The Fine Game of Nil

This morning The Boy was running around playing with a bar coaster we had from Delirium Tremens beer which prominently featured a cute pink elephant on it. He then proceeded to jump up on my lap and ask to read A Nose Like a Hose which prominently features a grey elephant.  When we hit the first elephant picture he excitedly pointed back and forth between the pink elephant on the coaster and the grey elephant in the book.

I’m not sure if object abstraction is an official developmental milestone, but I’m darn proud of him.  Being able to recoginize that the class of things known as ‘elephant’ can contain multiple colors, varieties, and mediums seems pretty darn impressive to me.   This is not the first time either.  A couple of days ago we were reading Picnic and he noted that the red firetruck toy he was playing with matched the red pickup truck that the mice were driving to their picnic.

Of course, right now he has no concept of the size of an elephant.  Last time we went to the zoo, he didn’t yet have his elephant schema.  I wonder if now once he sees a real one it’ll just completely blow his mind.

The Boy has expanded his bag of tricks quite significantly lately.  For quite a while he’s been having these really in depth conversations with us in some native baby tongue, but recently, he’s really started to use his syllables, and is able to hold down his end of the conversation pretty well (even though its still gibberish).  The other day, though, I came home and Emily had taught him how to say ‘Moo’ for a cow and ‘Choo-choo’ for a train.

He’s also been going crazy with the books.  When we’re sitting with him in the living room he’ll run over to the book shelf, select a book, and bring it over to one of us to read.  His favorites are The Color Goblins, his Life on the Farm book and A Nose Like a Hose.  We go though and read the book and point out all the animals on every page.  Right now his favorite animal is the elephant, probably because of A Nose Like a Hose, but the monkey is swiftly gaining

We’re also a little bit shoe obsessed right now.  This is a picture of him wearing mom’s red shoes on his feet while putting his own red shoes on his hands and clapping.  Previously, he would go and find his shoes and bring them over and ask us to help him put them on.  More recently, he’s started bringing a pair of our shoes over to one of us and asking that we put them on also.

Also, even though we’re respectable parents we’re not above putting black olives on all five of his fingers for our own amusement.  Liam on the other hand seemed quite bemused by the whole process.

The weekend before last was another big snowstorm here.  We’d previously attempted several walks in the snow around the neighborhood. Mostly Liam seemed alright with walking around in the pavement or packed snow but was not quite sure about the more fluffy stuff.  Mostly though, he had learned that every walk in the snow ends with a visit to Mr. Crepe’ in the square for a sugar waffle.  On the way back from watching the inauguration though, completely unprovoked he decided to hurl himself into the snowbank and roll around in the fluffy snow.  I think its partly the fact that he’s a New England child at heart coming out, and partially because Mom and Dad have been working really hard to model good snow playing skills for him each time we go out.

Speaking of modeling good snow playing skills though, last time we were out the snow had just finished falling and I had picked up a handful of it to eat.  Apparently this stuck with The Boy because on his next trip out he was desperately trying to pick up and eat all the snow / plow cruft that he could reach.  This is one of the cleaner pieces he found, but most of the outing Emily was having to confiscate more gritty bits.  Definitely need to remember that right now The Boy is a sponge.

Looks like the third time is the charm for Liam and snow. Or at least, he is slowly getting there. Each time we take him out in the snow, he is a little more adventurous.

But before we see those pictures, here are a few pictures to encourage DSS to visit us. Liam loves getting into the liquor cabinet (before we finally got the child locks put on it!). He loves the small size nips, he thinks they were made just for him and any chance he can get to run around with them in his hand he cackles with glee.

Okay, on to the fun snow pictures. Saturday last, January 10, we had more snow, so Sunday was the perfect day to take Liam out in it. We didn’t have high hopes, given our previous attempts, including one (which there was no post about) where he freaked out and cried hysterically about 3 minutes out of the house. Granted, it was really really cold that day, so I think that was the issue, not the snow. Anyways. We decided to bring the sled and pull him, then give him the opportunity to walk if he wanted to. We also decided it was a perfect morning for sugar waffles from Mr. Crepe in the Square, so we headed in that direction. As usual, Liam was only so-so on the sled.

