When Three Become Four!: Welcome 2010!

Outside it is a winter wonderland, and it is the kind of day it is easier to get caught up on things around the house. Things like putting away the rest of the Christmas decorations, laundry, cleaning and finally updating the blog. My blog has been a ghost town lately, but it has not been fully abandoned!! If you are out there faithfully following or still checking in, I encourage you to leave comments as this helps motivate me to post more often ;-) It is not hard to do, and if you have questions let me know. I love feedback!

We have finally recovered from the holidays and gotten back into our daily routines. We also said farewell to our Chinese guest a couple days ago, and are enjoying reclaiming our entire house again (though we do miss her too!). We are also going to move Liam to his own room at last within the next few days! I have gradually been nightweaning him preparing for this long-awaited day, and around 14 months he started sleeping ALL night some nights (7-8pm until 6-7pm range) just on his own with no big changes!! Some of these cold winter mornings he'll still get up in the 6am hour, but more than before he gets in a generous mood and will let me coax him to sleep in a little longer. When I'm really lucky, even until 9am which feels like heaven! I still am occasionally having minor bouts of insomnia, I believe to be stress-related, but I enjoy feeling rested again.

Liam is overall a happy, active child that loves being around other people. He's been healthy, aside from a bad cold that was leading to a double ear infection and caused him to spike a fever of 102.7 last Wednesday. It was actually the first real fever I have discovered in his life, and everyone who told me I would know when my kid was feverish just by looking at him was right. Our normally active and independent child just wanted to lay and drool all over Mama's pants leg, snuggle on my lap, and fall asleep in my arms! That day we got him into the doctor's office right as they were closing, and they were awesome and stayed a little late to check him out. He ended up on Amoxicillin as the doctor was concerned that both of his ears showed inflammation. I am glad we caught it in time, before it got really bad. He bounced back quickly.

Other than that, recently he's been showing more interest in foods with more complex flavors. He's enjoyed a few bits of Cincinnati style chili, coconut chicken curry with us yesterday with basmarti rice (he didn't eat as much of the sauce but loved the pieces of chicken), guacamole (baby style, with just avocado and a little tomato, onion, cilantro, and lemon juice). I got him to also try scrambled eggs (he's still not as sure about their texture) and yogurt (another thing he's fairly lukewarm about).

Here are a few pictures to share!

At Daddy's birthday party, ready to dig into the cupcakes (literally!)

Loves playing with the piano

And with Daddy and Uncle Matt...

I have over 100 pictures from Christmas, here are highlights!!
Our tree (check out Chester's laser eyes on the right... haha!)

Gatherings with Michael's family

Making a silly face

Tackling his older cousin, Evan

Christmas Eve service

Playing at the gathering afterward

No Liam, you cannot have Daddy's beer!

When he got tired, he found a strange place to rest!

Christmas Day

He spent the night in the grandparents' rooms, so Mommy and Daddy got a little break! This was Mommy's favorite gift of all, especially since he gets overtired over the holidays and doesn't sleep as well ;-)