The Fine Game of Nil

Warning, there are a lot of pictures here (39 to be exact)!

Finally a post with as many, or more, pictures of Dor than of Liam. We went to Kat and Taybin’s wedding in Woodstock, CT last weekend. We had a great time and the wedding was short but heartfelt. The food at the reception was yummy, and they hired babysitters to watch the many toddler children, which allowed us parents to relax a little. The next day we went to the cabin Kat and Taybin were staying at for their honeymoon, and just hung out and swam. Also very fun and relaxing, just what we needed. We got to spend time with our friend’s Naama and Greg, and their new daughter Lena (from LA). And Colin also came in from Seattle. We don’t get to see our West Coast friends very often, so this was a nice opportunity.

Without further ado

A family portrait, just after bath-time

Dor on the bed at the hotel

The many faces of Dor

Teacup and Dingo

And he’s gone!

Curl up…

and stretch!

The ladies all dressed up for the wedding

Liam was the ring-bearer. He carried a small bird’s next with candy rings in it down the aisle. He only tried to give it to one person sitting on the aisle, and then promptly took the next to Taybin

a few wedding shots. Look how happy Kat, the bride, looks

After the wedding, the bride and groom asked everyone to join them behind the barn, and took a group photo. I’m sure it will be an awesome photo, it was a very picturesque setting.

Now, let’s dig in to some BBQ!

Greg and Lena

A friend of ours from the Clark years, Emily Walker, with the bride, Kat

Derrik and Colin get very seriouis

Liam gets down on the dance floor

Our table at the wedding (Colin, Derrik, Saul, Erica, Greg, Naama and Lena)

Alex and Dor

Naama and Lena

This is pretty much how Liam looks all the time

Then the groom broke out the hula hoop. There is a long story resulting in an inside joke about a hula hoop, but just suffice it to say, it was a very funny gift from Alex and I.

I guess he lost his hula hoop mojo? The bride assures us he actually won a hula hoop contest at a bar once

.A fine family

I love the way Liam is looking at Dor

We continue our attempt to get Liam to go into water, for example, here at the hotel pool. He still isn’t buying it. He did get into his swimsuit and step on the first stair into the pool, but that’s all he would do.

Emily Walker, holding Dor, and Naama

Liam, Taybin, and Kat feeding the ducks at the lake

I hope you can tell in this picture that he is screaming at the ducks in glee

And finally, the boys and the grill. what is it about boys and grills?

No pictures today, I apologize.

Just wanted to take a few moments while Dor is quietly sleeping in her cocoon to give an update on things in the Holman Household.

Liam continues to grow every day, adding words and sentences to his massive (to us) vocabulary. I love when he uses complex words in appropriate ways. For example, yesterday Dor and I met Alex and Liam in Davis Square when they got home from work. We decided to splurge and share a cup of ice cream (Almond Joy flavored). While we were ordering it, Liam kept insisting “I eat too, I eat too”. Maybe it’s not that impressive that he understands, and uses correctly, the concept of “too” meaning also, not just the number, but it seemed impressive to me. He continues to want to do things on his own, and often says “no, I do it” or “no, my turn”. He also carries the step stool round now so that he can climb up and get things off the counter, get on the bed, wash his hands at the sink, etc. If he wants to watch me do something in the kitchen, he will go to his room, get the step stool, and carry it all the way into the kitchen. We’ve begun a little bit of potty training, offering to let him sit on the potty whenever we change his diaper. He pretty consistenly pees in it, and has even pooped in it a few times (sorry). He isn’t at the point where he tells us beforehand that he needs to use the potty, but he is getting comfortable using it. When he uses it, he puts his hands in the air and says “yay pee in the potty”. Funny word pronunciation of the day is when he points at the fridge and says what sounds like “manyana”… this actually means “my yogurt”. Also, when he hears music, he starts to hum/coo to it, his version of singing. He calls music “noise”, even when I try to get him to repeat “mu-sic” he says “no-ise”. Plus, he is just incredibly cute, even when in the throws of “terrible twos”, or as I like to call it “angsty twos”.

