Well good grief...

I've been thinking for a while that I needed to make some sort of blog post, but this is just embarrassing.  The last post I made was in January 2012!  Ok, so clearly I need to get back on the ball with this - my only excuse is that life just seems to be getting faster and faster, and it's been infinitely more fun with Liam over the last year.

Lately I've been having a ball working on some various construction / home improvement projects, so I thought I'd share for those who haven't seen.  Those of you with the handyman bent should especially appreciate these I think.  First, the flowerbox.

I'd had the itch to do some kind of fun woodworking project for a while, and this is the one that won out.  As you walk up to our front door, there's this ledge that screamed out to me to use.  It's about 4 feet high and 6 feet long, I thought "perfect for a nice cedar flowerbox".

I did some research on the web and found some good inspirations for how I wanted it to look, and then set to designing.  Of course you know I had to do it the hard way and include a few non-right angles.  Here's a shot of my end sketches and calculations.  I decided to make it 6 feet long to span pretty much the whole ledge.


So off to our friendly neighborhood McCoy's I went and got all the material.  I decided to use rough cut cedar - I love the way good cedar looks, it holds up ridiculously well in outside weather conditions, and it's not crazy expensive.  Plus if you seal it (which I did, you'll see later) it has a beautiful natural color I love.  As you can see it wasn't a huge amount of material - mostly 1x4's with a few 2x2's for internal support and 1x2's for finishing.



Now the fun really begins!  I had a blast staying up late in the garage working on this one.  A few shots of the work in progress.

After a few days' work I had the box construction complete, and started on the sealing.  I went with a clear seal to show off the natural color and tone of the cedar - you can see how dramatic the difference is on the sealed vs. the non-sealed section even with a clear sealant.







Then I just had to let it dry overnight, put it up on the ledge and secure it to a few studs, and voila!!  I'm really happy the way it turned out.



Here's a quick before and after to show the difference:

And of course, what would a flower box be without any plants?  Kristen is the expert there, she picked out all these awesome herbs and got them planted well.  Now we just go cut some fresh herbs whenever we're cooking!

Stay tuned for more posts, we've been tackling a raised bed garden lately...

New Year Update

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:

Up, Up, and Away!

The big news since our last post - Liam is officially walking!  I've got a ton of videos of him just starting to walk, getting more comfortable, and really cruising around.  I was actually lucky enough to get video of his very first solo steps, here it is:

The most incredible/surprising thing to me about his walking is how fast and sudden it's been.  I really expected more of a gradual progression, but it's like he just woke up that day and decided he was going to walk!  Fortunately Kristen and I were both there for his very first steps, which happened on Saturday 11/12.  The very next day he also started using his walking cart that we've had for him for over a month.  We had tried to get him to use it before, with absolutely no success.  This particular day, he saw it, went over, stood up, and started shooting around the house!

He's really fast on this thing - a few times it's almost gotten out from under him, but so far he hasn't had any major wipeouts (knock on wood).  Now it's been a few weeks since those first unaided steps, and his confidence is way up.  Here's a clip from last week:

It's just so fun to see him standing up like a little man.  Crawling was definitely a fun milestone - we could tell that he was so much happier when he was able to move around wherever he wanted to go.  Walking has been like that, only better.  He's so happy and proud of himself to walk around just like everyone else, and his general mood has improved even more.  I find most parents' reactions about Liam walking hilarious - most say some variation of "uh oh, now you're in for it", but we couldn't be more excited because he's so much happier and fun.  I can't wait to see what our little man does next!

On a somewhat related side note, I love the camera on my iPhone (iPhone 4).  All of the video I've shared here was taken on it, and the quality is really very good.  We have a dedicated video recorder that I've been using as well, but you can't beat the convenience of pulling the phone out of the pocket, shooting some video, and sending it via message or email in minutes.  Such a cool age we live in.

Birthday update - Liam turns 1!!

Ok, so I totally fell off the blogging wagon.  But I'm using Liam's biggest milestone yet as my inspiration to get back to regular updates.  That's right, Liam is offiically one year old!! (almost to the minute as of writing this)  I don't mind saying that there were plenty of times, especially 9+ months ago, that Kristen and I didn't think we'd ever make it this far.  But while some days (and nights) dragged on here and there, the year has completely flown by, and life has been getting better and better as Liam has gotten bigger, more mobile, and more personality.

So, since I haven't written any kind of update since April (!!), here's the month by month blow of what's been going down:

April (Liam at 5 months):  Life was really starting to take a turn for the better.  Liam was finally sleeping better (5-6 hours at once!!), Kristen and I were starting to feel like semi-normal people instead of half comatose zombies.

