Liam rolls over again!

So yesterday, Liam turned 18 weeks old. He celebrated by learning how to roll over from his back to his tummy!!! He rolled to his right two times in a row and then looked at me like - hey wait, I didn't want to be on my tummy.... lol.

Both boys are sick and have been since Friday. ugh. Eli had a fever and cough for a few days before Liam caught it, and now they both have bad colds. Luckily, the fevers are finally gone, but this cough is no joke. Not looking forward to the potential 2-3 more weeks of coughing. Blah.

Gotta jet cause Eli just woke up... just wanted to say that yesterday, when we were reading Winnie The Pooh, Eli pointed at a picture of Eeorye (how do you spell that?) and called him EE-whore. Nice.

to be continued.

Pirate Land

Eli's new obsession is with pirates. Nearly everything we do involves some kind of connection to pirates. The things he likes watching on TV right now are... The pirate episode of the Backyardigans, the Halloween episode of Yo Gabba Gabba (cause one of the monsters dresses up like a pirate), Peter Pan (cause of the Pirates), The Wizard of Oz (more on that later) and A Bug's Life (more on that later). His firehat aka yankee doodle hat has now become his pirate hat and he likes to wear his eye patch (which often falls off and bothers him since he can't fix it himself) and use one of the foam edges from the alphabet mat as his pirate sword. He runs around yelling ARRRR. A phrase he keeps saying that I didn't figure out until today is "Ooooh a pirate's life for me!" (From Peter Pan). I bought him a pirate outfit from Melissa and Doug that I'm going to give him for Christmas. :)

During lunch, this was a conversation we had (to show you how confusing it can be for mommies of children this age):

Eli: "Mommy, are you a pirate?"

Me: "ARRRRR" (what I have been instructed by him to say in the past as a response).

E: "Are you a pirate?"

Me: "ARRRRRRRRR"

E: "Are you a pirate?"

Me: "Yes. Mommy is a pirate. ARRRRRR!"

E: "Mommy's not a pirate???" (He was asking and telling at the same time).

Me: *Sigh* "No, Mommy's not a pirate." (confused....cause now I don't know what I'm supposed to be next time)

Another conversation I have 47 times a day:

E: "Do you like ladybugs?"

Me: "yes, I like ladybugs."

E: "Do you like spiders??"

Me: "Noooo."

E: "Do you like spiders???" (cause he always repeats himself when I say no, just to make sure I understood, I guess? lol).

Me: "Noooo. I don't like spiders. Do YOU like spiders?"

E: (Today, his answer cracked me up.....) "No. They have TOO MANY LEGS."

We went to the museum of Natural History on Monday to meet up with Sawyer and meet her new baby sister, Jasper. Sawyer was confused about why Eli had to stay in his stroller since she is such a well behaved little girl and always listens when mommy tells her to come here.... but when I explained that Eli will run away unless he's strapped in, she relented and decided she wanted to push him around the whole time. It was adorable to see a 2 year old pushing another 2 year old in the stroller. She did great, the little mommy, and even managed turns and tricky spots. lol. The kids had a fun time seeing each other again...it's been a while!

Yesterday, I took the boys to the zoo and when my friend Dianne met up with us, we took turns taking him on the bug carousel. He LOVES bugs right now (Hence, always wanting to watch A Bug's Life!) and was thrilled to get to ride the fly and the ladybug. He's pretty good at naming most bugs and can tell you which ones he likes and which one mommy likes. He has a book of bugs that his Tita Carol gave him and we look through it allll the time so he can question me about which ones I like. I'm up in the air about whether or not I should be honest with him and say no all the time cause he tends to not like the same ones as me and I don't want to cloud his judgement on bugs. lol. I often find myself saying I like beetles, centipedes, moths, bees and other bugs I can't STAND just so that he stands a chance at liking them. He also gets upset if I say I don't like certain types of bugs, so most of the time it's easier for me to just say yes. lol.

