Liam in Pictures

A Week in our lives: Tuesday

Tuesday was fairly uneventful, as many of our days are.  So here it is:

6 AM: Liam is up.  Andy feeds him, puts him back to bed.

8 AM: Andy leaves for work, Liam is up for the day.  I get up, get him, and take care of the dogs.  Liam and I play for a while, and I try to feed him at about 9

9 AM: Liam takes his first bottle, and drinks about 3/4 of it before refusing to finish.  This becomes the theme of the rest of the day.  I put him down for a nap.

9:25 I shower, start laundry, do dishes, and pick up the living room/kitchen.  I really want to stay in my pajamas today, but I force myself to get dressed.  I don’t allow myself more than one pj day a week, and I put my jams back on Sunday after church, so that’s out this week.  Type out the Monday post and catch up on the blogs I read.  Start to read my library book.  And have my coffee (with peppermint mocha creamer)

11:00 Fed-Ex drops off the sewing machine I ordered.  I really want to re-learn how to sew.  I was never really great at it because my mom usually got aggravated with me and ended up finishing my 4-H projects (shh..that’s a secret), but I want to be able to do basic stuff.  Oliver and Keegan lose their ever loving minds and wake Liam up.

11:15 Liam plays on his floor while I clean up his bedroom.  We play peek-a-boo while I fold laundry.  Then we read his library books again and play with toys.

11:50-12:30 I attempt to feed Liam.  He screams and refuses to eat.  He gets maybe 3 ounces.  I lay him down for a  nap.  He screams.

12:50 Andy gets home.  He decided he wanted donuts for lunch, so he went to Marzipan, the bakery at the end of the street.  I eat two donuts…lunch of champions.

1:00 Andy is able to get Liam to drink 4 oz. of formula and he puts him down for a nap.  Liam falls asleep after about five minutes of protest.  I prep 2 pie pumpkins for the oven.  The seeds get sorted out and rinsed and the pumpkins get roasted.

1:30 Andy heads back to work, and I finish making sure the house looks decent before Tiffany comes over to borrow a sweater.  I also watch The Good Wife on cbs.com during this time.  The mail came and Liam got a package from his grandparents—a book, a letter and a homemade sleepsack!!

2:00 Liam’s up.  We play a bit and at 2:30 he’s acting hungry, so I’m able to get him to take a bottle.  We continue to play for a while, and I put him down for a nap at 3:15.  We also talked to my dad during this time.

3:15 I watch 2 Broke Girls on cbs.com

3:50 Tiffany gets here.  Both dogs lose their ever-loving minds.  Keegan loves her instantly, Ollie is more hesitant.  After a few minutes, he warms up to her.  We hang out for a while.

4:10 Liam wakes up, again.  No good afternoon nap for this boy.  He comes and hangs out with us.

5:30 Andy gets home, I’m still hanging out with Tiffany.  She leaves about 5:45 and I start dinner while Andy feeds Liam.

6:00 I cannot cook pork chops to save my life.  They have been cooking forever and still aren’t finished.  This has been a common occurrence lately, and I am getting frustrated.  I pureed the pumpkin and put some in the freezer for Liam, and save some for pumpkin bread (Andy requested that I give Liam the larger amount because he wants him to have the “real” stuff instead of the canned/jar stuff).  I let Liam lick a smidge of puree off my finger—he seems to like it.  Certainly more than he liked the taste of banana I gave him last week.  I toast the pumpkin seeds.  And just generally get aggravated with the pork chops.

6:15 Pork chops are still cooking (shoot me now).  They start to burn, so we have to start the vent fan and pull them off the stove.  Andy and I give Liam a bath. 

6:45 Liam’s out of the bath, and I work on getting his pj’s on.  Oliver poops on Liam’s rug (seriously, he never does this…and he’s done it twice this week).  Andy finishes with Liam, I clean up Oliver’s mess.  Liam goes to bed.  Then I get dinner finished and the pumpkin frozen.

7:15 We finally eat dinner.  I want to throw my pork chop out the window I’m so mad at it.  We also taste test the pumpkin seeds—yum!  Andy gives Ollie one and he tries to dive into Andy’s bowl to get more.

7:30 Andy falls asleep on the sofa.  I watch Big Bang Theory online and email Andy’s dad.  At about 9:30, I go to bed for the night…Andy’s still on the sofa.  He makes it to bed sometime in the middle of the night.  Poor Ollie ends up sleeping alone on the sofa because Keegan took up so much room in bed.

A Week in our lives: Monday

Totally typed lies instead of lives the first time…that post would have a very different feel to it.

