The Fine Game of Nil

Sunday was my work’s summer picnic.  Back when it was time to RSVP for it, we were back and forth on the fence about whether we’d be able to make it with a newborn.  But, we figured that Emily would probably go a week or two early, and we’d have no problems bringing a 2 week old in a baby sling.  Of course it turned out that Teacup was born just 3 days before the picnic.  But, on Saturday we found ourselves feeling a little bit house-bound and approaching stir-crazy, so we headed out Sunday morning to the picnic.

For most of the month of June, the weather here has been cool and rainy, and Sunday was no exception.  Out on the coast on the North Shore there was a heavy mist falling and gusty winds blowing in off the ocean.  During lunch, Dor spent her time in her carseat bundled under a blanket.  Afterwards she migrated to snuggling into mom’s chest in a baby sling.  Dor got lots of compliments on being a very cute baby and quite outgoing to visit a picnic at 4 days old.

Liam also had an excellent time, and due to the weather was the more photogenic of the two.

We’ve never had issues getting food into Liam or getting him to try new things.  The menu at the picnic was a New England lobster boil, but they also provided a kid’s menu with burgers and hot dogs.  Liam ended up eating: clam chowder, bbq chicken, potato salad, half an ear of corn… and his first lobster.

After lunch, we walked down to the beach.  It was too cold and blustery to go into the water, so we just walked around, dug in the sand, and played with sticks.

Emily and Dor also came walking on the beach, with Dor bundled up against mom and borrowing my hat to keep off the wind.

Liam on his last day as an only-child.

This was 9 AM on Wednesday.  Emily had started having some minor contractions, and we were pretty sure the baby was coming some time in the next 24 hours.  Liam and I were just taking a walk in the rain while waiting for Katie to show up and look after him while Emily and I went to the OB to confirm.

Mom, Liam and Dor.  Posing for some pictures before we head out to the OB.  It turned out that things were progressing slowly enough that we came back home afterward and spent the afternoon and early evening hanging out and waiting.

Around 11 PM, contractions were getting to be about 5 minutes apart, and we decided to head into the hospital.  Emily called her OB to confirm that we were coming in and we bummed a ride from a friend and headed in.

The photo above was taken at 11:24 PM, soon after we had been admitted.

The photo below was taken at 2:15 AM, soon after Dor made her appearance.

The next day, Liam came in to visit and met his baby sister for the first time.  He was thrilled and excited and made sure to point out that she also had two eyes a nose and a mouth.

More later hopefully.  Its been a challenge to get this up though.  I’ve been running herd on an excited 2 year old who wants nothing more than to play and roughhouse with his little sister.  Much of today has felt like being locked in a minivan with a dingo and a bone china teacup full of meat.

No baby yet… Due date is tomorrow. I’m surprised this baby didn’t make an entrance a little early like Liam did. But they do say that every pregnancy is different, and how one goes doesn’t influence how the next will go. So, we’re just waiting around. On the bright side, we’ve had several really nice, relaxing weekends with Liam, trying to really just savor the time with him. He won’t remember a time when he was an only child and got all our attention, but hopefully it will mean something down the road.

Here are a few videos to keep you occupied. This first one is Liam opening a present that arrived from Bruce and Barb. He has been very into shovels lately, since helping Alex plant the garden, and also digging in the sand and some of the playgrounds around here. So he already knew the word shovel, and he knew exactly what they were when he saw them. After banging them together for several minutes, we had to immediately go outside and dig in the sandbox with reckless abandon.

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Liam has been coming with me to some of my prenatal doctors appointments. He now knows what it means when I say we’re going to see Dr. Hardiman or Arianna. If we are seeing Arianna, he puts his hand on his chest, near his heart, and says “bump bump”. That is because she lets him hold the doppler wand to listen to the baby’s heartbeat, and sometimes puts it up against his heart so he can hear his own heartbeat. It may be one of the cutest things ever. So at my last appointment (June 16th), I brought my camera so we could get a video of it.

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Overall I’m actually feeling very good. The weather has been unseasonable cool and rainy. The rainy part is kind of a drag, especially if it means Liam and I are housebound. But the cool part is nice. Hot and late pregnancy are not a good mix!

Stay tuned, hopefully we’ll have some exciting news to post in the near future.

