All Sorts of Stuff

Well, since I have been horrible at blogging this last week we present you with a bunch of random photos. 

Liam started eating peas and carrots, although I have to peel the peas because the skin is a little much for him [He's like a little sultan being fed peeled grapes by hand at his whim].  He seems to really love the peas.

Daddy stuck Liam in a cardboard box.

He loved it!

Sleepy boys eating a banana together

Liam practicing his gymnastics

He loves crawling on the dining room chairs.

Babies-R-Us had a baby food sale. Liam will not starve this month :)

Here is a random picture of my flowers from the Farmer's Market.  They are called brains!

On Tuesday Liam had a play-date with Tommy.  Tommy is 6 months so not quite as mobile as Liam. I spent most of my time chasing Liam :)

And trying to keep him from attacking little Tommy.

Chris and I have been trying to walk or run every night.  This gives Liam a chance to play at the park every day that we actually do. He enjoys his time there.

He likes to walk around the train

He has also conquered climbing up the slide by himself.

On Wednesday Liam decided to climb into his diaper bin.  Usually he just pulls it down at pulls all the diapers out of it, but not today.

He decided to sit on the diapers instead.

He also enjoyed attacking his daddy while he was attempting to play angry birds.

Lastly, here are a couple of videos of Liam playing by the stairs and hanging on the gate.  It is one of his favorite things to do during the day. He is much more vocal in the second video :)

Out on the Trail

First of all, this boy was really enjoying the Daily Show last night.

After the show, we took this cute li'l guy out on the trail with his walker 

He loved it

He was so cute weaving back and forth.  Everyone that passed him instantly fell in love and one little boy wanted to pick him up.  No worries- Chris stopped him from doing so.

Liam did get distracted several times.  Once by a big leaf...

...again by a tree.  Overall, it was a big hit, I think he felt more included in our walk :)

Here is a little video for your enjoyment.  Don't worry, he fell straight to his bum at the end.

1st Baseball Game

Liam went to his first baseball game on Tuesday night.  We met up with one of Chris's friends from work and his wife, who used to work for the Nationals as one of those crowd-pumping, t-shirt-throwing people.

Here is our boy.  He enjoyed watching people more than looking at the camera.

Checking out the field

Liam and his daddy

Family photo! 

Liam loved Ghani and his wife Maggie.  I think they enjoyed Liam also.

They are expecting a little boy in September.

Liam even sat in his own chair for awhile.

He did really well until the end of the game.  The Nationals beat the Braves and the crowd got a little loud for Liam, and he cried a little.  After the game the boy was still going strong at 10PM on our way back to the car.  He even let out a scream that made the guy walking in front of us jump. Ha!  The minute we put him in the car seat, though, it was all over.  This boy was OUT!

Walking Boy! (with assistance of course)

Liam loves to walk with assistance. Aunt Mindy got him a little walker toy and it took him about a week to really figure out how to use it.  He LOVES it now.   Here he is testing out some shoes

I was going to take him and his toy outside on the trail to walk so he would have more room but he has such fat feet none of his shoes really fit.  I tried these ones on but they put too much pressure on the tops of his feet.  He also has a nice pair from great grandma but they are too long right now, so this weekend we are going to find some fat baby feet shoes!

He has also started to stand for up to 20-30 seconds at a time (he's capable of standing longer, but doesn't like to be in one place that long).  Here is some video of the boy cruising.

and some more

On Sunday we had a family workout day. Liam dressed appropriately.

He was excited at the beginning. He loves going to the park.

Out like a light on the way home.

After our walk Chris and I decided we were finally going to get our house clean and organize the basement from our epic flood.  We hadn't been able to finish in the basement since maintenance had to move a bunch of stuff to put a seal-coat on the basement walls to prevent mold from growing.  As I was upstairs getting ready to mop the kitchen I heard Chris yell (which can't be repeated on this family blog).  I went down to see what the commotion was about and guess what-it happened AGAIN!!!  This time the 50 year old AC runoff pipe had clogged, so a gradual leak had been dripping for a couple of days. Luckily we caught it before it went all Epic of Gilgamesh on us, but it still got to the carpet and our desk.  It was about an inch of water. Needless to say it ruined the rest of our Sunday plans. I don't think our basement will ever be organized.

