With your baby's breath, breathe symphonies

One of the cutest, oddest things Liam does these days is the way he organizes his toys. I almost never see him do it, but I am forever finding a line of trains on s windowsill here, or a horse precariously centered on a ladder there.


I almost never think to take a picture when I find them, but it brings me such odd joy when I am looking for his special new stegosaurus and I find it perched on the back of the big chair, looking out the bay window, next to the Tyrannosaurus rex. In the last few days I have realized, in fact, that I should stop looking on the floor or under throw pillows, but should first search all of his toys' random hang-outs.

It's just another little reminder for me that we have a really special kid.

Or, maybe we have magic elves living with us. What do I know, really?

Koh kor mountain?

Liam just learned how to say "cracker," as in graham crackers, one of his favorite snacks. Of course, it took us a little while to figure out what he was saying, because the way he pronounces it, it sounds exactly like he is saying "coke whore."

So.

Mispronounced by many (including former roommate Deanna, and uh, me) as it's spelled in English, as in, rhymes with "page," according to the Wikipedia page, the Greek word φάγε or FAGE is actualy pronounced fa-yeh. It's a singular imperative verb meaning 'eat!' It's mostly recognized as a thick, strained yogurt that came to the US in 2001, and is super popular in the health-food set.

In Liam-ese, "fa-yeh" seems to mean: "Follow me!"

In related news, his word for "yogurt" is "yoot."



This kid.

Tut, tut!

Today, I am thankful for Brickway (even after a 25 minute wait!), warm sweaters, chai spice lattes, chicken soup, the stores of Hope Street, and pajama pants.

In other news, happy November everybody! :-)

The King of All Wild Things

“And now,”
cried Max,
“Let the wild rumpus start!” 

Happy Halloween ❤

totally sick, dude

My friend Jessica recently asked me what I thought was the hardest thing about being a stay-at-home parent. I thought about it a little and finally decided it was the fact that in this job (and let's be serious, it is a job), you don't get any sick days. When you stay home with your kids, if you get sick, you are stuck more or less "at work" unless your partner can stay home to take care of the kids, and even then you are still in the same house as the kids and aren't really able to get peace and quiet (or, in my case, away from the guilt of abandoning Kurt with Liam).

Lucky for me, Liam is an incredibly empathetic kid and doesn't mind if I put Tangled on and then spend the entire movie sprawled on the couch. To him, it's time to climb on top of me and watch a movie. He usually stays pretty quiet and will sometimes come over and give me a little pat or a hug or even rub Eggy's ear on my cheek (something he does to himself for comfort when he is hurt or sick or sleepy).

Also luckily for me, I have found two amazing medicines that make me feel, if not all the way better, than at least well enough to not completely bail on my son on a sick day when Kurt has to work. Luckily for you, I am going to share the secrets!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

To completely steal from my awesome sister-in-law, Jenny, I present you now with a new installment of this blog: Liam-isms!

At 28 months now (can you believe it?!), Liam is developing his own little language. Much like Spanglish, Liamglish contains some similarities to my first language (English), but has some words and sounds that are foreign to us all. Here are a few Liam words:

I wanna scream "I love you" at the top of my lungs

What is so great about being a stay at home mom, anyway? I was thinking about this the other day while on a walk with my good friend Jessica, who is expecting her first baby in November. She's in the process of getting her PhD, so won't be home for long, but I realized while walking and talking about babies that all I seem to do is focus on how hard this is. How much harder it is than I ever believed it could be. How much more stressful, more exhausting.

I was shot down by your love

Usually posts with this label are texts I've sent to Kurt about things Liam does during the day when Kurt is at work and Liam and I are at home, but this one is from last night while my friend Carol and I were out for a walk and Kurt and Liam were hanging out at home:

I'm eating something rice based, and Liam skips over to me and says (very clearly), "daddy? I want some"

I'm blown away

And then, he comes back a second later and I ask "do you want some more?"
"Yes peese" (again, clear as a bell)

“To answer your as yet
unasked question…I have
no idea what is in Liam’s
hair.” 

