Friday Five!

Another quickie edition of Friday Five for y'all. I need to wrap up our Montreal trip (have 2 1/2 more days to cover!) & I need ample time to sit down & do that but I'm running low on ample time this weekend so don't keep your fingers crossed for anymore Adventures with the Fellow before Monday (although, I will indeed try!).

Five New Things Liam is Doing:

1. He goes & gets his "bibbie" when he eats his apple sauce in his chair in front of the TV. He says "bibbie" also with this really cute little boy lilt in his voice
2. He says "meat" (guess who taught him that one, Nikki!) and it is the hands-down-cutest thing recently. He smiles when he says it too! We were at the grocery store with Nana & Grandpa and we passed the meat section & I just put some chicken in the cart and he kept turning around saying it but they didn't know what he was saying & I turned around and said "yes, that's meat! it's chicken!" and they just started laughing that he was saying "meat" and especially since he was correct about it!
3. Lately, Liam has been "blessing" himself with various liquid-y substances! When Matias takes him to church he does cross himself with the Holy Water before entering & leaving the church so he's familiar with the concept BUT we've caught him "blessing" himself with toilet water, cottage cheese remnants & split water. We've got a budding blesser on our hands here! He's got the across the chest movement down but he's still working on the head portion (whoops, typed potion!) of the maneuver!
4. Now he calls the playground down the street "HOT!" when we drive past it because of the time earlier this week I took him and the slide was burny-hot and he screamed burny-murder when he sat his little bum down on it. Whoops, my bad. I told him it was too hot out, think he'll listen to me now? I kid.
5. When we went out to run errands a few days after being home, he said "Ge?" (airplane for the Liam to English translation) and then when we told him no, we weren't going to the airport today, he then asked if he could see "Nana, GG, Barbara and/or Wow-Wow". Matias asked him if he wanted to go back to Montreal & see everyone and he said "yeah" (sounds more like a grunt but he's saying "yeah") and it was one of those moments when you know you did the right thing by dragging him along with you to a different country to throw him off schedule & have him refuse about 90% of the food you attempted to give him in order for him to spend time with your family :)

This is the Pope calling...

Way back when we were told that we would totally get tickets to see the Pope in DC since Matias' sister is studying in Rome right now & that she had a "connection" that was fool proof. We were put on High Alert with orders to pick up our tickets at Will Call tomorrow for the Mass at Nationals Stadium. Then we were told that we were to wait for a call officially confirming all of this. Well that call never came, sadly.

I joked that we were waiting for the Pope himself to call us and then found out that we were in fact waiting for a call from Rome and not from his sister but from someone in the church or something or maybe Matias is just pulling my pagan leg. Either way, we didn't get a phone call & it's past midnight in Rome now so it looks like our sure thing sure wasn't.

Kind of a bummer because it would have been a special time for Matias & Liam, sure I would have found it neat to be a part of it but obviously not in the same way my Catholic boys would have. I'm not sad about getting up before dawn to take the metro into town to stand in the Pope knows how many lines to get inside finally to wait for a Mass with a toddler, you know? Hopefully, this won't be a once in a lifetime missed opportunity though & some other day, some time, probably some other place, my Catholic boys can see the Pope together, as I do feel it's important for them to share in this experience together.

Matias said that it would be like seeing the Royal Family trying to light some sort of fire under my enthusiasm but I do have to say that those two things do not generate the same sort of "fire" for me! Yes, I would love to be a part of a historical event but sometimes you gotta realize when he's just not that into you and the Pope sometimes just doesn't return his calls like he says he will.

(Long) Easter Weekend

I figured I should get on this before his 9 Month GushFest is due at the end of the week & I have a lot of recapping to do before then!

My parents came into town on Wednesday to help us finish getting ready for GG & Auntie Carol coming into town on Friday. I had tried to do as much cleaning as I could work around Liam’s schedule hoping that we/they didn’t have much to do before our company arrived…we really only had Things To Hang on the Walls, vacuuming (with two long hair cats that is REALLY a project), and final cleanings on the kitchen and such. I hope it wasn’t too much for everyone involved but it was REALLY nice to have an extra set, or two extra sets, of hands on hand to help with Liam while I tried to get the work done. Grandpa hung all the pictures while I played Little Helper – they all look so nice hanging, so much better than leaning against the foyer walls! Grandma was a TROOPER and took on the vacuuming duties – what a freaking difference it really makes to get all that hair up – you have NO IDEA how much those kids shed in a day. I know other people who have hard wood floors and no matter how much I sweep, there is still a ton the next day. I don’t know what they do overnight but I’m sure it involves pulling off hair and throwing it around – that is when Monkey is walking around screaming to no one in particular. Weirdo.

