For the moment, all about the Holman child.
File these under: Its Officially All Over!
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2 things to note about these videos. First, these were shot after the drive back from Lake George, so he was pretty amped up to be out of the car seat. Second, I’m really glad I had the forethought to break the cats’ spirit while they were still kittens. They’ve been remarkably understanding throughout this whole process.
Alex and Emily Holman are reported to be missing, presumed eaten in what authorities are calling a “Probable zombie attack.“
Police entering the residence found scraps of clothing and bone as well as a camera, containing a single image (shown below). Also discovered was a 9-inch hole which appeared to have been gnawed from the inside of the residence. Authorities are urging neighbors to remain calm as they believe the situation will resolve itself once the creature finishes teething.
Actually, this is the result of Emily handing Liam a whole tomato, but it does illustrate pretty well why I take care to keep my fingers well away when tossing food into his cage. Also related is the Pluot incident, which I’ll write about as soon as I get the pictures off Emily’s phone.
A couple of months the owner of the company I’m postdoc’ing with, and where Liam goes to daycare, received a realistic life size iron rhinoceros sculpture for his birthday. He placed it on the grounds surrounding the lab, just past a thicket of tall grass, such that as you exit the front door of the main lab building there’s a rhinoceros standing in the distance staring at you.
When I first showed it to Liam, he was immediately taken with it. He clearly recognized it as representing something animal and interesting. On our first visit he started staring at it and squeaking. Since then, whenever I go and spring him from daycare during the afternoon, we make a point of walking over to visit his rhino. We pet it and talk to it, and Liam really likes how when you pat it on its side it makes a nice hollow bonging noise. If we’re walking around the grounds and I ask, “Liam, where’s your rhinoceros?”, he’ll pause, scan the horizon till he finds it, then point at it and squeak.
Last week after we visited with the rhinoceros, we went over to the guinea hen enclosure and checked out the pair that were scratching around in the dirt. Liam was transfixed with the set of prehistoric-looking birds scratching around in the dirt. When one paused and ruffled its feathers in the dirt, he startled and clung close onto my shoulder.
Afterward, we went back to the main lawn and sat under a big shade tree and watched the world go by.
Emily and I have taken to alternating who gets up and plays with Liam after he wakes up at 5:30AM, allowing the other parent to sleep until the decadent hour of 8. Last Sunday was my morning, and as I was sitting bleary eyed fending off a one year old who really wants to drink coffee, he suddenly turned and scooted off around the corner. After a couple of moments of shuffling sounds, I hear Liam give his slightly alarmed, “Dad, I’m in a little over my head here and could use some assistance” cry. I came around the corner, and found darling Liam stuck head and shoulders in a cardboard box. Turns out his arms fold down really well and push into the box, but when he went to back out, he couldn’t get purchase on anything to free himself.
Around the house he’s continued to get into EVERYTHING. We’re continuing our triage babyproofing. He’s just starting to develop the skills to possibly shake the entertainment center down on himself, so that’s now bolted to the wall. The poisons cabinet is now locked, though I have yet to get the latches on the root vegetable cabinet (you’d be surprised at the amount of trouble The Boy can get into armed with a yam).
Walking and climbing seem to be coming online relatively closely. This morning he took a good 5 or 6 steps across the dining room. Later, I think he purposefully placed his play cube on the floor and used it as a step-stool to boost up onto the couch. Then, as the three of us were waiting downstairs on the porch for my ride to arrive, he climbed 4 steps up the hallway stairway before the narrow turn stopped him. I really expect to walk into the dining room one day and find him sitting in the hanging chandelier like he belongs up there. I already routinely walk in and find him standing in his car seat riding it like a rocking horse.
Up till now we’ve done a lot of talking about the whole business of baby steps. However, sitting in the sidelines we’ve had a handful of videos showing the process. Here’s a brief retrospective from:
First tentative putting one foot in front of another:
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Stumbling around the house while supported:
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Tearing around the house in his rockin’ Tonka truck:
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Come morning, I can consult with Emily and figure out the approximate dates of each video, but surfice to say, this has been happening QUICK! The big news here is that lately we’ve had some first tentative unsupported steps. Mostly happening when he gets so excited about something that he forgets to hold on and walks with out realizing it.