My favorite part about the zoo yesterday was when we went to see the Lions. When I told him that's where we were going, he said "lions and tigers and bears...oh my!" HA. Then when we got there, we saw that there was a Mommy Lion, a Daddy Lion and a baby (teenager) Lion, all of whom were sleeping. The zookeeper told us lions sleep a LOT and I read that they can sleep up to 21 hours a day. Well, Eli LOVED that they were sleeping and told every single person that came up to see them (a lot of people, since we stayed there for about 15 minutes): "The Lions are taking a NAP. They are VERY tired." lol. He's SO not shy.

He is also OBSESSED with the wizard of Oz and I couldn't be happier. He wants to watch the movie every day. He loves the lion and loves acting out the scene where the lion first appears. He loves watching the scarecrow and is THRILLED to see so many scarecrows out this time of year (we have one on our door that he always tries to touch/pull off/play with). Yesterday, he went over and put his toy frying pan on his head and told me he was the tin man. Lol. His new favorite game to play is me and him skipping around singing "we're off to see the wizard." He always goes to pick up his basket (something mike is not fond of... "Why does he have to be Dorothy? Why can't he be the Scarecrow... Why does he always need the basket??) and skips (runs) around the room. He wants me to follow him and skip and then he makes me go into the bathroom and close the door. Once I'm in there, he knocks/rings the doorbell. I then open it and say "WHO RANG THAT BELL?" Eli: "Me. Let's go see the wizard." Then I follow him around the apartment skipping until he leads me back to the bathroom and we do it all again. We literally did that about 40 times in a row last night. Lol. He really wants Liam to be The Wicked Witch or Toto or The Lion for Halloween. I'm ordering a Lion costume for Eli that I will also give him on Christmas. I should get the Scarecrow, too.

Ok - nap time is over (ALL TOO SHORT today!! Noooo), and we're going to try to venture out and walk over to the KFC in the Bronx to pick up some chicken for Daddy. It's an absolutely gorgeous day today and since Mike's second job called to say they don't need him tonight (too many cancellations), we're going to make the most of it and head up to the Yonkers Raceway to watch the horses race! Should be fun!

Liam is 16 weeks!

The weeks fly by! Liam is already 16 weeks old and in about 10 days or so, he'll be 4 months old. He's still a pretty little guy. I feel like he's taller than Eli was at this age, but no doubt skinnier. Some of the outfits that Eli was in at this age fit Liam, but are definitely looser. He's in pretty age-predictable outfits right now, wearing mostly 3 month stuff. He's still in size 1 diapers, but that's mainly cause I have some left and am trying to go through them all before we bump up to size 2.

Liam is, and has always been, Mr. SMILEY. He loooves smiling and when he does, he smiles with his whole face. He loves smiling at his daddy and at his big brother Eli. He LOVES watching Eli do anything and is always smiling whenever Eli walks near him. Eli continues to be an amazing big brother to Liam and now tries to comfort him with extra hugs or kisses if he ever sees him crying.

He hasn't been napping too good the last few days and yesterday refused to take an afternoon nap at all. Part of that is cause my attention is often divided, and when I should be focusing all of my energy on getting the little guy to sleep, I often have a "MOMMY! PLAY TRAINS!" guy hanging out next to us. Sigh.

Liam continues to sleep well at night. He typically goes down between 8:30 and 10 and then sleeps til about 4 something... I can usually get him to go back to sleep for another hour (2 to 3 times) by putting a pacifier in. I'm very thankful he goes back to sleep, but broken sleep isn't so restful. He's usually up for sure by 5 or 5:15 and after I feed him he'll go back to sleep for another hour or two. He's then up for two hours, from about 7:30 to 9:30 and then starts to REALLY get fussy. He NEEDS that morning nap. I've been trying to make that nap coincide with our getting outside to run errands or go to the playground, but there are a lot of times (like this morning) that I realize getting me and Eli ready to head out isn't going to work. Those are the days we're pretty much trapped here all day, because when Liam wakes up from his nap, it's lunch-ish time and then time for Eli's nap. Life is GLORIOUS when they both nap together in the afternoon and I try SUPER hard to make that happen. I always have grand plans to get stuff done, but oftentimes those 1-2 hours fly by at an insane rate and I realize I've done nothing productive.

Making dinner can be a bit of a challenge some days, but for the most part, Eli plays out in the living room (or watches a movie) and Liam hangs out with me in the kitchen. Poor guy is stuck in his little froggie chair for like an hour sometimes..and he's such a trooper about it. When he starts to get fussy, I just move the chair around so he has something different to look at. He currently likes being parked in front of the fridge cause he likes to stare at all of the magnets.

