Week of...last week.

Well we are currently in the midst of a really busy week so I'll keep this brief.  Also, I don't remember much of last week and my camera and phone aren't reminding me of much that happened so I guess we just had a low key week.

Wednesday Caleb went to visit a family whose mother was dying.  Sadly, she ended up dying on Thursday.  They asked Caleb to do the funeral a few days later.

Thursday was 50 cent corn dog day at Sonic.  Caleb got some for lunch.  Liam approved.

Saturday Caleb went to his sister's house to help Bert build this:

 

Caleb got up with Liam one morning and let me sleep in.  When it was time for him to go to work he came in and plopped this cutie on the bed.

 This is old (but forgotten) news, but Caleb finished the doors on our DVD cabinet.

 Also, I got Liam's exersaucer back out to see if he would like it again and he was fine for a few minutes, but he prefers to play with the toys from the outside of it.

 

Superheroes are must-haves for bedtime.

 He makes this scrunchy face all the time now.

 Bonfire night. 

Week of May 11

Sunday - Mother's day at church!  I got this cute little pot with seeds from church.

Liam never gets any attention when we are at church.  ;-)

Challenging Jacob to a fight

 "I'm innocent, Mom.  It was Jacob"

Learning about "Wes's Pole"

Monday - Caleb made Liam his activity board!  It's a pretty neat board and the best part is that it cost us 25 cents.  Sort of.  Caleb had bought a board to put in a closet when we moved in and the board is the left over piece from that.  The door stop I bought at a yard sale for 25 cents (two pack, one for me one for Liam).  Several of the things were in a box of "junk" that Caleb's dad gave him when they were moving.  Some other things we got from my grandpa, and other things we had laying around the house, like my old belt and the zipper from one of caleb's old pairs of pants.  My dad had given us a couple of things but we just didn't have any more room for them.  There's also a window latch on there that we got off of a window that was scrap outside of the lumber yard across the street.  Anyway, you get the point.  It's a pretty sweet board for very little cost.  So far Liam's favorites are the door stop and the little latching door.

Tuesday - My mom had let Liam play with my toy drill from when I was a kid when we were at their house the previous weekend...so guess what he has a fascination with now.

Wednesday - We have a weekly city newspaper that comes out every Wednesday.  They always have an article from a local pastor and sometimes Caleb submits articles for it.  I usually only read the article if I see that it's Caleb's.  I had read through the paper and skipped over the pastor's section because it didn't a smokin' hot pastor pictured.  Caleb went to read the paper and started chuckling because the article was actually his article but the newspaper editor had put a different pastor's picture on it.  There are some ironies that go along with it but I won't post them for the world to read.

Thursday - Liam's first chomper finally made it's debut.  Teething isn't fun for any parties involved.  Thank goodness for amber necklaces and hyland's teething tablets.

Friday - Caleb couldn't get the internet to work on either of his computers Friday morning but mine had been working fine earlier that morning.  I thought it might be a problem with Lil' Ol' Trusty, my free router I had gotten when I got my first laptop before I went to college...almost 6 years ago.  I called Charter and they sent a technician out and he replaced the modem.  I think Lil' Ol' Trusty would have continued to work just fine but we went ahead and bought a new router just to make sure that wasn't the problem.

When the technician came out he had on a bright green vest, like a traffic or construction worker would have on.  Liam stared holes through that man and would not even crack a smile.  The guy wasn't exactly kid-friendly so he didn't try to make Liam smile but Liam wouldn't take his eyes off of him.  Liam was sitting on Caleb's lap staring at the man and he all of a sudden yelled out "MOM!!!"  We had a good chuckle out of it, like he was yelling for me because there was a strange man in his house.  It wasn't even a Mama, it was Mom.

Saturday - Caleb's parents came to visit on their way back from the Rust Revival in Wayland, MO.  I wasn't a good daughter-in-law and forgot to give Lori her mother's day card.  Oops.  They took us out to the BBQ place here in town.  I'm not a super big fan of bbq, but this place wasn't too bad.

I don't remember what day, but Liam had his first "hair cut" this week.  I basically just chopped off the little curls above his ears.  I wanted to trim the mohawk, but he is not one to sit still.

My best attempt at a before picture.  An after picture was even more of a joke.

 A snippet of hair, not to be confused with some nasty bug.  This is cute.  Bugs are not.

Caleb has been reading a book about disciplining. Liam seemed a bit intrigued.

Then a bit scared about what he discovered.

"Come on, Dad.  This is a joke, right?"

Here are some more pictures from this week:

 He loves windows.  He also loves to do this in his pack n play with the mesh on the sides.

Liam turned 9 months old this week!  And he is also continuing to make taking pictures harder and harder.

Since Liam wouldn't cooperate very well I took pictures of my child that would cooperate.

