Fuzzy Love

Shopping

Remember that pouffy jacket from yesterday? Today I repeatedly stuffed it into a carseat, then a stroller, then back into carseat. Poor Liam was stuck in that coat and could barely move his head. Well, he could move his head and look at the inside of his hood, but that's boring. Needless to say he was a bit frustrated. The two of us went Christmas shopping at an outlet mall south of Denver. It's kind of a strip mall place, so we had to keep going in and out of doors, and I couldn't really take his coat off in every store, so after a couple of hours you could've stuck a fork in him (he was done).

Last stop: Liam needs a new pair of shoes. At the Stride Rite store, I had to let him out of the stroller and take off his boots, and why not his coat too? Well, after so much confinement, Liam went wild. He hid in the window display. He dug through the sale sock bin. He begged for a gum ball. He ran through the store, crashing into the shelves and pushing all the shoe boxes to the very back of those shelves (this got the sales clerk's attention). Yes, I stopped him. About ten times. But I learned that if you keep a kid in a stroller for a couple of hours, there are consequences. He tried on two pairs of shoes, I got him redressed, and I stuffed him back into the stroller: it took about 35 minutes. Fortunately he fell asleep in the car on the way home (and by some miracle he stayed that way when I transferred him to his crib).

Off topic: there is a new chain of restaurant coming to an airport near you. It sells cereal! Name brand cereals in Chinese take-out boxes with any sort of topping from brown sugar and fresh fruit to lucky charms marshmallows and malted milk balls. Wouldn't that just kick a MacMuffin's ass?

Snow

We got Liam his first real snow suit over the weekend. They were on sale and we knew the snow was coming, so here he is, padded within an inch of his life. Have you ever seen the movie A Christmas Story? (If you haven't, it's a great movie.) Anyway, Liam was totally the little brother in that movie; we put him on his back and he could not get up. Actually, every time he fell over in the snow this weekend - which was a lot -we had to pull him up again. This may have been partly due to his slightly-too-big boots (I want them to last all winter)or that he had on fleece-lined jeans, socks, a wool sweater, big boots, a hat with ear flaps, mittens, snow pants, a jacket, and a hood. Thank goodness he wears diapers (Liam is not the easiest kid to dress).

He actually got around quite well for being so pouffy. At least he was so padded he couldn't get hurt.

As expected, Liam had a ball in the snow. He helped us shovel, he ran around, he moved snow, he fell over. Didn't try to eat it though.

We have to get a sled. And we actually have a decent hill not far away from here (not so easy to find a hill around here that isn't covered in thorny bushes under the snow). Hopefully we'll have a nice snowy winter.

New Things

Liam has picked up a few tricks in the last few weeks, so here they are in sound-bite form (or else I'll never get them down). Most dramatically, he's learning to talk; he has a new word every other day or so. The latest is cooo-key!, which is always yelled. The words don't come easily, he has to concentrate and there is a pause between syllables, but he does get them out.

Also new is what we call the "happy dance". All of a sudden, Liam loves to dance, and he does it well. Today we went to a sing-a-long at the mall and he made his way to the epicenter of the event to perform his little hops and spins. Very cute; I must try to get it on video. When the music stops, he claps.

Let's see: I think I embarrassed Liam for the first time the other day. We were watching The Wiggles (a favorite of Liam's and could be worse for me) and I was singing along (loudly) to make it more fun. Liam turned around, clapped his hand over my mouth, and said, "no, no, no, no, no, no!"

Finally, Liam loves the dishwasher. He particularly likes to empty the silverware, piece by piece, either on to the floor or into my hand, whichever is most handy. Since he tends to make it difficult to shut the door, we have allowed him to push the buttons to get the dishwasher going, which is very exciting for him. Well, guess what? Now he knows how to turn on the dishwasher. And he does. All the time.

So, don't complain because you don't get a picture today; I put up a whole new album. They are from the photography class I'm taking, so hopefully they will get progressively better as time goes on.