4:50 Liam wakes up. This is really unusual and very rarely happens. It seems as though he hit his soothing giraffe on something and turned on the play sounds and woke himself up. I held him while Andy fixed his bottle. Andy fed him, I went back to bed. Andy kept asking questions, so I may as well have been up. I have really awful heartburn at this point. Once Liam’s finished, Andy puts him back to bed.

7:50 Andy gets up for work. He leaves at 8, and Liam promptly wakes up. I get up with Liam and the boys. I feed and change Liam. Then I take the dogs out and feed them. Liam and I play on his activity mat for a while. When he starts acting tired, I put him down for a nap.

9-11 Liam’s morning nap. I play on the computer, take a shower, get dressed, and pick up the living room during this nap. I was having a very lazy morning.

11:00 Liam wakes up. I feed and change him. He comes with me to our bedroom, where we make the bed. The sheets had been in the laundry, and the bed needed to be made. Ollie tries to play hide and seek in the sheets. Liam is on the floor on his activity mat, and he’s having a blast chatting with me. I go ahead and pick up our room and hang up wayward laundry as well.

11:50 Into the kitchen. Liam is in his Bumbo and watching me work. I puree his green beans in the food processor and put them in the freezer. I also start a pot of black eyed peas. I take the butternut squash out of the ice cube trays and into a ziploc. Then I do all of the dishes.

12:30 Feed the dogs, take them out. Get Liam ready for Bible study.

12:45 Leave to go to Bible study

1:00 Arrive at Bible study, find out it’s cancelled. Stand and talk to Kellie for about 35 minutes in her driveway. Liam was asleep, but woke up. Stayed content in his car seat.

1:35 Leaving the cancelled Bible study, decide to go to the library since we’re close. Liam was asleep when we arrived, but he woke up on the way in. I pay an overdue fine and check out two books of my own. Liam checks out three, his very first library books!! He got Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Skippyjon Jones goes Up and Down, and Thomas and Friends: A Crack in the Track

2:30 We finally got home. I feed and change Liam, and put him down for a nap.

2:30-4:15 Liam’s nap. During his nap, I spray paint two pumpkins (Andy and Ashley pumpkin and Ollie and Keegan pumpkin), decorate Liam’s pumpkin, finish the black eyed peas, start a vegetable beef soup for supper, and type out the Sunday blog post. I ate two handfuls of almonds..my first food of the day. My stomach was off from the food yesterday and I wasn’t hungry.

4:15 Liam’s up, and gets clean pants. We read his library books, and then have a dance party using the Pink station on Pandora…because every little boy needs to listen to Pink, Avril,and Rihanna. My dad calls and I talk to him. Andy got home really shortly after 5, which never happens. He went out to blow leaves and cut the grass. Liam and I stayed inside and hung out. I tried to put Liam down at about 5:45 for a short pre-bed nap. He wasn’t having it. I think he’s giving up his early evening nap in favor of just the morning and afternoon naps.

6:30 I feed and pajama Liam and put him to bed at about 6:54. Andy finishes the lawn at 6:45 and takes a shower. At 7 we both sit down and eat while watching an episode of Running Wilde. I got really sick to my stomach after dinner, and felt awful for about an hour. After that, we watched an episode of Breaking Bad, and then Andy went to his office.

8:40 I look up some baby food stuff online, try to figure out a feeding Liam travel plan (since we are on the road so much right now, it’s a valid concern). I also watch a few episodes of The Office.

10:00 I head to bed early, because I have been so miserable lately. The dogs do a passive agressive fight to figure out who sleeps where. Basically, Ollie tries to snuggle with me, which is normal. Keegan crowds Ollie until he gets mad and leaves and pouts, and Keegan swoops in to snuggle. It takes them a long time to settle down at night.

1:50 Liam wakes up. Again—it has been WEEKS since this was happening. There was no discernable reason for him to be up, but he was. I fed him and diapered him and put him back to bed. Both dogs decide to wake up and want to go out. I take them both out, then get back to bed. At this point, I was awake, and didn’t fall asleep until after 3.

A week in our lives: Sunday

I have seen several blogs that do a detailed week in the life post, and I always think they are fun. I thought I would document this week so I can remember it later, when Liam starts walking or we have a second child, and I can look back and reminisce about how easy life is right now.

6:30 Liam wakes up, Andy takes the first feeding. I stay in bed. Oliver and Keegan both find ways to snuggle with me. Ollie crawls on my pillow and puts his face in my face. Keegan curls up under the covers into my stomach. We stay there until Andy gets back. If Liam wakes up before 7, he will generally go right back to sleep after eating.

6:50 Andy comes back to bed for a while.

7:30 The alarm starts going off. Andy is leading worship at church this week, so he has to be there early. He doesn’t get up until 8:00.

8:00 We both get up. Andy showers and races to church. I feed the dogs, take them to the bathroom, and shower/get ready. I get the diaper bag packed, the tithe check ready, and everything at the front door.

