Liam is enjoying peek-a-boo these days.  My extra set of hands, Shalin, has been playing it with him during the day and David’s been taking up the task in the evenings.

He’s also experimenting with cause and effect, known in some circles as “drop it and some girl will pick it up”.  That’s usually played while perched in his new chair surveying my activities in the kitchen.

In the bath over the weekend, he discovered his penis.  He spent a good while pulling at it.

Finder Faye has a son!  David has marveled several times about Liam’s impressive short term memory span.  It would seem that he is both observant and possessing of recall.  Lucky for us he’s also willingly distracted by other subjects of interest.

Liam takes a lot of joy in putting his toes in the mouth, anybody else’s too, for that matter.  The only problem is that he likes to do it while getting his diaper changed and so we have to negotiate the wiping of the inguinal crease.

Last Monday Liam watched his contemporary shake a rattle.  It took a few days, but soon enough shake the rattle became another favorite changing table activity.  Which is good because I get easier access to the inguinal crease, but not so good because I have to dodge the swinging arms and legs that make the rattle shake just so.

Along with my super observational powers, it would seem that Liam has inherited his father’s love of climbing.  Now that he is free to crawl around the studio, Liam loves to climb on the high mats and moon boxes.  But climbing the two steps into the bathroom is really something special has far as he’s concerned.

The higher he stands the harder he falls.  Watching Liam fall from standing is like watching a tree fall.  The amazing thing is that he’s not too bothered by the experience.  But then I guess that’s a baby standard.  Determined to stand, determined to walk.  Who are we to get in the way?

Thursday (1/26/12) 7:50-7:57
Eating paper.  Whoops!  I just let Liam eat paper.  Not good.  This is precisely the sort of thing that I’m supposed to keep from occurring.  But look, it’s stuck on the roof of his mouth, sigh of relief, now to extract it. Almost almost, yes!  Got it!  Now how about a golf ball?  What fun.  i sit down to record this event for the sake of posterity.  within a minute (not exaggerating), the roll and follow the golf ball game has led Liam to one of his most coveted spots, the entertainment cabinet (which I had neglected to conceal before putting on the floor because -to be fair- we started out in the office).  By the time I reach him, he’s turned the receiver on and off.  I scoop him up and take him over to the computer so that i can just get this one thought down and it’s there that he sees that inviting scrap of paper hanging off the side of my desk. He gets it, to the mouth, i swipe it away, it lands on the floor.  And then to my relief, my son realizes what a good sucky-thing his hand is.  And we enjoy a couple moments of tranquility.  But just a couple.

Tuesday (1/31/12)  9:00-9:33
Another office adventure.  I set up a blockade of cube shaped baskets in front of the shelves that Liam loves to pull things out of.  Liam’s first order of business was to get to those baskets.  Then he pulled himself up to standing, of course.  So I figure that I’ve got a couple minutes to look over emails, peruse a couple websites of interest.  Then he takes one of his increasingly frequent tumbles.  I dash over to check it out.  Turns out that he’s been using his new stature to reach past the basket over to the next shelf up (the recent destination point for  the untouchables from the shelf below).  Turns out that Liam took a tumble because he’d put forth a mighty reach to get his hands on one of my water color tablets.  And he did!  That amazing boy!  So the fall was no big thing, he had his prize and was quite pleased.  I rescue the tablet and restore him to standing; he goes reaching again.  I figure this is photo worthy and snap a couple, Liam smiles for the camera once he realizes.  It’s time to move all the untouchables out of reach (again) and put one of his toys in the shelf.  Fine, that was worth a minute or two.  I returned to the computer.  The next time I check in he’s gone ahead and pushed the other basket out of the way completely and is busying himself with the contents of the shelf next to the now empty one.  He’s discovered the pressor foot to my sewing machine.  In this case I figure that it’s best to to let him see this exploration through.  He spent 6 minutes with it and then he was on to investigating his bouncing cradle.  Next the old entertainment cart (standing of course), then the great challenge of standing while holding on to the back of David’s swivel desk chair.  Obviously his time there was brief, for as I explained to my crying son once he’d tumbled, unstable objects make poor braces.  This was enough for our little explorer, he was content to sit on my lap , not particularly still mind you, as I completed this narrative.  Until he wasn’t, at which point we adjourned, computer too, to the living room for some nursing which I expect will lead to a nap.  But I never can be sure….

Liam ushers us into the year of the dragon
Life is pretty busy for us these days so this will be a short entry.  While David and I are hustling to keep one step ahead of Liam, the house clean, money in the bank, and generally on top of our new roles as parents; Liam is continuing to be Liam.  So I must continue to record the relevant happenings.

Liam is now a sitting baby.  I realized it over the weekend, checked with David and he said that it he’d been noticing for a few days.  It seems that these new developments are slow to sink in to my awareness.  In perfect time, David rustled up a high chair for our little guy and he’s making good use of it.

Liam’s exploratory missions around the house continue with vim and vigor.  He’s removed a heating vent from the wall (it wasn’t very well attached), dismantled the dishwasher (okay, I helped him a bit with that one, but not much), and is getting into everything with great efficiency.  Oh dear!

Today, I had the baby downstairs with me for a quick laundry change and he pulled himself up on his feet to get at something.  Luckily he didn’t take a tumble from his newly elevated position.  That came later when he was standing over his stool.  Falling from standing looks just awful to me.  Surprisingly Liam wasn’t too put out by the experience.  So that was a relief.  So I guess that we can add standing to our son’s list of accomplishments.

David and I are working as hard as we are able to get Bayside Pilates set up.  The studio is looking beautiful and I’m so happy that Liam and I will have such a great workspace.  While we’re hard at work, Liam is entertaining himself in the Seidler pack n’ play.  Containment is a good thing.