May (Liam at 6 months):  The dreaded teething began.  We probably should have known by this point that Liam doesn't do anything by halves.  The crazy drool factory - no problem.  Pretty much constant fussiness/screaming during the day - not fun, but nothing we hadn't handled already.  Sleeping for only 2 hours at a time at night again - uncool.  It's a particularly cruel trick to give new parents a taste of decent sleep and then yank it away again.  Pictures start to fall off dramatically.  We also discovered that Liam absolutely loves swimming (and water in general - check out this album for more).

June (Liam at 7 months):  We finally see the first two teeth!  Right around the start of June the first two bottom incisors poked through, and we finally got a break.  For about a week.  Then we started on round two of the teething.  We didn't think it would be possible, but this bout was even worse than the first.  Up to this point, Kristen had still been pumping to give Liam breast milk - unfortunately, right around this time she had a horrible case of mastitis, and was completely knocked out of commission for the better part of a week.  Really not a fun time overall.  Still, some cute moments captured on film (well, digital film) - like this one.  Who needs toys when you've got a box?

July (Liam at 8 months):  More teeth come in!  We finally realized why this second bout of teething had been so bad - he got all 4 upper incisors at once!  No wonder the little guy was so fussy, and he was pretty young to get all these to boot.  After these teeth pop in, we get another break.  For about a week.  Again.  And then it's back to crazy fussiness and no sleeping.  Again.  On the bright side, we also discovered infant Ibuprofen around now, and let me tell you, that stuff is way more effective than plain old Tylenol when the really serious teething starts.  Still a dearth of pictures as Kristen and I do our best impression of the walking dead.  Really can't remember too much from this month, to be honest, except that it was hot as Hades.  Aunt Hannah continued to make regular visits, keeping us sane.  Liam started to walk around while holding our hands for support.

August (Liam at 9 months):  More teeth!!  Liam got his last 2 incisors in (bottom outside), and with these came a true break in the teething madness.  Typically children get the molars next after all the incisors, and those don't usually come until much later, so we hoped against hope for a break - and got it.  With the cessation of teething came a renewed interest in eating solids on Liam's part.  Kristen and I mostly spent the month recuperating and sleeping.  Still a bit of a blur.  Somewhere in here he really started to crawl pretty aggressively too, if I remember correctly.

September (Liam at 10 months):  Blessed sleep!  For the first time in his life, Liam suddenly started sleeping fantastically.  By the way, whoever came up with the phrase "sleeping like a baby" to mean sleeping long and soundly clearly never had a baby.  I digress.  Kristen and I were despairing of ever getting sleep, or of looking halfway decent - seriously, when co-workers remark to you that they don't remember you not looking tired, that's just wrong.  I digress.  We were even contemplating the "cry it out" method, which we've never personally been fans of, especially given how strong willed Liam can be.  The thought of trying to out-stubborn him still gives me the shakes.  But magically, he just started sleeping 6, 7, sometimes even 8 hours at a stretch at night.  We suddenly remembered what it was like to feel human again.  It was like being transported to another planet.  The planet Awesome.  Where you can sleep.  Picture taking started to resume.  One morning Kristen captured one of the best set of shots we have of Liam to date - this is one of my favorite.

October (Liam at 11 months):  It might have actually been in September, I can't remember exactly, but somewhere around here Liam had his awful bout with a stomach virus.  In general we've been really fortunate with Liam regarding his health - he's really never had any serious sicknesses yet.  That changed with the stomach bug.  One evening we decided to take him out to dinner (as long as there's a patio we're generally ok).  He usually always nibbles on whatever we're eating, but he wouldn't eat a thing at dinner, which we thought was weird.  Then on the way home came the projectile vomiting.  It was seriously like something out of a movie.  I have no idea how he could even store that much liquid at one time.  It was a very scary thing - it's absolutely terrifying when your small baby can't keep anything down, even water.  Fortunately we have a good pediatrician and we got through it mostly unscathed.  There were good and bad things out of that episode.  On the one hand, Liam suddenly took his bottle wonderfully - prior to that, it was always a struggle to try and feed him.  On the other hand, he would pretty much only take his bottle - we couldn't get him to eat almost anything solid.  But we kept at it, and he's mostly back to eating solids pretty regularly, although he has his days where he doesn't seem to want anything.

Liam's physical dexterity has been improving by leaps and bounds lately.  For a good 4-6 weeks he's been cruising really well (pulling up on things and then walking along them, e.g. couches, chairs, etc.).  Just in the last 2 weeks Kristen and I have been seeing lots of times when he'll pull up on something and then let go and stand unaided for a few seconds before he sits back down.  I think he's so close to walking on his own, I can't wait to see it.

So that pretty much brings us up to date.  We just had a Halloween/First Birthday party for Liam this last weekend and I posted a bunch of photos from that - be sure and check out the album!  Now that Liam is sleeping through the night pretty regularly, Kristen and I feel like we can actually stay up for an hour or two after he goes to bed, so I'm planning on being better about updating everyone on what's going on.  Hope this post finds everyone doing well and enjoying life.  Drop us a note sometime and fill us in!