Later on Sunday, Chris and I booked airplane tickets for Boston in September.  We have some friends getting married and we thought it would be a nice weekend get-away.  Chris had applied for an opportunity to take a Patent Bar review course offered by the intellectual property education arm of his company (PRG) in preparation for taking (and passing) the Patent Bar in order to promote PRG, where the review course is being offered over a week in California. (Don't ask me exactly what the difference is compared to what he is doing now).  Anyway, my awesome husband's submission won!  The bad part is he has to leave the Sunday we are in Boston!  Luckily, it had been less than 24 hours so we were able to cancel!  We rearranged our trip and are still going to Boston, Chris is just going to fly from Boston to California.  Then he will be home for about 4 days and Liam and I leave for AZ!  So much traveling in the month of September! 

I leave you with this cute picture of the boys reading to each other.

Baby Food Hair Gel

On Thursday this little man was eating his breakfast and had baby food all over his baby hands.

He decided to use the excess baby food as his own personal hair gel.

He has grabbed his hair while eating out of a bottle before but never baby food out of a jar.  He did it over and over on this particular day.  It gave his mom a good laugh.

Later that evening we went on a family walk and let Liam play at the park.  

We made funny faces

Smiled real big at his daddy before heading down the slide

Went down the slide

Then he walked around...with some assistance.

He played on the giant turtle

Enjoyed the teeter totter with his mama and dada.

This picture of him on the teeter totter is one of my FAVORITE pictures of him.  I just may have to frame it :)

Eight Months

It's official Liam is 8 months old! He is 29 inches long, which is shorter than what I measured him at last time, so I am assuming I screwed up last time! Ha!  I weighed myself and then him with me and he is about 18lbs 4ozs.  Thanks for the idea Michelle :) He is a blast. He loves to play and he also enjoys wrestling with his daddy when he gets home from work (his dad works, not Liam, to be clear).  He loves climbing, standing, and crawling as fast as he can.  Lately, he has been standing on his own for about 7 seconds, it keeps getting longer and longer.  He has 6 teeth in total and those darn 2 on top are still trying to pop through.  He has been making lots of sounds like baba and dada but not with any purpose to what he's saying or who he is saying it to, so we aren't officially counting any words yet.  Liam likes to look at you and start jibbering loudly and with purpose like he really has something important to say and then he will turn away.  It's awesome. He is still a very sweet baby and only gets upset a couple times a day because he is tired, hungry, or has fallen and bashed his head.  He is taking 2 naps a day but the length of them is very inconsistent, anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours.  He still wakes up around 2-3 am to eat and then is usually up to start his day about 6:30-7:00am.  He still is very observant and watches anything and anyone very closely.  He loves other babies and always smiles real big when he sees someone his size. I have finally given up breastfeeding, though for the last several weeks the biggest reason I was just pumping and not generally feeding him directly was fear of being bitten. He generally refuses to hold his own bottle even though he can (why do the work when one of your sucker parents will do it for you, right?).
We attempted his 8 month photo shoot on Sunday night when we got back from Richmond.

Liam quickly decided he was NOT in the mood.

So we gave up and tried again the next day.  Liam loves to crawl back and forth from the kitchen to the living room.  He also likes to stand up next to the trash can.

Here he is crawling towards his mama

Later he was trying to hold himself up on his Daddy's arm and gave me the cheesiest smile EVER! I LOVE it! Plus you can see all his teeth.

He's a sweet boy

He quickly decided he did not want to sit for pictures so I ended up with a few that looked like this...

So we took him outside to hopefully distract him enough to get a few photos

He sat there quietly picking at the grass and occasionally would look up at us, but we couldn't get any smiles out of the boy.

He likes playing in the grass

Profile shot

Then a mosquito landed on his face and I flipped out because I HATE mosquitoes with a passion.  We quickly came back inside and got this surprised look from him.

Lately, when the boy gets tired he will rest his head for about 2.2 seconds and before jumping up quickly in fear of actually falling asleep.

He was getting tired around 7:30 so Chris and I did our best to keep him awake a little longer by giving him a bath to buy some time before he fell asleep.  He still loves his baths.

He is a good boy and it amazes me every day how much he learns and grows.