Oh, ok so he is almost 7 months, but due to scheduling issues his 6 month appointment was slightly delayed.  All in all, he is doing really well.  He has a bit of eczema that Dr said to try the over the counter cortisone cream to see if that helped before going to the Rx version.  So far nothing else has.  It is the worst in his diaper region and gets really flared up when he has a dirty diaper, poor thing.  Dr's assessment is that he is really focusing on gross motor skills at the moment, and that he'll probably be crawling soon, and usually walking is 2 – 3 months after that, although she said the same thing about Lauren and she didn't walk until after she was 1, but Evan has more motivation in the name of Lauren.  We'll see.  He is just about crawling, he gets up on all fours, rocks, pulls his knees forward one by one until they catch up to his hands…and then pushes them back out and goes back into Cobra.

He is following his growth trend line beautifully, and they think he measured his head incorrectly at the last appointment as it spiked up, but it is now on the trend line again. So here are his official measurements:

Weight:  21lbs, 2oz 90th Percentile
Height:  28.875" 95th Percentile
Head:  45 cm 75th Percentile

At least he is proportionate right?  So yes, he is big, bigger than most, but not all!

I tried to keep going, but sputtered horribly to a stop in posting.  Some days I just can't find anything that interests me to write about!  Some days there is TOO much to write about and it sounds like a jumbled mess in my head.  Still cooking, still working on this, that and everything it seems.

Our little family has settled into some routines that we aren't sure how they started but we are enjoying them.  After dinner every night (6 days out of 7 it seems) we sit down and watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, we would occasionally watch Wheel because Lauren liked to shout out the letters, and still does, but now we seem to make a conscious effort to watch them both.  I even have my own wheel watcher ID and I am hopeful that one day it will come up for some fabulous trip.

Lauren is a singing, dancing, running, playing, hoparooing (kangaroo), little dynamo and loves her little brother to pieces.  Evan is a happy, toothy grinning, little chunk of love, who is trying to crawl, walk and jump all at once!

After years of trying to figure out how to make a sausage roll, I finally bit the bullet and tried to recreate those tasty treats.  Here is my recipe.

Ingredients
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1/3 cup milk
1/3 lb ground chicken
1/3 lb ground veal (or the leanest ground beef you can find, or buffalo would probably work too)
1/3 lb ground pork (or 1/4lb ground pork and a few good quality pork sausages removed from their casings)
1/2 small onion chopped
Shredded Carrot
Salt & Pepper to taste
worcestershire Sauce
1 egg, plus 1 egg slightly beaten
2 sheets frozen puff pastry, just thawed

Directions:
Combine breadcrumbs and milk in a bowl and set aside until milk is absorbed.  Place ground meat, bread crumbs, onion, and egg, carrot and seasonings in a food processor.  Process until well blended. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes to chill.

Place sheet of pastry on a lightly floured surface and cut horizontally into two.  Spoon a quarter of the mixture along the center of the pastry.  Fold over the long edges of pastry, slightly overlapping in the center, and making a long sausage shape.  Repeat with the remaining pastry and filling to make 4 long rolls.

Place rolls, seam side down, on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.  Cover and refrigerate for 3 minutes or until firm.

Preheat oven to 375.  Cut each long roll into two to make 8 standard size rolls or into 7 sections for "party" sized rolls.  Brush the top of each roll with beaten egg.

Bake for 30 – 40 minutes or until golden brown and puffed.  Serve warm with tomato sauce (ketchup).
 

Notes:
One of the original recipes I found was an Australian recipe and it said to just use a decent sausage and remove it from its casings, but sausages in Australia are much more lean and less fatty than sausages here, and I was worried the excess fat would keep the pastry from getting flaky.

Another recipe said to use the beaten egg to close the seam on the roll, which I did on my first batch but the bottoms of the rolls didn't get flaky.  They were cooked but a bit soggy.  The second batch was much better when i just pinched the seam closed.