He's doing GREAT with tummy time and is now able to balance on his belly and lift both his arms and legs up (like he's swimming). He's also started to reach for things and rolled over a second time last week. He likes it when I put crunchy books in front of him.

Yay 16 weeks!

Crazy things overheard

As I type this, Eli is running around in his diaper and fireman hat, screaming "CAPTAIN ELI!!!" "CAPTAIN ELI!!!" I love his imagination. He's been HUGE into pirates this week, thanks to a cute little episode of the Backyardigans about pirates (they sing suuuuper cute songs). He is usually running around with his "pirate hat" (which is really his fire hat and also doubles as his Woody hat) holding his fake coin (which he calls his "Golden") and screams "ARRRR!!" He is also using a part of the alphabet foam mat I set up for Liam as his pirate sword. It's very cute. I ordered him a pirate outfit for Christmas... hope he's still into them by then!

This morning, I knew Eli was up cause I had heard him earlier, but it was silent in the room. I didn't have the monitor on so I couldn't see what he was doing...but I assumed he either fell back asleep or was reading. Liam was up in the living room and I decided to go ahead and feed him, knowing full well the second I did, Eli would be screaming for me to come get him. And that's EXACTLY what happened. Literally the SECOND I started to feed Liam, I hear "MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!" on repeat. I yelled to him that I heard him and was feeding Liam and would come get him soon. He was NOT happy with that. The next thing I heard? "MOMMY - I'm poking myself in the EYE!" followed by "I went poop on the paper!" Um.. WHAT? So as I sat there, feeding the baby, imagining what he could possibly mean by pooping on the paper. Did he get his diaper off and poop on the books in his crib? Was he then poking his eye with it? Should I go in and check? Sigh. I decided to just let it be and face the consequences when I was finished feeding Liam. I then called out "why don't you sit down and read your peter pan book?" and INSTANTLY realized my mistake. I had MEANT to say 101 Dalmations book, cause that was the one that was in his crib. The Peter Pan book was out with me. Nooo. I quickly yelled "I mean 101 Dalmations! Read that one!" which was met by screams of "NOOOOOOO... I WANT PETER PAN! PETER PAAAAN!" Sigh.

Thankfully it got relatively quiet and I just had to answer "Is Liam done?" every 15 seconds or so. :) When I went into the room to get him, he was wearing his clothes, diaper and both eyes were intact. Whew. :)

On to more adventures.... we're heading to the post office and grocery store. Having tommy and kathryn over for dinner tonight and am going to make chicken tortilla soup and lime chicken tacos. We're going to a dinner party tomorrow night, so I need to also make my butternut squash/apple soup. Then we're going to a BBQ on Sunday and I need to make a dessert. (I LOVE cooking/baking, so these things are all fun for me.... but I haven't yet prepared lists for what I need at the store and Liam's already screaming....sigh).

Detective Mommy

Being a mommy is a lot like being a detective. All day long, Eli is telling me things he wants to do or wants me or Liam to do.... most of the time I understand what he means, but then every so often, he'll throw me something like this....

"Mommy! I want to watch the stand up on the bed one!"

Um..huh? So then I have to think of every movie he's watched and try to remember if there is a scene where people are standing on the bed...

Fun thoughts for the day

Today was a long but great day. It's getting easier to manage both boys (you were right, Becky!) and I am getting better about doing everything one-handed.

Today, Liam rolled over for the second time! (From Belly to back). I tried to tape it, but alas...he gave up.

Favorite Eli line of the day....

We were eating dinner and he handed me his half-chewed piece of bread.

Eli: "Here, mommy! YOU eat it!"

Me: "No thank you. mommy doesn't want it."

Eli: "Mommy, TRY IT! You might like it!"

hahahaha.

ok...tired... zzzz.

Thanks, Liam!

After several days of getting up every few hours and a day after refusing to nap from 10am til bedtime, Liam gave me a fabulous gift last night! He slept from 8:30pm til 5:15am! YAAAY Liam! Let's keep this going! :)