Thursday, September 30, 2010

Snickers Must Be Raising This Baby

Apparently when Liam and Mommy play outside in the grass, Mommy should pay more attention to what the baby is putting in his mouth.

Or maybe the vacuum should make an appearance more often... Meh.

Question of the Day: Can anyone guess what we found in Liam's poopy diaper this morning?

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Lazy Days

Liam did not - DID NOT - want to go to sleep last night. He finally fell asleep in bed with Mommy at 12:30am. (What on earth did he think he was going to miss out on?) He went to his own bed at 4am, which is when Bounder came in and took Mommy's spot on the bed, and Snickers lay down where Mommy wanted to stretch out her legs. It was a long night, to say the least.

Mommy finally woke Liam up this morning around 10am in order to get ready for playtime. (Huh. Isn't it strange that 10am comes after 12:30am?...) After playtime we came home and took a 2-hour nap together, which was just lovely. We didn't even cross anything off our To-Do list! (Maybe we should write down "Playtime" just so we can cross it off.)

So we had a lazy day today, and that is ok sometimes, too.

Yesterday Grandad came to visit. The baby tried peaches for lunch and loved them. Grandad also gave Liam a fingertip of chili. Incidentally, Grandad can come and change diapers from now on if he wants to give him any more chili. Yikes!! Maybe that is why he couldn't sleep last night - because of an angry belly??

There should be more to write about, but there really isn't. Daddy will be home on Friday, and Mommy ate all the pumpkin bread and cookies in the house, and the ice cream is almost gone too.

Hey, here is a cool article about some of the benefits of breastfeeding.

And here are some pictures (that's really why you read this blog... admit it... ADMIT IT!):

Liam in his outfit from the lovely Esther Fox.


"Snickers! I was reading that!"


Giving Grandad baby CPR.


Liam's new bib from Aunt Bethy is fun to chew on.


I see Great-Grandma Iris in this picture... is it the mouth? The eyes?

"Yes Mom, you could make me peaches for lunch!"


These are a few of my favorite things.

"RARRR! Imagonnagetchu!"

Monday, September 27, 2010

Sitting Up

Twice now today Mommy has laid the baby on his belly, blinked, and found him sitting up. Still haven't caught him in the process though! Daddy is going to come home from Ohio at the end of the week and won't know his own baby! He'll walk in the house and Liam will be all, "What up, Daddy-O? Can I borrow the car? Yeah, I grew a beard."

Meanwhile, the Packers are playing the Bears tonight, and it is a very good way to introduce Liam to his heritage.

Weighed and measured the baby yesterday: 20 pounds and 26-1/2 (or a wiggly 27) inches. We meet with the pediatrician next week and will see how far off our measurements were.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Drinking From a Cup

Just a quick update tonight, since it is way past Mommy's bedtime.

At dinner tonight Liam demanded some milk in a glass. Not a sippy cup, because he is a Big Boy. So there, MOM!

He must have had the hiccups, because he mostly wanted to stick his chin in the glass and suck on the far edge of the rim.


So Mommy showed him how to drink like a big boy. We only put a couple swallows in each time, but Mommy had to fill the glass three times. The picture is a little blurry; it is hard to both work the camera and keep from drowning the baby.



Secondly, the baby is coming along very well with his crawling. He still army crawls:



But today he also figured out how to move FORWARD on his hands and knees. Have you ever seen a newborn giraffe try to walk? I imagine it looks something like this:


Question of the day: Can you sleep like this?

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Six Months

Today is Liam's 6-month birthday! Happy birthday, Big Guy... it seems like just yesterday you were a little baby! Wait...

Daddy's out of town again, both this week and next. Mommy has lots of things on her Could-Do-List, but we are pacing ourselves. Yesterday we went up to the IGA for a few groceries (hellooo, chocolate ice cream), made and froze pureed apples, and watched the season premiere of "Castle." We sat outside and avoided being conked on the noggin by hickory nuts and saw a gopher (prairie dog? groundhog?) down by the turn in the creek.

