As a young teenager I remember my cousin Delaney's first Thanksgiving. I remember it so well because in front of the entire gathered family, they gave baby Delaney a pickle, and she made the most dramatic, hysterical face. Maybe it is a bit sadistic of me, but I've been looking forward to giving Liam his first pickle at the holidays in front of my family in the grand family tradition. He has such expressive faces, I was sure his reaction would be a riot.
But actually, what is most remarkable about his reaction is how non-plussed he seems to be. In fact, I stopped recording after a while because it was just a baby eating a pickle. And after the end of this record, he goes on to snarf most of a pickle, even picking up and preferring the pickle pieces to his favorite: blueberries. Really? a baby who prefers a pickle over fruit? What worldly little taste buds :)
Update: Liam is STILL a pickle monster. Pickles are his new favorite food. At lunch most days he gets one third to one half of a Vlassic dill pickle cut up into cubes. If I'm lucky I can sneak some of his "real" lunch into his open maw while he's busy shoveling pickle cubes in as fast as his chubby fingers will allow.
Shortly after we found out I was pregnant, I had the totally unanticipated urge to know other women who were also pregnant for the first time, to have someone else going through all of this for the first time. Most of my friends in Chicago already had babies. But I found out through Facebook that a friend of mine from back in high school was not only pregnant, she was pregnant with triplets!
Erinn kept a very excellent blog of her pregnancy that has transformed into a lovingly chronicled narrative of life with triplets. Their blog Merrits Plus Three is a great read for anyone into baby blogs.
Erinn was on bedrest for a while, and her boys wound up being born just two weeks after Liam. They also did some time in a NICU before they got to go home. And now they are just as lively and cute as can be! Being able to read about Erinn going through the experience of an early birth and NICU time was very therapeutic for me, it has made me realize a lot of my feelings and worries are normal and common among moms with preemies.
Over Christmas break we took Liam over to meet the triplets one afternoon. Although every day is like a playgroup when you have three babies, Liam was the first unrelated baby friend the triplets had over...their first playdate!
Cooper crawls through the exersaucer to check out Liam
Noah hanging out in the toy box.
Discovering quickly how tough it is to get a good picture of four mobile little babies.
Cooper hamming it up for the camera
Little Noah makes a break for it, with Cooper hot on his trail
We had so much fun bowling with Keith and Emily's family over Thanksgiving, that we wanted to give it a try with the McDonnells over Christmas. So we got the whole crew together the day after Christmas and went to a really nice, very family-friendly bowling alley. Good times were had by all.
"Brupper" (breakfast for supper) has become something of a Christmas tradition at the McDonnell household. In one of the days before Christmas, all of Denyse's family who live locally get together in their jammies to eat pancakes, sing songs, play games and be festive. There's almost always a signature drink (this year it was the maple-tini). There's also a gift swap/steal game that involves dice and small gifts under $3. It is a really wonderful time and always nice to be surrounded by such great family members. I really struck gold when I married into this clan, and Liam is one lucky boy to grow up with so many fun relatives!
Pop making the traditional pancakes, with sous chef Jack.
Everybody wears their PJs for Brupper, so Grammy McDonnell got Liam a cute pair of jammies for the occasion.
Liam with Aunt Bri
Terry with Kalie, the very much grown up flower girl from our wedding.
Connor, our grown up ring bearer, now plays the guitar. He played along as the group sang Christmas carols.
The whole crew in their jammies (minus Jenny and Brian who came after Liam went to bed)
Over the holidays we got to spend a week with the McDonnell family, which was lots of fun. Liam got to see Aunt Bri and Uncle Jesse for the first time since he was just a little lump of potatoes last spring. This time he was an interactive little charmer.
Grammy Mac Makes Liam Laugh
Reclining on Aunt Bri's lap is very comfy. Maybe someone could feed me peeled grapes?
Hanging out with Grammy. I like racing down the hallway and then going up and down stairs (with Grammy's help).
Taking my bottle on mommy's lap. I like looking out the window at the golfers.
Liam also got to log some quality time with my Grandma Pfingsten. I was surprised at what a great baby comic she was, but she really yucked it up with Liam and had him in gales of laughter.
We also celebrated Christmas with my stepmom and her fiance, Rick. It was also supposed to include my brother-in-law, niece, nephew, sister and her fiance, but for good reasons none of them could make it.
So we enjoyed a little selfish one on one time with Brenda ("Grandma Honey") and Rick, but it was cut short by our need to catch a bus down to a hotel near Ohare so we could make our red eye out to North Carolina the next morning...which would require waking at 3:30 am.
Opening up my presents with Grandma Honey (Mommy's step-mom)
Sitting on Grandpa Rick's lap
Looking like a little man, playing with my new foam puzzle.
Taking Liam home to see my parents and extended family was a wonderful treat. He is at such a fun age, and is by nature such a charming kid, so it was wonderful to get to see my family interact with him and get to know his emerging personality more.
Opening my first ever Christmas present, from Great Aunt Lori
With Grandma Schultz in front of the tree
With Grandma and Grandpa Schultz
Learning to play my new baby drum with Daddy
Helping Grandpa open up his present.
Grandma really likes the coffee cup with my pictures on it!
Mmmm delicious bow
With mommy and daddy, dressed in my fancy Christmas outfit
No Christmas was complete growing up without finishing the day at my Grandma Metz's house. We always had some roast (beef or ham) and somehow mostacholi became another traditional Christmas food. The cousins would line up on the steps in Grandma's living room and take an annual picture. Then I would sleep over at Grandma's house so I could hang out with my cousins, play video games, shoot pool, and then have biscuits and gravy for breakfast the next morning.