We have determined that Liam is indeed teething, but still no teeth in sight.  That
means a considerable amount of irritability.  What with all the exploring, head bumping, teeth manufacturing, and building of new skills, Liam is working up quite an appetite for milk, food, and cuddles.  So there’s lots of that going on too.

We’re way past bedtime.  So it’s time to sign off.  Happy Chinese New Year!

Waiting with bated breath
Saturday 12/17
David toils all day to get our big television monitor up on the wall.  Then he sets up the new entertainment cabinet.  Then he puts everything in it and gets it working again.  Liam is on the move and loving it.  He’s been doing a lot of push ups and plank position.  Setting his sights on something in front of him, he goes for it but surprises and annoys himself by going backwards.

Sunday 12/18
David captures Liam’s movements on video.  He’s more or less doing the Pilates-esque move that I’ve been hoping for.  Thank you, Liam!  He’s getting his knees underneath himself.

Monday 12/19
More of the same, and yet every little movement that Liam does on the floor is fun to watch.  Sometime recently (I didn’t note the date), Liam swung his torso off the side of his bouncy seat (yikes), so now he’s fully strapped in every time.  This kid’s a firecracker!

Tuesday 12/20
I just walked past Liam on the floor.  He’s thrashing around while squealing joyously.  He was up on his hands and feet and he picked up one of his knees and pulled it forward underneath himself.  I watched for a moment to see if he’d follow with the next move in the crawling sequence, but he collapsed to the floor and then continued with the usual for these days:  pushing himself backward in alternation with “walking” his feet along the floor.  Any day now this kid is going to take off.  I sure hope that I’ll be there to see the look on his face because I imagine that he’ll be pretty pleased with himself.

Wednesday 12/21
Last evening David witnessed the hands and knees balance with the forward thrust.  The problem that our young son is currently encountering is that when he thrusts forward, he doesn’t move his arms so he collapses on himself.  But he keeps on trying, and this morning he’s just doing it over and over again.  Sometime yesterday, Liam decided to bring back the squeal.  I guess he figured it’s been too quiet around here.  Oh, I’ve forgotten to mention, but he’s sucking and drooling with a real sense of purpose.  So basically floor time is spent either making out with Sophie the giraffe, squealing, going up and backwards, and then getting really frustrated or tired and needing a break.  Hard work, this being an infant!

Thursday and Friday
Same old same old in the midst of yuletide preparations.

Saturday 12/24
Off topic but worth mention:  David says that re-dressing Liam after a diaper change is like trying to put the skin back on a chicken.  Even though I’ve never tried the latter, I’d be willing to say that I agree.

Sunday 12/25
So many people leave precious little time and space for floor romping.

Monday 12/26
David reports that Liam has all the parts of the crawl.  I was doing laundry, so I missed the first forward thrusts.  According to David it goes something like this:  a quick rise to knees followed by a forward toss of the hands.  Now it just about fine tuning.  Oh boy!

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
More of the same has been going on around here.  Perhaps Liam is working on a behind the scenes project, we wouldn’t be surprised if a couple teeth show up soon.  In the meantime, Liam seems to be taking a break from the forward thrust of the hands.  The same thing happened with rolling over.  He’d do it and then take a few days off.  This is not to say that there’s no ground being covered, Liam has honed in on Siegfried’s food area as a point of great  interest.  He works his way over there quite quickly and I’ve had to snatch a food dish out of his hands once (yikes!).  What with all this moving around, Liam is frequently finding himself in a tight spot with some body part stuck up against a wall or piece of furniture.  Either he bumps himself, or he just gets really frustrated and then he needs a cuddle break.  Once we’re holding him and he’s returned to his happy self, he figures all the better to move about and he gives a great toss of his body toward his desired destination and if we don’t go there, he’s likely to be frustrated yet again.  This makes his impending discovery of independent locomotion so much more exciting for us because we’re getting a front row seat to the dramatics that play a role in our son’s desire to move.  Soon, all his frustration will be transferred to us as he’ll be on the go and we’ll be hustling to maintain a safe and orderly home.

Saturday 12/31
The forward hand motion is back and a bit more refined.  He’s doing the crawl in fits and starts.  He’ll move one or both hands forward, then sort of rotate his body to one side, then pivot prone down and pull himself forward.  So the coordination has improved during his break.  And yet, he still doesn’t seem “aware” of what he’s done because there’s still a good amount of struggle to it.  Liam took a great interest in our new years cards which were all together tucked in a box as I was attaching labels (infant = no hand writing).  I kept moving the box forward and he kept following it.  Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Sunday 1/1
While our little babe’s form is still a bit sloppy, he’s getting where he wants to go, even when it means going forward.  At the end of our day, we delayed bath time a bit because it was so much fun to watch him achieve his goal.  We had friends over for dinner and when they were leaving Liam was showering each of them with so much affection that it seemed he wanted to give goodbye hugs.  We all entertained his apparent wish and I have to say that his cuteness in dispensing hugs to our guests reached a new high in my estimation.

Monday 1/2
Today is the day, he’s off and away (thank you, Dr. Seuss)!  I realized this first thing,  that indeed Liam is now a crawler.  Yesterday really was “the day”  but it was late and I tend to write in the morning, which is a sly way of admitting that I’m logging two days worth now and since we’ve finally reached announcement time, soon this log will be published to boot.  Liam’s only frustration so far came from being restricted from sucking on my iphone, so that’s a nice reprieve.  So far today he’s had a few bumps (nothing cry-worthy), eaten some box (hopefully that just resurfaced in his spit up), sucked on his dad’s office chair, box of drill bits, and our foam roller, not to mention his toys – but those are soooo yesterday.  Oh and every time I change his diaper I discover a bruise.  New year, new adventures, here we come!

Happy New Year!  Hugs all around!