Light and Shadows

Perhaps one of the simplest joys of childhood is playing with your shadow. Twice now, I have caught Liam experimenting with the way light and shadows work. Since his birth he as found pleasure in watching the tricks of light. Now he has found that he can manipulate light and make it work for him. This morning as the sun shone in our living room window, Liam played with his shadow. He sat with the light on his back holding forth with the light as if it were his orchestra. With arms raised he played with the light and made his little shadow friend dance. Mike and I were lucky enough to be witness to this shadow play. I truly will never tire of watching this boy learn and delight in new things.

A photo tribute to dinner

Hi Friends - just this weekend, Liam tried two new things - pickles and tofu (that's little bits of silken tofu mixed up in his sweet potatoes). He loved both. In fact, he was downright rebellious when we took away the pickle he was gumming. He's also become a rather squirmy little fellow, which adds a new element of action when it's time for dinner. He eats willingly, but T and I have to be fast to get the spoon into his mouth instead of on his face or into his eye as he scans his surroundings looking for something to grab or shove in his mouth.

6 month checkup

Liam had his six month check up yesterday. We're pleased to report that he's doing great, right on track, and even doing a little better in terms of his weight. At 6.5 months, he's 27.5 inches (85th percentile), and 16 lb. 2 oz (30th percentile). I don't recall his head size, except that it's grown 1 inch since his last check up a couple months ago. We had a nice discussion about his sleep patterns - he's still getting up a couple times a night. Perhaps this weekend we'll try to work on that a bit. He also had 4 shots - yuck. He's really got the hang of sitting up on this own, and we can sit him in the middle of the floor relatively confident he won't topple. He can turn from his back to his stomach in one twisting move. Once he's on his stomach, he can work is way around 360 degrees, but hasn't quite got the forward and reverse down. Overall, he's squirmier than ever. He loves to move, flap his arms and clap them down. It's amazing how much he's grown in just two months.

Youngest member of the Academy

There was an interesting article that appeared recently in the New York Times. Their chief film critic, AO Scott, encourages parents to take their kids to the movies. And not just the kids' movies, but the movies the parents want to see. I say, great idea! As appropriate, of course - Apocalypto and Borat, perhaps, not the best movies for kids. But, he says parents have an opportunity to teach their kids the magic of watching movies in a theatre. Scott quotes another article that says today's kids will grow up watching movies via netflix, tivo, cell phone, internet, rather than at the theatre. Of course, that's regrettable, given that movies experienced in a darkened theatre can be magical indeed. The experience is simply heightened, and all senses absorbed. And you don't fall asleep on the couch. Liam is certainly too new to comprehend much of the movie going experience, but that hasn't stopped us from taking him along with us to the movies (well, maybe saving babysitting $$ has something to do with it too...). The first few were easy - he slept right through. The last few more difficult as he becomes more squirrely and susceptible to what he sees on a screen. It will be nice when he's older to go back and view *again* some of the movies he's already seen (in order, according to Tara's and my best recollection):

Inconvenient Truth
A Prairie Home Companion
Pirates of the Caribbean 2
Monster House
Who Killed the Electric Car?
Wordplay
Islander
Little Miss Sunshine
Flushed Away
Happy Feet

Holiday Madness

Hello All-
We are back in Maine after being in Ohio for the holidays. We had a wonderful time seeing family and friends. Mike gave you the update all the way up to Christmas. Following Christmas we spent some fairly low-key days visiting with my family and enjoying the time catching up with friends.

Little Liam was finally able to meet some little friends that he didn't know he had. We got to spend a couple evenings with our dear friends Leah and Steve Bechtol and their son Wyatt. It was such fun getting to see Liam and Wyatt play together in the way only babies and toddlers do. On the 28th we also go to meet up with three friends from high school and their families. Lindsay and Rick were in Ashland from Bath, Maine. Claire and Jay were passing through Ashland with their son Jack and Julie met with us with her daughter Mya. It was a joy to see them all again and to be amazed with the passing of time. It truly doesn't seem so long ago that we were in high school together hanging out at Malabar Farm, skiing together or just hanging out. How wonderfully odd it felt to met for lunch with our husbands and children.

We left Ashland on Friday the 29th. We got to the Columbus airport only to find out that our flight was canceled and that we were on a much later flight. We called my parents back to the airport and got them to take us out breakfast. Then it was back to the airport for a long day of waiting. We waited for the flight out of Columbus, and then waited for our flight out of Cincinnati. Liam was a champ through the whole thing. He even managed to sleep through both legs of our flight again. We finally arrived in Maine at 10:00 or so. We stayed at Lindsay and Rick's in Bath and then the next morning woke up early to start our drive towards Northern Maine. We had plans to meet up with a group of friends for a New Years celebration in the woods of Maine. We finally met up with our group and headed to the wilderness camp at which we would spend the next couple of days.

We had a great time at the camp. The cabins were rustic but provided us with heat and relatively comfortable beds to sleep in. We were able to play in the snow, hike on the Appalachian Trail and enjoy hanging out with a great group of people. Liam had only one major meltdown the entire trip and that was midway through a long hike. He was pretty hungry and probably a bit cold. One feeding him he fell right back to sleep and we enjoyed the rest of the hike.

We rung in the New -Years while playing games and having good conversations in the woods of Maine. One can't complain about that. We are so lucky to have gotten to know so many good people in Maine who help us to provide great experiences for Liam. I once heard that the way you spend your New Years is indicative of how your year will go. If this is the truth then we are in for a great 2007.