Category Archives: The Boy

Liam Update

New sentence yesterday: “Cello? See cello?”

It took a while to follow up on the “Mama car?” phrase he said to his caregiver a couple of months ago, one afternoon when he decided it was time to go home and thus I should magically show up in our vehicle to whisk him away, but we now have more proof of linking two ideas in a phrase. Yay Liam!

Oh — and of course I took the cello out so he could see it. He’d clearly asked for it, after all.

Now if he could just get the meals/eating anything/napping/wakeup time settled back to normal after the gastro upset it all, things would be ducky.

More new words: “banana”, “Pooh”, and I keep forgetting to share the coolness of having Liam totally in love with owls. He calls them “AH-whuls!” (complete with strong emphasis on first syllable, and exclamation mark). He was particularly in love with my stuffed snowy owl known as Fflewddur Fflam, calling to get it down from the top shelf where it sits, but the pleather on the feet began to flake off so I hid it, and now he plays with my classic Pooh stuffed Owl instead. His use of “Plss” and “Ta” are also now more correct, thank goodness.

Liam Update

Apart from the gastro thing (which appears to be officially over, hurrah!… except now HRH is very ill indeed) Liam’s doing really well these days.

New words lately: “Tigger”, “ta-ta” (as in thank you, and used infrequently, but when it is it seems to be to ask for something; I think we need to work on the concept of cause and effect), the rats are now “tss”, please is “lss” (as is his playmate Elise), Cheerios are “ch!”, Rice Krispies are “kss”. The trains have become “choo-choo”.

Those ankle boot-shoes just rock. They are so darned cool.

He made up a new game last week. He tossed his ball over the child gate into my office where I was doing some online banking and then grinned at me, looking like a little puppy. So I tossed it over his head into the hall. He followed it, and the next thing I knew he was tossing it over the child gate again. I started tossing the ball further and further down the hall, saying “Go long, son!”. (I am a geek. He’d better get used to it.) He loves this game; he absolutely beams while he plays it. The whole ball thing kind of came out of nowhere. We’ve been trying to teach him how to play with it for months, and nothing. Then out of the blue he found it one day, stood up with it, and dropped it on the floor. He saw it bounce. And that was the end of that. The ball is now one of his favourite toys. He throws it two-handed in that adorable underhanded throw toddlers have.

I don’t want to say this too loudly in case I jinx it, but it looks like we have the one-nap-a-day thing down. He goes down after lunch for an hour and a half to two hours. And as a result, he’s sleeping a bit more at night, which means sleeping in later in the mornings. This is a Very Welcome Thing.

He pulled the Muppet Movie off our DVD shelf and asked to watch it yesterday, so we loaded it and he sat on my lap holding the case, touching the photo of Kermit with his banjo, then looking up at the screen where Kermit was singing ‘The Rainbow Connection’ and softly saying something that sounded like “kog”. Which was, in all likelihood, his version of Kermit the Frog, and charmed me utterly. I cuddled him closer very gently, despite wanting to squeeze him as tightly as I could, overwhelmed by that surge of love and joy he inspires in me.

Sometimes, even in the middle of all the stress and rushing and frustration, all I need is a moment like that to reset everything.

Woe And Teh Sad

Things are kind of tentative around here. Liam has his first gastro thing happening, and is now living on toast, a bit of juice, and Pedialyte. He’s cheerful and playful during the day, although with a low appetite and he’s operating at a less breakneck speed than usual. He’s sleeping a bit more (I could get very used to this part!), and does that throwing up thing once or twice at night, although he has no temperature. We’ve done more laundry in the past day than we’ve done in the past two weeks. He’s so good: once he’s been sick he just wants to sit in someone’s lap and lean his head against their shoulder, while the other parent changes sheets or washes his bunny or finds new pyjamas. If he’s awake enough he even wants to play a bit, or coo softly to us while he cuddles, or read a book until he drops off to sleep again.

It will be over soon. In the meantime, there’s lots of love going around.

Schadenfreude Gathering

Someone described last night’s hangout here as a wake for people’s recently lost jobs, and I think it’s a good way to describe it. It’s been a dreadful week for a remarkably large number of people I know, and half a dozen of us kind of gravitated together to support friends. I made a huge pot of chili and garlic bread; Ceri made Schadenfreude Pie (schadenfreude being the German term for reveling in someone else’s misfortune, and to be perfectly clear we weren’t reveling in the misfortune of those who had been laid off, we were reveling in the misfortune of those who did the off-laying, because they lost excellent workers and will officially be up a creek without paddles or boats come Monday morning, but that’s their problem, isn’t it?); and Paze brought over some Bailey’s (both original and chocolate mint) and wings and Asian noodles. And for fourish hours we all sat on the floor and chatted and ate, and provided the right type of distraction for everyone, no matter what their week or job situation. The neighbours from upstairs drifted in. We actually got to see Scott, whose employer allowed him to leave the premises at a sane hour for once. The whiskey came out. We opened a bottle of Soave, courtesy of my FIL. We talked and talked and talked, in a companionable way that I haven’t enjoyed in, oh, ages. It’s good to be there for friends. That one has the opportunity to unwind at the same time — well, it was a really nice bonus.