Week of May 4

The most exciting part of our week was going to Fenton to see my family this week.  We left on Friday morning and stopped by my sister's house in Chesterfield for lunch.  She had the most amazing chicken salad sandwiches.  I've been dreaming about them ever since.  After lunch we all headed to Fenton.  Amy and I went shopping with Lil' Bit to get him some new shoes.  He has lots of shoes but he doesn't have any with soles on them that currently fit his feet.  He has been wanting to walk everywhere (with some help) so I wanted to get him some shoes to wear.  We went to JCPenney, Kohls, Famous Footwear, and finally Target.  Target is the only place that sells shoes with soles in size 3.  We ended up with these cuties:

Then since Starbucks was having half price frappuccinos and Amy had a gift card, we HAD to go.  :-)

Amy had brought her dog, Piper, to my parent's house.  Liam hasn't ever really cared about Piper until now.  Loud sounds have started to bother him (especially the blender) and Piper's bark kept scaring him.  Caleb got down on the floor with Liam and Piper and was trying to show Liam that Piper won't hurt him. Liam was not impressed.  Liam had also hardly napped all day so he is much more agitated when he is tired.

Piper brought Liam a toy:

 Piper trying to play with Liam

Liam did eventually pet Piper the next day.

On Saturday Liam gave me my mother's day present.  Apparently he had been going behind my back and talking with his grandma about getting me a present (she has the JCPenney discounts!).  I was trying to get a picture of him giving me my present, but he never holds still anymore.

I got a beautiful necklace!

Thank you kisses!

I had made my mom a thing for her birthday made out of salt dough that had Liam's handprint and it ended up cracking.  She asked me if I could make her something with Liam's  footprint, so I made her this.

Good thing I went and bought washable fingerpaint because this was difficult to make and I had to keep wiping the paint off.  Once I got the paint on Liam's hand he would just close his hand and not want to open it.  Then when we got his hand open and on the board he wanted to smear it around.  We thought the feet would be a lot easier since he can't close his foot.....but he is always turning his feet in circles, and this time was no exception.  Once his foot was on the board he kept trying to twist it.  Anyway, all difficulties aside, I think it turned out pretty good.

Liam had celebrated his grandpa's birthday earlier in the week by wearing a bucket on his hat in lieu of a party hat:

And he made his grandpa a birthday card!

Trying to color with this kid was not much easier than fingerpainting.  The only thing he cared to do was eat the crayons.  He didn't even look at them to check them out, they just kept going straight to his mouth.

Here are some more pictures from Saturday:

Liam loves getting his cheeks kissed.  :-)

 My grandparents with Liam

 Liam playing with my tool box from when I was a tot

 My sister took this picture of Liam and I thought it looked like a meme.

 So I made it into one.

I'm going to go ahead and tell you about Mother's Day.  :-)  When I got up, there were post its stuck on things throughout the house.

And I have to say, the one that says "You're my favorite mom" is quite a compliment because Caleb has one awesome mom!

He also made me this:

And then later in the afternoon he gave me this tiny bottle with sawdust, a bullet, a guitar string, and a piece of a book page:

It had this note on it:

It says:
I took the good parts of me
and all of the things I do
I gathered them so you could see
and I bottled the finest few
But you can have them, they will never be
more valuable than you.

:-D

Now for the rest of this past week:

Liam is a little beggar sometimes.  He kept staring at Caleb like this and it was cracking me up:

 Sandwich spotted:

 But Dad!  Please!

 Liam helped me make my video update last week.  He was just chilling on my lap.  :-)

 Kicked back enjoying bath time.

 I'm thinking he is going to need a hair cut soon.  I'm hoping one of these days the rest of his hair will catch up with his mohawk.

 Babbling in the backseat. 

And last but not least...My newest money-saving adventure...cloth diapers!  I had thought about using these pretty much since Liam was born.  The price of them scared me off for awhile because I was afraid of shelling out money for them if I wasn't going to like them.  I had talked to several friends about their experiences with them.  However, the last time my friend Lydia came to visit she was telling me about how she was using cloth diapers on her baby and she paid around $4 per diaper!  So I thought about it some more and got the information from her on where she got them from.  She had bought a bundle of 20 diapers for $84, but I wanted to just buy a few and try them out before I spent that much on cloth diapers.  I was able to buy each of these for around $4.75 each (1 pocket diaper + 1 insert). I am still going to use disposables on Liam at night and whenever we go out, but for the times that we are just at home these are perfect.  I had several boxes of size 3 diapers that Liam was quickly outgrowing, so I've been able to return those to Target and have gotten back most of the money that I need to buy more diapers.  I had to buy some different detergent to use for them and the cheapest I could find it on Amazon was $20 for a bag of the powder (around 75 loads).  I went on diapers.com and with some discounts I was able to get it for less than $12 a bag.  When I got the box the next day (they have super fast shipping) the bag had busted open and detergent was spilling everywhere.  I was able to save about 2/3 of the bag that hadn't poured out yet.  I called diapers.com and they sent me a brand new bag free of charge that arrived the next day.  So I really got a good deal on the detergent!  I've only used them a few times, but so far I love them.   They make very affordable flushable liners that you can put in the diaper so if there is a number two, you can just throw the liner in the toilet and be done.  Fortunately I haven't had to deal with a poopy one yet (hopefully I don't change my mind about cloth when that happens...) but Liam is pretty predictable and usually goes before I even get him up in the morning.  I'm going to give these diapers a little bit longer before I make the decision to buy the 20 pack, but so far I am completely on board and probably even I a little bit more excited than I should be.

 Look at that tush!