Month: February 2011
Phil Must Pay For This
And by “this” I mean this:
Wordless Wednesday: Cocoa-Mocha Frosting Makes A Great Goatee
Liam Quips
Earlier this afternoon we learned that Liam loves us more than pasta. Over dinner, Scot asked him whether or not he loved us more than Star Wars.
He considered this for a moment.
“Mmm. No.” he said.
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Also over dinner, we were commenting on how well Liam was eating and Scot told him he was an awesome kid. “Liam, you are awesome swimming in awesomesauce.”
“Well, I do like to swim,” Liam replied.
That Pretty Much Sums It Up
A Family Portrait
Liam came home from school last week with a note in his backpack about a project his class was participating in. This project required that each child send in a picture of their family. I knew that this could pose a problem.
The problem is that I’m usually the one behind the camera so I’m almost never in photos. Scot avoids being in pictures like they are a form of torture. So, most of our pictures are of the kids. I started digging around in my photo archives looking for something of the four of us together.
I found two. That’s it. TWO. One was from when Jamie was just 3 months old. Liam was FOUR. A two year old picture was not going to cut it. The other was from Liam’s preschool graduation. He was 5. When Liam heard that this was the best I had, he was unimpressed. He wanted something from when he was six – understandable given that he just passed that birthday.
So, we made an effort to get a photo. And, we got lucky – in two clicks of the camera we got this:
Yellow Belt!
Liam tested for his yellow belt this afternoon. He passed with flying colors and now I must play proud parent and show him off.
Here he is doing his pattern:
What is amazing to me about this pattern is that he had it memorized correctly about 6 classes after earning his second yellow stripe. If I had still had a mind like a steel trap, I would be so much happier.
Hodgepodge
1. I have to apologize for the lack of blog posting. There are lots of reasons but mostly it has to do with illness and the horrible depths of winter. It seems like we manage to get over one nasty virus only to catch another one. It’s getting tiresome to say the least.
2. Last week Jamie decided to pop with another mystery virus complete with mystery fever. After 3 days of trying to figure out his problem with no luck, we took him to the doctor. Double ear infection. I think he’s getting close to needing ear tubes. This is the second infection he’s had in 6 weeks and it’s certainly not his first time on the ear infection merry-go-round. We’ll have to talk with the pediatrician at his checkup but if this keeps going? Tube city.
3. In related news, Augmentin sucks. It may kill the infection but it also makes for diapers that I really don’t want to spend the time describing. Those nasty diapers, in turn, gave Jamie a case of diaper rash like you wouldn’t believe. His whole butt was cherry red and he was hopping mad as a result. I decided enough was enough, called the pediatrician, and asked that Jamie be put on a different medication. He is a much happier camper now.
4. In dealing with Mr. Shedding Virus, I seem to have caught his cold. It was inevitable, I suppose, since he was coughing on me and I was short on sleep. I’ve had worse but this one is sticking around and driving me nuts. I’d really like to see the back side of it sooner rather than later.
5. Phil the Groundhog failed to see his shadow last week. If his prediction holds true and we get an early spring, I will travel on over to Punxsutawny and plant a big fat kiss on Phil’s lips. On the other hand, if he fails me and this winter hangs on until April, his caretakers are going to want to put him in some kind of anonymous protection program because I will hunt his furry ass down. I’m sure my father would loan me his varmint rifle.
6. I want a new camera so badly I can taste it. Our point-and-shoot is really beginning to piss me off and the pictures I have from Liam’s birthday are so crappy as to exacerbate my ire. However, we have more important things to be spending our money on so I will go on dreaming.
The Birthday Celebration (A Very Picture Heavy Post)
To say that Liam’s birthday party was a success would be an understatement. That kid had a haul of presents so large it was embarrassing. Wowsers.
In any case, he celebrated turning 6 in style.
He got lots more stuff but there are just way too many pictures – most of them bad – to share every gift he got. After presents I made dinner and we had a very nice meal together. And then it was time for cupcakes and singing.
Ruminations On Year Five
I knew that five was going to be a big year for Liam. I knew that it would involve big milestones like starting school. But there are other things I didn’t anticipate.
The first big event for Liam was graduating from pre-school. It was a big moment for him and he had looked forward to it for months. Why? Boredom. He was bored out of his mind by the end of pre-school and so ready to be done. So, after graduation he quit going and had a real summer vacation for the first time.
We did all kinds of things – swim lessons, play dates, museum trips, playing in the yard. He took day trips with his Granddad and played with the neighbor kids. I hope summers are always so much fun for him.
And then, in the middle of June, he said to me “Mommy, I want to play soccer.”
Well. That came from nowhere. We’d been offering for a year or two and he kept telling us no. We didn’t want to push and felt that it had to be his decision. Then, one day, he was interested. It turned out that he had to wait until fall to play but we promised him he could.
And so we became soccer parents and he learned about team sports.
A few days after proclaiming his need to play soccer, he told me he wanted to take lessons in karate. This was another activity that we’d offered him and he had turned us down. Again, we felt that if he was to enjoy it, it had to be his decision. Again, he just up and changed his mind.
I set about finding a school and we found Young Brothers Tae Kwon-Do. He fell in love with it from the very first class I took him to and he is racing through belt levels at a pace that it is hard to believe. Next week he takes his next belt test to earn his yellow belt. It is a fabulous outlet for his seemingly boundless energy.
At the end of summer, Liam started kindergarten – the biggest change to his life yet. He took it all in stride and settled into the routines of school. He loves it. He’s excited to go to school every day, he loves his teacher, he has made friends, he comes home and tells me he had a good day every single day. Academically he is doing well, too. I hope he always retains his love of learning.
Liam didn’t just expand his horizons in the metaphorical fashion this year, either. He did it in the physical way, too. My slow-growing, never-put-on-weight, barely-on-the-growth-charts kiddo finally grew! At the beginning of year five he was 36 lbs and 40 inches tall. He was skinny and small for his age. He’d been that way almost since the time he turned one. It just seemed to be who he was and as long as he was growing at all, our pediatrician wasn’t worried. We were told that for a kid like Liam, gaining 2 pounds in a year was doing well.
As of now, Liam is 42 pounds and 43.5 inches tall. He has put on 6 pounds and 3.5 inches in a year’s time – this is nearly miraculous growth for him. He is still small for his age and on the low end of the growth charts but he’s finally starting to really sprout. You can’t count his ribs from 30 paces anymore and from all the sit ups at TKD, he’s beginning to develop a kiddie six-pack.
In all, Liam has gotten more independent in the last year and is beginning to spread his wings in the wider world. I hope he flies.