13 months

Our spring chicken's 13-monther is today. Here's the update...
A few of Evie's latest tricks include:

• Walking...E’s mastered the art and this is now her preferred mode of transportation
• New signs… “milk” and ”help”
• New words…“ba” (ball), “si” (outside), “ma-A” (Maya), “dog” (Griffin), “bup” (up)
• Self-defense (see story #1 below)

A few of Evie’s latest favorite things include:

• Balls, especially when taking from and throwing to G & M
• Clementines and Cinnamon mini-bagels
• Auntie La (even amidst E’s “stranger danger” phase, Evie squeals and sprints toward La-La anytime she visits)

A recent blog-worthy story I’ve just got to share:
“Fight and Flight” Apparently there’s a biter on the loose in Evie’s daycare room and to which Evie fell victim early last week. On Friday, LaTosha (Evie’s teacher) pulled me aside during pick-up to say that they’d like us to work on “gentle touching” at home. I guess since the biting incident, whenever the Biter gets ornery when playing near Evie, E simply attempts to take matters into her own hands and prevents any attack by grabbing the perp by the hair, tossing him to the ground and walking to another area of the room and quietly resumes play. I have to admit I’m sort of OK with this…

85 and counting

On Sunday, the whole fam’ (and La) piled into the Subaru to zip down to New Ulm for Grandpa Cal’s 85th birthday celebration. As usual for such road trips, EJB slept like an angel and the dogs anxiously paced in circles thinking they were on the world’s longest ride to the p-a-r-k.

At the big bash, the quote of the day came from Calvin Elmer himself… saying in his thank you toast, “Had I known I was going to live this long, I would’ve taken much better care of myself!”.

Touché.

Dog days of spring

Another Backer family tradition is the Saturday morning trip to the DP (can't say "dog park" around here or we'd have 150 lbs of dog bouncing off the walls!). After a week's worth of jetting t and from work during the day, fawning over the baby in the early evening and then hustling and bustling just before bed to pack lunches, make bottles, pack the diaper bag, et cetera... the least we can do is reward big G and little M by letting them burn off some energy chasing other dogs and tennis balls over the weekend.

Now that the weather so much nicer, Evie (not pictured, sorry grandparents!) has been tagging along on these outings. She absolutely loves watching the pups run and instantly signs "more" the second they return a fetched ball.

Hoop dreams

While this isn't exactly how I envisioned my childhood dream would play out, this past weekend I laced 'em up and took the court at the University of Minnesota's Williams Arena (a.k.a. The Barn) for an alumni basketball tournament.

We rattled off a string of wins on Friday night and, convinced we'd run off two more the next morning and win the thing, invited our wives and children to come watch us cut down the nets Saturday morning. A number of bad passes, stupid shots and matador-like defensive efforts later we found ourselves quickly out of contention.

Great times, nonetheless.

Editor's note: Rounding out the Dream Team were Jason McNerney, Brett Furber, Tom Racciatti and the Stevens brothers

Make that 15 million and one

This past Friday, ConAgra Foods abruptly announced plans to close the doors of their Edina offices by mid-July, relocating the company's Snacks business to Naperville, IL... a move that for all intents and purposes puts Lindsay out of a job (sadly, not unlike nearly 1 in 10 Americans these days).

While these situations are never fun and the timing is a little uncomfortable given the current state of the job market and with baby #2 around the corner, I'm confident we'll land on our feet again in due time.

Oh, life's little challenges...

Easter

Poor Ev was a bit under the weather all weekend, but she did tough it out long enough to humor Linds and I and engage in a quick Easter egg hunt in our backyard.

Editor’s note: Evie recently learned what a ball is, how to say it and how to throw (well, it’s more of “finger roll” really) so to her the day was all about playing her new favorite game of fetch with G & M using oblong, pastel-colored “ba”s.

Here we go again… 12 down, 28 to go

Yep, that’s right. Sometime around October 12th, this family circus is going to get one member crazier.

How’s Evie taking the news, you ask? Well, she was a bit floored at first… and just continued to ask, “Why… why… why?”…

... but has quickly grown to accept the upcoming change and has even begun to express a little love for her new little brother/sister.