Future marine biologist

One of Liam's favorite things to do is to search for pictures on Google. He usually asks to see worms, moose or bucks. Today he asked Aaron to look for "gray whales".

Weekend Up North!

Bundled up to rake outside!

Wearing the infamous London "Jimmy Hat"!

Fun noodle on the four wheeler! The best of summer and fall!

" Spring Training" (fishing season is right around the corner!)

A cloudy day...

His favorite truck at Grandma's!



Showing Grandma Karen his whale book!


"Is that a crappie?" he asked Grandpa Richie (whilst pointing to a whale)!

Off to kindergarten...

Well, that's what it feels like anyway! Liam is growing up so fast! I got to daycare yesterday and he came running over to tell me that he "pooped in the potty!" His teacher said, no, he didn't poop, but he DID pee in the potty! His friend Lily is potty trained now, and he saw her using the bathroom and wanted to go, too. He usually just sits on the potty happily and then jumps down, but this time he actually went! "I pushed the pee out!" he said. He was super excited and got a treat for being such a big kid! He was anxious to tell Daddy his news when he got home, and Daddy was very proud of him, too!

We might start potty training slowly now that he's really showing an interest in it, but I'm not in a hurry. He only just got rid of his nuks last week! One thing at a time!

Goodbye Nuks! (3/19/09)

Auntie Sarah got to see the big kid throw his nuks away, too! It started with mom forgetting to leave a nuk at daycare, Liam napping without it, and deciding that this was a good opportunity to get rid of them. He'd only been using them while sleeping anyway, so the transition was probably easier than most kids experience. He threw them away, got some stickers for being such a big kid, and forgot about them...until bedtime. He didn't cry and he didn't even say much about them, but he made his feelings known by throwing all his animals and his pillow out of bed 7 or 8 times. He also came out of his room on his own, something he's never done before. Aaron and I remained calm and he eventually fell asleep. He woke up only once asking for his nuk, but went back to bed after being reminded that they were all gone. He's done so well, and we're now on day 7 with no nuks!

Crazy pregnancy dreams

The crazy dreams continue. I had super vivid dreams in my last trimester with Liam, and the same seems to be true with Max! I had a dream over the weekend that I was traveling to Asia to adopt a little girl. I got there and realized that I was with a group of people I went to high school with, all of whom were also adopting children. Just to prove that my extreme organizational skills haunt me even while asleep, I realized that I didn't have the proper documentation to bring the kid back with me. What might the required documentation have been? A visa? A passport? Nope. Not in this dream. Apparently all you have to do to adopt a child in my dreams is to bring along a canceled check and a map of Florida. I'm not kidding. Hey, it made perfect sense in my dream...

I spy...

Liam and I play "I Spy" in the car on our way to and from daycare most days. I'll say, "I spy, with my tiny little eye, something that is..." and then I'll say a color. Liam will usually guess correctly the first time, and gets so excited when he is right. I was playing with him while Aaron changed his diaper last night and I said, "I spy, with my tiny little eye, something that is blue!" I was thinking he'd notice the giant blue laundry basket right next to him. He looked around for a minute, and then looked right at me and said, "Your eyes, Mommy!"

Fun AND Fun!

Liam's Auntie Kimmy is here visiting us for the first part of spring break. He's been anxiously waiting for her to arrive, and I asked him what they were going to do together when she finally got here. Today he told me they were going to have "fun AND fun!" That's a whole lot of fun!

Our big kid!

Liam had his 2 year doctor's visit yesterday. I always prep him before we do something he's not used to, so we talked all about what they were going to do and what they would ask him to do. He was skittish around the scale when Aaron took him for a checkup last time, so we talked about the scale and how they would measure how tall he is. He got on the scale without much fuss and then stood by the wall for his height measurement happily! He now weighs 35 lbs. and is 38 1/4 inches tall! His doctor said that he's in the 95th percentile for both height and weight and that he's very well proportioned. That was good to hear! He is now predicted to be 6'4" tall as an adult (which is much shorter than the 7' I calculated not long ago!).

Liam was very talkative for Dr. Boyd. He said "Is that Dr. Boyd?" when the doctor came in and the doctor said "Yep! I'm Dr. Boyd!" It was pretty cute. The doctor gave him a tongue depressor to play with (his "stick") and he let him do his examining. He knew he would have to have a shot in his leg and kept reminding me that "it's a little bit owie, Mommy." I told him that it might hurt for a minute, but that it would be ok in a little while and then we would go to the pet store. He did cry for about 30 seconds, but then calmed right down. He walked out into the lobby with me and politely asked for a sticker. What a good kid.

He spent the time before dinner outside with Aaron...digging in the dirt with his new "stick."

