The Fine Game of Nil

Last Friday Katie was over playing with Liam and got the idea to get some gel and spike his hair up into a faux-hawk. Of course, one thing led to another and The Boy ended up in leather and chains singing lead for the Norwegian metal band Bäby.

I’ll just go for the pretty!

So, Liam is not crawling yet, but has taken to turning 360 while on his tummy, and scooting backwards. The other day, this is what happened:

For perspective, he started in the middle of the room, on the blanket

Liam is not very concerned about this predicament

I also wanted to post a few more family pictures, these are from various times over the past few months

Here is Liam with his aunt Sara

Liam with Aunt Anne

Another Liam and Grandpa

Liam and aunt Jenny

oh, alex called, i’m to meet them at the T, gotta run

According to the post ID number this is our 100th post on the blog.  Granted, that counts several we’ve begun and not finished, but still, what a nice round number.  To celebrate that, I’ll leave you with a really nice picture of the boy (’cause we’ve not had much of that in the past 100 posts).

The weather has recently changed pretty drastically, and it feels like Spring could be just around the corner, which is good, because Winter was starting to drag on me a bit. Not that its been an especially long or hard winter; its been more snowy than bitter cold. I’ve just felt kind of like a shut-in for the last 4 months. With it being cold and getting dark around 5, its hard to figure out how to get out of the house on a regular basis with the boy. Emily seems to manage on the days that she’s home with him, taking walks out to the library and the grocery store. At work, I’ve been able to drop in on Liam in day care in the afternoons, which has been nice. Yesterday was the first reasonably nice day (still chilly and blustery, but not bitter) so we bundled up and went for a short walk on the trails around the campus. Liam was still a little groggy from his nap, and the chilly wind didn’t help, but we still had a good time walking through the mushy grass and looking at the river. Once it warms up a bit more we should be able to take regular afternoon hikes around the grounds.

I was a little concerned initially, about sending Liam to daycare. It felt kind of like kenneling him, sending him off to sit bored in a cage all day while Emily and I go to work. But after visiting him several times there though, its pretty clear that he loves the place. Usually when I show up he’s either hanging out in the arms of one of the daycare ladies, or sitting in a circle holding court with all the other babies.

I will swoop in and post just a picture or two, before he gets back to write more. We were recently in Seattle, which was a great trip, despite Liam having a cold with a really high fever (it hit 103.1 at one point!). Here are just a few pictures from that trip:

Liam loves his Grandpa Gerard

Mama still rocks too

Toes? Toes are really the next big thing, I tell you. Liam learned how to take his socks off while we were in Seattle.

We went to the Aquarium, which he did enjoy, despite this picture. It was octopus week, which was kind of disappointing, because they only had two octopus. I was hoping for an octopus battle royale…. but no.

Out side the Aquarium. Note our new stroller, the Bob…. we love it…

On more interesting news, I may have a new job vey soon…. I meet with HR there on Friday to discuss salary and benefits. I will keep you posted.

Things have been pretty silent here on the blog lately, but that’s certainly not because of a lack of things to write about. More, the boy has been running us ragged in the past month. In a good way though. Really, it feels like someone just threw a switch inside of him and he changed from an infant to a baby. When I was last writing here, he was definitely interactive, he would watch you and talk to you and grab stuff and stand when balanced, but he always had to work at it quite a bit. You could watch the thought process work:

Shiny object…I want it…there are these two hand like things stuck to the end of my arms…maybe I can use them…Yay it worked…now where should I put it…if only I had a mouth…etc…

Now, you pull him up to a table and he’s almost instantly oriented himself and is knocking over water glasses with one hand and going for a steak knife with the other. Before the switch, he would have interest in holding toys, and crinkling the crinkly bits a little, but he never seemed to really get into a toy. Suddenly now, his curiosity cube (tubular plastic cube with a different manipulation toy on each side) is the greatest thing ever. He’ll sit intently and poke at the rings on the bars, or spin the mirror, concentrating on it with all his baby might. He’s even started mimicking us. If you tap on something that makes noise, he’ll watch, then smack it also.

He’s also begun to pick up consonants in his range of noises. He’s now managed dada (though I don’t think it as of yet has any connection to me) and other more advanced sounds.

Wow, there’s so much more to tell about how he is and the cool things he’s doing, however the exhaustion just rolled over me, and I actually started to fall alseep while writing this sentence. To sleep for now, and I’ll post more in the near future. Whew, no attentiveness for proofing, I’ll leave my typos for our readers in Australia and come back and revisit this tomorrow morning.