9 months 12 days (41 weeks)

This week has been another big week of changes.  His crawling gets better and better everyday, and he is getting really fast too.  He is getting more stable at walking around the furniture. His dismount from his standing position is getting really steady too.  He is starting to take a new interest in his toys, and he's starting to play more with them rather than just chewing on them.  We gave him some Cheerios this week, and he's starting to get the hang of eating them by chewing them up.  I get nervous that he's going to choke, but thankfully his dad is standing by to reassure me, and step in if anything happens.  He's starting to sound out words more and more.  One day this week I thought he was trying to say 'dog'.  He is also getting so BIG.  Whenever someone asks how old he is, they are surprised at how big he is!  He is already busting out of some of his 12 month clothes, and already fits in some of his 18 month clothes!  We were somewhat surprised to find out that he is only in the 40th percentile for his weight (at 20 lbs. 3 oz.) and 35th percentile for his height (28 in).  Although, maybe it's his head (18.5 in.) that makes him look so big, which is in the 88th percentile!

His questionnaire was for 10 months this time, so some of the communication and personal-social areas are not quite there yet, but he scored really high in the gross motor, fine motor and problem solving areas.  The doctor says he's doing really well, and he advised to start feeding him more food, and less milk since he will be weaning off of formula and breast milk in a few months.  They did a blood prick on his toe to check for anemia, and he is good.  They also gave him a flu shot.  The nurse put a band-aid on his toe, and when we were in the car I heard him gagging, I looked in the rear view mirror and he vomited.  I pulled over to check on him and he threw up again!  I called the Dr.'s office to ask them if that could be a reaction to the vaccine, and they said it was not.  I decided to go to my families home to clean him up, and I found the band-aid in his car seat.  I am thinking he tried to eat the band-aid and he choked on it.  We won't be leaving band-aids on him for now on!

After I cleaned him up, I took him to Toys R Us, and got him a bunch of new toys.  He was a super good boy this week!

Liam is 9 Months (40 Weeks)

We think that Liam has made the most changes thus far in the past 2 weeks.  He went from sitting up on his own a couple weeks ago, to learning how to crawl, to standing and walking along the furniture!  He is now into everything!  And he also has decided that his jumparoo is boring, and wants to be out and exploring around the house.  The main floor is not very baby friendly, so we are grateful we have a bonus room upstairs that we can shut the door and let him play and explore with out too much worry.

His taste buds are getting used to fruit because he doesn't make as many funny faces.  We have been getting fresh local peaches, and we made him some baby food, but he also likes to take a bite of our peaches when we are eating them.  He practically attacks the peaches, and tries to get as much in his mouth as he can...we have to be careful he doesn't take too much though.

He's starting to get his little boy face too, although he still has cute kissable chubby cheeks.  His new little boy face also comes with 2 more teeth coming in on top and also his little boy personality that is forming.  He is a lot more sensitive to sounds and tones.  If something is loud or scary, or if we have a certain tone in our voice he can sense it and his lip will start to quiver and he'll cry.  He often will look to us for reassurance.  

The other milestone that he had this week that made our hearts soar was he started to sign.  I was feeding him his milk a few days ago, and he was moving his fist, and I thought it was a new thing he was doing randomly, until I realized that it was the sign for milk!!  Mike started doing the sign again, and then Liam did it back.  He has done it several times since, and now we are excited to start teaching him more signs.

Liam LOVES our dogs, and the dogs love him too, especially Gretchen.  We were most concerned about Gretchen because she doesn't do well with strangers, but she has been nothing but sweet with Liam from day 1.  Gretchen likes to keep watch from our bonus room window, which is low to the floor and Liam likes to use the window sill as a walking perch, so they enjoy looking outside together from that window.  He also found Gretchen's tags quite interesting.  He will point and grab her tag and try to put her collar in his mouth, and she will just lick him silly.  They are sooo cute together!!

Liam is 38 Weeks

At the beginning of this week Liam started to sit up on his own.  After he did it for about a day, he was an expert at it.  He is also crawling a little better too.  I made him some apple sauce, which he liked 'OK'.  He still seems to like vegetables better since they are not as tart, but he will eat fruits even though he makes faces.  Over the labor day weekend we went to the Davis Family reunion.  I haven't seen most of that side of the family for about 10 years. All my cousins now have families of their own, and it was good to see everyone. We learned a couple things about the Davis side, and that is Liam fits in well with his blond hair and fair skin, and I get my taste for salt and green apples from that side of the family. The family planned activities with the kids where they celebrated the different holidays. We were there on Saturday when they had an Easter egg hunt, and later in the afternoon we decorated cookies for valentines day. We thought that was a creative idea.  Liam was pretty good the whole time, although he did not want to take a nap.  At one point, he was so tired that he fell asleep on my dad's shoulders, it was pretty cute!  We thought when we left that he would sleep in the car, but he didn't.  Thankfully, he finally crashed when we got home.

Liam Crawling http://www.vimeo.com/1593412 "He is starting to get the hang of this crawling thing, but here is an example of his version of crawling (so far). He likes to scoot with his head down. This was taken on Aug. 24th 2008, he's about 8.5 months."

comment by mom/grandma on 09/10/2008
I am so glad you got this. Just in time too, now he has the regular crawl down you aren't likely to see this one much more.

Liam is 37 Weeks

Now that Liam is close to sitting up on his own, we decided it was time to lower his mattress in his crib.  We also, thought he could use a more sturdy bumper, since he likes to pull down on it. 

