The Fine Game of Nil

leaving for toronto tomorrow. liam’s first international trip.

Watermelons… this was at our house.

breakfast on the deck at the lake, what a way to live.

first boat trip, wearing his nifty life vest

love him in a mo-hawk!

Lexi and Liam got along famously

Aunt Linda kept him amused as well. She’s got great style, and is teaching it to him

Liam with his cousins (and dad)

love that beautiful boy!

a quiet moment with aunt linda

hanging out with aunt linda and uncle bill

Liam had a great time at Lake George, and can’t wait to spend more time there. He promises not to be so afraid of the water next time.

Alex has instructed me to tell a story about liam while we are in the car on our way to Lake George to visit with Bill, Linda, Chris, Becky, Quinn, and Alexandra. And Zeke and Luka, and maybe even Brinkley. It will be a full house, I suspect. The last time we went to Lake George was the weekend of July 7th, 2007, for Lisa (Dator) Hough’s wedding (to Campbell). I was enormously pregnant at the time

We had a great time, and Alex and I cut a rug on the dance floor and received several comments about birthing the baby right there from all the activity. I had Liam three weeks (exactly) later. This is the first chance we’ve really had since then to make it out the Lake. (as an aside, Lake George happens to be one of my most favorite places to visit, and Bill and Linda always make us feel so welcome).

What’s going on with us these days, you might ask? Well, we are beginning the final countdown to Liam’s birthday (July 28th). We’re having a little party for him, with friends coming over for a BBQ. Unfortunately no family can make it out. But our friends here are really a second family for Liam. They’ve been so great about the transition to parenthood and haven’t let it negatively affect our friendships, which is a relief. I haven’t decided if I’ll make cupcakes or a birthday cake. The only thing I know is I am definitely bringing some sort of sweet to his pediatrician the next day for his one year appointment. In the past six weeks, we have been to her office once a week! He just keeps catching bugs from day care… hand foot and mouth, really bad sore throat, fevers, coughs, and right now swollen esophagus/sore throat… it’s not a big deal, but uncomfortable, and can cause stryders (sp?) which is a kind of gasping breath. Working at the hospital makes me grateful that he doesn’t have any major illness, and each of these things has been relatively minor. I know he will have an awesome immune system in a year or so, and not get sick nearly as much, but it’s frustrating right now because he keeps catching things that have no treatment other than waiting it out and trying to give him TLC. And because he is so little we can’t really use a lot of logic with him to help him feel better. And we aren’t letting him watch TV, so we can’t park him in front of a cartoon with ice cream to help him feel better.

Alex is still working at NEB and really enjoying it. I have settled into my job at Children’s Hospital and finally have a real office. I can’t remember if I posted about the job change… I started at Children’s Hospital Boston March 31st. I’m working 20 hours a week in their multivisceral organ transplant department. It’s very cutting edge, and very intense. They have only performed 6 of these transplants at Children’s since 2004, but they are gearing up to expand the program. Right now I have a total of 9 post transplant patients, and 2 on the wait list that I follow. It’s nice to join the team while it is still small. I’m hoping I can grow with it, and that by the time they want someone full time I’ll be ready to work full time. (Though it is tempting that they have an open position in the pediatric heart transplant department. It’s full time, though).

Next weekend we go to Toronto for five days. Alex is going for another conference, and Liam and I decided we were going this time. We discovered it is significantly cheaper to fly to Buffalo, NY, and then drive into Toronto in a rental car, then to fly into Toronto. Additionally, if we drive into Canada, we don’t need a passport for Liam, just a birth certificate.

What else? I’ve been biking to work occasionally, but with it being hot and humid lately, I have slacked off.

Okay, what you have all been waiting for is the pictures… these are from the past few days/weeks

The garden continues to grow:

and grow:

chilling on the back porch

what? am i cute? sure!

speaking of cute… even though these are out of focus, i love them

My friend Erin and her husband Brian came up from Virginia over 4th of July weekend. we got to have lunch with them.

that’s it from me for now… i hear alex might have more to say later.

Liam and Jack

Liam’s first hike in a canyon, he clearly needs some sunglasses

what a way to travel

snuggle daddy

from this point on, all our pictures are fuzzy

at the Salton Sea

Liam enjoyed this beach… see him reach for the “sand”, and then…

I won’t show you a picture of what happened next, but it was gross… also,

that’s not sand, it’s this:

Liam trying a date shake (ice cream with fresh dates blended into it)

“that was good, please sir, can i have some more?”

And just three quick pictures from Anne’s visit

Hi all…. Alex has been in Crete for almost two weeks now, leaving Liam and I to fend for ourselves. I was able to piece together day care for Liam so that I could work for the two weeks. Anne came out from Seattle and watched Liam for two days, my friend/coworker Katie took two days off work to watch Liam, Jed watched him one day, and my friend Tiffany and her son Declan watched Liam one day. I’m so blessed to have such wonderful friends and family, and I clearly couldn’t have made it through this week without them (and the other friends who visited and called to check in on me, etc). It has been a difficult time, also, because Liam was very sick for a week. I had no idea what was wrong, only he wasn’t sleeping or eating, had a fever, and just wasn’t himself. When i took him to the doctor for the second time (the first time she noted his throat looked irritated), she told me he had blisters in his throat and had hand, foot, and mouth! poor thing. there is no treatment for it, it just has to run its course. It finally did, and he has been much more pleasant, eating and sleeping…

hopefully we’ll get more pictures together soon… we broke our nice camera in LA, and need to buy a new lens. Alex took the small camera with him to Crete, so I am limited in my picture taking right now.

here are some quick pictures from Tiffany:

Liam and Declan in their cage

let us out let us out!

finally freedom

to the swings, batbaby!

i don’t really know what’s going on here

or here

I don’t know how Tiffany did the whole day on her own! Thank you so much!

