Liam at 14 Months

Life with a 14 month old boy is pretty crazy, but it's also a lot of fun. Liam is showing his independence and making it known if he does or doesn't like something. He wears me out, but I'm so happy to be his mama!

Personality: Independent is the word on the street for Liam. Especially when it comes to walking. One day when Will got home from work, he left the door open a few extra seconds and Liam was off down the sidewalk...no pants, no shoes. If I set him down, he will immediately walk away from me. Not a bad thing in the right situation, but it could be scary in other situations. Obviously, we know not to give him the opportunity to walk away in potentially sketchy situations like in a crowd in public. But we are giving him more freedom to walk and explore in the right situations,and that includes some public places. (I fear that he will HAVE TO be one of those kids on a leash one day. That is, if I don't want to lose my son in a crowd...which I don't.) The real trouble comes once we pick him up to avoid a danger or even just when it's time to go. He screams and arches his back like it's the worst thing ever! I'm definitely hearing more frustrated "grrrrs" these days! Occasionally there's even a little foot stomping action. So dramatic! Walking and exploring and playing are his favorite things to do. He's typically a good-natured kid and in a good mood. If he's awake, he's moving. He's always on the go! "Stop" and "no" are his least favorite words. He knows what they mean, and usually screams in protest when he hears them. I'm sure they will be a frequent visitor in my vocabulary for years to come. He definitely likes to push his boundaries, and sometimes even touches something he's not supposed to just to see my reaction. I know this because when he does it, he looks at me with a sly grin on his face. The problem is that it's hard to keep an "I'm mommy and no means no" face in those situations. All in all, though, Liam is a wonderful kid, full of life, smiley, and curious about everything! He's a smart one for sure.

Skills: Walking has been mastered. Liam is now working on running. He's also working on climbing on furniture like the couch or the chair in his room, but is still just too short (even though he's tall). He tries though. He still babbles all the time, but is saying more words. He has said "cat" in the past, but the other day he looked at Squirt on two occasions and said it. Besides his usual words, he's mostly a repeater of words I say. Those include "go go," "dow" for "down," and "dah" for "dog." We've noticed that he does understand a lot more words now. If I ask him to go get a book, he brings me a book. There are also several specific books I can ask him to go get, and he'll bring me the correct one. If we ask him to go get a diaper, he goes and gets a diaper. If I ask for smooches, he comes at me with his mouth wide open and gives me a hug...smooches to him! I've said it before, but everyday I can just see him learning more and more things and processing them. That's fun! Stacking blocks is one of his new skills. He got wooden blocks for his birthday, but hasn't shown much interest in them except to throw them on the floor. Lately, though, he's been stacking them and can stack up to 6 at a time. Then he knocks them all down! He's getting pretty good at throwing things, whether or not that's good. He drop tests everything by throwing it on the floor (the tile by the doorway) to see how much noise it makes.

Food and Drink: Liam is finally feeding himself more and more foods all the time. He's gotten better at chewing food and eating in general. The big news this month is that he finally started feeding himself vegetables and fruit! So far, he's fed himself broccoli, blueberry halves, some watermelon chunks, and even a few random bits of steamed carrot. Now, he won't feed himself these things every time I put them in front of him (except the broccoli), but he's doing much better! He's also started feeding himself scrambled eggs and graham crackers. It seems like Liam might actually still have a bit of a milk sensitivity (definitely not an allergy), so I've stopped giving him dairy for the time being to see if the issue goes away. One of the issues has stopped, but still working on the other that was most likely caused by dairy. Let's just say he's been a little backed up, which can be cause by too much dairy as well. I'm thinking the problem may have just been too much dairy, and will cut back on it from now on but not cut it out completely. He's STILL drinking milk from a bottle a few times a day. He just will not drink it from his straw cups, plus he literally runs to the chair in his room grinning when he sees a bottle in my hands. I've learned that if he doesn't want to do something, he won't do it! I'll probably give him another month or so before I start pushing the issue and move away from the bottles. It's not like he's emotionally attached to them. He only drinks from one a total of maybe 15 minutes a day.

