Catching up

Well, once again, it's been a while since I've managed to post. In July we went to New Hampshire for two weeks of vacation. We stayed with our friend Rob and enjoyed clean air and good fellowship. We had two weekends of "gaming." It was fun to play games, but Liam didn't have much patience with the process, so usually either Allen or I had to sit out.
Here's Rob and Allen playing "Agricola." I played this one too, but I'm not very good at it. Liam just wanted to arrange the little wooden pieces.

We also took a ride up a mountain in a sky tram. When we got to the top we took a little hike around the top of the mountain and climbed to the top of an observation deck. Liam was a trooper and climbed up the stairs himself. When we got back to the bottom he was pretty tired!


We also took another trip to Cascade Brook. The adventure this year was that one of Liam's shoes fell in the water and had to be fished out. Liam really liked throwing stones into the water and wading in puddles, but he didn't want to get in the water himself.


We enjoyed attending a couple of concerts that Rob played his tuba in. Liam danced to the music and did laps around the bandstand.

Out and about

Last week we got to see our friend Frances in Oberlin Ohio. She was lives in Texas now, but had a professional conference in Oberlin. We enjoyed having lunch with her. Well, mostly we enjoyed it. Liam was very frustrated because we wouldn't let him play with the salt and pepper shakers which were shaped like taxi cabs.


Afterward we took a walk in a nearby park. Liam walked round and round this planter. He would have been content to keep going but we were getting warm in the sun and I was getting worried about the bees which might not be as friendly as story books make them out to be.

On Monday we visited Grandma or "GG" in Lima. Liam and I went since Allen was in the middle of a three night "observing run" - he was running a telescope from his office. The telescope is actually in Arizona, but thanks to the internet he didn't actually have to go. Anyways, we had fun visiting with GG and Uncle John. Liam remembered that GG has blocks and he played with them and her "little houses" quite a bit. He also thought it was great fun to roll the container the blocks are stored in to us as we were sitting in the living room. He took a spill headfirst off a kitchen chair. It was pretty traumatic for all of us and he ended up with a bruise. But when we got home he said he had "fun" rolling the block container and didn't mention the fall. He's been climbing up on things just as much as ever since then - maybe even more.


In fact, the other day he picked up his ride-on car and put it on the ottoman. Then he climbed up on the ottoman and sat down on the car exclaiming, "Better!" Allen didn't think it was better since the wheels of the car were about to slip off on one side.

He's also been running more lately, which is good for his development, but can have negative consequences. Today he got his first band-aid. He and I were playing a "get you" game and he ran toward a wall and tripped. He caught the corner of a heating/cooling register with his forehead and clipped another part with his hand - removing a layer of skin. He recovered from this amazingly fast. After a brief application of an ice pack he said he was "happy."

The point of this picture is that it shows Liam's first band-aid. But he's more interested in the fact that it shows the truck on his shirt.

Chickens and other events

Last Friday we got the first box of vegetables from the "Community Supported Agriculture" farm that we are going to be getting our veggies from this summer. We had gone to an organizational meeting a few weeks before and Liam really enjoyed getting to pet a chicken. This time he didn't get to pet one, but he still enjoyed seeing them, and we remembered the camera.

Last week was a challenging week as Liam adjusted to not nursing. He generally woke up very early and then was tired and grumpy because he wasn't getting enough sleep. I found that it was generally easier to deal with him if we had an outing of some kind, so we took an extra trip to the library. We even arrived before it opened, which was hard for Liam to understand. He kept wanting to go "in."

Once he got inside he was mostly glued to his favorite spot - the train table. Since it wasn't right after story time he had less than the usual amount of competition for trains and track space. Possibly by observing other children playing he has discovered that there are other ways to have fun with trains besides letting them roll down the hill and watching them fall off the track. Not that watching things fall has lost its appeal to him!

Thomas Clothes

Liam and I stepped out onto the porch today to check the mail and found that although it was raining the air felt warm and soft. I thought Liam would like to walk around in the rain, so I put his swim suit on him and we headed out. By that time it had gotten somewhat cooler, but Liam still wanted to go. We walked up and down out walk and driveway in water that was deep enough that Liam said, "Splish splash! Splish splash!" When we got inside we changed out of our wet clothes, but Liam was still pretty excited about his "Thomas clothes." There are pictures of Thomas the tank engine on his swim suit.