Dor continues to develop and grow as well. We have been having random social smiles over the past week or two, getting more regular every day. She is cooing up a storm, already much more verbal than Liam was at this age. (We’re told girls tend to be more verbal than boys; boys tend to be more physical at first, then it all balances out). She is still napping quite a bit, and is pleasantly portable. She’s growing more slowly than Liam, but still at a steady rate. I think she is just over 10 lbs now. We’re beginning to wonder if her eyes are turning brownish, as both Alex and I have thought they look a touch brown out of the corner of our eyes.

Other exciting things, next weekend is our friend Taybin’s wedding. We’re excited to see him marry his fiancee, Kat. We’re also excited to see our friends from college: Naama (and Greg and their new daughter Lena), and Colin. I’m sure other college friends will be there, but those are the ones we are most excited about.

For Labor Day we are going to Lake George to visit Bill and Linda. The cousins may be there as well, which would be a lot of fun. Sadly, they have put the lake house on the market. Obviously this is their decision, but it is sad because it is my most favorite place on earth. (A close second would be Milford Sound in New Zealand, but Lake George is a little easier to get to). This will most likely be our last visit there, so I want to make sure to really savor it.

Then the next weekend we are going to St. Louis to visit my family.

Then it’s back to work. I can’t believe 12 weeks is almost over. It goes so fast.

It is a little silly to have three seperate posts with pictures related to Liam’s birthday. But if I didn’t break it up this way, it would be one really really long post. I promise we have also been taking some pictures of Dor. These last pictures are from the Moms Group Birthday Party. As I mentioned below, I love these moms. They have been an awesome source of support for 2 years now. We met at a playground across the street from one mom’s house, because she had her son just five days before the party. The kids ran around and played on the jungle gyms, while we moms (and dads) talked and ate. The intstructor from our group two years ago, Deb, was able to come as well. Finally, we played parachute.

This is Tiffany and her son Declan, with Liam and I. Tiffany lives a few blocks away in Arlington, and we get together at the playground frequently. Both our boys are very active and so it’s great to get out and have someone to talk to while they run around. Sadly (for me) she’s moving a few towns away in about a month.

Trying to get nine moms and nine kids to pose at the same time is impossible, so I’m putting up two pictuers

From the top right:

Lisa (mom) & Katie, Jen (mom) & Joceyln, Sarah (mom) & Alexandra, Rachel (mom) & Gabriel

Bottom right:

Deb, our instructor; Margaret (mom) & Matthew, Holly (mom) & Savannah, Katie (mom) & Yonald Jr, Tiffany (mom) & Delcan, Me & Liam

I love this photo

Yes, Dor really does wonder what exactly she got herself into

Here are the pictures from Liam’s birthday party at our house. It was a very small turnout, which I think is going to be pretty common due to having a summer birthday. Many people we invited were out of town or had other vacation type plans already.We had chicken wings and a soccerball birthday cake.

Warning: the following pictures of Liam are very messy!

Cake was yellow cake from Betty Crocker with a layer of bananas, and homemade banana whipped cream frosting, and chocolate cookies carved to look like soccer ball hexagons.

Yummm, cake

Then, because we were so messy, we had to get naked and get into the tub of water

This post is sadly delayed…. Liam turned two on July 28, and Dor turned one month on July 25. Liam had several small celebrations over the week of his birthday. On Monday, July 27, he went to daycare, where it was our day to send snack, so we sent birthday brownies. They made him a birthday crown (or birthday hat, as he likes to call it), and I believe that they sang happy birthday. He is still wearing the birthday hat two weeks later! Tuesday, July 28, his actual birthday, we had cupcakes for dessert, complete with candles to blow out and he opened the box of presents from Bruce and Barb. Saturday August 1 we had a small gathering of friends over, no presents, as he has plenty of stuff. And Sunday August 2 we had a joint birthday party at a playground with all the moms from the moms group I was in when Liam was first born. As an aside, these great ladies all signed up to bring us meals for the first few weeks after Dor was born, and it has been incredibly awesome. For the past five weeks we have had two meals a week brought to us. It has made adjusting to two children much easier, and I don’t have enough words to thank them for it.

