"Aunt" Molly Comes to Visit

On Friday afternoon, my friend Molly came to say goodbye to us all (her and John are moving to Denver). She really saved the day too because Scott got stuck at LAX and got home at 6 pm instead of at 11 am, so Molly came to the rescue and helped me with Liam's bath. And Liam thanked her by splashing her with lots of water and bubbles!!! On Saturday she helped us once again by watching Liam while Scott & I went shopping for a new refrigerator and a new dishwasher. In a few days we will have a nice new refrigerator that will hopefully not leak and prevent another kitchen floor drama like the one we experienced this past week. And thanks to the new dishwasher that we ordered, I will no longer need to wash dishes before I put them into it (or at least so said the guy at Sears). So we're really looking forward to getting these new appliances. Today Molly left. It will be a long time until we get to see them again. Liam will be a toddler by the next time we see her and John.

Last night, when Scott was feeding Liam his dinner right after his bath, Liam fell asleep in his highchair while eating. It was the cutest thing ever. He tried to wake up to eat again, but within seconds the eyes were shut and the head just flopped back down. And of course we forgot to take pictures. But we do have some wonderful pictures with Molly to share.

Some updates: Liam has been pulling up on everything that he can. He can balance for about 10 seconds without holding onto anything, and then he falls flat down on his cute little tushy. It is adorable. He has been crawling all over the place for a while now and he seems to always gravitate towards things that are not meant for him. I gave him a big drawer with Tupperware and wooden spoons and he is very pleased with his new toys. There's really no need to spend money on store bought toys; home made toys are his absolute favorites.

Today was a better day

Thanks to our babysitter and to our cleaning lady, the house is mostly clean. There's still the task of taking everything out of the pantry, wiping everything down, vacuuming in there and putting everything back. But other than that, it seems that we got rid of at least most of the sawdust. So the house is clean, Liam is clean, I am clean and have managed to not have a nervous breakdown. Tomorrow Scott comes home and Liam and I really can't wait.

Just one of those days

Today was a very stressful day. One of those mini nervous breakdown days. We had a bit of a leak from our fridge and the floor around it was all messed up. So I got a contractor to come look at it today. Well, it's bad and good. The area damaged was fairly large but there's wasn't much mold at least. But he had to take up the floor boards around to let things dry before we replace them. And for that he had to use one of those wacky circular saw thingies. Well, I went upstairs with Liam to nurse him and put him down for a nap while he was working. Liam was not going to sleep because of the horrible noise (regular noise he can handle but that was pretty bad). So I let him play in his crib for a little while and went downstairs to check things out. The fridge was now in the middle of the kitchen and the entire kitchen was covered with a thick layer of saw dust. When he left (leaving the fridge in the middle of the kitchen so that the area could completely dry before he comes back again Friday) and started to assess the situation I just then realized how horrible it really was. The saw dust had gotten every where. And I mean everywhere. It got to the living room, to the study, over everything in the pantry. Over all of Liam's toys, bottles, pacifiers, everything. Pre-Liam this would have been a disaster and I would have complained about all the cleaning that needed to be done. But with Liam it turned into a mega-disaster. Because now I had to keep him happy while I was trying to clean everything up and still maintain his routine and get his stuff done. I had also realized that I hadn't eaten in several hours and I was famished. And being famished and nursing don't go well together. Our babysitter came to our rescue. She was able to come at 2:30 instead of 4. If it weren't for her, I would have ended up in a mental institute with a real nervous breakdown. Seriously. These type of things are stressful enough without having a baby to keep happy and take care of and without the husband being out of town for the week on a business trip. This is also after having not really slept much in two night since Scott left. Well, things are cleaner now but there's still saw dust in all kinds of weird places. We still need to take everything out of the pantry and clean it all out. There's still a fridge in the middle of my freaking kitchen. There's still a need to call the carpet cleaning people and have them come in and thoroughly clean our carpets because Liam like to crawl on the carpet and I'm afraid to let him do so now. Alas, it could have been worse, I know. Why do these things always happen when Scott is gone? Well, Liam got the better end of the deal because of all of this today. He got to watch a lot of DVDs. He got to watch Baby Mozart, and a couple of Israeli baby DVDs. He usually only gets to watch like half of Baby Beethoven once or twice a week. But today I had no choice, I had to clean as much as I could so he got to watch more. And of course I feel horribly guilty over it. I feel like a really terrible mom letting my 8 month old baby watch so much TV. Anyways, got to go nurse and put the little guy to bed for the night (well, at least until he wakes up hungry again because that seems to be his thing to do now). We are crossing our fingers for a better day tomorrow.