Events and Firsts: Honestly, not a lot has happened this month and we haven't done much. Liam started feeding himself whole meals this month. He went to his first playday at the church, but probably won't go to anymore. Tried sleep training and it failed. I'm still trying to figure out what may be the best strategy to try next. It took a while for his sleeping to go back to normal after the training debacle, so I'm a little hesitant to try something else right now. Liam did get to go to Guitar Center a couple of times with Will. The first time, they left quickly because Liam started pitching a fit. The second time, they managed to come home with a guitar (that will be resold at a profit!). Last week, Liam got to play in the fountain at Post Eastside in Richardson. It was a nice evening to be outside and it was 7-11, so free slurpee! I think that was my first slurpee...it tasted just like an Icee. Yesterday, he went to the Japanese Baptist Church for the first time and got to hang out with Japanese kids. We hadn't been in 2 years, but a friend who was in town from Tokyo invited us. We will try to do more this next month!

Teeth: He still just has four teeth. I think the top middle two are finally all the way down. He's had some teething pain recently, but no new ones have made an appearance yet. It takes two toothbrushes to brush his teeth: one to distract him with that he can hold and chew and brush his teeth with himself, and then one I use to actually do the brushing.

Favorites: I think I'll add this category to highlight what some of Liam's favorite things seem to be at the moment.
- eating graham crackers
- playing with toy balls
- throwing toys on the floor by the door
- being read books
- walking outside
- seeing cats and dogs
- playing with water (still need to take him swimming!)
- opening and closing doors

Feeding himself a vegetable for the first time

This picture shows why we call him Mr. Chunk

Daddy and Liam

Walking in the park

Headed right for the street...until I stopped him, of course

Walking away from me...off exploring

Found some leaves

That swoop is out of control. He needs a barrette...or a haircut 

Issues

I keep the blog pretty light, mostly documenting Liam and all that he's up to these days. Pretty much just the good stuff. But the past few weeks have been somewhat tough on me. Nothing major has happened. Nothing bad has happened. Plenty of good things have happened. It's just been one of those periods of time (and it's happened before) where I doubt my abilities to be a good mother. Now, I know I'm a good mother. My son is happy and healthy and growing and learning everyday. I've just been wondering if I've really done the best job I could possibly do so far. These feelings typically come up when hormones and emotions collide, and while I know it's probably silly to think about these things, I still do.

It probably started when Liam went to a summer play day at our church and I worked it, but was in another room. The longest Liam had been at the church before this was about 4 hours. This day, we were there closer to 7 hours since I had to be there early to work. We also had to take Will to work beforehand and pick him up afterward. That had us out of the house all day long. Liam was in the baby room with wonderful teachers. He behaved fine as far as I know, but he ate and drank very little all day long, and slept for about 5 minutes. The teachers did nothing wrong. It's Liam's personality, and the fact that when he's there, he's too busy playing to want to do any of those things. He's also easily distracted, so trying to feed him when other things are going on in the room must be quite difficult. It's difficult for me! Going into the play day, I really didn't think Liam would have any problems. I figured he might not sleep, since he never sleeps there, but I figured he would eat and drink since the only thing he had before we left the house was some milk. He needed to eat two meals and a snack while there, and drink milk! I felt like the worst mom in the world when I picked him up and got the run down of the day. He was extremely tired and hungry when I picked him up. His bottle of milk was still in the fridge, so I gave that to him before we left. I cried for several hours about it since it was my fault he was there, and he obviously wasn't ready to be away from home that long. Even though we need for me to make some extra money, we decided that I wouldn't work them anymore or send Liam anymore. Now, we may re-evaluate the situation in August and see if he would be ready for the last two.