Weaning

Well I may have nursed Liam for the last time - yesterday afternoon. We have been gradually cutting back on the amount of nursing he's been doing. Since Thursday night Allen has been putting him to bed. Yesterday morning and this morning when he woke up at five in the morning Allen gave him milk to drink and got him to go back to sleep. So yesterday we were down to just nap time. I decided to tackle that one this afternoon and managed to get him to sleep without nursing.

I feel both happy and sad about this. Nursing has been very hard on me physically. I wanted to nurse Liam longer, but he had started taking two hour "marathon nursing naps." I didn't get any rest to speak of during those times and was getting way too tired. Also, I've really been wanting to eat some chocolate, which I've been avoiding while nursing in case it kept Liam awake. And then there's my hormones, which I would like to get back to "normal."

But on the other hand, this seems like another step in the end of the "baby" stage for Liam. I don't think I can handle having another baby, so yesterday was probably the last time I will nurse - ever. I feel kind of sad about that.

I think Liam is adjusting to the change pretty well. I thought he would be very fussy when he woke up from his nap this afternoon, but he did pretty well. It helps that he's still really excited about the cars and "shovels" we got yesterday!

Liam is still sleeping in our bed with us. Well we try to get him to sleep in the crib and he's doing that more and more, but tends to scoot over into bed some of the time. I managed to get him to sleep this afternoon by going into the other room, which has a futon in it. Maybe he will start taking naps in there, which would be a step toward having him sleep on his own.

Why sleep in the crib when you can stretch out on the bed? Caught Liam in this pose the other day as he was just waking up from a nap.

Two dollar bag day!

I've been seeing signs for a garage sale at the fairgrounds, so I decided this morning to go - with Liam. We'd already been up since 6:45 and it was time for a change of scenery anyways. So we put the stroller in the trunk and headed off.

The first signs I saw for a garage sale led to a small sale - nothing exciting or very enticing. I managed to find a few kid's books, but I was thinking, "They opened up the fairgrounds for this?" The nice man at the cash register gave Liam a hippo key ring, but that didn't really make it worth the trip.

As we were heading back toward the car I spotted people coming out of another building with bags in their arms. I investigated and found the Wood County Humane Society garage sale. It was two dollar bag day! So we bought a bag and headed in. Clothes and kitchen items didn't interest us much, but we found some toys and games at the back. Filled a bag and took it out to the car. But I still hadn't made it over to the books, so I bought another bag and headed over. They weren't great, so after we'd taken the good ones we headed back over toward the toys. Liam was begging to get out of the stroller by this time, so I put the bag in the stroller and let him walk. Went pretty well until he started crawling around on the floor pushing cars. Dirty floor. We even got to say "Hi!" to our friends the Yu's.

When we got home we headed straight out to the back deck to wash the new toys (mostly cars and "shovels"). I took Liam's pants off him so they wouldn't get messed up. It's a good thing. His bottom got wet and grime from the deck rubbed off on his diaper cover. But we got the toys washed and brought them in the house. Finally Liam was free to PLAY! Had to stay in the kitchen, though since some of the cars were still wet.

Where to start

The problem with getting out of the habit of posting to a blog is that when you want to start up again you have to figure out where to start. I have no idea, but here goes....

Allen's parents, Jeremy and Phyllis visited us for two weeks. They left last Saturday. Liam warmed up to them quickly He called them "Dad" (for Grandad) and "Carpone" (which somehow translates to Grandma.) He gave them lots of hugs and enjoyed hearing extra stories and having more help building train tracks.


Before that we had a nice picnic with my family at a park near upper Sandusky. It was by a river and when Liam saw it he took a deep breath and said, "Delish!" He spent a long time throwing handfuls of sand into the river. He got sand and water all over him. I wasn't worried because we had a change of clothes in the diaper bag. It would have been more convenient, however, if the diaper bag had been in the car, rather than back at the house. Thankfully Aunt Cindy had some clothes she could lend us.

We enjoyed seeing baby Ben as well as Granny and Grandpa, Grammy and Grandpa and Liam's two uncles - Isaac and Titus. The day started out a little cold, but turned out to be beautiful.