Life's Little Disappointments

Today Liam learned that not everything in life can be fun and games, even when something is supposed to be. Inspired by Nirit & her little girl Lia's fun times at the Gymboree (see link on the right) I decided to brave the outside world and take Liam to "The Play-Room". Liam was very disappointed to find that "The Play-Room" didn't have anything appropriate and fun for his age. They had lots of stuff for younger babies, and lots of stuff for older babies, but nothing for him. There were no fun tunnels to crawl through like at Lia's Gymboree and no other babies to play with. In addition, the place wasn't really what I would consider clean. For the first 20 minutes or so Liam just sat there in a state of shock. He has never seen so many kids running around and so many colors. So I just let him get used to his surroundings. After 20 minutes or so, he crawled towards a red ball. Next thing you know, he picks it up and puts it in his mouth. I cannot describe the horror I felt at that moment. Well, anyone who knows me can just imagine. So there I am, trying not to freak out and not to think of how many babies have put that ball in their mouths. Somehow I managed to keep my hysteria to myself so as to not freak Liam out (I'm still feeling a bit traumatized by it all). And after about 45 minutes I made an executive decision to take my boy and go home. There were no real toys for him there and he has such wonderful toys at home. And let's face it, 45 minutes for me in a not so clean place, well, that's not my idea of fun. As soon as we got home I had to resist the strong urge to take him straight to the tub. The only reason I didn't was that I hate giving him a bath all by myself because I find it very difficult. So Liam and I just played until daddy got home and came to our rescue. All in all I'm glad we went because now we know never to go there again. Next week, we will brave the outside world again and try a different place, and hopefully we will have nice experiences to share.

Baby Liam doesn't take too well to eating a cracker

Yesterday I decided to see what Liam would do with a cracker if given one. His babysitter and I placed him in his highchair, and we got him all good and ready. He took the cracker, placed it in his mouth and did not seem to appreciate it all that much. In fact, he freaked out a little, spat it out and we were only able to calm him down with some water. But then, the unthinkable happened: he grabbed another cracker and tried again. The same thing happened again, he got some more water, calmed down, and went for it again. We let him do it a couple more times before we put an end to it. It was a little unsettling, but also kind of funny. He hated it, yet he kept going back for more. He sure is a brave little guy. After that I spoke with his doctor and we agreed that we need to wait a couple more weeks before we attempt something like this again. So I guess the Cheerios will have to wait a little while. Anyways, here are a couple of pictures of the whole thing.

Visit from Grandpa Gabi

Liam is quite the popular little man. Since July 3rd, he has already had 4 visitors. It started with "uncle" Nathan. Then came grandpa Phil & grandma Sandy. And this past Friday, grandpa Gabi from Israel came to visit him. Liam and grandpa Gabi have not seen each other in about 4 months and they were both very excited. Grandpa Gabi taught Liam how to take the rings off of the ring stacker that we bought him just last weekend. It took a few tries, but he finally got it and now he starts taking them off before you even finish putting them on again. And he can take all four off at the same time. Apparently that's way more exciting than just one at a time. Liam's crawling has also improved quite a bit since we posted his first crawling video just seven days ago. He's crawling all over the house now and he especially likes getting under the kitchen table. And he's also very fast. No turning our eyes away from him for even a second now. He seems to be very interested in getting to our shoes that are on the floor. Maybe my obsession with shoes has transferred to him while he was in the womb. Or maybe they're just funny and interesting looking. Who knows?
Grandpa also helped Scott a whole lot in the yard this past weekend. He also cooked a whole bunch of food for us and put it in the freezer for us to heat up whenever we feel like it. And most importantly, he helped Scott install more baby gates and some more baby proofing items. We are not quite done with those and it is becoming more and more crucial that we finish all of that because Liam seems to be interested in all the dangerous things and places he can get into.