We’re slowly catching up on the blog posting…
Liam’s birthday was July 28th. His birthday party was July 27th. No one from either side of our family was able to attend the party, which was a drag, but we had tons of friends there to help celebrate in style. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and this party was a great reminder of the village that Liam has helping raise him. We had a very casual BBQ party and the weather, which as been very odd this summer, decided to cooperate. (As a side note, we have been loving the weather this summer. Usually in Boston you might get one or two thunderstorms a season, with maybe three or four good claps of thunder. Then the next day, everyone would be talking about how terrible the thunderstorm was. Alex and I are both from Missouri, where you get really amazing thunderstorms. I used to love sitting on the porch with my dad at night and listen to the rain and thunder while he read a book or newspaper. So, with that history in mind, we have had at least 15 great thunderstorms this season, and it has been very refreshing).
As I was saying, Liam’s party was pretty casual. We invited a small handful of people and the attendance was really good. There were lots of babies/little kids there, which was nice. At one point, I believe we had four babies (all 1 year or under) and two older children. We had said no presents were necessary, but of course, our friends being very generous did bring presents, mostly books. We served hot dogs and burgers, chips and guacamole, grilled veggies, fresh from our garden, broccoli salad with red onions and bacon (delicious), and of course, birthday cake. Alex made a magnificent duck cake out of sour cream pound cake with mango and pineapple and saffron whipped cream icing. Liam thoroughly enjoyed eating the cake, and opening the presents. He gets very excited around other babies, and often will scoot right up to them and scream (happily) in their faces, as if to say “I’M SO GLAD YOU’RE HERE!! YOU’RE MY SIZE!! YAY!!!!” This can be overwhelming to some little ones, and did in fact make two of our guests cry. (And, like the overprotective mother that I am, I had to ask the pediatrician if this was “normal”or if I should be worrying that Liam is a bully. She laughed at me (good naturedly) and said it was very normal).
before the party, Jed and Ray came over to occupy Liam while we finished getting food ready.
The Cake
Regina and Grady
Liam saying “hi” to Alasdair. He really didn’t mean to be so rough!
Tiffany, Declan, Xochi, Liam, Alasdair and Evyan
yummy, birthday cake
Happy Birthday to Liam
that’s some good cake, daddy!
Declan with the party hat. Declan’s birthday was July 25th, just three days before Liam’s
Evyan and Alasdair. Alasdair’s birthday is August 15th (I’m almost postiive! we’re going to his birthday party this weekend)
Dawn, Avram, and Joel
Liam loved the knit brown bear that Xochi made him. His nose is the perfect size to go into a baby’s mouth
Opening presents is fun
get that off my head, daddy!
Liam’s two big birthday presents from Mom and Dad were an activity cube, and a tonka truck. It’s hard to tell which he liked better. They were kind of like chocolate and peanut butter, two great tastes that taste great together!
Daycare also had a little celebration for Liam’s birthday. On Monday when he arrived, they had a sign up, and made him a little hat to wear. This is why we love his daycare.
Yo, it’s my birthday!
Speaking of the pediatrician, Liam had his 1 year appoint on July 29th. Everything checked out well, though he continues to be a peanut. He weighed in at 18lbs and 2oz, still only in the 3% for weight. But he grew quite a bit, and is now 28 3/4″ tall, putting him around 10-15% for his height. The pediatrician continues to be not concerned about this. To ease my worries, she showed me him charted by weight to height ratio, and he falls comfortable in the 10-15% range. I’m trying hard not to be obsessed about it. He’s a peanut, and that’s how he is right now. He’s healthy, he’s active, curious, and clearly growing, and has the diapers to prove the food is getting through. It is probably compounded by the fact that I now work with kids with massive intestinal issues who don’t absorb food correctly and need to be on tube feeds and every day at work we constantly talk about nutritional needs. But he eats well, and enjoys eating, and we enjoy feeding him. So I’m relaxing. I knew motherhood would be about worrying. But at least it’s also about laughing.
So, although a little late, Happy Birthday Mr. Liam. I can’t believe it has been a year. In many ways it feels like just yesterday that we brought you home, scared out of our minds and extremely sleep deprived. In other ways, it feels like we have known each other for ever.
I’m going to sneak in ahead of alex and post some pictures, and maybe some stories, about our trip to Toronto.
After Alex had been gone to England/Scotland in April for a week (while I went to St. Louis with Liam), and then Crete for two weeks (with me home alone with Liam), I decided that Liam and I were coming with Alex for his next conference, which was in Toronto. We flew to Buffalo and then rented a car and drove to Toronto. This was a significantly cheaper route, and also didn’t require Liam having a passport, which I think I mentioned here before.
Update… darn, he got in before I did…
I’ll start again. It’s Monday night. Liam is asleep after a little fussing (has a tooth coming in), the Olympics are on, Alex is at BTO, and I have a cup of Green Tea Chai steeping.
