Liam versus Paint

I have many, many blog posts to write, and I definitely intend on writing all of them, no matter how far removed from the date they should have been written I get. I haven't done a 365 post for most all of May and now into June. A big one is about Liam at two years old. I will really try to write that one soon. I think he's an amazing kid.

However, the material for this blog post happened just this morning. Liam got some paint and paper for his birthday, so I decided I would introduce him to painting (finally) this morning. We didn't do it when we lived in the apartment because I knew it make a big mess. I was right.

I chose blue and yellow paint so he would get to paint with three colors. I knew it would all get mixed together to make green.

He was unsure of what to do at first. The small end of the brush hit the paint first. He quickly got the hang of it though. I let him do whatever he wanted. That meant before too long, he had paint all over his hands, some on his face and in his hair, paint on the table and on the chair, and even paint on the chair I was sitting in. I had to abandon it!

Of course he wanted to use ALL the paint I brought outside. I had no choice but to let him pour out the remainder of both paint bottles. In true toddler fashion, this one picture wasted a lot of paint.

Once he (I) had enough of the painting, I carried him to the water hose in the front yard to clean off his hands. In the process of doing that, I made a mud puddle. Liam loved stomping around it. I still had a dirty kid, though. I stripped him down on the front porch and left the dirty and wet clothes and shoes outside, and straight to the shower he went. Fun morning, but it will probably be a while before we paint again. At the rate he went through the paint, I can't afford to let him do it much!

We got these chairs off the curb when I neighbor was throwing them away. We haven't totally decided to keep them yet, so it's no big deal for him to paint them!

Mommy made a mud puddle...oops.

My Poor Neglectarino Blog

I have missed blogging so much, but there just hasn't been time. There isn't really time right now, but I'm typing for a few minutes while I should be doing other things. I should always be doing other things.

So we bought a house nearly two months ago now, but we just moved in less than two weeks ago. We (I say we..I really mean Will) have been doing what turned out to be some major renovations. Kitchen and main bath...all new. Neither one is finished yet, but we are slowly getting there. Looking back, it would have been nice to not have moved in already, but after pushing back our move out day repeatedly the apartment leasing office finally put their foot down and rented it out from under us. We had to go. Someone else (surprisingly) wanted our apartment with the faint green crayon smudges on the walls and the upstairs neighbors who liked to yell at each other at 5:00 a.m.

But...we moved, and it was the hardest move we've ever done, and we've done more than our fair share of moves. (I couldn't figure out how to get "move" in that run-on sentence one more time.) Since someone has to keep an eye on Liam at all times, 99% of everything having to do with this move and renovations has fallen on Will. He is a weary man. Beat down. Hating our new house for the amount of his time it has consumed and continues to consume. All I can do is help when I can (which is not much between Liam and working from home), be encouraging, or nag him to get more things done faster. I'm ashamed to say I've done more of that last one than the other two. Between the closing day and the moving day, I stepped foot in our new house all of two times. I didn't understand that house renovations are apparently the most time consuming thing ever. We now know that any project will take AT LEAST four times longer than you think it will, especially when one person is doing the work mostly by himself. Will has thankfully had help from friends, and we are incredibly grateful to them for giving up their time and sharing their knowledge and helping us out.

However, I'm beat down too. Liam is wearing me out these days. Busy is an understatement. Belligerent is an apt word to describe him. Around the time he turned two (about two weeks ago), we moved, and then I found out the Terrible Two's are real. He is stressed out along with us because everything is different now. Our house is still not "put away" (where's it going to go, lol?) so I spend a lot of time redirecting him and keeping him from touching/doing something he shouldn't. Tantrums ensue. Stressed out mommy. No one is happy. Everyone is crying. Blerg. It's just a stressful time for everyone.

Want to read something funny? I had originally planned to have Liam's birthday party here at our new old house May 19. Way back at the beginning of April, that sounded like a great plan. May 19 ended up being just one day after we moved in. So the party has been pushed back to June 2. In two days. Three weeks ago, we thought sure this place will be awesome and ready for public viewing by then!

It's not.

Not even close.

I'm trying not to freak out on the inside (or the outside) about that. The living room and kitchen are still flesh-colored (Eww). We will have a kitchen floor by then! But the cabinets will not be painted nor will they have doors. The backsplash area will still look rough and patchy. I will have to get over it. I will have to make decorations and do everything at the last minute. I will have to be stressed until 4:00 p.m. Sunday when the party starts. I will have to not worry about what our guests think of our half done house. I assume they will not care. They are our friends. I still care, though.

However, I know Liam will have a fun Curious George party with his buddies. That's really all that matters. And in a few weeks, we will have a finished, cute house.

