A Very Merry Un-Birthday...

My sweet baby will be one year old in exactly one month! He's getting to be so grown up already! He can stand on his own now, and will be taking his first steps soon, I think! He is a stubbornly independent little guy even at 11 months...don't try to feed him, rock him or take anything away from him. He has his own ideas! He laughs about everything! He is such a happy baby. His favorite thing to do right now is string a bunch of babble and words together, look at you and bust out laughing. It's his own stand up comedy routine!

His hair has stayed very light and still has a red tint to it! This makes me extremely happy! Liam has red tints, but only in the sun. Max still has blueish eyes, but they're starting to turn darker. Liam had blue eyes until he was about a year old and then they turned brown. I don't know what Max's are going to do!

Max is sleeping very well lately, only getting up once at night and then sleeping until 6am or so. He also goes to bed later at night, so we are able to do more as a family after Aaron gets home from work. It's nice to have a little more flexibility in our schedule!

I'm sad to see Max grow up so fast, but I'm anxious to see the little boy he's becoming, too.

Sly Guy

I love this face that Max makes. He's such a little goof.

He is supposed to be eating a snack, but is occupying his time with a plastic dinosaur egg instead.

As you do.

Pre-Dawn Spider...

Liam climbed up the stairs to our bedroom this morning at the early hour of 5:45. I asked him what he needed and he said excitedly, "Mom! There was a big spider on the mailbox yesterday!" Ummm...thanks, buddy...but I would have enjoyed this story much more had you chosen to tell it at 7am instead...

Liam

"Mom, I had a dream today!" Liam said excitedly.

"I dreamed that I grew big grown up teeth!"

This is the first time he's actually remembered a dream and told me about it! Interestingly, I also dream about teeth quite often. Mostly that they are falling out. And then the diamond falls out of my wedding ring. I do a lot of looking for things in my dreams...

I said, "You're cute!" to Liam yesterday after he did something particularly endearing. "You're cute, too, Mom!" he said. :)

Heaven

There was a documentary on the weather channel the other day about the Challenger disaster. I was half watching it while doing laundry, and Liam came in and was excited to see a rocket ship so he hung around. He knows a lot about space (mostly that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs!) and that people can go to the moon. I told him that this rocket didn't make it into space and that it exploded. He asked some questions about why that happened, and then asked what happened to the people. I told him that when the rocket exploded the people died and went to heaven. He is starting to understand what it means to die, but he's so little yet that it's just not anything he can comprehend fully. I don't want him to dwell on it, but I don't want to pretend that it doesn't happen if he asks about it, either.

We were driving to the park yesterday, a full 24 hours after this conversation, and I watched him in my mirror as he looked out his window and up into the sky.

"How do they get back down, Mom?" he asked.

"Who, buddy?"

"The people that died on the rocket and went to heaven. Do they get down on a ladder?"

I could imagine what he was thinking so clearly. I tried to explain it as best as I could. I told him that when someone dies and goes to heaven, they can't come back again. They stay in heaven and wait for us to get there, too.

"How do you get to heaven, Mom?" he asked.

He knows about Jesus and Easter, but he wanted to know more than that. Where is it? I told him that we don't know the way to heaven, but that God will make sure that we get there.

Our Second Home: The Sanctuary

Liam's Take on The Big Event

I'm blowing bubbles!

I'm doing the baseballing!

I'm driving the truck! I think it was great!

I was reading a book with that guy! It was about the three owls and they did "aaaaaaaaaah!"

Here I am driving the crane, I think.

I am driving the truck again!

I am making a picture of the tiger. That's how I did it!

That's Max and Uncle Bird!

That's when Uncle Bird buyed me LOTS of things, and my microphone.

Max got tired.

Thanks for a great day, Grandma Meg and Uncle Bird!