As I was saying, we flew to Buffalo, a very short flight, then hopped in a car and drove to Toronto. The drive was only to take 2 hours, but there was construction on the high ways, and we made one wrong turn, so we arrived at our hotel at 230am! we were exhausted to say the least. Liam slept the whole way in his carseat like an angel.
Alex had his conference from Saturday afternoon until Wednesday morning. He did a great job of balancing time at the conference and time with us. Every day he had an hour and half for lunch, and we would walk down to meet him and eat lunch out, or go back to the hotel room for lunch there. We also did some sight seeing. Liam and I went to the Royal Ontario Museum, Casa Loma (a castle/mansion), The Hockey Hall of Fame, the CN tower, and the Toronto Zoo. Alex came with us in the CN tower and to the Zoo.
Our swanky hotel room:
The View from our hotel room:
Liam with moose:
The first night there, the conference people organized a scavenger hunt of sorts. There was a map of the city with several points marked on it. For each point on the map, there was a question about the location (i.e. how many people are in the statue outside the courthouse). you got 1 point for a right answer, 0 for a blank, and -1 for a wrong answer. You also only had 90 minutes to answer as many as possible. After 90 minutes, you lost 1 point for every minute late. Alex and I were a team, and answered 15 questions with no time penalty. The next day we found out we came in second place! Pretty good, I think.
by the way, the answer was 11
The Royal Ontario Museum
Casa Loma
just hanging at the pastrami house (I can’t remember what it was really called, but it was delicious!)
atop the CN Tower
We had dinner out at Kensington Market one night. It’s a funky/hip area with lots of little grocers, thrift type stores, and more upscale stores
With the Stanley Cup at the Hockey Hall of Fame. Sadly out of focus as we had a bystander take the picture for us.
At the zoo
I’m not sure you can tell here, but Liam started to point at things while we were in Toronto. Here he is pointing at the elephants. He loves to point to things at home now, sometimes accompanied with “dat” to indicate he wants something, or wants to know what something is.
On our way back to Boston, we got stuck in Buffalo for an extra day because the storms in Boston were so bad our plane didn’t make it into Buffalo. It worked out well. We were able to take a bus out to Niagra Falls and spend the day there.
We also saw the Niagra Falls Aquarium, which was small but kept Liam’s attention pretty well, especially with the Sea Lion show.
This might have been the longest post ever. It was a great trip, and it was fun to travel with Liam. Two final images for you, loving daddy and loving mommy
Things have been a little sparse here for the past couple of months, mostly because the three of us have been running around several shades of crazy busy. There’s been the travel. First I was off on the Greek island of Crete, then the three of us were over in LA for Naama’s wedding (which was gorgeous and an amazing time). Finally we all went up to Toronto where I attended a bioinformatics conference and Emily and Liam played in the city. All of these trips have fun interesting stories, which I’m not going to tell here, but will hopefully we’ll be able to get some of the photos and stories up.
Aside from the travel, The Boy has been keeping us good and busy. Recently, the developmental milestones have started coming rapid-fire. First he was butt-scooting around the floor. Then he learned how to pull himself up on objects and cruise around the perimeter of the room. Funny story by the way, about the pulling up and cruising. I was slightly worried that we didn’t have enough objects in the house that would offer a decent handhold for him to practice pulling up and standing with. Turns out, that EVERY object in the house is appropriate. The couch, our big wooden storage crate, chairs, the fireplace, the bookshelves, the cats. One of his favorite hand holds is sneaking up behind daddy and grabbing a double fist-full of leg hair to pull himself up with.
One of the other reasons I’ve been off-blog has been a secret project I’ve been dumping all my free writing-about-Liam time into. As a present for Liam (and Emily, though I actually gave it to Liam on his birthday) I took the entire blog and turned it into a hardcover 8×10 book. I ended up re-downloading all the photos in high resolution and setting up a completely new page layout, with some of the nicer photos as full-page images. When I started the project, I really did not have any idea the scale of a project that it represented. I was imagining a simple 60 or 70 page book with photos, however after several weeks of working on it in secret, I ended up with a really nice 200 page photo book. I had the thing printed through a company called Blurb that does 1-off photo book prints for relatively little money, and I’m very happy with the results. Which brings me to the related announcement:
The book project Liam’s First Year was designed and intended as a gift for Emily and Liam, and it has worked wonderfully as that. However, if anyone else would like to buy a copy, you can drop over to the Blurb website via the link below. It runs about $50 for the softcover and $70 for hardcover. I have no stake in anyone else buying copies, but let me tell you it ended up as a really nice looking book.
It lives at the Blurb website here:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/297859/
If you’d like to check out the layout and content, you can run a preview of the first several pages on Blurb, or download a .pdf copy here:
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.