Liam and Gibson

I think it's safe to say I've gotten out of the habit of blogging. I didn't have time to really do it for a long time, and now that I have a little more free time to do it, I don't really think about doing it. I need to, though, so I will try to be a better blogger.

Liam's birthday party was originally supposed to be May 19, which ended up being just one day after we moved in our house. I informed our guests that the party was getting pushed back to June 2.

Between moving in and 4:00 pm on June 2nd, Will worked tirelessly on the house (I helped when I could) to try and get it ready for other people to actually come inside. We achieved this goal at approximately 3:59 pm June 2nd. The living room was still full of boxes just one hour prior to the party. Thankfully, Will's parents had been here that weekend and helped us a lot around the house.

Of course, I didn't get to do all the cute decorations I wanted to use or utilize all the fun ideas I found on Pinterest, but that's ok. A month and half after the party and it's already hard to remember all the details, so I'm sure no one cared that there weren't streamer garlands hanging from the ceilings.

Liam's buddies and their families came over and had snacks and cupcakes, colored, and played outside. The weather was nice that day. After the party, some friends stuck around, and we ordered pizza for dinner and the kids that were still here played some more. It was a lovely day, except for the chigger bites some folks got in our yard.

Liam enjoyed his George party, and had really been looking forward to "party cake" leading up to the event. He did a great job eating his cupcake in a civilized manner with a fork. I think a fun time was had by all!

The huge cedar tree in our backyard provided perfect shade.

The balloons were a big hit since I didn't have time to actually tie them down somewhere before the party.

Brown painter paper came in handy.

The toddler crowd loved coloring.

Bubbles

While we sang Happy Birthday to Liam

Finally got to eat some party cake!

Playing with the water hose resulted in a soaking wet Liam

An outfit change was necessary.

Playing with his new truck.

Look at that face! They had so much fun with that balloon!

Evidence a party had taken place. Nice cracked patio, right?

Technically, this is about Liam at 25 months old since more than a month has passed since Liam turned two. I won't be writing these posts monthly anymore, but will probably do them quarterly.

Four days after Liam turned two, we moved to our house. That was a very long and stressful day. I was in charge of occupying Liam, so we spent a lot of time in the car. In fact, I drove around for an hour or more just so he could take a nap. Things are better now, but being in the new house right after we moved stressed us all out. There were boxes and stuff everywhere that could not be put away. Because of the unfinished renovations, there was literally no place for it to go yet. We spent a lot of time telling Liam, "No, No touch, Stop," etc. Of course, that made him angry and in turn made us angry. He spent a lot of time in his high chair watching Elmo or Curious George because that was the only way to get anything accomplished and to keep from going crazy. It's difficult to remember exactly when it happened, but a week or two after we moved in, Liam had the biggest meltdown I have ever seen any child have. He screamed and cried for almost an hour. He wouldn't really let us touch him and he kept throwing himself on the floor. We were scared. We tried everything we could think of to get him to stop, but he just kept screaming. Finally, he snapped out of it on his own and started smiling and talking like nothing had ever happened. I think he just had to get all of the stress he was feeling OUT. When it happened, I could have told you everything that led to the meltdown, but I can't really remember now. I do remember thinking it was no wonder he reacted that way and that it was a perfectly normal thing even though Liam had never before screamed that long. Like I said, it was frightening, and since then he's just had his typical, very short toddler tantrums.

Let's talk about good stuff now!

Liam is a very smart kid. At least we think he is. Maybe he's just average and we're easily impressed. Either way, he shows his intelligence more and more all the time.

Liam recently learned the names of colors. He showed no interest in knowing them for the longest time, then one day he just started asking me what the colors were while he was coloring. He learned them quickly that day. He knows red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple (pronounces it as "people"), pink, white, black, and brown. He sometimes knows gray. He's also calling colors crayons these days, but it comes out as "cray-nons."

We're also impressed by Liam's memory these days. He tells us lots of stuff he does at church, who he played with, and what they played with. He can also remember if I promise to give him a treat like a cookie and don't make good on that promise in a timely manner. I will be reminded! For his birthday party, I got him a Curious George matching game with pretty much all the characters featured on them. (The only one not on there is Allie, and she's pretty much Liam's favorite.) Anyway, he's learned pretty much all of the characters' names from them. Yes, he watches George regularly and already knew a few, but now he knows a lot more. Seriously, if he can touch it and see it, he retains the information much better. He knows a lot of Sesame Street characters as well, mostly from a coloring book he has. I previously mentioned Liam watched probably too much TV right after we moved in. Well, it got to the point where he could remember things that were about to happen and tell me. He would usually just say a word and then a second later that object would appear on the screen. Yes, it meant he was watching George and Elmo too much, but he was also strengthening his memory!