Sweet Pea

Weekend in Pictures

Look, Mama! I made a dog!

I love my Grandpa Howie!

A mini fishing pole! Just for me!

Fishing lessons with the Fishing Master!

Look, Mom! I'm doing it all by myself!

He dragged this 5-gallon bucket filled with crappies into the living room without any of us hearing him! He showed up with this giant pail of fish and we were all like "how did you DO that?!" Tricky kid!

Grandpa, Daddy and I fed the deer at City Park!

He sings, "Here we go, driving on the track!" as he runs around the living room pushing his dump truck. The sunglasses were a recent addition to the wardrobe!

Should we do that?!

Liam is quite the mimic, and can imitate mom and dad pretty well.

We're heading up north after work tonight, so this morning he said,

"We're going to Grammy Pammy's today!"

Then, he put on his best 'mommy imitation face' (eyes open wide, mouth in a perfect "O") and said,

"Should we do that?!!!!!"

What a crazy kid.

Duss Upon a Time...

is how Liam begins each sentence when telling us stories lately! He'll hold his book in front of him and say "Duss upon a time...there was a lady." It's super cute. He's also very insistent that you listen closely to his story and will stop mid-sentence to say "LISTEN to the story, Mama" if you aren't responding appropriately.

He's also expanding his counting horizons. He was counting spots on a giraffe this morning and counted all the way past 13 (his usual stopping point) to "two-wenty!" He even went so far as "two-wenty-six!" but had trouble after that.

Baby Max!

We had our second ultrasound today and it went really well! Liam was a little bit of a booger during the proceedings, but settled down a little bit when offered a sucker. He took his sucker out of his mouth and held it up to the ultrasound screen saying "See baby? I have a treat!" It was pretty cute. Everything is fine with Max, and he's super cute!

Look at those chubby cheeks!

Awww!

Liam said "What's he biting?" when he saw this one!

Do you feel good?

Liam still forgets he has to be careful around my belly. He was kicking around while lying in bed with me this morning and I had to remind him that Baby Max was in my belly and he needed to be careful. He asked if he could touch him and I said that he could. So, he put his little hand on my belly and said "how do you feel?" to the baby. "Do you feel good?" he asked. He's excited to see Baby Max on the ultrasound today, and so are we!

I love you too, Mama!

Liam has been a bit of a pill lately, but he makes up for it by being ever more adorable in between bouts of sassiness. I snuggle with him a lot, and just grab him and hug him occassionally. He usually just lets me or gives me a little snuggle, but lately he's been saying the cutest things. If I cuddle him or even just touch his cute little cheek he'll say "I love you too, Mama!" I don't have to say "I love you", he just says it to me! I love you too, Liam.

To feel again

I often say that I expected to feel closer to God after Liam was born, but instead I feel farther away than ever. I did everything I could to numb myself - my mind, my body, my heart - after he was born because feeling was just so hard to do. I was so tired, so I numbed myself to the feeling and it went on from there. Now, I feel like I'm walking in a haze most of the time, and it catches up with me occassionally. It's been a hard week or so, and I'm realizing that I'm missing some things that I (and my family) really need.

We say our prayers every night with Liam. We talk to him about God. We go to church and we sing Jesus songs. He knows who God is and who Jesus is. The trouble is, God has changed so much for me (or I've changed so much) in the past two years that I haven't been able to connect with him in a long time. I haven't been able to push through this fog to see him on the other side.

I used to be very spiritual and very quietly faithful, but that was when I had a lot of time to devote to it, and was surrounded by other faithful people if I wanted to be. A lot of those people were too radical for me, or too something for me. I was turned off to the "contemporary Christian" scene because of how exclusive it seemed and how elitist many of its members appeared to me. I want real faith and real life, and I have been struggling to find it in the past few years. I refused to read some of the latest books by well-known Christian women because I didn't want to be labeled as "one of them" - someone sucked into the whole popular Christian circle.

I'm realizing that there is a balance somewhere, and that I need to break down some of the walls and look past some of the stereotypes to see what's really there. I've taken on my own elitist attitude towards much of it, and lost a lot of the substance in the process. I decided to read a book by Beth Moore (the uber-Christian-woman author) to see what she had to say. And I LIKED IT. I like it a lot. The book is called Feathers From My Nest and it's her reflections on being a mother and raising a family. She has so many good things to say, and she seems to be genuinely humble despite her fame, fortune and Living Proof Ministries empire.

So, I took the plunge. And I'm finding out that it feels so good to be opening that spiritual door again. I want Liam to see my faith in action, and to know that I live my life with love because of my faith. We are going to the Christian bookstore tonight (a place I've avoided for too long) to get a family devotional. We'll start reading it every night...just like my mom used to do.