Luminati

It was pointed out to me that it is now JANUARY. I’m not entirely sure when this happened or how. I’ll look in to it and get back to you.

There have been quite a few things going on lately and it seems silly to condense them all into one post. But by golly, I’m gonna try!

1. Christmas happened. I have pictures somewhere–gallery to be updated soon.

2. I love my family

3. As of 5:30pm this evening, all our new windows are installed. I got excited about new window coverings but left the store nearly in tears after finding out how much nice blinds cost.

4. B’s birthday is the 21st

5. Big decisions have been made

6. I started a new blog–one for family members giving them updates on Liam. I think I may just switch to only updating that one since that’s what most of my updates are anyway. So you might want to start looking at that one instead.

7. There should be more, right?

Christmas in KS was fun! We had a very uneventful trip there and back, which means Liam is finally starting to get used to riding in the car! We also traveled over his nap time which helped. He called Gpa Dan, just plain “Dan,” which he got a kick out of. And he LOVED watching the three guinea pigs that Great-Gma is ‘babysitting.’ Every half hour or so he’d go “PIG!” and haul someone over to the stairs to go see them. And of course Great Gma stuffed us with food and even packed up a whole box of leftovers to send home with us. Yay!

I hosted Christmas with my family here on Christmas Eve. I had worked out a list of when everything needed to be prepped and when to put it in the oven, trying to figure out overlap times since I only have 1 oven. Thankfully Mom and Dad got here around 4pm and Mom pitched in and helped me with the sweet potatoes (which did not cook completely in 1 hr as the recipe indicated they would). By the description on the packaging, the turkey should have only taken 1 3/4 hrs. Two hours later, the timer still had not popped. 15 minutes later I said “F- it” and we took it out to coincide with everything else being ready. It still looked a little bit pink to me even though Dad said it was done, so I made him put the carved stuff in the microwave for 3 mins. All in all, everything turned out splendidly and I got many comments on how good everything tasted–my sweet potatoes were a hit, also! My Mom even asked for the recipe–a first, for sure!

The added stress of trying to give my overly helpful family members tasks didn’t help. And my niece and nephew were wild children bouncing off the walls. Liam feeds off their energy unfortunately so he started getting crazy, too. B thankfully roped them in Little Big Planet to keep them occupied ’til dinner.

Well the two older kids just could not WAIT to bust into the 4 boxes of presents my parents brought. I was cleaning up in the kitchen and missed half of the present opening. Liam got a BUNCH of books from Gma and Gpa (surprise, surprise), some sidewalk chalk that he desperately wanted to break out, some markers and paper and fingerpaints. Where are the toys?! Bah. I guess I’ll have to go shopping with the cash money we got.

I was exhausted by the time it was all over. I feel like I missed out on so much of Christmas because I did so much prep, then cooking and stressing, and then cleaning. I did have help with the cleaning I guess, but I am so set in my ways of getting things done that I did most of it myself. Then Liam was falling asleep on his feet so I went to put him down and by the time I got out of his room, my brother’s family had left. We watched The Dark Knight to end our evening–a Christmas movie, for sure. I even forgot to have Liam check out his stocking this morning I was so out of it. It’s still hanging there, full. And now Christmas is over.

Liam gets more adorable every day. His favorite word is “taco.” He just randomly says it throughout the day, and it’s always his answer to “what do you want to eat?” and “are you hungry?” Though a couple days ago I actually gave him a taco and all he did was play around with it. He also heard me say “What the?!” the other day and now finds it funny to say that at random times. I’ll post pictures here in the next couple days and hopefully a couple videos, too.

Let’s see…Liam can now identify about 10 animals by name (in his own language which it seems only Brian and I can understand), has got quite a few colors down and can count to three very clearly! He also identifies ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘M’. I’m so proud! His newest exclamation is “neat-o!” He says it “Nee Toe!”

He also has figured out that Dodi eats food that he drops. She walked by his chair yesterday and he held a piece of hotdog down to her. “Dodo! Hot dog!” It was very cute, but it took a lot of convincing that she didn’t need his hotdog and that we could give her treats later.