I was helping in the room that was the next step up from the baby room Liam was in. That day really brought to my attention several things that Liam doesn't do yet that other kids around his age are capable of doing. Yes I know, don't compare your kid to other kids, or don't compare yourself to other moms. But seriously, who doesn't do that? And why can't Liam do these things? I figure it must be my fault for not pushing him to learn, or rather master, these skills. The two big ones that stood out in my mind were feeding himself an entire meal and falling asleep on his on.

So I've set out to work on him with those skills. Liam can feed himself just fine. There is no doubt in his physical ability to do so. He feeds himself several times a day. And he's feeding himself more and more foods all the time. I do still feed him some things from a spoon, though, like fruits, veggies, oatmeal, and yogurt. To him, a spoon is still just for playing with. I always give him one during meals and try to encourage him to use it, but he never does. I know he will one day, though. Up until this week, really, he wouldn't feed himself vegetables or fruit. He would just smear them around his tray, but he would let me feed them to him. This week, though, he has done an excellent job at feeding himself steamed broccoli, sometimes even shoving it into his mouth with both hands. So that's a start! Liam has also fed himself whole meals a couple of time this week. Those consisted of broccoli, cheese, and bread. I'm also working with him to learn how to take bites out of food. It's only been less than a month since his top two teeth starting coming in, giving him a grand total of four chompers. Before then, when I tried to get him to take a bite of something, he wouldn't do it. But now that he has teeth on the top and bottom, he's getting much better at it. So now, I'm a little less worried about him feeding himself. I still don't know if he could sit down in a chair (not a highchair) and do it, though. Pretty sure he'd be too distracted. It also can take him a while to self-feed a whole meal. He certainly doesn't mind taking his time.

The bigger issue is certainly the sleep one. Liam slept in our room until he was exactly one year old, and I always held him while he fell asleep. I've let him fall asleep in my arms for naps as well. Apparently, I've been setting him up to fail in life by doing that! I know that it's important for Liam to learn to fall asleep on his own. I'm sure it's why he doesn't sleep at church (that, and there's too much fun stuff going on to sleep). The times I've tried to let him fall asleep on his own have been met with many tears, so I'd give in and hold him. Last week, I decided to start some sleep training with Liam so he could learn to fall asleep on his own before he got even older and more set in his ways. I have several books about baby/toddler sleep, so I must have known this would be an issue one day.

I decided to try a gradual approach with me staying in the room until he fell asleep, and gradually moving closer to the door until I was no longer in the room. This way allowed for soothing from crying by picking him up and calming him down, but putting him back in the crib while he was still awake. The first night wasn't horrible, but he did start crying so hard I picked him. He was then asleep about two minutes later in my arms. At nap the next day, I did the same thing, and laid on the floor waiting for him to fall asleep. And he did, after some crying/whining and about 45 minutes. He slept for 3 hours! Things seemed to keep getting better over last weekend, and he started falling asleep faster. There was always some crying, though, and I was there to soothe him. I was not going to let him cry it out. We started putting him to bed earlier, and on Sunday night he was asleep before 8:00 p.m. That has been extremely rare for Liam. Then he woke up in the middle of the night. Trying to stick with my plan of not letting him fall asleep in my arms, it took an hour and half for him to fall back asleep, once again with a ton of crying and soothing. But, he eventually wore himself out and fell asleep...in his crib. I felt bad for him. Monday night it took an hour and half for him to fall asleep, and there was a lot of crying and soothing during that time. He was upset. Very upset.  Then there was a  repeat of the previous middle of the night awakening. 1.5 hours. Both of us awake. Tuesday night, the same thing happened again at bedtime, 1.5 hours of crying/whining/soothing/Liam freaking out. He had become scared of going to bed, the opposite of what I was aiming for. Bedtime was so very stressful. I had failed. I can't remember if I gave in Tuesday night. I think I did. I finally let him fall asleep in my arms. And I've been letting him fall asleep in my arms since then. The gradual approach was obviously not working. Not working at all. I did something wrong. I am against letting him cry it out. Liam is so stubborn and persistent that I have no doubt he would cry for hours until he was throwing up. And that won't be happening.

