For Thanksgiving this year we joined the family of Terry's best friend, Keith. They live in Louisville, KY and so were a pretty close drive for us. We were invited over to Keith's grandma's house for Thanksgiving dinner.
At the end of the meal, Liam entertained everyone with energetically banging spoons on the table.
Then Liam and Mr Karem watched football on television.
Liam loves seeing his Godfather Keith.
Keith's parents, the fantastic Karems, were wonderful hosts. They even watched Liam one night so we could go bowling with Keith, Emily and assorted Cousins. We thought Liam would just sleep, but apparently he made a fuss and wound up cozied up on the couch with Greg and Peggy Karem, sleeping while they watched TV (which was probably Liam's idea of heaven).
Liam also had fun interacting with their eager but skittish dog, Bailey. Bailey started to get a little jealous of all the attention Liam got, so while Greg was holding Liam on the couch, Bailey whined and crawled his way up onto Peggy's lap. From then on whenever someone picked up Liam, Bailey wanted to be held too. Here's a clip from just after Bailey whined his way up into Peggy's arms. Liam's having a great time. Bailey seem like he'd like nothing more than to crawl right up on top of Peggy's head and get away from this crazy kid who is invading his house.
The day after Thanksgiving instead of hitting the malls, we joined the Karems and Emily's family at Churchill downs for some horseracing (where I got to cash in a few tickets and wind up making a tiny profit on the day).
We had quite a fun Halloween with our little guy. We took him to the pumpkin farm to pick out a pumpkin. The day before Halloween we went to a kids Halloween party with the other moms and kids from my MOMs Club. Then the day of Halloween we went to his friend Cora's birthday party, and then tried (and failed) to go Trick or Treating with our little dragon.
Sitting with friend Cora at the MOMs Club Halloween party.
Posing with some other costumed baby friends.
Rar! Ferocious dragon.
Dragon on the move
Gragon and mommy
Liam's friend Cora turned one the day before Halloween, so she had a little Halloween themed birthday party on Halloween. Balloons were enjoyed by all the babies.
On the front porch, Halloween night. I wanted to carve a pumpkin that was somehow baby themed to celebrate Liam's first Halloween.
Our little dragon, sizing up the pumpkin.
Is there anybody in there?
We had wanted to go trick or treating with him, just to take him out in the pleasantly warm weather and let him see the fun sight of all the dressed up kids. There is a section of our neighborhood that is legendary for trick or treating, so it is apparently brimming with excited kids, and I thought it would be a fun sight. Alas, in the car halfway there Liam melted down and we turned around and took him home for bed.
As I have mentioned before, Liam seems to live to prove me wrong. Just like last time he went to his doctor's appointment and then rolled front to back for the first time on the doctor's table. This time at least he waited until we got home. After telling the doctor no, no he didn't crawl at his nine month well visit, we took him home. I put him down on the ground and he very competently crawled four "steps" in the upright standard crawl position, grabbed a toy, sat down and played with it.
And did I mention that the same day he first crawled he also cut his first tooth and started pulling up on furniture into a standing position by himself? Crazy kid.
Over the next couple of days I went nuts trying to capture him on camera crawling. I finally got him the next day, but I could only get him to do a military (belly) crawl.
And then four days later...as you can see he went from crawling to officially being "a crawler." He was zooming laps around the room like he'd been doing it forever.
I had the hardest time getting him to crawl on camera. I finally had to bribe him. You will see he looks super enthusiastic and is practically panting with joy as he crawls toward me. You will also see that I am not the target of all that baby excitement...
There are a flood of updates that are due. Cute Halloween updates. Thanksgiving updates. Updates on how Liam made his first crank call at 6:15 AM. Updates on Liam crawling. Cute Christmas pictures.
It all exists, but right now it is all stuck on my camera because I know you people dont really read the blog for my thoughtful essays. That's like reading Playboy for the essays. No, you all are here for the addictingly cute pictures of the chubby baby. But my poor old computer (like my poor old brain) is running out of space and having trouble thinking. So I cant dump a bunch of megs of new pictures onto it or it may...I dunno...blow up? eat all my academic work? So I have finally taken over Terry's iPhoto and started downloading pics and vids to his computer and will soon begin the process of uploading and posting. I may even rope Terry into it to speed things up, so you could be getting a little Daddy perspective soon enough.