Today Liam took a couple extra naps, we watched a couple episodes of "Firefly," and went to our favorite store - Barefood Kids. Mommy bought some more laundry soap, a baby food mill, and a little present for Liam, which you can see in the video below. We also stopped at the Tuesday evening market and bought some peaches and some beets. Beets! Mommy is excited! She has only ever had canned beets! Can you tell Mommy is excited!?

The baby is practicing his crawling. He is learning to coordinate his arms and legs while up on his hands and knees. He'll be getting into (more) trouble in no time!

Apples and oatmeal for dinner tonight... Liam wasn't too excited about the apples, but he gobbled up the oatmeal. Grandma J just might be right - some of these fruits might be too sweet for him.

Awesome. He just learned how to open the tv cabinet, and he's playing with the dogs' stinky "squirrel baby."

Making and freezing purees tomorrow: acorn squash, beets, peas, maybe another pear, and peaches if they smell ripened.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

B-A-N-A-N-A-S... This Day is Bananas!

The baby looooves bananas, too. As such he should, the little Monkey! Mommy could not shovel the mushed up mushy mush into that little mouth fast enough. And it ALL ended up in his mouth; he made sure of that. We'll have rice cereal and sweet potatoes for dinner tonight, to see if he likes it any better than last time. Question: How serious do we have to be about getting lumps out of his food? There were teeny tiny banana lumps in his lunch, since we only used a fork to mash it.

It is official, this baby is crawling. Mommy and Liam played on the deck today, and Liam was pulling himself around, picking up leaves and sticks for examination. Which means.... TIME TO BABYPROOF THE HOUSE! We know to get outlet plugs and cabinet door and drawer locks; what else should we be thinking about??

Mommy has found a new way to fill her days: http://www.hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/. Mommy found the story about Texas so funny, at one point she simultaneously inhaled her cheese sandwhich and peed in her pants. It was messy, and now Mommy has a cheese sandwich lodged in her lung. You should read it too. But don't read it with food in your mouth. And go to the bathroom first. Please have better sense than Mommy.

Warning: The next story is about poop. Don't read it if you are easily offended.

But if you decide to read it, there are pictures (not of poop!) at the end of the post.

Or you could just skip the poop story.

PS: poop

Liam had his first Big Boy Poop today. They have steadily been getting stinkier since we started cereal, but this is the first real one. There were actual (very soft) chunks! Like, marble-sized poop-colored sponges. It was probably the avocado that did it, wouldn't you think? It was a respectable amount, too. Holey Moley, was it a respectable amount. And the... after-poop?... was kind of mucous-y and smelled like dead fish. Is that normal???

And now, the promised pictures:






This next photo is of Liam licking the bowl clean after avocados. See the avocado on his forehead? Also, that is avocado under his nose, not boogers.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Avocados, Love, and Waves

The baby flipping loved avocado! No full-body shivers, no ugly faces, most of the food ended up in his mouth.

Also, one of the perks of staying home all day with only one very non-verbal person to talk at? Morning naps curled up next to the baby. Puts a hamper on the showering and getting dressed, but it is worth it. :)

Say, is this baby trying to wave at me?

Eight Things, Including Crawling... Almost... Still...

1. We did not make it to the market on Saturday. It was a dreary morning, Mommy got up late, and we just didn't feel like going. (Mommy was still feeling a little under the weather from her cold this week.) Instead, we got a couple things from the grocery store to try this week: an apple, an avocado (yum!), and bananas. How did YOUR babies like these foods?

2. Mommy had a cold for most of this past week. She's been afraid that Liam would catch it also, and he has, but it is not really affecting him. We skipped church yesterday because he woke up with a little cough, and yesterday his nose was runny and boogery. (Awww, baby boogers are so cute!) He has slept a little more during the days and woken up a couple times during nights to nurse, but otherwise he is handling it like a champ!