I haven’t been here on the blog nearly as often as I’d like.  A good part of this is because The Boy has recently changed into some sort of crazed monkey; running around, swinging off things and screaming in joy.  Not that I’m complaining mind you.  Its quite a bit of fun to watch him tearing it up on the playground, or to see him spot a mud puddle 20 meters down the bike path and make a bee-line for it.  That’s what happened tonight on the walk home from the square as Emily, he and I were walking home from work.  When we departed this morning, we werent’ planning on puddle stomping, so he wasn’t wearing the proper waterproof footwear.  But with only an hour before bed, I’m not that concerned about wet feet.  Wet pants though, are a pain, so I managed to stall him long enough to roll his pants up past his knees.  With that done, he took off at full speed towards the puddle, expecting, I assume, to plow right through it like a powerboat leaving twin wakes and a rooster tail behind him.  Instead, it turned out that because it had just rained, the puddle was a bit deeper than he imagined.  Two steps into it the ground disappeared out from under him and he flat out belly flopped face first into muddy water that nearly washed over the back of his head.  There was a moments pause as he arched his face out of the water and Emily and I froze to see what would happen.  Our theory on bumps and falls is to see how he reacts before coming to his aid.  Tuesday, he took a line drive from a foam baseball to the face and just shook it off and went about his business.  This time, however, he came up eyes squeezed shut against the water and crying about the cruelty of all of existence.  Emily and I picked him up and cooed at him and tried somewhat successfully not to laugh at the whole situation.  He calmed down pretty quickly, but for the whole rest of the walk home he still seemed a bit shell shocked; holding our hands and stumbling stiffly down the path, still trying to figure out what had just happened.  By the time we got home though, he seemed to have completely recovered.  He spent the next 15 minutes running laps in the house and screaming while I made salads for dinner.

This past weekend was relatively quiet and uneventful, and combined with the weather seemed to make exactly he relaxing weekend the three of us needed.  We spent a lot of time at the park, which for mom and dad involves a lot of sitting in the shade occasionally exclaiming, “Did you just see that? I didn’t know he could do that!”  Sunday’s big trip was a walk out to our garden space about a mile away.  Emily seems to be holding up wonderfully during this pregnancy, but a two mile round trip is quite an accomplishment for a 9 month pregnant lady.

Emily standing in the wind looking epic.

Liam was thrilled with the outing and had the best time running up and down the walkway near the garden.

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Liam has been becoming more and more verbal every day. He comes out with words that we had no idea he could say, and it just astounds us. I hope to take a few videos of him talking, because writing it really doesn’t convey the way it sounds, and sometimes only Alex and I would be able to decipher what the word is… but, for posterity’s sake, a few of the words he can say are (not all are as clear as the look written, and where possible, I’ll try to give an accurate representation of how it sounds when he says it):

cat, hat (shat), ball, basket, dog, dada, mama, sock, shoe, double U (that clear), playground (DA dow), slide, stair, chair, fish (oo-ish), horse (oo-orshe), orange (oo-rshe), goldfish, apple, owl, Derrik (de-r), Xochi (chee), Shawna (shoe-ona), bed, book, poop, cow, moo, baaa (for sheep), duck, goose, quack/honk (gonk), truck, car, fire truck (ire truck), wee ooo wee ooo (noise a fire truck makes), picture (bicture), baby (bebe), me, no (obviously), yes (yeah)…He also tries to sing the alphabet song, starting from Q

I’m sure there are more, but that’s all I can think of right now. It’s really amazing and wonderful to watch him learn new words. It’s clear he understands much more than he can say, and to see the way his face lights up when we finally understand what he has been trying to say is priceless. For a while now he has been saying “bicture, bicture”, especially if I’m on the computer, and I couldn’t tell what it meant… did it mean push in (as in push in mama’s chair)?  Then it finally clicked that he was saying picture and asking to look at pictures on the computer. Our screen saver is pictures of him, and so he knows that pictures of him are on the computer.

Also, when we discover that he can physically do something we weren’t aware, the feeling is just awesome. This past weekend at the play ground he began climbing up tall ladders (5 or 6 feet) with no fear and no trouble at all. We were mightily impressed. He even made it up chain ladders and across suspension type bridges.

This is a really fun age!

