Liam is 9 months old!

How can it be that my sweet boy is going to be a year old in 3 MONTHS! I honestly cannot believe it. It is so cliche when people tell you "enjoy each moment, it goes so fast." But, man is it true! Each day he gets more and more fun! His little personality is coming out and he is just so funny!

We think he is going to be an early walked because by the end of his eighth month he is crawling very fast, pulling up on anything and EVERYTHING, cruises along furniture, and he is standing unassisted for a good 20-30 seconds. When we hold his hands, he will walk. Dr. Pam told me at his 9 month well check that he knows how to walk...but just doesn't know it yet. But, who knows! While the next step is always exciting, I would like him to stick with crawling for a bit longer. I know the falls get much harder when they are walking! We are still working on waving bye bye, but he can give you a slobbery kiss on demand and also has mastered the high five.

He is getting taller and is now in the 75th percentile on height. He has dropped to the 25th-30th percentile on weight, but she said that is just due to his increased activity. He still has a huge head though!

He drinks about 25-30 oz of breast milk everyday. He eats some pureed solids, but he is pretty much over the runny stuff and prefers finger foods now. He seems to be independent and likes to feed himself. He loves cheese, chicken, and peas. Anything I will let him pick up and eat, he pretty much likes. But, he specifically wants whatever is on my plate. So, I can trick him into eating veggies and quinoa :)

He got is tongue tie clipped at 8 1/2 months and is now babbling away! He LOVES to swing outside and will do it for hours no matter what the weather. He just relaxes and swings away. He also loves his daddy! Every evening when Brad gets home and says his name, Liam turns around with a huge smile and crawls straight to him while squealing little sqeaks the whole way to him. It is so cute how much excitement he shows when he gets home now. I know Brad really likes that since he only sees him in the morning and at bedtime.

We are having a blast with the little guy and look forward to the coming months! We are so blessed to have him and we are so thankful the Lord has chosen us to raise this little guy!

Christmas!

Christmas was over nearly a month ago and I am just now posting! Our camera got messed up and the images shot were raw images. So, it has taken me this long to convert them. So, needless to say, they don't look all that great and I had to delete a few.

We had a wonderful time over the holidays. It was so much fun to have Liam this year. I always think that Christmas is more fun with kids around, even more so when he is mine! We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning at my parent's house with my parents, Allie, and Eric/Amy. We went to a beautiful Christmas eve service at The Door and Liam got to attend the service. He was dressed in his Christmas vest and just looked precious :)



We went home and all played a game called "Quelf." It is one strange game. You pick these cards and it has you do some crazy things. Throughout the game we had my mom pretenting she was riding an ostrich, my dad wearing lipstick, and Amy with her hand wrapped up in foil. So, you can see it is quite the game. But, we had some great family time together.




Christmas eve we spent the night at my parent's house. Liam did not sleep well to say the least. We thought it was just being away from home, but come to find out he had a fever. He woke up on Christmas morning with 102 fever! Luckily, it ended up being teething and we broke the fever with some motrin. We opened all the amazing gifts with my side of the family, had a yummy breakfast, then headed to Houston with our cranky/teething baby.





We then got to celebrate with Brad's family. As usual, both our sets of parents do way too much for us! We had a very tasty dinner with his family, and then headed to the living room to open gifts. AS you can see from the picture (like where's waldo...find Kate!), there was a lot of gift to open :) We open those gifts one at a time...so it took a while!

The next morning we had a girls shopping day! It was a lot of fun!Then, the following day we headed home, took our Christmas stuff down, and relaxed! It was a wonderful time with everyone and we really had a memorable Christmas! The Lord has blessed us with such wonderful parents, brothers/sisters, and sister/brother in-laws. We all love each other and get along so well! Here are some pictures from Christmas Eve and Day!

8 months old already!

I honestly cannot believe that my sweet little baby boy is 8 months old. That means that in 4 months, he will be celebrating his first birthday. That is so crazy to me! But, we sure are enjoying every second with him and he continues to make us laugh on a daily basis.

It has been such fun seeing his personality really come out. He really has a sense of humor and seems to be goofy like his parents. We had a wonderful first Christmas with our families and I will post about that next time.

This month has been full of fun and lots of new things for Liam. One of our biggest changes is we are MOBILE! He has been pulling up, getting on all fours, and rocking back and forth all month. But, starting the day before he turned 8 months old (yesterday), he figured out how to move those legs and he can crawl. So, he is moving around his playroom now :) He is also pulling to to a stand on anything he can get a good grip on! It seems like he has just taken this huge step in just a couple weeks.






