A Long Awaited Update - Spring Edition

I knew it had been a while since I posted anything, but didn't realize until now that it's been almost two months!  It's been a whirlwind for us, and I've definitely slacked off on the photography, but there was also a good size backlog of photos to get off my camera and post, too.  I've posted a selection of my favorites from last month (Liam's 4th month of life) on our Picasa album - check it out here to see them all.

There are a bunch of great ones from March, but my favorite are from the end, right about a month ago.  At that time we had recently bought a Bumbo chair for Liam, which he loves because it lets him set upright and see the world.  My morning routine had evolved to setting him in the seat on the bathroom counter with me while I brushed my teeth, put in my contacts, and generally came back to the world of the living.  He loves looking at himself in the mirror, and one morning he was in a particularly good mood and I got some great shots.  He was extremely photogenic that day (as always, just like his mom), but I also loved getting shots of him and his reflection in the mirror.  These are still some of my favorite pictures of him so far.

Life had been steadily improving - Liam was getting less and less fussy, Kristen and I seemed to be finding our groove as parents, and most importantly, the holy grail of parenting (as far as we're concerned): we were getting more sleep.  But, as many experienced parents have already told us tends to happen, just as we were getting comfortable Liam decided to change the rules a bit, by starting to teethe.

We've read and heard from some parents that some babies who teethe have a few days, maybe a week or two of fussiness before they cut the teeth they're working on.  To date, Liam is working on 4 weeks, and still no teeth.  His symptoms seem to wax and wane from week to week, but he's definitely been more cranky, fussy, and is back to a newborn sleeping pattern.  Prior to this he had been sleeping for 5 or 6 hours straight at night, usually followed by another 2 or 3 after that, and Kristen and I were loving catching up on much needed sleep.  For the last month, however, he's been back to 2-3 hours at a time, and won't take naps as often during the day like he was before.  I feel like the waking dead most of the time.  It's pretty bad when someone at work tells you "Wow, you actually don't look exhausted today, did Liam sleep last night?".

Still, there have been some fun milestones with Liam this last month.  We got him a bouncing seat that makes music and lights while he bounces in it, and he absolutely loves it.  Check out the video for a snippet of bouncing action (excuse my crazy falsetto that I seem to permanently use with him).

We've also made inroads on eating solids.  He surprised us one day by nomming on an apple that Kristen was eating!  We were sitting out on the front porch one fine spring day, and one of our neighbors stopped by to chat.  Kristen had eaten half of her apple and was just holding it in front of him, and next thing we knew he was drooling and licking all over it!  We got some great pictures from that.

And just the other day, we had our first successful solids meal.  We had been trying a few different foods to see what he'd like, and met with limited success, at best.  Lots of grimacing and spitting out, and looking at the spoon like it was something evil.  But this particular night we tried some carrots that Kristen had made for Liam, and he loved them!  We were amazed to see him down two small bowlfuls of the stuff!  Kristen was able to snap a few shots while I was feeding him, and some of the photos turned out fantastically.

Sorry it took so long for any updates, I'm going to try and be better about taking pictures and keeping people up to date a little better.  Let us know how everyone else is doing!