Grandma & Grandpa had a great time with Liam – watching him do all his new tricks – and learning more every day, it seemed! It’s nice to have people who are eager to feed him, maybe not so eager to change the diapers, but help out nonetheless, get him up from his naps & play with him non-stop. He didn’t have any “stranger anxiety” when they came – I think it helps him when he’s in his own environment & not at a “new” place plus “new” people. Like I mentioned earlier, Liam got his first set of swim trunks, a little swim jacket cover-up thingie, some shorts, a couple tshirts & totally kick ass adorable two piece pajamas! THANKS AGAIN! They also got to witness the Fellow taking a bath – finally getting to see what we mean by him “thoroughly enjoying himself” in the tub! OH! And also! Grandpa put all the child proof cabinet latches on in the kitchen. That is still taking some getting use to! THANKS FOR THAT! I would NOT have had the patience (or the tools) to do it properly!

Friday afternoon GG & Auntie Carol arrived from Montreal at Dulles & neither Liam or I could accompany them due to the amount of luggage they brought with them – even the Explorer could not fit us all! Liam was a prefect Fellow for everyone – no big displays of anxiety – just the normal 5 Minute Meet & Greet and then back to normal Fellow mode. Everyone was really happy to meet him & finally be able to spend time with him outside of cyberland! It was great to see my Grandma with him – even if she was a little antsy about holding him due to the damage the stroke inflicted in her arm/hands. Friday night/Saturday morning was a little rough for Mommy, Daddy & Liam will all the new strange noises that were happening during our normally quiet sleep time, so some of us were crankier than usual (guilty!) and a little on the tired side. I think Liam was up 5 times that night – and it is a little difficult to practice the CIO method with two people sleeping in the guest room & two more in our Ghetto Guest Room (aka the formal living room) so we just sucked it up & made the best of it while trying to get him to sleep peacefully.

Auntie Leanne came in the early afternoon after driving through the Great Blizzard of Spring 2007 (we actually only got about an inch but she made it seem like she drove through 12 foot drifts to get here!) and commenced Operation Spend Time with Liam!

No one could contain their Easter gifts to Liam until Easter morning so after he went to bed, and Grandpa was snoring on the couch, we got presented some wonderful gifts for my Little Big Boy. I had been searching high & low for the Anne Murray children’s album There’s a Hippo in my Bathtub for over a year and Auntie Carol managed to find it up north! I was really excited to get this for Liam since it was my favorite album growing up & I wanted to be able to pass it along to him. My favorite version of Teddy Bear’s Picnic is on there along with some other wonderful songs – what a great treat – a Canadian musician from our Canadian family! Auntie gave him an adorable assortment of socks – they are all just TOO CUTE! GG gave him money for a US Savings Bond which we plan on putting forth to his college fund. Grandma was the only one who could hold out until morning to give Liam his gifts…

We spent the rest of the night listening to stories, decorating the Easter table & hiding Easter candy for our hunt/race the next day. Liam slept a lot better that night since the new “noises” were, thankfully, being held to a minimum. YAY!

Sunday, we all got up & started getting ready to go to church downtown for Easter Mass at Holy Rosary. It was a really nice Mass & I always enjoy watching Daddy with Liam in church. Liam is normally well behaved if we have books & puffs with us to keep him entertained. Now he has started “singing” along with the choir (don’t know if 3 people make a choir…) & it’s just really adorable since he REALLY likes to be the loudest singer there! Then he bit the priest. But in all honestly, you really shouldn’t put your finger THAT close to a teething baby’s mouth without expecting him to take a little nibble out of your digit. Totally the priests’ fault. After we went to the Dubliner (the Irish Pub that is in the hotel we had our reception at, for those playing along at home) and had a nice Irish brunch, complete with pints & stolen pint glasses! Liam was, again, really well behaved – he ate his lunch after we ordered & sat eating his puffs while we ate – all in all it worked out quite nice! We drove back down Independence instead of Constitution so that we might catch a glimpse of the snow-damaged Cherry Blossoms but it really wasn’t worth looking at since they were already past-Peak & been done snowed on and all…and we headed back home to get ready for our Easter dinner & late starting Candy Hunt/Race.

