Happy New Year everyone! I can't believe we're in 2012 already, but I have to say Kristen and I are looking forward to a new year. I uploaded a bunch of photos to our Picasa web albums - four new albums to be exact, just click on the pictures below to get to each one.
These are some assorted photos from November. They start off with a random night at dinner time, capturing Liam's normal mealtime antics. There are also some from a nice visit from Aunt Hannah, topped off by some shots from Thanksgiving.
Next up, Liam sporting the ridiculously cute santa pajamas that Kristen bought for him for Christmas this year. He was in a particularly good mood on this evening, so we thought he could model the pj's while he was being a crazy man.
Christmas this year was a much more pleasant experience than last year. Last time around, Liam was dealing with his reflux issues (but we hadn't realized that yet). This time around, he was a super happy camper and had fun showing off for everyone. We had Christmas with Kristen's family on the 24th in Katy and with my family on the 26th in Brenham, and both times Kristen and I both couldn't believe how good his behavior was! If anyone had been there meeting us for the first time and heard we had had a rough go with Liam, they would've thought we were liars or totally incompetent. Unfortunately I couldn't get a lot of shots with the camera, but there are a few good ones.
Liam loves going to our neighborhood park to play - there's a nice swing set, a fun little playground jungle gym thingee, and a few other goodies. New Year's day was a gorgeous, sunny, crisp winter day here, so we capitalized on the weather and went to play for a while that afternoon. The angle of a winter sun is hard to deal with for photography, but I still managed to get some great shots, including some of the very rare ones where Liam is smiling! It's not that he doesn't smile, just that he never smiles for the camera. The set when he's swinging are some of my favorite all time photos of him.
That about wraps up the update from last time, as well as wrapping up last year. We're definitely excited to start a new year and put 2011 behind us (known around here as "the dark times"). Life continues to get better and better in this house, especially as Liam grows more confident in walking and can get around to pretty much wherever he wants to. Much less frustration there, which is wonderful.
If you're wondering how many chompers he's got in his mouth these days, we're at about 9.7 (roughly) - he's got his front 4 on top and bottom (8 total), his lower left first molar all the way (#9), and his upper left and right molars are on their way in (another 0.7 we'll call it). Along with these molars has been a surge of eating more and more foods, which is fun to see. Chili Cheese Frito's are a sure fire backup if everything else fails (much to the chagrin of my mom) - he's definitely my son!!
I hope everyone's holidays were wonderful! We're looking forward to traveling a lot more this year, so hopefully those who haven't seen much of Liam yet will get to enjoy his crazy company this year. I'll sign off with two of my favorite recent videos of Liam:
Liam (like most babies), is
crazy flexible. So flexible, in fact, that he can kick himself in the
face with his own feet - which he shows off in this hilarious video (thankfully he finds this as funny as we do):
Some of our friends gave Liam these fun little toy cars for his birthday
(thanks Heather and Brandon!), and he loves to race them on the floor.
We've got a fun game going these days where he gives me a car or two, I
race them, and he runs off to pick them, bring them back, and we start
all over:
