is so curious and alert. He wants to see everything and gets frustrated that he can't always do everything he wants with his limited mobility and hand-eye coordination. 

I think Everett had a blast, wine tasting at a castle, Jelly Bean tour at the factory, Golden Gate Bridge, a sticker factory, his first Halloween, first snow, forst time out of the state, geysers and a ton of petting zoos!

Everett met his cousins Marnie and Carlos and their kids Cristian, Matthew, Madison and Carly on this trip, too! He had his first cold just before we left for the trip and we got a mini humidifier to use on the road.  

We saw some fish at Monterey Bay Aquarium and I was watching Everett Watching them! 

Month 6 has been a great one for Everett and he has done a lot of growing and changing! He is in a size 3 diaper, Honest Co. Are my faves! He can wear anything from 12 months to 18 months in baby clothes, running big I guess, but Kai did too. He rolls around and can scoot backward on his tummy a bit, which is sort of like a backwards crawl, maybe he will crawl soon.  No rush, we still have baby-proofing to do at home!

Everett's First Halloween

Halloween took place in the middle of our Family Fun Frenzy Forever Road Trip, and I think his first time celebrating was a blast!  Big Brother Kai chose the costumes this year, and he had decided (before his brother was even born) that they would be Batman and Robin!  Then, a few days before the trip, Kai decided he wanted to ALSO go as Ezra from the Star Wars Rebels, so we decided that would be cool, we would just wear one costume on Halloween, and one to some kind of Halloween party or something.  It worked out well, because when we got to where we were going to be the day before Halloween (Petaluma, CA) there was an outlet mall hosting trick-or-treating, and we needed some cold weather clothes anyway since suddenly it was predicted to snow in Lake Tahoe!

The boys wore their Ezra and Darth Vader costumes to a cool pumpkin patch there, where we picked up some nice edible squash and gourds, and then to the mall for some treats!

Baby Darth Vader and Ezra

Everett as Darth Vader

Look at that maniacal grin, perfect Vader Baby!

Everett as Robin, super cute!

 As far as first baby costumes go, the Darth Vader outfit was basically just Pajamas with a Velcro cape.  Ever didn't mind wearing it at all and enjoyed walking around outside all day at the pumpkin patch and then the outlet mall.  

The only down-side was that Napa and Petaluma were both pretty hot, maybe 80 degrees, and both kids were pretty hot in their costumes.  We were back to the place we stayed before it even got dark so the sun was not on our side!  

The second day, we actually went to a DIFFERENT outlet mall, this time in Napa, where we were staying anyway, and the boys as batman and Robin were pretty adorable.  I actually preferred the Robin costume because it is more like a costume, with a mask and stuff, but Ever kind of hated the mask... so he didn't wear it for long.
The mall also had trick-or-treating and it was a bigger mall, but a lot more kids were there because it was actually Halloween, so it felt more festive.  We got to see all the other cute costumes, and there was another kid in Everett's same Robin costume, too.  We decided to go with the mall trick-or-treating since we were out-of-town and didn't want to just swoop in on some random neighborhood for trick-or-treating.  We discussed not even doing the trick-or-treating since begging and candy eating aren't habits we'd love instilling in our kids, but decided to go with it after all.  Next year we will re-visit the question.

As a bonus, I have included a picture of Everett with his Grandma, snoozing at Sea World.

Ever riveted by the Shamu show