He knows numbers 0-9, and know a few numbers in Japanese. He especially likes to say the word, "Japanese!" It's cute, and it's always said with enthusiasm.

He's known all the capital letters for a long time, and now he knows almost all the lowercase letters as well. He gets "d" and "b" mixed up, but who doesn't sometimes? He doesn't know all the letters in order, however. He can't sing the ABC song, although he has been trying to sing it lately. If we tell him a sequence of a few letters, he can usually tell us which one comes next. He hears the ABC song all the time, so he is processing and getting the order of them straight in his mind!

Speaking of songs, these days Liam wants us to make up songs about almost every word we say to him! A typical conversation would go like this:
Me: "Do you want to use the orange crayon?"
Liam: "Orange say color" (I'll write more about "say" later.)
Me: "Yes, orange is a color."
Liam: "Color song."

He wants the song to be to the tune of the Elmo's World theme, so the "Color" song would go:
"La la la la. La la la la. Color song. La la la la. La la la la. Color song. Color likes his crayons. His markers too. That's color's song!"

I've sung songs about almost everything it seems. This has gotten more and more annoying over time. Sometimes now I just tell him there is no song about that or that I don't know how the song goes. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't!

Back to "say." This started out with Liam telling us what lots of different animals would say. Horse says neigh. Cow says moo. Etc. Although, Liam usually does leave the s off "says." He has this book about jungle animals that he loves, but it has animals in it that we're not sure what sound they make. So instead of making up surely incorrect sounds, we starting giving those animals a descriptive word but keeping with the "(animal) say ____" pattern. Therefore, Giraffe say tall, Hippo say big. Stuff like that. Well then Liam wanted to know what everything says, even inanimate objects like shoes. (They say walk, by the way.) He's still big on this and asks what everything "says." As annoying as this can also be, it means he's learning about all kinds of things.

We recently turned his carseat to face forward. He was starting to complain about it, and with it getting hot and his carseat effectively blocking most of the air conditioning getting to him (it's in the middle), we decided to turn him around. He loves it. He quickly learned that red lights mean stop, green means go, and yellow means slow down.

For a two year old boy, Liam is very verbal. He talks all the time, at least at home. He will repeat everything we say say to him, and learns new words everyday. As with any toddler, he does still mispronounce some words, but he works out correct pronunciations more and more all the time. The one phrase I hope he keeps saying his way for a while longer is "Thank you." I love hearing him say "Deedoo." He's up to four word sentences now, although more often than not he leaves the minor words out. "The snacks are all gone." becomes "Snacks all gone." One of the most recent full sentences he told me was, "Emma broke a toy." He was telling me something that happened at VBS.

Vacation Bible School was last week, and I helped in a kindergarten class for three days while Liam got to hang out with his fellow two year old buddies all week long. All of his friends from church were there, and Liam loved going everyday. He talked about it every afternoon and evening, and was eager to go to "Bible Gool" every morning. What's really fun is that he knows the names of all of his buddies now and talks about them a lot. He tells us who he played with and what they did.

Speaking of names...Liam now says his name all the time! About a month ago, we finally tricked him into repeating his name. The first time, it came out as "Yeem," but he quickly started saying "Leem," and now it either sounds like that or he pronounces it correctly. It's so sweet to finally hear him say his name! He held out on us for so long with that one. Now he's into claiming his stuff..."Leem's snack," "Leem's mama," etc.

As far as Liam's behavior goes these days, it's definitely hit or miss in public. After having to leave a restaurant early while out for my mother's day dinner, we've been reluctant to take him to restaurants. We attempted going to The Mellow Mushroom in Frisco recently, but after waiting 20 minutes for a table with Liam getting increasingly irritable, we chickened out and left. I honestly can't remember if we've taken him to a restaurant at all in a month or so. I know we've opted for take out when we really wanted to go out several times recently. Liam is just not a fan of being strapped down in a highchair, and unfortunately food doesn't distract him enough to want to stay seated. He's not one of those kids who just eats and eats all the time. Liam would much rather be in motion and not sitting down eating. I know he won't learn how to behave correctly if we keep him home all the time, but I really don't want every meal in public to turn into an attempt at a learning experience! Plus he's been plenty of other public places lately. Target is one of his favorites as long as he gets to "push a buggy." He sees the red logo, and those are the first words out of his mouth every time. If both of us are there, we will usually let him walk around with us. That means one of us is following him while the other shops. I know we look silly to other shoppers and it sometimes seems like our kid is out of control (sometimes he's on the verge), but we do like to give him some freedom when we can. It only really gets embarrassing when a lady looks at Liam and then me and says, "I know who's running your house."