Edited to add: I thought of a bunch more words yesterday morning… here they are:

dinosaur, egg, water, more, Mehmot (”memo” name of someone in his vanpool), bus, turtle, cheese, trash, flush, mouse, moose, dragon, monkey, jacket, monster, bird, eye, ear, nose, teeth, banana (manana), balloon, purple, bee, walrus, rabbit, frog, pig…. the list goes on and on

For Mother’s Day this year, we had a nice quiet day, starting with Alex and Liam making me eggs and waffles for breakfast, as well as letting me sleep in until the decadent hour of 8am. We then walked out to the garden to plant a few more tomato plants and enjoy the spring weather. The garden is about a mile away, so the walk is quite a bit of exercise for me at this point. While Liam is good at walking, he’s still somewhat unpredictable, and because we have to walk on some major roads to get there, he is stroller bound most of the walk. After we get to the Fresh Pond area, where the garden is, we ar eable to let him out and he can run around in the woods.

Happy to be out of the stroller

Supervising the planting of the tomatoes

Helping with the planting

Family portrait

Cheese!

Is it just part of life with a toddler that you’re always playing catch up? I wanted to get a few more posts up before the new baby arrives, which could be any time in the next three weeks!

Easter was a small affair this year. We did have our annual Easter Egg Dyeing party, but we had it the week after Easter, and I only took one picture from it. Easter Day itself, we had Jed and Ray over for late lunch/dinner, and had a small easter egg hunt on the back porch (it was still very cold). Bruce and Barb sent Liam his very first “Easter Basket”, with lots of goodies in it

Like a typical child or pet, Liam was very intrigued with the packaging

A bug catcher, which might do double-duty as a kitten catcher

An Easter Bunny/football toy

Working on a cool new puzzle with Dad. As a side note, this puzzle had six different opening each with a different type of lock to figure out… Liam could do five of the six on the first try. I’m not sure that teaching him how to undo all the mechanisms we have to keep him out of things is really a good idea!

Easter Egg Hunt

The one picture from our Easter Egg Dyeing party. This is Katie, our friend and faithful babysitter!

A nice picture of Liam and Mama

Daycare must have taught him to say “cheese” when he gets his picture taken, because now when you go to take his picture he says “cheese!” and smiles. Also, note the hair cut

Liam’s hair has gotten quite long, and Alex and I have frequent discussions over when it will be time to cut it… It usually involves Alex saying, “he has a mullet, we have to get his hair cut” and me saying “he looks bald, we’re not cutting his hair”. (As a side note, we finally did cut his hair about two weeks ago. I cut it for him, because I couldn’t justify paying someone to snip just a little bit off. I’ll post pictures of that soon. also, I know he doesn’t look bald, but his hair is so blond and fine that it doesn’t really seem like he has that much). Here are a few pictures to demonstrate the hair situation.

Also, here I am about 7 months pregnant

The final two pictures are of Liam over two days when he was sick with a pretty high fever. He was quite lethargic, and just kind of passing out all over the place. He actually fell asleep on Alex about half an hour before his bedtime, which is very unusual for him. He had chosen his outfits (note the trucks and sharks), and they clearly don’t fit anymore

A few weeks back, we took the train out to Codman Farms in Lincoln, MA. It’s calving/lambing season, and we had heard that they had lots of baby animals to see (lambs, calves, piglets, kids (goats), etc). They are conveniently located less than half a mile from the train stop, so instead of renting a car, we got to ride the train. Liam is really turning into such a typical boy. He loves to see cars, trucks, buses, trains, etc. When he sees a bus, he moves his hands around in a circle, the motion for singing “the Wheels on the Bus”. There might not be anything cuter than a little boy waving his hand and saying “beep, beep, beep”.

So, we took the train out and walked over to the farm. There we were told to feel free to walk around and look at whatever we wanted.

Hard to see, but the piglets are in the background

He was afraid of the turkeys, which I can understand. They’re as big or bigger than he is, and just funny looking. Plus, there were a lot of them and they were clucking and carrying on

Cows? We’re much more comfortable with cows. We know they saw “mooooo”

Inside one of the barns was this old toy horse

Then we went to see the baby goats

Some action shots

Oh yeah, Liam also loves tractors

We had a great time, and it was nice to support a local farm.