Now, the pictures:

Outside daycare

Birthday smile at home. I love his forced smile when you ask him to say “cheese”

Monster bowling present

Name train

Dor really got into the celebration

As did Liam (which is unsurprising, he loves a party)

Next comes the cupcake with candles. Please note the basketball in his hand, and the hoop stuck to the TV. He is very obsessed with all things “ball”.Everything is a “basketball” until we tell him what kind of ball it is. He knows basketball, soccer ball, and, my favorite “basey ball”. I also love this picture because it really captures the sense of motion… Liam is always on the move.

After he blew out the candles once, he put them back on so he could blow them out again.

And then, time to eat the cupcake (it was banana cream flavored, bought from a cupcake store in our neighborhood)

The summer hasn’t been the best. June was terribly wet. July was alternating wet and humid. It wasn’t incredibly hot (the high 80s), but it was sticky and oppressive. Liam continues to be unsure about water. Last summer he had buckets of water thrown unexpectedly into his face, twice, by older kids at water parks. Now, they didn’t do it on purpose, they were all running around throwing water at each other, and Liam loves to try to get in on the action, so ended up in the middle of it.

This season we have been working on getting more comfortable around water. There are two different playgrounds near our house that have spray parks attached to them. Liam usually runs away from the water, and hides behind fences or benches to watch it suspiciously. As the summer has been progressing, he has gotten a little less afraid, though, and will now splash in the puddles nearby and play with buckets dumping water back and forth. He even asks to have his shoes, shirt, and sometimes pants taken off. But he still won’t go into the spray.

He will however, play in a bucket of water, which is a good first step. We’re hoping that he’ll be up for going in the lake at Lake George of Labor Day Weekend.

Look at my two handsome guys. I’m a lucky lady!

Dor and I

Mom decides to get in on the action as well

Dad too

Obviously water play in the backyard ends up in nudity

So, I was just looking back and couldn’t find some of this information on the previous entries. It might be there, but I couldn’t find it. So, for the record:

Dorothea Pearl Aurora Holman

June 25, 2009, 1:56am

7lbs 9.5 oz

19 1/2 inches

head circumfernce 33cm

brown hair/ blue/grey eyes

Many people have also asked about her name. Dorothea is a name that I  have always thought was beautiful and classic. I like the way the “thea” flows as opposed to Dorothy (which is too reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz). We also wanted her nickname to be Dor, after a character from one of my favorite books, Neverwhere by Neil Gaimen. (As an aside, my favorite book is Mood Indigo by Boris Vian, translated by John Sturrock).

Pearl is a reference to the Dead Milkmen song Punk Rock Girl :“punk rock girl, you look so wild, let’s have a child, we’ll name her Minnie Pearl, just you and me, punk rock girl”

Aurora is her second middle name, like Liam has two middle names. His second middle name is Auris, which is a family name on Alex’s side, and also Alex’s second middle name. Aurora, besides being just beautiful, seems like a feminized version of Auris. Additionally, another song reference, this time to a song by Josh Ritter, Kathleen: “all the other girls here are stars, you are the northern lights; they try to shine in through your curtain, you’re too close and too bright”. I love the imagery of that.

No pictures for this post, we are still taking some, but not nearly as prolifically as we did with Liam. I will post Dor’s birth story at some point. Alex did a good brief summary of it, but I could flesh it out some.

My parents came out to meet Miss Dor from July 11 to July 18. They stayed at the hotel down the street, the one that has a free breakfast in the morning, that we often walk over to eat with them. They were extremely excited to meet Miss Dor, and also excited to get to spend more time with Mr. Liam. They last saw Liam in February when we went to Seattle for a visit. It’s tough to get to know your grandparents when you only see them two or three times a year, but we do our best. He’s probably getting old enough now that he would recognize them if we did an internet/video phone call through skype sometime. With the time zone difference, finding the time would be the hardest part. I wish I could say that we will visit more often, but having two kids now, and the fact that starting July 28 we have to pay full fare for Liam’s plane tickets means we probably won’t be traveling as much as we did when he was little. (He flew on 15 flights before he was 1 year). Dor will miss out on that early traveling. It’s too bad Seattle is too far for a road trip. St. Louis is even pushing it for a road trip.