 

7 am, the usual morning lineup

When Kurt and I got married, we didn't have a lot of money. We paid for the wedding ourselves with some help from our families after saving for a year and a half. We wanted to go on a honeymoon and with the help of our generous wedding guests we were able to go to London and stay at a family friend's flat. We had a fantastic time and I will always treasure the memories of that trip, but sometimes it makes me weirdly sad that we didn't get many wedding gifts and don't have, say, wedding china or dishes that we can say, "Oh, so-and-so gave us this for our wedding."

"Liam spotted and helped
me rescue one of his bugs
from under his crib. Then
he lay on the floor and
made his two bugs kiss.
This is complete with
making kissing sounds."

Dubais

Liam has started using lots of words in the last few months, and we've been having a lot of fun compiling a list of the words he says and how he actually pronounces them (coming soon to a blog post near you). One of the funniest things about doing this is trying to translate a repeated word or sound. It took us, for example, weeks and weeks to understand that "Taice" meant "Thomas" (as in, "The Tank Engine").

One such case was captured on video on Tuesday night while our friend Tyler was visiting.

"Liam just showed me his
foot which had a Cheerio
stuck to it. It fell on the
floor, and he promptly
picked it up and ate it."

Baby advice, part un

This post is going to be a 2-part-er. And this part starts with a little bit of explaining.

After being the only person my age I know very well at all with a kid, two friends of mine are, more or less, expecting. One of them, Jessica, lives in the same city I do and is pregnant and expecting her first child in November. The other, Stephanie, is a good friend from college who now lives just outside of Memphis, Tennessee, and is actively working on adopting her first child.

Both of these ladies told me their news at about the same time, and so of course I started making a list of things I wanted to tell them that I’ve learned since having Liam. A couple only really apply if you’re pregnant, and a couple only really apply if you live in this area, but I thought I’d post my list here with some explanation, and give them (and anyone else who may be reading) the opportunity to become acquainted with some of the knowledge I gained as a mom.

I am so excited for both of these girls and their families. Jessica is going through something I have already been through (though, thankfully, she is having a MUCH less dramatic time with it all than I did), and Stephanie is going through something I may jump into in a few years when we are ready to give Liam a sibling (if you take a gander over at the right-hand side of this here blog, you will find a link to Stephanie’s blog, Blessed to Be, and learn a little about her journey to motherhood).

Anyway! Here is the list:

Your son

Has the most remarkable
ability

To sense when I am just
falling asleep

And then start yelling

For "Daddy."

He's a bumpkin!*

Because it is August and because his birthday is in August, and because he was an excellent date to our dear friend Bethany Kent’s fantastic 30^th birthday soiree, and for a bunch of other reasons (some of which, I suppose, you are about to read below), I would like to tell you, today, 10 reasons that my friend John is great.

Toy cars

My grandfather was in junior high during World War II, and to save money, the town he lived in--Mamaroneck, NY--shut down the junior high school and arranged it so that the high school kids went to school in the morning, until about 1 p.m., and then they would leave the building and the junior high kids would come in and go to school all afternoon and evening. He and his friends would meet at Walter's, a now famous hot dog stand, eat lunch, and then flip a coin to decide whether to go to school, or to go to New Rochelle to see a movie. When his father found out about this, he sent my grandfather, about 14 years old at the time, to military school.

Boy Cat, Girl Cat

He may have kept us up until around 1:30 in the morning, but he was so cute about it...the trials and tribulations of parenting, I guess :-)

Here we go, go, go again

I am bad at blogging.

I used to be good at it. You can check out actual proof over at A Call to Write. But that was when I sat at a desk in front of a computer all day and sometimes needed downtime. I still need the downtime, but now it comes more in the form of trying to trick my kid into watching PBS Kids while I ie on the couch and try to catch a little shut-eye. (…am I a bad mom?).

On Breast Feeding

I felt guilty, at first, that I did not feel guilty about feeding my roughly 12-hour-old baby with a bottle full of formula.

The choice was basically this: let a night nurse feed my baby formula and get to close my eyes, at midnight, for the first time since roughly 6 am (after about 3 hours sleep the previous night), or, hold a tiny screaming baby as firmly as I could against my torso, trying desperately to avoid coming in any contact with the fresh C-section incision while a 6 lb., 11 oz. person screamed his head off and pushed himself away from me with both arms and both legs.