So, yes, I've gone back to the old way for right now. He has to become not scared of bedtime anymore. Even if that means I have to hold him to fall asleep. So it's the type of situation where I'm a bad mother for not teaching him to fall asleep on his own sooner, but I'm also bad for putting him through what was obviously becoming quite traumatic for him. Can't win!

I will be trying a different approach at some point, hopefully not too far in the future. I really do want him to learn to fall asleep on his own and stay asleep. By not doing this much sooner, I've only made it much harder on everyone. I know that now. I'm hoping and praying he does learn at some point, though. I know it will be much better for him to learn this skill, and learn it soon.

These aren't the only things I've been struggling with lately, but they're the big ones, especially the sleep. I think it's time for a mommy break.

Splashin'

Since it's already 100 degrees or more pretty much everyday, the summer heat oppression has begun. We don't make it out for our walk everyday because it's usually too hot by the time we're ready to go. Obviously, staying inside all day is the coolest (temp-wise) option, but Liam still needs some outside time if we can get it. So yesterday, I set him up on a towel with a bucket of water (actually his Easter basket), and let him splash away. Will came home from work early and get here just in time to see the splashing. I think he had fun, but he would've enjoyed a bigger bucket more. I wish we could get him a little kiddie pool! We need to take him swimming in the regular pool that's 50 feet from our apartment.

I think Will had just poured water down his back.

Love that belly!

Father's Day

This was Will's second Father's Day, but last year Liam was barely a month old and we were still in survival mode. I didn't really have it together enough to do much for him.

This year, we celebrated by going to Fort Worth. We went to two of our favorite places, the Japanese Botanical Gardens and the Spiral Diner. It was a nice morning and special since we rarely ever go to Fort Worth. It was Liam's first time at both places. He saw the huge koi, walked laps around the rock garden, and crossed the little pond with his daddy. Most of the terrain was too treacherous for a newbie walker, but he adored walking around in the couple of places he was able to do so. Liam is definitely happiest when he is free from all restraints!

Lunch at Spiral Diner was wonderful. It truly is our favorite restaurant. Yes, it's all vegan, but it is all delicious! Liam got to try the best potato salad in the world and their yummy bread. He spent most of the time goofing around with Will and looking around trying to get attention from people. Thankfully, he was pretty much ignored there!

Sunday, actual Father's Day, was very low key. We went to church and that was about it. Then I made a cake for Will on Monday.

I just have to say that Will is a wonderful father. He adores Liam and loves him with all his heart. He spends a lot of time with Liam and takes him for a walk almost every evening. He gets him ready for bed every night. Will lets me take much needed breaks and doesn't complain that our place isn't clean all the time. He works hard so that I can stay home with Liam, and he absolutely believes that's the best thing for our family. He loves playing with Liam, and I know they'll be best friends in the coming years. Liam and I are blessed that he is the head of our household. Liam has a huge advantage in life by having a father who loves him and is invested in his life. I know he will always be there for us. Will is the best!

Liam at 13 Months

Here we are, a month after his first birthday. I feel like Liam is now even more so in fast forward mode. I can tell that he will grow up a lot this next year, which is good. I think we're heading into a time of frustration as he is becoming more physically able but still can't communicate effectively. He's always learning, though, so I know this is just a short stage. I admit I am looking forward to the day when he can tell me what he wants or what's wrong. I'm over the screaming, and he doesn't just do it if he's upset. It actually happens more when he seems perfectly fine. I think he just likes to scream. I think he does it because he doesn't know how else to show some of his feelings yet or voice demands.

I'm dropping stats for awhile. Liam won't have another pediatrician check up until he's 18 months old. So I'll just say he's a little bigger than he was last month. He's a large, solid, strong kid.