Lately, we've noticed that he gets bored really easily, and we have to think of new things to entertain him.  We got him a pretty cool toy called 'Learn and Groove Musical Table'  made by Leap Frog.  He thinks it's pretty fun!

Liam has now decided that he wants to sleep in his crib full time. We had him in our room at night because it's on the main floor and his bedroom is on the 2nd floor, and both of us are zombies if we are waken in the middle of the night. But alas, he just couldn't sleep in his hard playpen any longer, so we decided it was time to buy a video monitor. We hesitated for a while getting one because we read some reviews that it interferes with the other electronics in the house. But, we bit the bullet and decided to just get one, and return it if we had problems. We went with the Summer brand, 7 " LCD Screen Monitor. So far it has worked great. The sound is staticky, but we turn that down and use our other monitors for that. The picture works pretty well, at least for what we need it for, and that is just to be able to see how he's doing. Before with just the sound, any little cry or whimper in the middle of the night was exaggerated 10 fold when I was half asleep. It made for many restless nights. Now I can just glance over on my nightstand and see that he is well. It wasn't cheap, but having peace of mind and better sleep is priceless! We love watching him on our L-TV (Liam Television).

Liam is 36 Weeks

Liam had his first sit-up bath this week.  We were concerned about doing it earlier because he wasn't sitting 100%, but he's pretty much there except for the occasional time he gets excited or distracted and loses his balance.  We just made sure one of us was there to hold him, and he did really well.  He seemed to really like sitting up in his bath.  His new thing this week is pointing his finger at things.  We are constantly amazed at how well his dexterity is.  He is very precise with his fingers, and picking up things.  He's fairly mobile now, even though he hasn't quite caught on to the crawling thing.  Other than the 'worm' move, he also does this move where he lifts his bottom in the air and scoots with his head.  (If you are familiar with yoga, it is similar to the downward facing dog position).  We have noticed that his legs are super strong, and he also likes to use them as if they are extra arms and hands.  He will wrap his legs around things to get stuff to him.  

Some of you may know that I do not eat meat (other than fish), and I have had mixed feelings about giving Liam meat, but I do know that as a growing baby and child he will need protein and having too much soy is probably not a good thing.  So I have decided that if he's going to have certain meats, I would like it to be organic.  So this week we let him try organic mangoes and chicken, and he seemed to really like it.  My friend also let me borrow her book on making baby food.  I got a little carried away with the first week, making a meal for him that had lentils, onions, carrots and celery.  He ate it OK, but I think it was a bit much for him for the first time making him food.  I have decided to go back to the basics and make him the simple stuff like single fruits and veggies, and then work up to the fancier recipes.

He had a bit of a rough week this week as far as sleeping goes.  He hasn't been taking his bottles as much this week either, so we think maybe his gums are sore from teething.  One night this week he actually woke up around 3 or 4am and thought it was play time.  After giving him some extra milk, he finally drifted back to sleep.  Several weeks ago I had to convert his bassinet to his playpen because he was just too big for the bassinet, but I still wanted the option for him to sleep on the main floor if he was getting up a lot in the night.  However, it seems he's decided that he really doesn't like sleeping in his playpen anymore, and tends to sleep much better in his bed...can't say I blame him, his bed IS more comfortable!  He has also given up nursing all together, and takes a bottle in the night now.

On August 14th he had his IN/OUT day, which means he has been in the outside world as long as he was inside me.  HAPPY in/out day Liam! WE LOVE YOU!

Liam is 35 Weeks

Liam found his tongue on Sunday and likes to stick it out now.  He also has a third tooth coming in.  His new game this week is throwing his toys and watching us pick it up for him.  He has also started to growl. He mostly likes to growl at his toys, especially his stacking cups because it makes his voice louder. Today I had a dentist appointment, and our dentist told us to bring him so he gets used to going there.  He watched with wide eyes as the hygienist cleaned my teeth.  I thought he might cry at the loud sounds, but he was a perfect angel!  

Liam turned 8 months yesterday!!  Here is a list of 8 things we LOVE about Liam:

8 THINGS WE LOVE ABOUT LIAM
1. His smile and laugh is contagious
2. He loves new things
3. He is sweet natured
4. He's beautiful!
5. Good sense of humor
6. Super healthy and strong
7. Good with other people.
and last but not least...
8. He loves us!

Liam is 34 Weeks

Liam had a pretty busy week this week.  His teeth are coming in quickly, although they are quite crooked.  We've read that is fairly common and they should straighten as the others come in...crossing our fingers on that one.  He's getting quite the workout pushing his tummy off the floor, and he's gotten super fast pivoting around on his tummy.  He also does what I call 'the worm' where he scoots forward similar to an earth worm.  As close as he is to crawling, he still prefers to be upright, and we think he will want to walk as soon as he's old enough.  One morning when he was in his playpen, Mike had put him in laying down, and when he went to check on him, he was sitting up.  Unfortunately, we didn't see it happen, so we don't know how he did it.  We figure that he used the side to help him up.  Although he wasn't too thrilled about his new accomplishment since his leg was folded back!  He had 2 new foods this week, the first was oatmeal and the second was prunes, he seemed to really like both of them. On Saturday we took him to Park City to the Art Festival.  It was pretty hot, and we were there for quite some time, but he just loved to see all the people, and he was an angel the whole time.  On Sunday my grandparents were in town and they came over to our house for dinner with our family.  He put on a show for them, and they all thought he was adorable....we agree!