Lucky

It’s really easy to read some of the stuff I’ve posted about some of the stuff I’ve been through in the last few years and feel sorry for me. It’s pretty easy to read anything I’ve said about feeling lucky through all of it and think, wow, that girl is strong. Or, wow, that girl is delusional.

I totally get it.

Well shake it up, baby, now

Tough day, today.

Tough day the last few days, actually.

Let's be alone together

For my 28^th birthday, my mom gave me a soft little stuffed bunny.

…Let me start over.

 

My 28^th birthday occurred while I was about 4 months pregnant. My mom was a little bit sheepish about the stuffed bunny, explaining that she hadn’t planned to get a gift for the baby and give it to me on my birthday, but it was just so cute and soft with such floppy ears. She showed me how she imagined her grandchild holding the bunny by its ear to drag it around and how he or she might enjoy brushing its soft fur against their cheek.

She was raised in a New England village

When I envisioned this blog, I thought about things I might include in it. One of the things that seemed most obvious in my earliest thoughts was a recurring series about the awesome people in my life. Trust me when I tell you, while there are only a few people I hold close these days, they are a truly remarkable group.

So, I kick this series off with exclamations of praise about my friend Bethany Kent.

The baby, the baby, the baby!

I found out I was pregnant on October 30^th, 2011. I’d had suspicions for a few days, for various reasons (I’d been feeling nauseous for a few weeks, my period was late, my breasts were achy, etc), but I finally decided to take the plunge and take an at-home test. I woke up early, early in the morning so I was sure to use the test with my first trip to the ladies room of the day (as recommended!) and waited the 3 minutes to see the results.

Today, I am thankful.

When I was a freshman in high school, my best friend told me that I was the most negative person she had ever known. It wasn't meant to be an insult, she said it kind of offhandedly in response to what I’m sure was at the very least an extremely sarcastic comment from yours truly, but it completely knocked me over. I doubt she even remembers this conversation, but I thought about it every day for a really long time.

Oof.

Folks, I have a new challenge on the horizon

Going to the gym.

Let me clarify: going to the gym that is one block away from me, and doing it by myself.

The Blind Leading the Blind

I woke up one Friday in April of 2012 and I couldn’t see as well as I could the day before.

I know, I know. That sounds a little dramatic. But bear with me.

What a Year for a New Year

So, I thought a good, sort of sweeping New Years resolution for 2014 would be to do something every day that I feel good about. I think it's a pretty good one because it can cover a lot of things (drink more water, cook more, go to the gym), without being so specific that I put too much pressure on myself and make it too easy to break the resolution and give up halfway through January.

Better than the first time, better than the worst time

I’m going to be honest. Sometimes, it’s awesome being a stay at home mom.

Liam, my now 19-month-old son, is the cutest, sweetest little boy and we have a lot of fun together. We spend our mornings watching the Today Show and playing with toy cars and trucks while drinking tea, and milk and practicing using a fork while eating slices of banana (we don’t each do all of those things—I’ll let you figure out who does which). He is good enough to entertain himself for a few minutes at a time when I have to go make myself some toast or wash a dish or two. When it’s finally time for him to take a nap in the afternoon, he grabs his favorite stuffed animal, a little floppy-eared bunny named Eggy, already worn from a year and a half of love, and whines until I pull him into my ap in the big chair by the windows where he curls up and drinks from his bottle till he falls asleep. And looking at his sweet little face when I gently carry him to his room and put him in his crib, set to the tune of deep breathing and the gentle hum of the sound machine on his bookshelf, I feel so, so lucky.

I’m going to be honest with you.

Sometimes, it is not so awesome.

Mic check

So, I’m 30.

Ok, that sounded a little grim and dramatic. I’m 30 years old today, and I feel pretty ok about it. It’s nice to feel solidly in a new decade (being “still 29” was starting to feel a little like I was clinging to something), and I figure if Kim Kardashian can be in her 30s, side by side with Britney Spears, then I’m in pretty hot company. On top of which, two of the coolest, smartest ladies I know in real life (Mindy Scott and Michelle Houle) tell me that my 30s are something I just need to get through to make it to my 40s, which they both assure me will be the best decade of my life.

Anyway.