Liam spent a lot of time with Auntie on the Guest “Bed” in the Ghetto Guest Bedroom & he basically mastered his Standing Up Without Holding Onto Anything! And he was ESTATIC! Every time he let go, we would ALL yell “HURRAY” and “WOW” and “YAY!!” and he would scream with delight – by the end of it all he was ‘saying’ HURRAY along with us & continues to do that any time he thinks he does something HURRAY Worthy – which to an almost 9 month old, pretty much constitutes every thing & anything! He had so much fun & was being such a good Little Big Boy, I’m so glad Auntie got to spend that time with him.

We had a fantastic Easter dinner & I TOTALLY won the Easter Candy Hunt/Race of 2007…Matias managed to make himself sick by eating ALL of the jellybeans he received & gathered up from me once he found out I didn’t enjoy the bean. Liam ate dinner with us on his NEW Bunnykin “china” dinner setting – it’s too cute & just about prefect! It’s not the same design of my set but I don’t care about that, it was so great to be able to give that to him (THANKS GRANDMA & GRANDPA!) and share that little bit of our tradition with him! Now he has his own set of Good China to use on special occasions :)

Everyone was packing up & moving out on Monday afternoon so we spent the morning making sure everyone had everything they needed for the rest of their trip & just hung out getting in all the Liam Time they could! GG got to give Liam a bottle, he didn’t flip & flop himself all over the place as he has been known to do lately & Auntie Carol even fed him a few meals claiming it’s the First Baby She’s Ever Fed, but as you can tell from my capitalization of the Event I somewhat doubt it. Auntie believes she peeked the first signs of his upper teffie coming in but I didn’t really spy or feel anything until today, actually, so I’m not really sure about that one! But he definitely did get his second lower teefie while they were all here! After everyone left, it was amazingly quiet & I think I could have napped for the rest of the week, if Liam would only have let me!

I’m amazed at how well he acted & reacted to all the commotion & new people hanging out in his house – it was a joy to be able to host everyone for Easter & have my family come together – all FOUR GENERATIONS! Hell, I’m surprised at how well I acted & reacted to all the commotion & new people hanging out in my house J It was a fantastic time & I’m really glad that we all got to be together & spend some QT hearing stories from the Olden Days, about Yupie being an asshole, and people losing their fingers at work. And thankfully, GG did NOT throw up on Auntie’s Blankie - she is learning to make it over the phone with GG’s guidance!

I’m just waiting on pictures from everyone so that I can post some here – hint hint! But I think that is all, & I HOPE I am not leaving anything out! Correct me, if I am, please! Oh yes, the Great Eggplant Reaction of Spring 2007 – wowzers – I’ll let that be a post all of its own!

Another Milestone

Liam pulled himself up to standing on the ottoman this morning!

I'm counting this one as his "official" pulled to standing since I saw it happen :)

He's also successfully turning himself in circles (while standing) from the ottoman to the couch (with our legs straddling him like a cattle chute)! And he's also shuffling along either the couch or ottomans - the beginning of his walking phase!

He very much loves to try and pull himself to standing while doing anything but particularly when he is in bed with us in the mornings - he uses the side of my body and goes into his Downward Facing Dog position and then attempts to right himself without holding onto anything. Sometimes he searches for our hands as support but mostly he's just trying to launch himself up to standing!

The forward crawl is now his main form of mobility - BEEP!BEEP! has been retired for the moment unless he needs it for a simple thing, like reaching a book or part of turning around to ZOOM!ZOOM! in the other direction.

Today is Palm Sunday so we are off to DC for church & then possibly to take in the Cherry Blossoms depending on everything...

Happy Ash Wednesday!

Hmmm, not sure if that is appropriate or not, let me consultant my Catholicism for Dummies handbook...

Anyway...Liam went to Mass today at Holy Rosary in DC to participate in his First Ash Wednesday & thus the start of Lent & Fish Fridays!

He did really well & had a friend a few pews back who kept him smiling and giggling. He went and received his ashes and then promptly (and I mean less than 10 seconds) smeared them on my off-white shirt I was wearing. I continue to resist the urge to wipe Matias' forehead, it's something I struggle with every year. I only had to take him out during the liturgy over Communion as he was being a bit too loud for my taste...I brought him back in for Daddy to take him to be blessed but he had already done gone up. He slept in the car both ways - he really loves his new car seat, it's making a WORLD of difference!

Then we went to Whole Foods after & he slept in his Daddy's arm most of the time. We just needed to restock on his fruits & veggies (and believe it or not, Grandma, they DID NOT HAVE PEACHES!) but he was really good the whole time. I realized I cannot give him the Yo Baby yogurt yet as it contains whole milk...bummer...

I owe y'all (and Liam, of course) a 7th Month GushFest so I'll try and get to that tonight while I wait to see if I can make it to 10pm to watch LOST.