Liam is 11 Months!

Liam is changing in leaps and bounds lately.   He is getting really good balancing and he's taking more and more steps everyday.  A few weeks ago he went through a faze where he was scared to take a bath.  He would be excited to get in, but once he was in, he got scared and cried.  We worked with him, being really quiet and gentle, and thankfully he is OK now, and even likes to splash the water like crazy. 

 

Liam had a really fun Halloween.  We went to Pumpkin Land to pick out some pumpkins, and we got some cute pictures of him with the BIG pumpkins.  We also went to the zoo the Saturday before Halloween.  He wore a tiger costume that Grandma P made that Mike wore when he was a kid.  He was really cute in the costume.  On Halloween we carved our pumpkins, and handed out candy to the trick-or-treater's.  Liam's cousin Baloo, who was dressed as a bear, stopped in for a visit, and we got some cute pictures of them together.

 

Liam really loves food, and especially loves the food we eat.  Some of the new foods he's tried lately is our 'Lemon and Caper Pasta' meal, a Moroccan stew, guacamole, and mango salsa.  We are hopeful that this is a good sign that he won't be a picky eater later on.

 

In the morning when we are getting ready for work, he loves to watch 'Elmo's World' and 'Word World'.  He squeals when he sees Elmo on TV, and also when we let him play with Tickle Me Elmo.  It is sooo cute!  His favorite sound lately has been 'Da Da'.  And it seems he tries to say 'Dog' when he sees a dog.  It's crazy to think that our little 6lb. 6 oz. bundle we took home almost a year ago is a soon to be a talking and walking little boy!

10+ months (Liam is 45 weeks)

Liam is starting to balance and stand and sometimes he will try to take some steps. He also has a Lion walker that he helps him to walk too.  We are pretty surprised how quickly he is learning to walk. He points at things he wants, and his new sound lately has been 'ba ba'.  One habit he started recently has been blowing raspberries while he has food in his mouth.  It was pretty funny the first time, but then got pretty messy.  Thankfully he doesn't do it all the time now.  He's getting really good at chewing, and he really likes cheese.  When he likes something he will say 'mmmm' while eating it.  He will also point and do the milk sign if he wants more.  One morning I brought his bottle up to the play room and a yogurt for me.  He got really excited, and I thought he was hungry for his bottle, but he pushed that away, and came over to me and wanted some of my yogurt.  He gets cuter and cuter everyday, and we ask each other all the time how we got so lucky!

Liam is 10 Months!

Liam's personality is emerging now, which also means he's developing a mind of his own!  He is now starting to let us know if he wants to do something, but more so if he doesn't want to do something.  We can see 7 teeth now.  He went through a brief faze where he wasn't interested in eating food, but that seems to have passed because he is now eating really well, and a lot too!  His new foods that he can have now is processed dairy, and he absolutely LOVES his 'Yo baby' yogurt.  He also loves mashed bananas.  He started clapping his hands, and scrunching his face.  He's also a little chatter box, talking to us, to the dogs, to the window, and to himself.  The sounds he says most these days is Mama, and Dada.  He can turn a bad day into a good day in seconds just by giving us a big smile!  Happy 10 months Liam-WE LOVE YOU!

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).