Whew. It seems like just a couple of weeks ago I was busy being thrilled that The Boy had figured out how to pull himself up on my fingers and would take a tentative step forward. Today, I can barely believe that its the same boy that we’re dealing with. By last week he was running around at the wedding and had gotten pretty good at pulling up on a pair of fingers and running laps.  He was generally deciding on his own where he wanted to go and who he wants to visit, and really, I was only there for balance and as a cheering section. Overall though, he wasn’t very mobile on his own yet. He could butt-scoot a little bit, but generally if he wanted to get somewhere he had to call for a pickup. On our last day in LA, something clicked for his butt-scooting technique and suddenly he was moving.

Since getting home, he’s been EVERWHERE.

On the first day back, I got home from work and found Emily collapsed on the couch and everything less than 2 feet off the floor spread throughout the room. Skip forward to today, where he’s adopted a strange one-legged scoot-y sort of gate. He ends up with his left leg pushed behind him in near a crawl position, but his right leg stays folded up ahead of him, much like a sprinter passing over a hurdle. When he gets a direction in mind, he’s able to scoot forward on his butt and front leg surprising speed and purpose.  I say surprising because I was surprised at how fast he managed to get across the kitchen and start spilling the cats water dish.  This afternoon he was scooting around the kitchen chasing a foam ball that Greg and Naama gave him. He’d scoot across the floor to the ball, pick it up, giggle like a maniac, and then roll it across the room again. It was like a game of fetch with Liam playing all the parts. This is of course, was only after we dissuaded him something like 25 times from scooting over and continuing to spill the cat’s water dish.

The cats, by the way, have come to know fear and stare it in it’s 10-month old eyes. I think it is that previous games, such as Bumper Cats, were limited by daddy’s attention span. For ages now, the cats have known that while they cannot avoid my indignities, they can simply outlast them and emerge the moral victor. Liam however, is blessed with boundless energy and an unmatched zeal for kitten petting. Having lived soft and kept lives, the kittens have lost their natural survival instincts, and routinely fail to notice a 10-month-old butt-scooting up behind them. The boy has been in bed for 3 hours now, but shuffling sounds behind Maus still cause him to leap into the air like a startled armadillo.

just a few quick pictures from Naama’s wedding this weekend. We’ll update with more pictures and more substance soon.

the beautiful bride

and of course, the beautiful babies

This is Liam with his future wife, Dahlia (Naama’s niece). They loved meeting each other. Dahlia taught Liam to squeal in delight and call to us in a sing songy voice, and Liam taught Dahlia how to roll/stick out her tongue. A great friendship was born.

It was a beautiful, wonderful wedding.

Congratulations, guys!

The day before heading out to LA, Liam and I invented a new game. We’re calling it Bumper Cats. As you might remember, recently his favorite thing in the world is to grab onto two fingers, hoist himself to his feet, and scamper around the house. We briefly experimented with the game Chase the Cats Around the House, however, lately the cats have grown sluggish and complacent. Thus the game Bumper Cats was created. The rules are pretty simple:

1. Pull yourself up on tottering baby legs and point in the direction of a cat.
2. Scamper as fast as possible towards said cat, who, if he’s adhering to the rules of engagement, will completely ignore your existence.
3. Crash headlong into the midsection of the cat.

Last one standing scores a point.

Right now its a pretty even match; a 17 pound baby versus either a nimble 15 pound cat, or a 20 pound sumo-kitty with a low center of gravity.

We’re just getting ready to head to LA for Naama’s wedding. So excited! But, before we go, I thought I should get a few more pictures up to keep you guys satisfied. Here are the pictures from planting:

The plot was pretty overgrown:

Liam was hard at work:

we pulled up a lot of weeds!

Hopefully all the hard work will pay off

the boys

Here’s some pictures of me looking like a goof. this was on our mother’s day picnic to spy pond

Finally, Liam was very interested in meeting our friend Regina’s baby, Grady, who was born April 3, 2008

okay, enough procrastination, i have to pack!

Today we planted our first ever community garden…. we arrived at our plot, which technically is not available until tomorrow (but who starts on a Monday?), to find it overgrown with weeds. We spent an hour weeding, then got underway planting. We planted tomatoes, three just regular, and three heirloom varieties (sioux, black zebra, and oaxacan jewel), peppers, both 6 cubanelle and 6 rainbow bells, 4 strawberries, 2 squash, 2 zucchini, 3 cantaloupes, and 6 cauliflower. Liam napped through the weeding in his bike trailer, and then played nicely on his blanket while we planted. A few other people were planting as well, so we aren’t the only one’s breaking the rules. We’ve never done a community garden before, and we have high hopes (but realize that we may not get much). We are also growing spices on the back porch, 2 varieties of thyme, rosemary, cilantro, basil, and 2 tomato plants.

pictures to follow, of course.

Sometimes you just have to stop to smell the flowers….

and then….

crush it

and finally, all you can do is

Yes, what I have learned from my son is:

when all else fails, eat it

if you can’t beat it, eat it

if you don’t understand it, eat it

also, if you’re hungry and it’s food, drop it on the floor!