Anyways, baby Liam is sleeping and hopefully will remain so until 7 am. So we are off to bed as well.

Liam's first crawl

Liam has sort of figured out how to crawl. He has not perfected it completely yet, but is just about there. Scott and I witnessed it last night on our bed after his bath (we tempted him with the TV remote), but we missed the real stuff today. Fortunately, Liam's wonderful babysitter captured it on her video phone and so we have it now. What would we do and where would we be without technology?

href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6837466505828840512">Liam's First Crawl

Two new exciting developments!!!

So, Liam pulled himself up on the "wall" of his play-yard today. He had already pulled himself up in his crib once, about a week ago, but this was his second time and now in his play-yard. Daddy witnessed this one from start to finish, and I was called to witness the end result!!! The second exciting development is that we felt Liam's first tooth cutting through his gums. It's not quite out yet, but it's definitely cutting through. Yay!!! (we think). I guess it won't be so much of a yay! when he bites me for the first time while nursing. Anyways, a couple of cute pictures for you all to enjoy.

More of the visit from Grandma Phil & Grandma Sandy

So Liam is having lots of fun with grandpa Phil & grandma Sandy. This morning he showed them how he knows to take a few steps when he's hands are being held stretched out. He also showed them several times how he can sit up on his own. He rolls from his back to his tummy, pushes on his hands, sticks his butt in the air and sits up (hooray for Liam!!!). And then he went for a walk in the stroller with the grandparents (they are still out and of course I am obsessing on whether or not he's getting too much sun!). Here is a cute pre-stroller walk picture.

Visit from Grandpa Phil & Grandma Sandy

So today grandpa Phil & Grandma Sandy came to visit baby Liam (and us of course, but we don't really matter anymore...). Liam loved all the attention of course. Grandpa and Scott did some yard work (they were trying to kill all the Poison Ivy so that the yard will be Liam safe) and grandma watched Liam while I went to the store by myself (yay for me!). We had a nice dinner. Liam threw up on mommy a couple of times (yay for me again!) while I was nursing him after his bath before bed time. We're pretty sure the vomiting was because of his congestion. We're hoping that's it and it won't become some sort of illness. If it happens again tomorrow we'll take him to the doctor. And he just woke up a few minutes ago crying like mad and needed to be nursed again. Very odd considering that I nursed him for like an hour before putting him down for the night, and he nursed like he hasn't had any milk in like an entire day. We're hoping it's just some growth spurt or something like that. Babies really need to come with a manual, don't you think? Anyways, here are a couple of pictures with the grandparents and don't forget to go to our photo page to see the rest.

A new day...

So, Nathan left this morning, but before he left we managed to take some great pictures of him and Liam. We are going to spend the next couple of days resting as much possible before grandpa Phil and grandma Sandy come to visit

"Uncle Nathan's Visit"

This is our first blog entry ever. So today is Nathan's second day visiting with us. Nathan is Scott's friend from way back when. They grew up together in Blacksburg. Nathan came over yesterday after visiting another Blacksburg friend in Northern VA. Today is July 4th. This was Liam's first 4th of July. The fireworks are just now starting, but Liam won't get to see them this year. He's is asleep, and hopefully will stay asleep until morning. He is getting over a bad cold so he hasn't been sleeping as well as usual, so we'll see. We're hoping to be able to see some fireworks through our window since we can't leave the house with Liam sleeping. Tomorrow I hope to post some pictures of Liam and Nathan before Nathan takes off. I think that's it for the first blog entry. I know it wasn't exciting, but it's all I could come up with.

Oh, and don't forget to take a look at our pictures http://scottandyael.dotphoto,com