Personality: Liam shows more personality all the time. He also seems to have more than one personality! He's becoming more affectionate and cuddly, which is so sweet. When I'm reading to him, he likes to lay his head on me or even sit in my lap now. He snuggles more than he used to. He will also show affection towards people other than us. Liam is a social little guy. He doesn't appear to be shy, even though he may act that way at first to get more attention from people! He actively seeks attention from other people, especially in restaurants. And of course people usually give it to him, so there's usually random people coming to our table or always looking towards us. Will and I are not used to that! It's cute, though, but waitresses especially seem to take a liking to him so they're at our table almost constantly. Liam's other personality is that of The Screamer. Sometimes it's just random screaming, but other times I can tell he wants to tell us something or do something that he just can't do yet and so he screams. It's SO loud. I feel like this age is somewhat frustrating to him. He just can't do everything he wants to do or say what he wants to say. Lately, he's been really frustrated during meal times and screaming a lot during them. I honestly don't know what it is. He's typically ok when he's feeding himself, but starts freaking out when I feed him. However, I give him the option of feeding himself non-finger food things like oatmeal and mashed up fruit (still won't feed that to himself, remember?) by putting some of it and a spoon on his tray for him to try. He just plays with it. He doesn't feed himself with a spoon yet, so I have to do it. It's the only way he eats fruits and veggies, so it must be done. He doesn't even try to put food on the spoon and put it in his mouth yet, but still he gets frustrated. Too many meals lately have ended in tears, both from him and from me. Any suggestions are welcome!

Skills: Now that Liam has mastered walking as well as any 13 month old can, I'm hopeful there will be a verbal explosion over the next few months. He still hasn't added any words he says on a regular basis, but he will randomly say words. In the past month, he's said door, thank you (dankoo), and get down (apparently. Will and I didn't hear it but 4 family members claim to have clearly heard it!). He still says "good" all the time, but lately his most favorite word has been "Dad." Liam has been saying it all the time! No daddy, just Dad! It's cute! He has also gotten better with his mimicking skills. I taught him how to turn his palms up and shrug his shoulders like he's asking a question or saying "I don't know." That's really cute, especially when he just randomly does it. He's starting to understand more words, even if he doesn't say them. He's also pointing to things more often. One thing Liam has learned in the past month or so is sharing, or at least handing objects to us. He does this a thousand times (it seems) a day with me. Nine times out of ten, he hands me a book. That's usually followed by some babbling and perhaps some feet stomping that means he wants me to read it to him...now! I always read the book if he hands one to me. He LOVES to be read to! It is seriously his most favorite thing in the world. I read a lot of books everyday, and a lot of the same ones over and over. I don't think I can emphasize enough how much he loves this. He also loves to look at books on his own and sometimes babbles "reading" them. I hope he always loves books!

Food and Drink: As mentioned earlier, there is sometimes some drama at mealtimes. I started this post last week, and things have been somewhat better the past couple of days since I wrote that. Liam is doing pretty good with feeding himself, but still won't touch the fruits and veggies. However, he did feed himself a small bit of pickle at a restaurant the other day. That may be the first veggie he's fed himself! Since he still doesn't have much in the way of teeth, the fruits and veggies I deem safe enough for him to eat are usually pretty slimy since they are soft. So maybe he just doesn't like touching the slimy stuff. He doesn't like to get messy when he eats. He will feed himself pretty much anything else that's a finger food. His favorites are bread and cheese and little fruit snacks. One thing about Liam, he is a slow eater. With anything I put on his tray, there is usually a time of playing with the food before he eats it. He likes to smush the cheese, but then he eats it. When I feed him something, unless he's super duper hungry, he likes to rest between bites. But, even though he is usually slow, he is the type of kid to put lots of food in his mouth at once. With snacks, I have to regulate them and put out a few at a time, otherwise he will have 10 cheerios in his mouth in a few seconds.

