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.

365: April 12-18

This felt like a really long week. Will's dad was here last weekend helping Will out with house stuff. Liam loved seeing his "Pepaw" and playing with his hat and sitting in his truck. He's still talking about it a week later! Then I was sickly at the beginning of the week, and then the weather got cold and rainy AGAIN, so we stayed inside some. It's a miracle I remembered to take at least one picture everyday.

April 12: That morning, Liam and I went to story time at the Interurban Rail Museum in Plano. We're in a playgroup, and this was only the second time we've been able to go, so I was really looking forward to it. Liam enjoyed looking at the model train before the story time began. Of course Liam could not sit still during the story. He was up pretty much the whole time. He even went and stood right in front of the storyteller with his back turned to the other kids. He also turned around and just looked at them while they were trying to listen. Awkward! Then, if I put even just one finger on him to convince him to sit down, he protested! He was definitely a distraction. Afterwards, we briefly walked through the old train car on display and played some at the park before going grocery shopping.

April 13: Saturday morning, Liam and I had several errands to run. While at Buy Buy Baby, Liam tried on this awesome monkey hat. It was a little too small, though, to purchase.

April 14: My main duties during this move are to watch Liam and to pack. I finally got some boxes from our realtor's sister in law who had just moved. Now I suppose I have no excuse to not start packing.

April 15: This was the day I really felt terrible. The weather was nice, but unfortunately for Liam, I could not leave the apartment. So we hung out inside all day, watched entirely too much Curious George, and played with shadows. We both survived.

April 16: With me feeling well enough to go outside, Liam finally got to do some sliding and playing in the dirt. His new favorite way to slide is on his belly. That's all fine and fun...until your shirt rides up and you're sliding down on bare belly. Ouch. Once that happened to him, he was back to normal sliding.

April 17: At that point, he had been 23 months old for three days, so I knew I needed to take some pictures of him for that blog post. Thankfully, he complied when I put him in his stroller, and we spent some time at the park taking pictures, blowing dandelions, and narrowly avoiding ant beds. We both had fun!

April 18: I attended the Dallas Moms Blog Moms Night Out party in Allen. It seemed like it would be a really fun event with food, drinks, a live band, and getting to meet other mama's. I got there a little early, got my swag bag (hoping there would be an Anthropologie coupon in it...nope), and went to Anthropologie anyway. Once the event started, I was just standing in line for food for a long time (freezing!), and really wasn't impressed. I talked to a friend from my teacher certification class whom I hadn't seen in a few years, and then I finally met up with my friend Amanda. We immediately started taking about just going to eat at a restaurant instead because it really wasn't worth it to be so cold. So that's what we did. There ended up being five of us going to Grimaldi's for pizza and warmth.

Here's some bonus pictures from this week!

The one time I actually got him to sit down at story time.

Playing at the park in downtown Plano

We went to Ace Hardware to get some paint samples, but Liam decided he needed to sit in every chair on display instead.

Zonked out after a busy morning

Sitting in Pepaw's truck

Liam's first letter drawing. He told me it was an N. I believed him.

Liam at 23 Months

Goodness, Liam will be two years old in less than one short month! This month will also probably fly by as we prepare to move into the house we just bought. Will is working extremely hard on the house, but it looks like we will be moving the first week in May instead of at the end of April. I'm planning on having Liam's birthday party at our new place the third weekend in May, so it has to be done by then, right?!

Liam has really upped his vocabulary and communication skills this month. I can't even begin to tell you all of the new words he has learned and started saying. There's at least one new one everyday. I think he has also started understanding a lot more this month as well. He's now understanding and verbalizing up/down, hot/cold, open/close, happy/sad, etc. I especially love to hear him say he's happy! I think he pretty much understands most anything I say to him or ask him to do. He still may not comply, but he understands! Liam is also telling us when something hurts. He says, "Ow. Hurt." It's typically for very minor things, but he has also recently told me that his stomach was hurting. I'm so glad he's finally able to start communicating that kind of information to me!

Liam is also starting to say things he's obviously remembering. For example, yesterday he said to me, "Daddy. House. Church. Pepaw. Hat. Truck." He was telling me about the previous morning when Will went to work on the house while Liam and I went to church. After church, we went back to the house where we said goodbye to Will's dad (Pepaw) and Liam played with his hat and got to sit in his truck. He also recalled what he did Sunday evening when we went to Bible study. He said, "Na-Nate (Nate Nate), Wawa (his pronunciation of Ava), Cho-ree (Chloe), Katie. Box. Dirt." Katie is the babysitter, and all the kids played outside with a big box and with dirt. So he was telling me what he did and who he played with. It may not be sentences, but I totally understood him!

