(Matt and Liam are in the bathroom finishing up with the brushing of Liam’s teeth)
Liam:Â “Good Job!”
Matt:Â “No Liam, actually that wasn’t a good job, you weren’t very helpful tonight.”
Liam:Â (pause) “GREAT Job!”
Author: Shannon
The Boy Who Cried Poop
Liam is now telling us he needs to poop all day long (spoiler: he doesn’t actually need to go 15 times per day). Tonight I overheard the following conversation between him and Matt:
Liam:Â “Poop.”
Matt:Â “Liam, have you ever heard the story about the boy who cried wolf?”
Liam:Â “Poop.”
Matt: “There was a boy who was herding his sheep. One day he cried ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ and all the townspeople came running because if you are a shepherd, people come running when you cry ‘Wolf!’ The boy kept crying ‘Wolf!’ until the townspeople stopped coming. Then a wolf actually did come along and the boy died.”
Shannon:Â “Ahahahahahahaha!”
Anatomy Of A Morning
Liam has a cold. He was up at 11:30pm and 3:30am because he couldn’t breathe. Here’s how the morning went:
7:45am: Matt returns from his run and soothes Liam, trying to convince him that he needs to sleep very badly.
8:15am: Liam is completely over trying to sleep, Matt gets him up.
8:45am: I finally get Liam to try eating breakfast and put on a pot of coffee for myself to try to soothe my throat and wake me up enough to exist.
9:05am: My waffles are finished and I pour myself a cup of coffee.
9:07am: I sit down at the table, starving.
9:07:08am: Liam informs me that he needs to poop.
9:07:47am: Liam is sitting on the toilet and I’m trying to swig some coffee while sitting on the edge of the tub reading books.
9:30am: No poop and 10 books later, Liam gets off the toilet.
9:31-9:59am: I run around trying to get Liam (and me) ready to go get a (completely necessary) haircut and trip to the Farmer’s Market.
10:00am: We leave the house hungry (well, I’m hungry…), but in plenty of time to get to the appointment with 5 minutes to spare.
10:45am: Finally arrive in Decatur at Miss Lisa’s 15 minutes past our appointment time.
10:46am: Liam begins weeping and will not let go of me to be put in the chair to have his hair cut.
10:47am: Miss Lisa and I forcibly remove him from my body and get him into the chair.
10:48-11:05am: Liam screams, wails, and cries (despite the paci and woobie I have given him in a bribery attempt) for his entire haircut making it (seemingly) completely impossible for Miss Lisa to cut his hair. Somehow she still manages to give him a better cut than previous hairdressers have when he was in a good mood.
11:06am: Liam is covered in sweat, tears, and snot to which all the hair is sticking (big surprise: he refused a cape) and he’s now flailing wildly and screaming “ITCHY, ITCHY, ITCHY” and clawing his neck.
11:07am: We remove him from the chair in an attempt to get him to allow us to get the offending hair off his neck and face.
11:08am: We give up. I pay Miss Lisa while apologizing profusely (although she truly seems not to mind, which is the reason that we will continue to drive (what should be) 30 minutes to go see her). I run out with my tail between my legs.
11:09-11:10am: I try to soothe Liam outside the car enough to get him to release his grip so that I can strap him in.
11:11am: We head home. Organic apples be damned. No errands are worth attempting at this point.
11:35am: We arrive home, still covered in hair, and commence watching Sesame Street, complete with paci and woobie. I’m toast. Speaking of toast…
12:03pm: I attempt to feed Liam lunch. He eats half a cheese stick and takes 2 swigs of milk. He’s clearly finished.
12:30om: I put Liam down for a nap.
12:31am: Workmen in our neighbor’s yard commence throwing materials, screaming, and laughing approximately 20 feet from Liam’s bedroom window. They aren’t yet aware that if I even perceive that they have prevented Liam from sleeping 30 seconds less than he needs there will be hell to pay.
Mini Monday Roundup
Here are a few pictures from the last several days:
Liam gets a handle on proper hydration:
Checking out the half-marathon runners as they pass our house (although they went out there to cheer on the runners, Liam’s cuteness (and probably his outfit) caught attention and more runners were cheering him on than the reverse). Matt and I both think that this would be a really cool race to run in the future.
On Sunday Matt got to go with us to PDK for the first time. The weather wasn’t great, so there wasn’t as much activity as we’ve seen before, but it was easy to see where Liam gets his fascination of planes:
Hooray for Hummus!
Chickpeas are good for the hair, right…?
Monkeys:
Hooray, Monkey!