One major change is that Liam no longer drinks formula. I was sad when breastfeeding didn't work out as planned and he had to drink formula in the first place, but I was actually also sad when he stopped drinking the formula. We ran out of it about three weeks after his first birthday. I didn't know it would be an emotional thing, but it was, I guess mainly because that means he's not a baby anymore? I don't know, but it was somewhat of a big deal to me. Since then, he's been drinking milk: mostly cow's milk with some soy. It seems he has outgrown the milk sensitivity he was "diagnosed" with at one month old. He's had more dairy in the past month than in the previous 12 months combined, but he's had zero problems with it. He has refused to drink milk (beyond the first sip) from his straw cup, so I've been letting him drink it from a bottle. I know that's bad, but I honestly feel like he needs another month or so before trying to go full-time with the straw cups. He drinks water from one throughout the day, but he sometimes takes a sip then lets it fall out of his mouth, just for fun. I'm trying to teach him not to do that. He did it with milk the other day, so until I can break him of this habit, I'm ok with him still drinking milk from a bottle.

Events and Firsts: Liam had two first birthday parties in May that were a lot of fun. He got to ride in a car facing forward for the first time. It was in a friend's car, as we still have him facing backwards in ours. We probably won't turn him around until the end of the year when we're planning on getting him a seat that only faces forward. He'll be about 19 months then, but I'm sure he will be the size of a two year old! Liam had his first play date at our house with his friend, Addy. They played really well together! On June 9th, we finally got a new vehicle! We got a Scion xB! The old, tired Camry is gone (traded it in). The xB (which is classified as a wagon) is the perfect size for us. We love it so far! Liam has a much safer ride now! His seat is in the middle of the back seat and it's so easy to get him in there. It was the best decision!

Teeth: Finally, there are more teeth to report! After several nights of waking up screaming, Liam's top middle left (from his perspective) tooth popped through on June 1st! Then the top middle right tooth popped through on June 7th! They are still in the process of coming down, so I guess he has about the equivalent of 2 and 1/3 teeth right now. Hopefully it won't be too long before more come in. As far as I can tell, no more are getting ready. These two coming in were tough on him. Lots of crying. He fell on his book, "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom," and that's what broke the skin for the second top tooth to pop through, so there was a little bit of blood involved with that one. Liam's smile looks so different already. He has a large gap between those two top teeth!

Now for some pictures! He is on the go (constantly, all the time) so it is extremely difficult to get him to look at the camera. I didn't really even try this month. These were taken at the Japanese Botanical Gardens in Fort Worth.

I can sometimes get him to look if he's strapped in the stroller!

Walking around the rock garden.

Louisiana Trip for Liam's Second First Birthday Party

Memorial Day weekend, we headed to Louisiana to celebrate Liam's birthday with family. This was Liam's fourth trip to Louisiana.

We ended up leaving much later than planned, so we stopped for lunch in Lindale at a Chinese buffet restaurant. As usual, Liam was a hit with the waitresses and people sitting next to us. He loves attention and isn't shy (still don't know where he got that from). The waitresses stopped to chat with him every time they walked by!

Liam did great in the car, but started screaming when we got off I-20 in Minden. He cried almost until we got to Homer. He was tired and hungry. Of course he fell asleep ten minutes before we pulled into my grandparent's driveway. But he woke up happy, and we visited with my grandparents and he ate some food! After that, we went to my parent's house and visited a little while before we met up with my grandparents for dinner in Homer.

As I've mentioned before, Liam likes to stare at people, especially girls. But now it seems he has started trying to "talk" to them to get their attention! He did this with the waitress at Homer Seafood and Pizza (you can get either!). He kept turning around in his high chair, since she was behind him, and smiled at her at said "Hey!" Sometimes he said, "Good!," which is his favorite word to say. So yeah, it's fun to watch, and this time Liam had a big audience (my family) to entertain. The waitress was smiling, so hopefully she was ok with it!

After dinner, Will, Liam, and I walked to my high school since my grandparents live very close to it. We even went on the football field since all the gates were wide open. Even if they hadn't been open, they wouldn't have been locked. It had been a long time since I had been on the field. Liam was not impressed, of course! After our walk, it was bedtime for Liam, but he was not ready! He wanted to play some more and spend time with his great grandparents. He was flashing lots of smiles and being cute! He just wanted to stay up, and he was really wound up, so I didn't fight him on it and let him stay up until I knew he was truly ready for bed.