I have no picture to show it, but we did let him out to walk a bit on the way there, and when he saw a puppy frolicking in the snow, he made a bee line for it as fast as he could… unfortunately the owner picked the puppy up and carried him away before Liam got there. Then we had to turn around and trudge back in the right direction. Once we got to Mr. Crepe, we ordered our waffles and sat by the window to watch the people and the snow plows go by.

Then came the sugar waffles, which were warm and crunchy and perfect for a cold, snowy day. Luckily we ordered two! We also ordered a bacon, egg, and cheese crepe, because we decided we were more hungry then we thought.

Then we headed back home. Liam was much more open to walking. Alex took some video, and he might post that later. This photo may be my new favorite photo of Liam

Liam walked a large part of the way home, and then walked (on his own, no coercing), into the back yard and right into the untouched, unshoveled snow. This snow was probably 6 inches deep, which is pretty deep when you aren’t even 3 feet tall yet! What motivated this bravery?

Unfortunately it was terribly stuck in the snow, and Mom wasn’t willing to shovel him out.

Hopefully we will slowly get the backlog of photos and stories up on the site, but I make no promises.

Thanksgiving was a relatively quiet affair. Our friends Jed and Ray joined us, as well as a new coworker from Alex’s work, Alka. As mentioned in the post about Christmas, Liam was not eating solid foods last year at Thanksgiving (which we spent at our friend Katie’s parents’ house in Connecticut), so this was his first real Thanksgiving experience.

We tried a new cooking method, called butterflying. (This is not a new technique in general, just new to us). It supposedly would cut the cooking time down from 3-4 hours to about 1- 1 1/2 hours. I was skeptical., but it did cook in about an hour and half. Amazing! Here is Alex butterflying the turkey:

Liam says he is ready to dig in. This was before he became handy with a fork, so you’ll note his little plastic spoon

A better shot of the table

Alex, Ray, Jed, and Liam

And no post would be complete without the return of the monster face. Liam had stopped making his monster face for awhile there, but with a resurgence of teething, it has come back in full force. This is Xochi holding Liam while he makes his monster face

Christmas this year was a quiet affair.  Emily, The Boy and I all stayed around Cambridge through the holiday.  We cooked our traditional dinner of mushroom soup and potato and cheese pierogies.

This is Liam’s second official Christmas, though for the first one he was really still a floppy lump of 5-month old baby.  This year, he was up and running around, interested in opening and interacting with objects, playing with things and had firmly made the transition from baby to child.  Also important was that while last Christmas he was still eating mush from a baby food jar, these days he’s able to devour most anything we put in front of him.  I’m still not sure if we’ve started forming permanent memories yet, so this still might not be the first Christmas he remembers, but he was definitely able to enjoy this one a lot more.

This was Liam’s first shot at the potato, cheese and onion pierogies with carmolized onion butter as well as the vinegar mushroom soup.  He’s been getting so much better with utensils these days.  Lately he’s been watching us eating with a shiny silver big-kid fork, and demanding one for himself.  Which we’re fine to provide him with.  He’s been getting so much better at carefully spearing a bit of food, then turning it around to either eat, or to feed to mom and dad.  I was a little worried at the beginning that the game Feed-Daddy-with-a-Fork would be entre into the game Stab-Daddy-in-the-Face-with-a-Fork, but so far we’ve been good.

Liam loved the pierogies with butter and onions, but wasn’t certain about the sharp, sour mushroom soup.  Thats okay though, he’s got a couple of years to grow into it.

Taking a quick break from opening presents to take a lap on our tricycle.

Emily had previously introduced me to the Christmas crackers with the toy, joke, and little paper crown inside.  This year, Liam got one that fit just right for his head.  Mom and Boy hanging around in paper hats.

I’m not sure why, but I really like this photo for some reason.  We take so many photos of The Boy, its a wonder he’s not tired of it.

Afterwards I let him have a go, and he took a picture of mom.

Looking at our kitty pop up book.

Then a ride on our rocking horse.

Then, later that morning, we took our tricycle out for a spin down the bike path.