Lately my Uncle David has been hosting instead of my Grandma Metz, but it is still a wonderful part of Christmas to get together with everyone. This year we were very fortunate that they had scheduled the gathering on the weekend before Christmas, when we would be home in Racine, so we got to participate.
With my counsin Kim, playing with his new maracas from GG Metz
Getting a snuggle from GG Metz
With my counsins and Great Aunt Joan in front of the Christmas tree
Sitting in the vintage McDonald's high chair...I had one just like it when I was a baby!
Hanging out with everyone at the table, impressive array of McDonald's collectibles in the background.
Liam loves peekaboo, and liam loves his jumperoo. So what could be better than peekaboo IN the jumperoo?
Liam loves his jumperoo and has for some time. Because it brought him such evident joy and glee, it was sad when it was time to retire the jumperoo. This video is from one of the last times he was able to use it (back in November I believe). As you can see in the video, he is now so big and strong that he can move the jumperoo around a lot! And if he wants to get something in front of him, he can lean forward and make the jumperoo go horizontal, which I am sure it is not intended to do. He dangles there horizontal like some sort of astronaut in training, straining to get some toy just out of his grasp.
Terrible napping threatened the plans, but Terry was getting a ride there fro colleagues, so we were already committed. Liam screamed so loud for five minutes on the way there that I almost turned around to go home, but then he fell soundly asleep.
Christmas tree in front of the capitol building.
Jackson, the son of Terry's friend and colleague, enjoys a lighted sword while watching the parade.
Through marching bands, floats blaring Christmas music, and honking horns of clown cars, Liam sleeps on.
My sweet little angel has sweater marks on his cheek. It was so nice to feel him all warm and snuggled up, with the gentle rhythm of his breathing against my stomach.
On the way home his santa hat slipped down over his eyes and acted like a sleep mask, blocking the light.
On the whole, nothing really atrocious happened while traveling with the baby. I guess I maybe had the whole process blown up to Dante-type proportions. The first leg of flying was quite smooth, thanks to flying to and from pretty small scale airports.
Don't forget to bring me!
Like a giant run-way for babies! And I can really cruise on carpeting!
Our flights to and from North Carolina were another matter. First of all, they were out of Ohare, that black hole of travel that seems to suck all problems into its orbit. Second of all, we were flying out on a red eye, when combined with Ohare and the weekend's weather problems and tons of crabby delayed passengers, that meant we had to get to the airport around 4:20AM.
We had planned to stay with our friends Rachel and Kelly in their Evanston home, but weather problems in Europe meant that they weren't back from France yet. So instead we had to radically shift plans, find a bus down from Racine to Ohare and get a hotel in the Ohare area.
The Doubltree kindly provided us this Soviet era gulag prison style crib for Liam (no offense Natasha)
We ordered room service that was pricey as all get out, but actually reasonably tasty. We put Liam to bed in his prison crib, and then--with no where else to go in the room that wouldnt disturb Liam--we retreated to the bathroom where we perched on the tub edge and watched the final few episodes of Dexter before bed. It was actually pretty charming in the way only unexpected and slightly inconvenient things can be.
The Doubletree folks were really nice, and they give out warm cookies which makes me predisposed to like them. When I asked if we would have any trouble getting on the first shuttle of the day (at 4:15am) they assured me we would not. So imagine my surprise when we arrive bleary eyed down to the lobby just after 4:00 and find it packed with about 30 people! We sort of had to wait out in the freezing cold and shove a few people out of the way with a stroller, but we managed to secure a spot on the shuttle, get to Ohare, wait in an hour long line to resolve problems with our connecting flight (a little problem called the second leg took off from Charlotte before we ever left the ground in Chicago). All the while we were on the phone with a nice but utterly unhelpful Indian man from customer service trying to see if we could resolve it on the phone. But thankfully the saint of a woman helping all those crabby customers was impressive and effective and fixed the problem for us.
Our way back from Wilmington wasn't too bad, though there were still some problems with the flights that had to be fixed. I suppose we should consider ourselves blessed on many accounts, as we were flying back after the Christmas day brief's bomber (or "underwear bomber" if you prefer). That really puts just a few mild inconveniences into perspective. Plus, Terry, Liam and Grandma McDonnell got their picture into the paper!
On the way home from Milwaukee to Nashville, the very final stretch of many many too many flights, we finally had our first major delay. Instead of getting home by 730 in time for Liam's bedtime, we would be stuck in the Mitchell terminal with an over tired baby. Recipe for disaster you say?
Well, it could have been. But instead of melting down, Liam decided to crawl around and make friends with all the other waiting passengers. He got lucky in that the two men sitting directly across from us--the first objects of Liam's flirtation--were Grandfathers themselves and more than glad to make fun faces with a giggly little baby. Several of the women in the row also had fun waving at him and making him laugh.
There was a little girl, maybe 2.5 years old with curly red hair whose father was keeping her busy running up and down the main walkway. Liam crawled over to see what she was up to and she immediately exlaimed "baby!" in the sweetest little doll voice and crouched down and then laid on her belly so she could be eye to eye with him. They jabbered at each other and then she ran on. Soon she was back, again proclaiming "Baby!" only this time she added, "I'm gonna kiss him" and then just as sweet as could be she crouched down by where Liam was sitting, puckered her lips, and gave him a little kiss. Then she put her arms around him in a hug, and he sort of half hugged her back, and gave his version of a kiss, which is sort of a sloppy prepubescent opened mouth slobbering.
Apart from visiting his friends in the row of seats where we were waiting, Terry and I took turns keeping him occupied and happy. Here's an example...