Saturday was a very busy day. We set out for Ruston, and I sat in the back giving Liam a bottle while Will was driving. We've done this many times before and never had any problems. But this was Liam's first time on a trip in his convertible car seat which makes him sit up higher and he can see out of the back glass. I'm not sure why, but something about drinking the bottle while going down the road didn't sit well with Liam. Once he had finished almost the whole bottle, he promptly projectile vomited it and all of his previously eaten breakfast all over himself, the carseat, and yes, on me as well. I yelled at Will to pull over, but the side of the highway wasn't the best place. Thankfully we were nearly to Athens and pulled into the (there's only one) convenience store parking lot. I had put a towel in the trunk for the trip, so I grabbed that and a full Nalgene water bottle and started cleaning it off of me just enough so I could function to take care of the rest of it. I got Liam out of the seat (poor guy), and Will helped me and got his clothes off of him and cleaned him off. I cleaned up the puddles in the carseat and on the back seat (thankful for leather seats in that moment), and then cleaned myself off some more.

We were headed to Ruston to have his one year pictures taken. Thankfully, I had been smart enough to not put him in his picture shirt, but he had been wearing the jeans he would have his pictures taken in. So I cleaned them off really well, and we put them on the front dashboard to dry. By some miracle, I had brought a pair of shorts as well (I know it's bad, but I pretty much never carry extra baby clothes with me). We put him in his picture shirt and the shorts, I dried the carseat as best I could, put him back in it, and we continued to Ruston. All in all, we handled the situation very well, I thought. We didn't freak out; we just dealt with it. I didn't have any extra clothes, so I smelled kind of like peach pumpkin pie baby food that had been part of his breakfast for the rest of the day... and it was a long day!

In Ruston, Will stayed at his parents' house to visit with them, I changed Liam back into his jeans which were still damp, and the two of us headed to Lincoln Parish Park where my friend Jamie took Liam's one year pictures. We were a little late, but it all worked out fine. As usual, Liam was Mr. Serious for the camera, but we managed to get some smiles out of him. I thought the shoot went really well, and it didn't take very long either. After that, I gave Liam another bottle since I knew he was hungry. Thankfully, I think he was only carsick, because he was perfectly fine the rest of the trip. Once we were finished at the park, we went to visit our friends the Kilpatricks. We had a nice visit with them, and Liam had fun getting into all their stuff, so the wrangling of him wore me out! We then met up with Will and his parents for lunch. By then, I think my clothes were mostly dry and so were Liam's pants! We ate at a new fast food place in town, Teriyaki Grill.

Unfortunately for Liam, there weren't any girls to stare at, but he did occasionally try to get the attention of the woman behind the counter. At some point, a guy came in and got an order to go. He sat at the table next to us while waiting for it. He was great with Liam, and Liam had fun hamming it up with him. I think he even gave him five! The restaurant was right next to Eskamoes (frozen custard), so I decided I wanted to get some since it had been years since I'd had any. We were just going to drive through, but then we saw that Jamie (the photographer), her husband Brian, and their three boys were sitting outside there! So we got to hang out with them for awhile, which was neat because none of us live in Ruston anymore!

At this point, we were all worn out, but it was time to head to my parent's house for Liam's birthday party. Thankfully, Liam slept on the way there. My mom chose a jungle animal theme for the party and had decorations, a cake, and a shirt she made for Liam that all matched the theme. It was very cute! Liam's parents (that's us), both sets of grandparents, great-grandparents, and aunt and uncle were there for his party! We had dinner first (Liam ate some beans and cornbread), and then Liam got to open presents! Once again, he had zero interest in actually opening the gifts, so Will and I did that for him. He liked playing with his new toys, though! He got a lot of great gifts. His family loves him so much! Then it was cake time! We put the whole cake in front of Liam and he promptly stuck his fingers in it. He had a look of concern on his face. I don't really think it registered to him that he could eat it! He never put his icing and cake-covered fingers anywhere near his mouth. I gave him a little bite of icing and and he mad a yucky face and coughed a little bit! So I didn't try to get him to eat anymore of the cake. Once we took the cake away, he just smeared the icing on the tray. The rest of us enjoyed the cake!