9:05 Liam wakes up for real. I change his diaper and dress him for church. He then takes a bottle and we are ready to go.

9:40 We leave for church. As we’re driving, Andy sees Titan, his boss’s dog, running behind Walgreens. We pull over and call her to let her know where he is.

10:00 Church starts. Andy’s up front leading. Liam ends up sitting with our dentist for a while, and he has a blast. About the time the sermon starts, though, he begins to fuss, so I take him to the nursery. I told them to page me if he got angry like last week, and I ended up sitting just outside the sanctuary for the remainder of the service in case they paged me. They didn’t—he did just fine. He played with the nursery worker and had a good time with his future best friends. After service while we were visiting, Ben tried to crawl into the carseat on top of Liam. Then he just rocked Liam’s carseat back and forth.

11:10 We grabbed a quick lunch at Taco Bell, which ended up being a mistake for my digestive system.

11:15 We got home, Liam was asleep in his carseat. We ate quickly and I went to Wal-mart to get our groceries and some Halloween pumpkins.

11:30 At Wal-Mart—I ran into SEVERAL former students, the store was busy, but not uncomfortably busy.

12:45 Get back home, unpack everything and put it all away. Liam has just gone down for a real nap, he woke up right after I left earlier and hung out with Andy and ate. I also peeled a sweet potato and put it in the crock pot to make sweet potato puree baby food for Liam. He starts solids in a few weeks, and I’ve been working to get the freezer stocked.

1:30 Take both dogs to the bathroom.

After that, Andy and I settled in and watched some television for a while. I cleaned up the living room, started painting Ollie and Keegan’s pumpkin, put some black eyed peas on to soak and blended the sweet potatoes during this time. Liam also woke up and hung out with us for bit. I did a fall photo shoot with Liam outside with pumpkins and leaves.

5:00 I decide to also make green bean baby food using the crock pot.

5:10 Clean the kitchen, fix Liam a bottle. Andy feeds him while I work on the kitchen. We play with Liam and the dogs for a while. We all crowded onto the activity mat and hung out. Liam is flailing his arms and hitting Andy all over.

6:30 I realize I didn’t plug the crock pot in. Plug it in now. Order pizza from Pizza Hut, using up the last of my gift card from Mariah from when Liam was born. Also a bad idea digestive system wise. Feed the dogs.

6:50 Liam gets his last bottle, puts on his pajamas, and heads off to bed shortly after 7.

7:00 Andy and I watch Parks and Recreation on Netflix and wait for our pizza to arrive.

7:25 Our pizza arrives, we eat. Andy leaves to go play video games online with some friends.

7:40 I put a butternut squash in the oven to cook for Liam food.

8:00 I start working on Liam’s Halloween costume. I have a few missteps, but it is coming together. I do this while watching more episodes of Parks and Rec because it is a sickness. Also, the dogs go to the bathroom.

8:40 Turn off the crock pot and pull the squash out of the oven.

9:00 Liam wakes up. This never happens. His fan got unplugged and he didn’t have his white noise. He is hysterical, and can’t settle in easily. I give him another bottle and change his diaper and eventually get him to settle back down.

9:30 Puree the green beans and squash. Freeze the squash in ice cube trays. Put the green beans in the fridge…they need the food processor, but it’s too loud.

9:40 Back to the costume/Parks and Rec

10:30 Finish the costume—the bitty boy can be a dinosaur.

11:00 Andy and I start to watch an episode of Breaking Bad. It’s painfully boring and I fall asleep.

Midnight—Finally to bed.

Random Snippets :)

Things with Andy’s dad are about the same.  He’s been awake a small amount this past day or so for the first time since Tuesday.  Things are basically holding steady at this point—still serious, but probably not critical.

Keegan has settled in to being at our house.  It’s likely he will be here for quite a while.  He will definitely be here until Andy’s dad is home from the hospital at the very least.  He seems to be enjoying his time, and he and Ollie are getting along well.  He’s getting more used to Liam, too, which is good.  He started trying to get into Liam’s toys this weekend, so I’m training him to leave baby toys alone the way I had to train Oliver.

Speaking of Liam’s toys, I was reading this month’s issue of Baby Talk (yay for free magazine subscriptions) and they had their “best of 2011 toy list in it…there was some seriously cute stuff.  This Poppity Pop Musical Dino, the way cute Rusty the Robot from Lamaze—Liam loves both the Lamaze toys he has, this Hug and Hide Activity Owl (if only they made a giraffe….just kidding, Andy keeps making fun of the number of giraffe toys Liam has….I think he’s up to four or five), and this Roll and Chase Bumblebee for when he starts crawling in a few months were my favorites.