His naps have still been on and off which is frustrating but what can we do? I still put him down for “quiet time” every day for an hour if he doesn’t fall asleep so I can get a break. He doesn’t seem to mind too much but you can tell when he’s done. He’ll start yelling “knock knock! Open!”

His favorite thing ever seems to be playing with stickers. It’s the one thing I can keep him occupied with for longer than 2 minutes. We stick them on each other’s noses or shirts, or sometimes and unsuspecting cat.

We attended a craft morning at a friend’s house which was pretty fun. Liam wasn’t real interested in doing the craft but I was a fan of socializing. He seems to be pretty proud of the “Christmas tree” we made out of construction paper hand prints. He didn’t want me using the scissors anymore so I only got 3 of the 6 cut out. It looks more like a Christmas bush, but oh well. He’s proud of it. He’ll walk up to the fridge and go “tee!” “1, 2, 3!” :) :)

Man, he seems like so much fun when I write about all his awesome times in my journal. He does have his temper tantrums, though, so it’s not all fun and games. But really, he is a pretty cool kid. And I’m pretty proud of ourselves as a parents.

I think Liam’s favorite words are “poop,” “pee,” and “toot.” Typical boy.

He also likes to throw his football around and say “hike!” He’s got a pretty good arm! He’ll put his arms out to catch it when I throw it back to him, but doesn’t pull the ball to himself. So it’ll just hit his tummy and fall to the ground and he just giggles. :)

Liam has been helping with our Xmas cards by drawing on the back of the envelopes with his markers. Personalized Xmas cards!

Went to a cookie exchange on Saturday with the Moms and it was so fun! Plus I got a bazillion cookies and have been eating about 4 a day (I’m holding back). Some of us also went out to dinner afterwords and it was a margarita-drinkin’ good time!

We went over to a friend’s house this morning and Liam actually wanted to play with her son! It was very cute! He’s never really taken much interest in playing with other kids which is pretty common at this age, but today he wanted to play WITH someone! And I think he pulled a couple wrestling moves on the kid in the ball pit, too. Totally awesome.

I think there was a point to this post, I just can’t remember what it was. Huh.

My cat snores.

We went ahead and purchased Rock Band 2, and have spent a couple nights this week playing until the wee hours of the night. Our ‘band’ consists of B on guitar and me on vocals. I’m still not sure what to think about Dodi’s reaction, though. When I sing, she comes over and sits on my lap or next to me and butts me with her head or meows at me. She actually bent over and meowed directly in my ear one time. Loudly. I offered her the mic, but she refused. So she’s either telling me to shut the hell up because I’m offending her, or she really wants to sing but she’s too shy to do it alone. Everytime we play though, it never fails that she’s there to pester me.

Liam has been going ape-sh**t lately being stuck in the house due to the cold. But he doesn’t want to put his coat on and go somewhere either! Full of contradictions, that one. We have managed to get to the Children’s Museum twice this week, though it required stuffing him in a coat while he was off guard and then putting me whole body weight on him to get him strapped into his carseat.

We are going to have to go for a Christmas light tour one of these nights. Liam LOVES to see the lights out our windows. When it starts getting dark he runs from window to window going “LIGHT! LIGHT!!!!” I went so far as to put some lights on our deck so he’d have those to look at, too. I’m just hoping that the squirrels don’t chew through them. (Or if they do, that the lights are plugged in at the time.)

He is more of a little person every day and it makes me smile. Even when he’s being a royal PITA, all it takes is for him to give me a hug or an eskimo kiss, or even a high five to remember how totally cool he is. He’s been really enthusiastic about things lately, too. Small things, even. Like I’ll tell him how awesome it is that he ate a good lunch and he’ll go “YAY!” and pump his fist in the air.

Also, he’s (knock on wood) back to taking a nap during the day. It varies in length but at least he’s taking one. I hope this keeps up because he obviously needs the sleep. We struggled a bit over Thanksgiving as he was up late and too busy during the day to take a good nap (he ended up sleeping in a tent on the floor of his room once or twice in the past week with us laying there until he fell asleep) but now I think we’re back on track. Good thing, too, as I was losing my mind!