But anyways, we had a wonderful visit, even if it was too short, which is always is. Liam really really liked seeing his grandma and grandpa. It was really awesome to see my dad playing with Liam, either at home or the playground. We did two walks while my parents were here, which was fairly restrained for my mom. One in Plymouth, and one in downtown Boston. It’s always nice to have extra hands around to either hold the baby, or keep Liam occupied while I get housework done, make dinner, or feed Dor.

Grandma, Liam, and Dor

Tummy time in the Holman House

Grandpa helping Liam put on his shoes

Climbing the ladder at the playground (aka the “DAY-dow”)

Liam is still very interested in his sister

But is sometimes a grabby hands!

Anyone who knows my dad will understand why this is such an unusal picture

Dor at Plymouth Rock (which is really so disappointingly small, it should be called Plymouth Pebble)

Grandma and Grandpa at Plymouth Rock

Just hanging out in Davis Square

Friday night, we had a picnic dinner in Davis Square and listened to the bands play as part of Art Beat

Saying good night

This entry has very few pictures of Alex because he was at work the whole week.

There are also only a few pictures of Grandpa holding Dor

No entry would be complete without at least one picture of baby feet

And of course, the obligatory three generation photos

Bath time is a special time in the Holman house. Despite Liam’s trepidation around water in the form of pools and spray parks/fountains, he loves his bath time. Most recently, his routine has started to include adding bubble bath, because our friend Linda Allen sent him some bubble bath in the shape of a soccer ball and a baseball. For a ball obsessed boy, this was about the best present ever. Then when he saw it made bubbles in his bath, it became even cooler (because he is also bubble obsessed). (As an aside, Alex has taken to making his own bubble mix, with water, Dawn original soap, glyceral/glycerine?, and a secret ingredient that is apparently found in KY jelly. It works very well). Liam has many friends join him in his bath: three rubber duckies, and a fish shaped water-pourer. He’s still a little ambivalent about water being poured on his head to rinse out the shampoo, and we often have to pour water on the head of each ducky first. (Edit by Alex: I always remember room 101 out of the book 1984 and picture Liam yelling “Do it to Ducky!”.  Emily doesn’t remember that particular plot point and never understands why I’m giggling evilly at the ultimate betrayal of a rubber duck.)  He gets dried off in his bear towel, and loves to look at himself and Alex holding him in the mirror after he gets out of the bath. He points to the reflections and labels “dada”, “mama”, and “liam” (sounds like “eee-um”). Here are some pictures from Liam’s bath recently, and then pictures from Dor’s first tub/sink bath.

I love the look on her face, it says “what are you doing, dad?”

So much can change in two months. No, Dor is not two months old yet (only 3 and 1/2 weeks today), but I have the perfect set of pictures to highlight the changes to our little family.

Here is a picture from Mother’s Day, May 12, 2009. This is taken on a bench outside our community garden, near Fresh Pond:

Here is a picture from July 12, 2009, taken on the same bench outiside our garden:

The plants behind us have grown larger, and so has our family. Our little family of three went to a little family of four. It has been somewhat challenging to adjust to it, but not too bad. I am finding that caring for a newborn the second time around is not nearly as stressful. I think it is because we’ve done it once before, and we aren’t worried about not feeding her enough or dropping/breaking her. Also, although our sleep is still interrupted, it feels easier to handle it because I know how time limited it really is. With Liam, I think there was this temporary panic that we would never sleep again and that our lives would always feel turned upside down. But we did eventually get sleep again, and our lives did settle into a wonderful routine. And Liam is so much fun now, with new words every day, as well as a better understanding of more complex concepts and actual sentences. (Even with the boundary testing of being a two year old!) He’ll be two years old on July 28 and yet it feels like the blink of an eye. I clearly remember the day he was born. I don’t as clearly remember his first three months, because it was a blur of sleep deprivation and learning on the fly. With Dor, I know we’ll get the hang of it eventually, so the blur doesn’t feel so hectic. Of course, maybe when she’s just about two years old, I’ll be writing a post about how her first few months were a blur as well. I think that’s just parenthood.