HappyThanksgiving Everyone!

This Morning

I had the best little moment with Liam. I had to wake him up to get ready and he hates being woken up. It doesn't happen all that often. He usually wakes up at just the right time. But when I do have to wake him up he gets kinda whiny and stretches out his little body with his eyes squinted closed. So I crawled into bed next to him and he scooted back with his back parallel to mine so I could cuddle with him and I put my arm around him and said "Don't you wish we could stay together like this all day".

Liam: "Mommy"
Me:"Yes Baby"
Liam: "Stay together mommy"
Me: "Yea, that would be great"
Liam: "Stay together, go night night mommy"

Heart. melted. Please tell me these years of cuddling will go nice and slow so I can savor them. On second thought, don't tell me anything at all because I already know the answer isn't one I want to hear.

Ladies Shoes

It started out innocently enough. Liam loves accessories- hats, jackets, shoes. When he sees them, he wants them on. This includes mommy and daddy shoes. When he first put on my shoes we said, "Those aren't Liam's shoes- those are ladies shoes". But he took it more as "Cool- ladies shoes!". And now it is quite common to come home and have Liam take off his shoes (kinda like Mr Rodgers) and slip into the "ladies shoes" as he now refers to them. He even gets upset at me sometimes when I put them on in the morning. And he has mastered walking around in them. He can spin, run and jump and not loose a beat. Good thing I am not one of those crazy moms who gets weird about this kinda thing. I think it's pretty darn cute.

Potty Training in 3 Days?!?

The idea: 3 days of not leaving the house and wearing nothing from the waste down while awake (that last part applies only to Liam). Once he realizes that when he pees it is making a mess on the floor, he will gain the insight to stop himself and go in the potty.

We just ended the 2nd full day of training and I am shocked to report that it's working. He only had one accident today and that was because we had gone outside for a couple of minutes and I forgot to take his pants off when we got back in. Every other time he has walked HIMSELF over the the potty and gone without any prompting from Chris or I. We have both a potty and a seat that goes onto the toilet because I wasn't sure which one he would be more comfortable with.
Seems the potty has won that battle and I am convinced it's because he doesn't need any help from us to use it. 1 accident and 9 successes all initiated by him!

The first day we focused more on the seat in the toilet and he was scared of the whole process. He cried everytime we put him on. But slowly he saw the method to our madness. Once he started getting the routine and realizing he could do it himself like a big boy, it was pretty smooth sailing. We used a sticker chart as a reward system which also worked better than I thought it would. Now I don't know if this is all a fluke, but it's looking pretty promising and I am really proud of him. Chris took tomorrow off to continue the training. And then we are supposed to keep him out of underwear or diapers for 3 more months. I don't know about that part. I haven't talked to Jordanna yet about how we will tackle training at daycare and I'm not gonna put a time limit on underwear for him. When he seems pretty consistent with going, we'll start underwear.

Coming So Fast

It crept up on me way too fast. It was something far in the future that I knew I would eventually have to deal with and now it's nearly here. The planning has begun and before I know it we will celebrating the second year of my little pickle's life. I know he won't totally understand why we are celebrating, but I can't help but feel he deserves to have the funnest party ever. He is just such a cool kid who brings us so much happiness that I will do whatever I can to return the favor.

So we have a rockin party since he loves to rock out and we have all his favorite people under one roof- I can't imagine anything better. And disclaimer before I go any further: by no means does anyone need to get him anything, BUT some people have already started asking me what to get him so here is a list of things he loves: Anything that has to do with music, Yo Gabba Gabba, skateboards, books, arts and crafts. For clothes he is a size 2T or bigger on top and 24 month or bigger on bottom. Hope we get to see you all there!

Just 'Cause

My Little van Gogh (but without the crazies)

I thought it might be fun to do some artsy fartsy stuff with Liam this weekend since he is a bit of an artsy fartsy kinda guy (or so I force him to be ;). You can tell he has done alot of watercolor painting at Jordanna's because he was obsessed with using the water which was really only there to clean off our brushes. The best part came when he started using his feet to paint which I can only imagine came from watching a Curious George episode where George shows a little girl all the different things that monkeys can do. All in all, a good time was had.

Halloween '09

I love that Liam has little friends that he is excited to hang out with and that we are able to do kid things with our best friends. This year we went over Renee's house for pizza and trick or treating. She lives in a great neighborhood for that sort of thing- one of those neighborhoods where people sit outside in costume all night in front of their house to pass out candy. I love that kinda atmosphere for Halloween.

Obviously, Liam was a zebra for Halloween. Although, he decided he would rather wear the helmet from Cameron's outfit rather than the hood that came on his. And that was fine with Cameron who was refusing to wear the helmet that actually went with his costume. So Chris decided to tell everyone that Liam was a referee which I found very cute (although technically they don't wear helmets, but you get it...). The outfit itself didn't last for over a half an hour in the humid, hot weather of South Florida, but no one seemed to mind or refused him candy because of it ;)

The Matherlys: Football player, Dora the Explorer, Tootsie Roll, Diego, and Superman!

LOVE Evan's arm around Liam.