However, I have noticed that he is reluctant to say words that start with "L." He also usually has trouble pronouncing L sounds in the middle of words. "Color" is a word he says a lot, and for a long time, he pronounced it as "cuh-yur," which is fine. He now pronounces it correctly since he says it so much. So I know he could say words with L sounds if he tried. The bummer of the no L's is that the two big words he's never even attempted to say are Liam and love. No "I love you!" yet, but it'll happen one day!

He does sometimes make sentences, but typically no more than three words. Last week, we were outside playing and we heard a baby crying. Liam said, "Oh no, baby cry." That's a good example of his sentence ability at the moment, but I was impressed by his empathy for hearing the baby cry. Although today, he did also tell me, "It's biper (diaper) time." His favorite sentence at the moment is definitely "Wha dat?" (What's that?) The past couple of days, I've heard that one soooo many times as he asks me about everything in ALL of his books, even the words he already knows. I love that he wants to learn, and I don't really mind it. Yesterday evening, after I had battled an upset stomach all day and he had moved on to the Dr. Seuss books, I admit that I just started making up words unless it was already named in the book.

Liam is still loving coloring. He got to color with markers for the first time in the past month. He loved that, of course. After the mess they made, I got him some color wonder markers for Easter, but of course he didn't care for them...probably because he kept trying to use them on regular paper and nothing showed up! I'm waiting until we're out of the apartment to introduce him to painting and play doh (on the back patio)! These days, Liam makes a distinction between coloring and drawing. When he colors, he's scribbling all over the page. When he draws, he's making lines and being more purposeful with the marks he makes. He holds the crayon correctly and can draw lines, spirals, and what he calls "stars." If I ask him what he's doing, he will say, "Draw pitcher." The sticker obsession has died down a lot, probably because I ran out of stickers! He occasionally asks for some, but thankfully doesn't get upset when I say they're all gone.

I've known for awhile that Liam is a visual learner. I really believe the alphabet puzzle and the ABC Duplos he got for Christmas helped him learn all the letters by the time he was 21 months old. Since we had focused so much on letters, numbers had fallen to the wayside, and Liam didn't really know any of them. I decided to get him a number puzzle a few weeks ago, and it has definitely helped. He now knows two and nine all the time, and is starting to mimic the rhythm of counting, although he usually just says, "Two, ich (one in Japanese), nine, two, two, two." Two is his fave! He's getting there, but he just doesn't have as much interest in numbers as he does letters. He can also read letters when they're upside down, and he's getting pretty good at knowing the lowercase letters. I think I've finally convinced him a lowercase "e" is not a "G."

Liam has turned into quite the climber. He's always been good at physical stuff, but now he's starting to try things that really scare me. The only way he gets in his high chair these days is to scale it and climb in, and I've gotten used to seeing that happen. He's also mastered the metal climbing bars on the playground equipment outside our apartment. That still makes me nervous, because one wrong move and he's falling to the ground, which wouldn't be SO bad since it's not that far. The bad part is that he would surely bang his face/teeth on a metal bar on the way down. I cringe thinking about it. We are always there to spot him on that one. He also tries to climb trees, but so far has had no success with that, probably because he picks trees without really low branches! Thankfully, he has not yet climbed out of his crib, although I have seen him get his foot all the way on top of the rail. Once he figures out how to properly hoist himself up, we're in trouble. I pray that day is a long way off.

In terms of personality, Liam really has a great one. There are plenty of days, however, that I'm pretty sure I gave birth to the most stubborn human ever. If he doesn't want to do something, he WILL NOT do it. Saying "No" to him usually results in a fit being thrown that may or may not involve throwing himself on the ground in protest. It's usually a gamble on whether or not he will behave in public. BUT, he is a very sweet and kind boy, and he's super curious like his favorite monkey, George. He is very much into exploring the world around him, even if it may not convenient for his parents for him to do so at times. He started making real smoochy sounds this month, and is excellent at blowing kisses. He adores his small stuffed Totoro and absolutely has to sleep with it. Unfortunately, his slightly bigger Totoro which he also loved did not survive being puked on. I seriously love this kid, and I can't believe I've been fortunate enough to spend almost every single day of his entire life with him watching him grow and learn. What a blessing.

I convinced Liam to ride in his stroller for the first time in months, and we were able to walk to the nearby park to take pictures like we've done many times before. This will be the last set from this location since we will have moved by the time his birthday rolls around next month! I ended up taking a ton of them.