All in all, though, Liam is a wonderful and absolutely delightful child. He is bright, curious, and braver than he probably should be! He's never done anything with malicious intent and is a very nice little guy. Stubborn and determined for sure, but he is thankfully more easy going for other people. Friends or anyone at church who's watched him has had only good things to say about him. He loves to play with other kids and likes having friends. He is a sociable little guy. We truly adore him very much and are constantly amazed by him. He definitely keeps me on my toes, but that's a good thing!

Some of Liam's favorites at two years old:
-Drawing, mostly with pens. He has covered a notebook in black and green "skeebles." He usually wants us to draw stuff for him too. He's quite demanding. The most common requests are glasses, trucks, faces, Pepaw, flowers, suns, and lately his friend Harlan. He always wants us to draw "two Harnans."
-Talking about his friends. We hear their names all the time now. Sometimes he'll get kind of fixated on a friend. Recently he talked about our friends' daughter Chloe a lot. He mostly just told us that she wears glasses! He's been kind of fixated on glasses recently too.
-Chasing the cats. They are still terrified of him, although I think they're getting a little used to him finally. They don't always immediately run away and he sometimes gets a quick pet in. He really just wants to hug them, but he knows that "Skeetchy and Onor scared."
-Walking or strolling down the street to see the light pole and the stop sign. He's pretty much obsessed with these two things. He can look out the living room window and see the light pole, so he has to do that every night to see the orange light glowing.
-Playing guitar with Will. Now that we live in a house, Will is able to crank up his guitar and play loudly a lot more. Liam loves it, and likes to strum with the orange pick. He will also dance and sing into a toilet paper stand microphone while he plays.
-Digging in the dirt. He's done this pretty much every day since we moved in. We don't have nice landscaping (maybe we'll worry about that next year!) so there's several dirt patches in the front yard. I've become an expert at getting dirt out from under his fingernails.
-Nate Nate's shoes. We were handed down pretty much Liam's entire summer wardrobe from a friend, and there were a pair of Nike shoes in the bag. For some reason I thought they were a size 7, so I figured they would fit Liam. When I put them on him, they were way too big, and then I saw they were a size 9. He refused to let me take them off of him, and has worn "Nate Nate's big shoes" a lot lately. I'm going to look online to try and find a pair in his size and attempt a switcheroo!
-Watching "My Neighbor Totoro." This is something new just in the past week. For Father's Day, one of Will's gifts was MNT on Blu-Ray. I know pretty much no one reading this blog knows about MNT, but Totoro is a much-loved character in Japan. The animated movie was made in the 80s, but Disney did an English dub maybe 6 or 7 years ago, so plenty of American children now know the wonder of Totoro. Liam has to sleep with a small stuffed Totoro that was actually part of a keychain, so he had an idea of who Totoro was. To our surprise, Liam actually loved the movie even though Totoro is very large and roars loudly (not in a mean way, though). There's also a cat bus that even I think is kind of creepy. He especially likes the youngest girl in the movie, Mei. He asks to see Mei and Totoro pretty much every day, and he even usually cries when the movie is over. We typically only watch half of it and start where Totoro shows up. It's a sweet movie, and Liam even shows concern for Mei when she is briefly lost in the movie. We're in the market for a larger Totoro for him to sleep with, mainly because it's small enough to roll through the slats in the crib and then he freaks out. It takes weird bounces too, so there's no telling where it will end up when it falls on the floor!
-Mama. That's me. Liam is in a stage where he only wants me to do stuff for him. He will pretty much not let Will even hand him food or change his diaper. I'm not sure why he's doing this, but he's definitely all about Mama these days. I'm hoping that will change soon and he'll be a Daddy's boy for a while.

Oh, I almost forgot about teeth. All four of the one year molars are in, but I think a couple of them are not all the way down yet. Recently, all four canine teeth broke through and are coming in at the same time. Amazingly enough, all of these new teeth coming in haven't bothered Liam much. I can only think of one instance of teething pain in recent months. After all of these are in, he will have all of them except the last four molars that will make an appearance in another year or so.