I bought the stuff for Liam’s Halloween costume today.  It cost me a whopping forty cents.  Technically .60, but I didn’t need one piece.  He’s going to be a dinosaur.  I found a tutorial online that I’m going to adapt.  Liam as a green and navy blue one piece outfit from Old Navy that has a hood, and I’m going to loosely sew red felt dinosaur spikes down the back..and after Halloween, I can just pull the seam out, and remove the spikes.

I also got our pumpkins today.  I am going to decorate one for Andy and I, one for Keegan and Ollie (I decided since Keegan will be here, he is part of the family too), and one for Liam.  I’ll take pictures when they are done.

I also did a fall photo shoot with Liam today…once Andy edits the pictures, I’ll post them too!

Christmas List

Since Lauren already posted her wish list, I thought I’d go ahead and do mine (technically ours, I guess, since I’m doing Andy and Liam too).  I like to give more options than my sister, who chose toilet paper and socks to go on her Christmas list.  This was way fun to figure out during naptime over the past few days…just don’t look at the floors or laundry in my house right now :) 

ANDY—I already gave my sister two ideas for Andy that I won’t post here

A programmable thermostat, like this one.  It’s currently listed about 16 dollars higher than it was a week ago.  It’s price seems to change every day on Amazon, but it has primarily been in the 60 doll-68 dollar range.

Season Six and/or Season Seven of The Office.  We have the first five, but I dropped the ball on buying the last two, and Andy doesn’t like having an incomplete collection.  Also, Target usually has these on sale once every few weeks/months or so.

 jeans (34 x 32—the dark wash or the gray)

New shirts…slim cut size large dress shirt.  Plaid or striped…some sort of pattern.  Old Navy has some that are nice…also, Kohls.

LIAM—Doesn’t need a blessed thing. 

But I know that won’t fly, so here are some ideas :)

Board books (his favorite right now)

Music (he’s a big fan of kid’s music things….he has a Clifford cd that he adores)

Blocks, wooden puzzles, balls—things he will be able to start enjoying in the coming months

And a few IKEA links for good measure….in case you’re visiting my sister in Chicago and make a trip :)

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20195775/

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40085455/

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20183876/

And any of the puppets they have there as well

ASHLEY—like Liam, I really don’t need anything.

But there are always things I like :)

Ceramic egg crate for jewelery 

SNL Best of Amy Poehler—because I love her

Paper shredder

Any of the belts at Charlotte Russe—I like wearing them to pull in shirts at the small part of my waist to hide the part where I’m still carrying baby fat—I especially like the skinny belts

Any of the following jewelery—I like them all…one or any would be great :)

http://www.etsy.com/listing/81132976/antique-gold-leaf-cut-out-earrings

http://www.etsy.com/listing/70552786/vintage-style-floral-pattern-oval-locket

http://www.etsy.com/listing/80002512/tiny-circle-with-vintage-style-circle

http://www.etsy.com/listing/83690320/personalized-necklace-hand-stamped

http://www.etsy.com/listing/76850366/modern-double-curb-link-necklace

http://www.etsy.com/listing/74212419/starfilsh-nautical-necklace

Andy’s Dad

Things with Andy’s dad are going.  I wouldn’t say they are going well, but they are going.  Since his original surgery, he has had two more for infection.  The first was last Friday, a week after the original surgery.  He was running a fever, and they rushed him back to the IU Med Center.  He went in for surgery that day to clean out the incision and to see where the infection was.  Then Andy’s mom called at midnight two nights ago, and he couldn’t breathe and they believed the infection was worse.  At that point, they did something, but I honestly don’t remember what.  Andy went up to the hospital at midnight and came back home about 6 in the morning with his parents’ dog, Keegan.  Keegan is staying with us indefinitely.  Yesterday Andy’s dad had another surgery, and they increased the size of his incision, so he currently has an incision that is 3 inches by 7 inches in his back, and they are packing a special gauze in it to keep air from leaking.  They removed part of two of his ribs to get where the needed, and will eventually be removing two more and using them to create a kind of vertical cage.  There is a lot of bad stuff going on, and a lot of bad stuff that can happen, so he’s staying put in the ICU for now as they try to get the area where his right lung once was to fill with fluid….he’ll also eventually have a surgery where they will take some of his own body fat and put it in that area to help it fill.  But all of that is down the road, once the infection is gone, and the danger is lessened.  The pathology report came back yesterday, and of the 22 lymph nodes they tested, one of them was cancerous, which means that it had spread out of the lung that was removed.  So once he is physically able, he will undergo a round of chemotherapy to attempt to remove the cancer.  The doctors are still positive on his eventual outcome, and keep repeating that he is young and he is strong, and both of those are working in his favor.  At this point, we covet your prayers!