The end.

365: April 19-25

Yes, this is incredibly late. Life has become very busy lately with us gearing up to move into the house we bought a month ago. Will has been working crazy hard at work and on the house, and I have been working crazy hard wrangling Liam and working from home. We're both exhausted, and I haven't had time to blog. I'm hoping to get this finished before Liam wakes up from his nap!

April 19th: This was apparently the ONLY picture I took that day. This is what happens when you pour water out in the seat of your highchair and drop some O's in the seat. They stick to your booty like they're glued on! Gross.

April 20: We went to Liam's sweet friend Collette's birthday party that day. The theme was ballet and tutus for the girls and bow ties for the boys. Liam had a lot of fun playing, messing with Collette's presents as she opened them, and even doing a little dancing. To my surprise, however, the thing he enjoyed most was the cake. He sat in a chair next to Collette and ate his cake with a fork like a big boy. Since then, he has talked about cake a lot...and Collette. According to Liam, she's his friend and she's cute.

April 21: This was the day Will left for his 5-day long business trip. We took him to the airport in the morning, and in the early evening, we played outside and Liam dug in the dirt with a stick for a very long time. Loves the dirt.

April 22: I've already given it it's own post, but that was the day I took Liam to some bluebonnets for pictures. Here's one I didn't post before.

April 23: I have no idea what he had just eaten to make such a mess around his mouth. All I remember is that he demanded to play with his number puzzle while in his highchair. Visual learning is working out yet again for Liam. Since I got him the puzzle, he is saying and correctly identifying numbers 1-9. I wish that puzzle had 10 on it. He'll just have to learn that number later!

April 24: At this point, Will had been gone for four days, and we were both going crazy! Around day 3 is when Liam always starts acting out when Will is gone. Thankfully, Will doesn't have to travel too much (although this was his third trip in four months), but I think that might make it worse since neither one of us is used to him being gone so long. We needed to get out of the house, so we went to Target and looked at books.

April 25: That was the day Will came home from his trip! He had flown on his company's corporate jet, so we had to go to a private hangar at Love Field to pick him up. That was also the day the president (as well as the loving former presidents) were in town. Will saw Air Force One parked at the airport as his plane landed. We couldn't see it from where we were. However, we were just really glad to see Will!

Extra pictures from Collette's party!

Collette ran up to greet Liam when we arrived, but Liam got all shy and just stared at his feet for awhile. Collette laid on the ground to see his face.

Liam and his bow tie!

Surrounded by tutus!

Watching the ballerina dance. Did a little stompy dance.

Waiting very patiently for cake.

He spent a lot of the party trying to get outside to go play. When the party was nearly over, we went out to the backyard for a few minutes. To our surprise, everyone else had left by the time we came back in!

Happy slider.

Bluebonnets and the Boy

Taking pictures of your child in the bluebonnets is just one of those things you have to do around here. Some people do it every year and make it a tradition. I wanted to do it last year, but never got around to it during their short blooming season. Since we have full access to the car this week, I decided to give it a go this morning and take Liam to some bluebonnets with high hopes of precious pictures in my mind.

I was needing to go to a store in Plano anyway, so I figured we should check out the supposedly awesome bluebonnet field at  JC Penney headquarters in Plano. I drove around the entire JC Penney grounds, and I could see fields of flowers up on the hills, but nothing blue stood out to me. There were a few of the blue flowers, but nothing I would qualify as a photo-worthy patch. However, the grounds were beautiful. If you want lots of colorful flowers as your backdrop, go there. On my second loop around, I kept an eye out for any patch of bluebonnets I could see. I finally saw one that had a decent amount of bluebonnets scattered among other colorful flowers. It was on the side of a hill (they all were). Maybe the bluebonnets were at the top of the hills, but I didn't venture far enough up to find out.

Liam wanted out of the car, so I set him free, and he started up the hill. I started snapping pictures, asking over and over for him to sit down or look at me. He had no plans to comply with any of my requests, so I took a lot of pictures of him pulling up flowers. I kept trying to get him to stop, but you can imagine how well that worked. However, Liam did enjoy the flowers on this Earth Day. I just wish I had gotten more than a couple photos of him looking at the camera. Also, I wish I had more photography skills...and a better camera.

Thinks all flowers are dandelions

Awkward superhero pose?

There's obviously some bluebonnets in those pictures, but you don't get the impression that Liam is frolicking among them. So before we went home, we stopped by another patch that's close to where we live. This was a true bluebonnet patch. We were there about ten minutes, and I once again had trouble convincing Liam to look at the camera! But I got pictures of Liam in bluebonnets this year, and that was the goal.