This month at our church we participated in the baby dedication service. It was such a special time to gather with friends and family, all praying over our sweet baby. Liam was joined by a few of his little baby friends (Lilly, Kace, and Alyce). It was a special time for our family. He did great at the dedication and just sucked on my necklace the entire time. :)





We went to Bass Pro Shop to sit in Santa's lap. They had an awesome system there so you did not have to wait in line for very long. Not to mention Liam LOVED Bass pro which made his daddy extremely happy. Just a few days before santa Brad took him there for a daddy/son outing while I stayed home and got some things done. That is how we figured out how much he loved going. There are fish, ducks, waterfalls, and lots of fun things for a baby to check out. Our Santa was a really legit looking santa. But, when he smiled...he looked kinda creepy. Oh well! Liam loved him and did great :)



I still cannot believe he is 8 months old! We set up an email address for him when he was born so that we could email him pictures, videos, and just different stuff throughout his first couple years. We copied that commercial that we saw. It is turning out to be pretty cool. I email pictures I take during the day and videos. Brad emails him a message every Monday. Then we had my family send him emails as well just telling him what he means to them. I think he will think it is really cool one day!

This month has been quite a growth month as far as what he can do. Since he is now so mobile and pulling up on everything. But, the one thing that has not been fun is teething! Poor guy was running 102 fever on Christmas morning from his teeth! He has ups and downs, but I feel like he takes it in stride! This is a picture of him at Brad's parents house yesterday morning after battling with teeth all night! He cuddled up with his buggy for a nap :)



It has been an amazing month with our sweet boy! Cannot wait to see what the next one brings :)

Thanksgiving 2011!

As usual, we had a wonderful day on Thanksgiving. It was a day full of family, friends, food, football, and fun! Liam had a fun day and he was a perfect little Angel! He was even sweet enough to take a nap during the big meal so Brad and I could sit and enjoy eating! We had my parents, Allie, Grammy, Patti, Randy, Bryan and Katie, Liam, and the masses of dogs this year. The Arnts came over after the meal to have some pie and watch some football!

On the menu this year we had a beautiful turkey, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, rolls, yummy stuffing, gravy, and fruit salad! Then we had a pumpkin pie, apple pie, lemon pie, and coconut cream pie to enjoy. Needless to say, we were all stuffed. But, come about 6:00 that night, we got it all out again for round two! I made sure Liam ate some sweet potatoes and pumpkin of his own (I made it separately of course) so that he could enjoy some yummy Thanksgiving foods as well!

We have so very much to be thankful for this year. We are blessed beyond anything I ever could have imagined and to that we praise our Lord Jesus Christ! One of our very most obvious blessings this year is our sweet angel boy, Liam. Life has changed so much and looking back seemed so meaningless without this little guy. I cannot imagine not having him in our lives! What a little blessing.

Another thing we are extremely thankful for this year is our wonderful church home, The Door Church. It has been such an amazing experience and we are so happy that we have found this incredible group of people to love and live life with. The love of God is ever-present at The Door and I look forward to the future with all of our amazing friends, new and old.

Here are some photos from Thankgiving this year!

Six and nearly 7 months old!!

On October 28th, Liam turned 6 months old! Now he is one week from being 7 months old...I cannot believe he is over 1/2 a year old already! So much has been going on and life has been so busy with this busy little guy that I have forgotten/not had the time to blog. But, I truly plan on getting better! There are just so many things to document.

Liam had so much fun on his first Halloween. Of course, he was a giraffe for his first halloween. He wore the costume proudly :) Our church had a block party for a few neighborhoods in Coppell. We had bounce houses, hot dogs, and candy for the trick or treaters. It was so nice to spend some time in our city, loving on the people who live here. Our Church (The Door) has been such an incredible blessing in our lives. I am so excited that Liam will be raised in this church with all the amazing people we have met there.





Liam has learned to sit up in the last month and is starting to rear back looking like he is ready to crawl! He is growing up way too fast! He can stand for pretty long periods of time (with assistance of course). He is not a huge eater, but we manage to get some solids down him each day. He eats a lot of avacado and squash :) He also loves pears, plums, prunes, and peas! We are enjoying every second with him and still cannot believe we have been blessed with such an amazing and perfect gift. It is a huge job to raise a Godly child in this world today, but we are thankful that the Lord has entrusted us with this sweet boy.






Liam is in LOVE with the dogs and cat. If nothing else makes him smile, all they have to do is walk into the room and he will giggle. That is definitely something he got from his momma (although Dad loves dogs also). He also obsessed with jumping and the best invention in the world is our jumparoo! He is always bouncing whether he is in our laps, in his excersaucer, or in his jumparoo!

In early October we headed out to the pumpkin patch to try and catch some cute pictures. Well, he LOVED the grass, hay, and pumpkins so much, we could not get him to look at the camera! But, we like the pics anyways :)







We did a quick photo shoot with Eric while he was in town and got some amazing pictures! Unfortunately, I cannot share them all because we will be using them on our Christmas card this year! But, here is a little preview of a few of them!







I will try to post more often and set aside a time each day. I know that one day Liam will really enjoy looking at this :)