Blanket cape:
Saturday Splurge
This week we went to the Gundersen’s for Oktoberfest. As a result, our splurge “meal” was themed accordingly. We took Beer & Brat Biscuits (to fulfill the German component):
and pumpkin cupcakes (to fulfill the October component):
I can’t really attest to the Beer & Brat biscuits (I can’t stand brats, so this was all about Matt), although Matt says that they were “okay.” Not exactly a glowing endorsement. The pumpkin cupcakes, on the other hand, were ridiculously good. I got the recipe from an issue of Real Simple, and it’s going straight into my go-to stack. They were delicious and moist, they looked fantastic, and they were very simple to make (not surprisingly, considering the source). Bonus points for the fact that I’d never made my own cream cheese icing, and after my first foray I’ve decided that I’m never going back (well…time allowing, of course). Mmmmm.
A, C, H, Elmo, K, W, X, Y, Z
Liam has taken his love of letters to the next logical step: he’s trying to learn to sing the alphabet. When he sings the “alphabet” it always includes “A, C, H, Elmo, and K.” He’s very consistent with those letters, but not so much with the correct ordering. Just the attempt on his part has caused me to move up my deadline for him learning all the words to “Closer to Fine.” He used to have until starting Pre-K and now I’ll be disappointed if we don’t see results by his third birthday. I hope he realizes that he’s being graded.
He’s also trying to spell. He’s just moved on from being thoroughly convinced that every string of letters spells “LLLIIIAAAMMM.” Tonight he walked up to the vacuum cleaner and said: “O, R, E, C, K…VACUUM!” Needless to say, we’ve got a ways to go — but we’re very excited to be on the road at all!
The Beginning Of The Fall
I love Fall. I love the crispness of the air. I love wearing sweats. I love sipping apple cider. While I have begun to enjoy the cold more and more, I have not begun to love the beginning of cold season.
I thought when I couldn’t fall asleep last night and woke up with a sore throat that it was all the result of drinking too many acidic things over the weekend (sometimes the reflux can be bad enough to cause burning in my throat). It turns out that I appear to have kid germs. Liam’s sneezing nonstop and it’s (apparently) bad enough to affect his nap. He’s been “down” for his nap for the past hour, but I’ve heard snuffling, sneezing, the occasional cough, and almost incessant babbling for the duration.
I just went in there in an attempt to coax him into sleep only to find him standing up in his bed, talking about “Fly Guy” (which is the name of one of our most recent library acquisitions), and missing both his pants and one of his socks. I should have known that all that work we’ve been putting into getting the kid to dress himself would backfire. I’m just knocking on wood that he’s still wearing his diaper the next time I go in there…
Lightening Strikes Twice
Yesterday afternoon, once again, Liam told me he needed to poop. I ran with him into the bathroom and put him up on the new potty seat that we purchased yesterday morning. Then, thinking that I should make things as pleasant as possible for him, I told him to sit there for just a second while I ran into his room and picked out several books to read while he was on the toilet. When I ran back into the bathroom he looked at me and said “All done.” I said, “Liam, we’ve gotta try for a little bit so why don’t we read some books while you sit there and keep trying?” We then proceeded to read books for about 10 minutes. At this point he became very insistent, saying ” All done, ALL DONE!!!” I didn’t want him to have a negative experience (especially this early in the game) so I said, “Alright, Liam. Let’s get you down and we’ll try again later.” When I pulled him off the toilet there was poop inside. He’d apparently gone while I ran to get the books and when he told me he was “All done,” he really was all done.
This morning we didn’t quite make it in time. This is a learning process for me as much as it is for him–but to my delight he did pee in the potty for the first time after I put him up there to see if he had any more business to finish. I’m considering that a win. Now on to order the potty seat that has an actual guard for the inevitable little boy spray. The one we have works fine for giving him a comfortable place to sit, but proper guards are definitely going to be VERY important.
See — y’all thought that the poop talk on this blog was winding down, but never fear: there are always new poop stories here!
Mini Friday Roundup
Here are a few shots of Liam playing outside yesterday afternoon:
There were planes:
There were sticks and there was bark:
There was silliness:
There were many “Hoorays:”
There was running:
There was pure glee:
There was abundant sweetness:
There were helicopters:
It was a wonderful afternoon.
Welcome back, Fall. Oh, how I’ve missed you!
Unofficial And Completely Biased
Liam just looked at me and told me he needed to poop (yesterday I started talking to him about telling us if he needs to poop, so it wasn’t a complete shock, only a mere surprise).
I took him to the bathroom and held him up on the seat (we don’t have any potty training equipment as of yet).
He then proceeded to poop in the potty. Let me just repeat this, because it is now my most favorite thing to type: LIAM JUST POOPED IN THE POTTY!!!
He thinks I’ve lost my mind because of the amount of jumping around and screaming that occurred as a result. I think it’s a miracle. My boy can poop! In the potty!
I’m fully prepared for this not to happen again for months, but I’m taking every little bit that I get. If he knew what an M&M was I’d definitely give him one.
When Liam gets his own potty seat he’ll look just like this (only he has lots more hair and he’ll be reading Stephen Hawking):