Damn Teeth

Not Liam's; mine. I just got back from the dentist and I finally need to have my wisdom teeth removed. Don't ask me why I didn't have it done as a teenager like everyone else, but really they haven't given me much trouble over the years - until I had one too many Tootsie Rolls on Sunday. One tooth has been hurting since then, so I went in today to learn that they should all be taken out ASAP. Particularly before I get pregnant again (not that that is in the works or anything). So, I have an appointment with an oral surgeon on Monday. I guess if we do the surgery on a Thursday, Mark can take that day and Friday off, and I should be mostly back to normal by Monday. Oh, and there will be lots of facial swelling (three days up, three days down). Don't hold your breath for pictures.

In the meantime, Liam has a cold and is having a hard time. Yesterday, to cheer him up, we went to the monster toy store (where people were already doing major holiday shopping) and got him a little car to play with. It works like this: when you push down on the driver, the car revvs its engine and drives forward about five feet or so. Right away Liam figured out that if he puts the car on the table, the car will drive off the edge and crash into the floor, making a big noise. Lots of fun.

Liam also has another cute thing: although he isn't speaking a whole lot of words yet, he does sing quite often. If I sing, "La la la laaaaaa," he'll sing back, "Na naaaaaa." Okay, that doesn't sound very exciting, but we get a lot of milage out of it and, trust me, it's very cute.

Tricking or Treating

Yesterday Liam went trick or treating for the first time. It was very cold, so we only went all of three houses since it was more for the experience than the candy. Liam was very interested in all the activity at our front door but, once we got outside, he was a little scared. You know how usually he's the bolting type? Every time we tried to put him down he just clung to our legs. He hadn't been out after dark for months and we think it freaked him out a bit. We ended up carrying him the entire time, which was fine by us.

Like I said, it was very cold and slightly rainy last night. All the little kids that came to the door were in heavy coats and looked warm and all the teenagers weren't and looked freezing. Fortunately, Liam was ready for hybernation in his bear suit.

I was hopeful that he'd at least hit the ground when we were ringing doorbells, but Liam said no way. Please note Mark's Pooh ears:

We were out there about 10 minutes tops. Back at home, Liam spent the rest of the evening transferring candy from the big bowl to his pumpkin bag and running for the door when the bell rang (most exciting part of the evening). We bought a whopping two bags of candy, which turned out to be about four times as much as we needed (why do we always overestimate?). We stripped the leftovers of our favorites and sent the rest in to Mark's office. After all, we can't let Liam eat all that candy he collected, can we?

Speaking of candy, we had bought a box of Gushers at Costco by mistake (so you know it was a big box). If you aren't familiar with Gushers, they are a disgustingly sweet gummy-type candy with a liquid candy center that is especially disgustingly sweet. We bought them because of the "100% daily vitamin C" announcement on the outside of the box, thinking Liam might like them. He spat them out immediately, so Mark and I tried them. Yuck. Oh, yuck. Not fit for eating. Since they come packaged in snack-size bags, I thought I'd salvage the situation by mixing them in with the chocolate bars and handing them out at Halloween. I actually felt cheap and guilty about it, passing on this crap to other people's children. To my surprise, almost every child I gave them to said something like, "ooooo, Gushers!" When one child got a chocolate bar instead, she actually said, "uh, could I have some Gushers please?" So she ended up getting Gushers and a chocolate bar, since I couldn't very well dive into her bag and get the chocolate bar back (although I momentarily considered it). The moral of this story: kids will eat anything, as long as it contains lots and lots of sugar.

Moving on. This morning, we woke up to this:

Big snow. In honor of the first snow of the season, I'd like to introduce you to the best drink on earth: Ghirardelli hot chocolate. A mug full of milk in the microwave for a minute, mix in some of this stuff, and mmmmmmmmm....hot chocolate. I'm trying to keep it down to one cup a day - must remember the junk in the trunk. (If Ghirardelli would like to make this a paid endorsement, I'm open to offers).