Liam had a great time at his party. He does love attention, and he had a lot of it there. He enjoyed carrying a ball around and walking from room to room. He enjoyed playing with the balloons. He is a very busy one year old.

When we got back to my grandparent's house, Liam got his first kitchen sink bath. He needed it, for sure! Then he did some more lap-walking around their house, and then I put him to bed. He was worn out, and slept through the night!

After Liam went to bed, we watched some TV with my grandparents. We watched a couple of episodes of "Duck Dynasty," which is a reality show based in West Monroe, LA about a family who has made millions making duck calls. It was seriously scripted, but it's very funny! I enjoyed it, though, and I like that it shows some places I'm familiar with, like I-20 between Ruston and WM! It does not take much to amuse me, apparently.

The next morning, we loaded up the car and headed back to Texas, stopping for lunch in Bossier City. All in all, it was a great trip! And the car got great gas mileage for a change. It was the Camry's last trip to Louisiana, as we will be replacing it this month! We won't have leather seats anymore, so now I'm paranoid about needing something to cover the seat in case Liam decides to make a mess again!

Go Pels!

Liam's In Between Room

I can't really call it a nursery, and it's not yet a big boy room. It's somewhere in between, I suppose.

Before Liam was born, we planned to have a nursery for him like most parents do. I knew how I wanted to decorate it and what the color scheme would be. We moved into a new apartment what turned out to be less than a month before he was born. So of course, the nursery did not get done before we brought him home. That wasn't a big deal. We were planning on having Liam in our room the first couple of months anyway. Around the time he was 2.5 months old, his nursery was still not ready for him and we weren't ready to be so far away from him at night. That's when we moved his crib into our bedroom (Liam had been sleeping in a pack and play bassinet). Months went by with the intention of cleaning out his room (it became our catch all room) and moving his crib and him into it. But we never really had a desire to give up our roommate. Sure, there were times when we wished Liam was in his own room, but I guess the desire was never big enough for us to actually take action to get his room ready. Then before we knew it, we were planning another move to a different apartment. That's when we decided it wasn't worth the effort to clean out the room and it wasn't worth it to put Liam through two transitions.

We moved into our current apartment when Liam turned 11 months old. We had bought a new mattress for our bed, but still had our old one. The first week we were here, Will was out of town for most of it. Since the bedrooms are across the apartment from each other, I knew I wanted to be near Liam for at least that first week. The movers put his crib into his new room, not ours, so we put our old mattress on the floor in his new room with the intention of sleeping there the first week. As it often does, time got away from us and we ended up sleeping in his room for almost a month...on a mattress on the floor, even though our perfectly good new mattress and bed were in our room.

Finally, on Liam's birthday, May 14th, Will and I just simply went to bed in our own bedroom instead of Liam's. We turned the monitor on, and thankfully everyone made it through the night just fine. Liam never even woke up! His first birthday seemed like a good day to go our separate ways.

Since then, we've all adjusted well to our new sleeping situation. Liam has woken up a few nights, but it's not too bad having to walk across the apartment to him. I think we all sleep better being in separate rooms. We sold our old mattress a few days after his birthday, so now we can't sleep in there even if we wanted to!

I know most people wouldn't dream about spending the whole first year of their child's life sharing a room with them, but there are plenty of other people who do and go way beyond a year. For us, a year was just right.

So now that Liam has his own room, I finally decorated it! I used the decorations friends made for it before he was even born. It felt good to finally get all of it up! I love his room. I think I will eventually put more on the walls, but I think it's good for right now!

Banner and pillow made by my friend Glenda

Curtains made by my friend Kelli. They match his baby blanket and the crib bumper.

Original artwork by my friend Amanda