My tree hugger/wannabe tree climber

I love how the wind is blowing his hair up on both sides in this one

He posed himself this way and sat like this long enough to take four pictures.

Threw himself on the ground for a quick fit after I picked him up and moved him from sitting on an ant bed

365: March 29-April 4 AND April 5-April 11

Yeah, so I've totally skipped out on blogging lately. My thoughts are usually taken up with house things, so I haven't thought too much about blogging. At the times when I really wanted to write, I just didn't have time to do so. Therefore, you get two weeks of 365 with this post.

March 29: Of course this seems like FOREVER ago now, but this was the day Liam and I made an Easter collage. In this picture, he was drawing stars on it. At least that's what he told me they were. I can see it!

March 30: At that point, it was the weekend before we were set to close on our house. We figured we needed to start deciding on paint. I went to the local Ace Hardware to look at Benjamin Moore paint samples since I read they had all the cool colors. What's great about paint is that you can pick a color from one brand and have it made with another brand's (cheaper) paint. As of today (April 11) we still haven't decided on one single paint color!

March 31: That was Easter, and thankfully I did an Easter post already. Liam got lots of coloring supplies in his basket, and spent a lot of his waking hours that day with a crayon in hand.

April 1: I'm not sure if the apartment lawn crew was trying to play an April Fools joke on us, but throwing a rock into our sliding glass door was a good attempt at one. Our neighbor's glass door was also a victim of a rock thrown by the mower. Thankfully, it was replaced the next day and never shattered and fell apart.

April 2: Liam got this cheap bucket and gardening tool set for Easter, and has spent a lot of time playing in the dirt with it. He is happiest when there is dirt involved.

April 3: It's extremely common for Liam to stand on objects by the gate. On this day, he chose a particularly unstable (although tall) object.

April 4: Yeah, I didn't take any pictures that day, so I chose this picture of cheese I took the day before. A week later, I'm not sure why I thought it was a good idea to take a picture of cheese. I'm partial to Tillamook cheese because in sixth grade, I was pen pals with a class of sixth graders in Tillamook, Oregon. Did anyone else have pen pals? This particular one was a school activity, but I remember having at least a couple other ones during my childhood.

April 5: This was a big day for us, as it was when we closed on our first home! I will be blogging about house stuff here on this blog under the title, "Close and Cozy." Close because the house is very close to church, the library and lots of other places we love, and cozy because the house is really small. We could've bought a bigger house, but we would've paid a lot more and not have been where we want to be, so we figured if a family of four (or more) could make this house work in the fifties, then we could too! Plus, a bigger house usually just means you put more useless junk in it. Like all good new home owners, we went to Lowe's that night to start getting supplies...like a crowbar.

April 6: While Will spent most of his day at our new house changing the locks and starting some demolition, Liam and I played outside for awhile. I think he looks so adorable here! He was holding up the shovel and blowing through the hole saying, "Bubbles! Bubbles!" It looked like a bubble wand to him but sadly produced no bubbles.

April 7: We were at a friend's house for Bible Study and Liam was obsessed with these apples. He kept climbing up on the chair saying, "Apples! Apples!"

April 8: Overnight Sunday/Monday was rough. Liam threw up at bedtime and again the next morning. Throughout the day he acted fine, but wouldn't eat or drink much. As a result, he wasn't wetting enough diapers. So after his bath Monday night, I let him play diaperless hoping the freedom and the breeze would get him to go. It didn't work (thankfully?) but he was back to normal the next day.

April 9: Liam loves playing with Legos, especially building up the cars. I adore it, too. I only took a few pictures that day because we stayed home and there wasn't really anything going on. I think one reason I like Legos so much is because they're so colorful!

April 10: Since it was cold and rainy, this was another day we stayed at home. The only way Liam can look at books is if every single one of them is pulled off the shelf. In this particular Baby Einstein book, he kept pointing to the treble clef on every page and asking, "Wha dat?"

April 11: Will has done a ton of work in the house this week. At some point, I will post before and after pictures. Today was the day all the tile was being removed from the kitchen and bathrooms. With the house being close to 60 years old, we figured there was asbestos tile in the place. Over the decades, the kitchen floor has just been given layers of new tiles over the old ones, resulting in a too tall floor. We didn't want to get it all up ourselves and discover a cancerous surprise at the bottom, so we hired professional asbestos removers. I didn't take this picture. It was e-mailed to us by the work crew. And they did find asbestos material at the very bottom of the kitchen floor, but I'm not sure if they found any in the bathrooms. Since one of the bathrooms was added at a later date, we figured the chance of asbestos tile in there was pretty slim, but it was just more convenient to have it all done at once.