3. We baked bread yesterday. Yum! Daddy was nice enough to babysit while Mommy mixed up the dough, before he went out to work in the yard.

4. Also, we roasted our FIRST WHOLE BIRD, a chicken last night. Mommy is a CHICKEN (get it??) and has always just cooked boneless, skinless chicken breasts. There was a cream cheese / grated zucchini / lime zest mixture stuffed under the skin. Daddy loved the cheese mixture, but Mommy could have done without; she thought it made the meat too goopy.


5. And then... THEN... The chicken carcass was cooling on a platter on the counter top after dinner. Sitting in the living room we heard a CRASH. The DOG had pulled it down onto the floor! Miraculously, the Correlle platter came along with it, landing under the chicken. The dog was so startled he jumped away, and Mommy was able to rescue the bird from that rotten Bounder. Incidentally... "Free to good home: One *spirited* Wheaten Terrier - cleans kitchen floors."


6. Liam is in love with Snickers. He likes to pinch her ears, pull the fur on her neck, tickle his nose with her tail, and play with (and last night, try to eat) her dog tags. She is a wonderful doggy; she puts up with most of it, and when she is done she simply gets up and goes to her pillow. Bounder is smarter; he hides.





7. We've been saying it for some time now. This baby is SO CLOSE to crawling. In fact, he is crawling already, in the loosest sense of the word. He gets where he wants to go, but not elegantly or efficiently. Mostly he moves by rolling from side to side. Or by getting up on all fours (or threes - two hands and one knee, with the other leg sticking out), rocking for a few moments, and then collapsing 3 centimeters further along. Actually, this usually sends him backwards, not forwards. He just can't figure out how to get his arms to move him forward yet.


8. One of the ladies from church gave us a bouncy seat for Liam. It is a saucer suspended from three posts by springs. On the saucer there are toys for Baby to play with, but mostly he just loves to jump. He'll stop jumping from time to time and play with the toys, but mostly it is jump jump jump jump jump jump jump. When he is done, he throws up his arms and flops to the side as if to say, "Oh, I'm so neglected! Won't someone come and get me out of this crazy thing!"







Question of the day: How does Mommy keep the baby from pulling out all of her hair?

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Sweet Potatoes... And Channeling Tevye

Liam tried pureed sweet potatoes tonight. This is the first non-rice cereal / non-mommy milk meal he has eaten.

Oh, my little baby is getting so big!

He ate about 2 tablespoons or so, and most of it ended up in his mouth.

Boo hoo!

After each swallow, he made a face as if to say, "Blech! What on earth did you just put in my mouth?" This was followed by a full-body shiver.

Sunrise, sunset. Sunrise, sunset. Swiftly fly the years...

We'll check out the market this Saturday to see what local fruit and veg is in season, and Mommy will work on stocking the freezer with purees this weekend.

One season following another, laden with happiness and tears.

Mommy's fine... really.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Yoga Fail

Liam has proved you do not need arms for yoga. We've caught him several times now doing "downward facing dog" on his face. He is very talented...

... or something.

Walking with Grandad... and Cereal Silliness

Yesterday Grandad came down to visit with Liam while Mommy got some things done (like power-washing the deck! - or at least starting it). But while the air was still relatively cool, Liam, Grandad, and Mommy all went for a walk on the Clear Creek Trail.

Lucky Liam got to spend the morning listening to stories from Grandad, watching the butterflies, and enjoying the sunshine. Hopefully Grandad will get to come down for more walks before the weather gets very cold.

And then there was this:


SOMEONE has been refusing to eat his cereal these last few days. He would turn his head and lean far back in his chair and grunt... Until we realized today that he wanted to hold the cup up to his mouth. He simply wants to eat like a big boy!


And a little post-bath fun:

(Good thing he is not too shy; the robe is a little short and his dingle-dangle is on display for God and everyone.)

Question of the day (night): Why won't this baby go to sleep?