7 months for Evan, 8 years for the parents!

Yesterday was Evan's 7 month birthday! I think he looks older...I wonder if he feels any older. ;-) And actually, he has changed so much in just the past week. He's so much more coordinated. He will see his pacifier, reach for it, grab it, and put it in his mouth (the right way!). He does it all in one smooth motion. A couple of weeks ago it was much more of a process for him to do that. Sure, he could see things and grab them and put them in his mouth, but there was more scrambling around, he wouldn't get them in his mouth just right, etc.

He's smiling more and more each day. Evan was a slow smiler. He smiled for real (not just gas) when he was 5 weeks old. However, it was until closer to 5 months before he started smiling on a regular basis. And even after that he was slow to smile. However, now he smiles all the time! He still doesn't laugh much though unless he's laughing at Daddy (or Daddy's friend, R). But I'm hopeful that the laughing will be like the smiling, that someday the house will be full of it all the time! Yesterday he was taking a nap in his car seat in the car. When I was getting him out I opened the car door and moved the sunshade cover that is attached to the infant seat. It woke him up. He opened his eyes, saw me, and immediately smiled!! I feel SO blessed to have him and it's the best feeling in the world when he is obviously so happy to see me. :-)

He isn't crawling yet, but he's rolling and scooting all over the place. He can make his way from one room to another just by that. He doesn't move much when I'm in the room with him though. It's if I leave that he starts moving all over the place. I still haven't child proofed the house much, but I'll get around to it!

Today, March 24, is me and Matt's 8th dating anniversary. It seems like just yesterday that we were two teenagers in love. A friend of mine said that she remembers when the guys in my high school Sunday school class used to have to drag Matt out of the high school class and into the college class. We started dating a couple of months before Matt graduated. After that he had to be in the college Sunday school class....but we didn't want to be separated! So all of the high school guys would gang up on Matt and physically drag him out. It was mostly silly and all in good fun, but looking back it was also kind of stupid how the teachers insisted that he leave. lol It just got me to thinking about how IN LOVE we were. I have always felt like we didn't lose that new love feeling as much as most couples do after being married and having kids...but after thinking about how extreme we were those first couple of years...I realize we really have lost a lot of it. That isn't necessarily a bad thing though. Just different. We're more mature now, we don't HAVE to be together all the time. But I'd also like to get a little more of that appreciation for each other back. We knew we were made for each other and we didn't want to be with anyone more than each other.

THIS is the link to the post I wrote last year about how our relationship began. It has pictures! But here is one of us in the Spring of 2002, just after we started our relationship. I'm 16 and Matt is 18! And we have our faces painted, I have a ladybug on my cheek. :-)