It was a miserable day weather-wise yesterday afternoon as well, with the first official appearance of That White Stuff on top of nasty wind and cold cold rain, causing absolute havoc on the roads and forcing me to call my MIL to ask her to feed Liam dinner over there because I was stuck in Ville St-Laurent. When Liam eventually got home to see friends in the living room he took serious stock of the situation, then wandered around talking to cats and persons alike, sharing books and macaroni before going to bed (beautifully and calmly, hurrah, yes).

Mousme even managed to clip the claws of two cats while she was here. Nixie, The Deceptively Soft-Spoken Kitten From Hell, made it known in no uncertain terms that while Maggie and Cricket may have fallen to Mousme’s blade, she had no intention of going down until Mousme was lying in a pool of her own blood first. It was generally agreed that perhaps more Bailey’s ought to be enjoyed instead.

Despite the preponderance of badness in the lives of many this past while, we had something terribly, staggeringly nice happen to us this week. The people involved know how we feel, despite our sense of not being able to communicate just how thankful we are.

Oh, and the pie? Ye gods. I couldn’t even finish my slice. By this morning, the single piece left in the pie tin had begun bleeding a dark syrupy liquid. I fear it. But then, one really oughtn’t overly enjoy schadenfreude.

Random Wednesday Things

Today for the first time, Liam is wearing a pair of blue leather size 7 Buster Brown ankle boots. They’re awesome boots, from the box of things my cousin sent up for me when Liam was born. But — size 7? Yikes. His feet have grown so much in the past three months. I’m hoping they slow down, like the rest of his growing has, because these are a seriously cool pair of shoes.

I had my annual checkup with the doctor today. Good news: I’m not dead. Remarkably far from it, actually.

And WHY has no one told me that Colm Feore did a guest spot on BSG? Did none of you think to do it, or were you all complicit in the plan to keep it a surprise until I saw that particular season 2 episode?

As you were.

Saturday Afternoon

Like some others, I am working today. This is one of the blessing/curses of the freelancer and the self-employed: you can work on the weekend to make up for lost time during the week. Of course, the other side of the coin is that sometimes you have to work on weekends when you really don’t want to.

Everyone slept in till eight o’clock this morning, which was absolutely delightful although not likely to become a regular thing. We went out to the craft shop where I picked up beeswax (finally!), new votive molds, and wick tabs. Then we picked up three new fish to add to Liam’s aquarium, three because we usually have a death rate of one within twenty-four hours, which would leave us with a total of one old and two new fish. There were two Abyssinian cats at the pet shop, lovely ruddy Abyssinians who were probably around eight months old. I wanted them, of course, but not as badly as I wanted the little green parrot-type bird who flirted with me through the glass of his cage. I so adore birds. I should stop looking at them in shops, because I fall in love with them and they with me and everyone’s heartbroken when I leave. Liam was positively ecstatic about the huge waterfall/koi pond whose front glass wall was as tall as he was. He could peek over the top at the surface of the water, or crouch down and stare at the fish eye to eye. Big fish, too, some of them half his size. And we saw tiny tiny little corn snakes, about the size of a pencil! They were adorable, and it was hard to believe that they would eventually be the size of the six-foot corn snakes upstairs. Of course, we have to go out again once Liam is awake, because I’ve just discovered that my printer’s ink cartridge is dead.

Tarasmas tonight! I have a lovely role in a serious radio drama. And I have a pot of stew on, which is making the whole house smell cosy and defended against the grey and sometimes-rainy afternoon outside.

Liam has now been asleep for two hours. If we can keep him busy till lunch then put him to bed right afterwards, he really embraces the whole one-long-nap thing. And… he just woke up!

Bits and Bobs

Forty-ish pages left to go on this tech read. I’m pretty relaxed when it comes to doing tech reads on others’ books — after all, so much is subjective in the realm of alternative spirituality — but still, there are things I read that make me scratch my head. It’s usually a result of the author thinking one thing and the phrasing indicating something different, which isn’t immediately obvious to the person writing because they know what they meant. Been there, so understand that.

I updated Firefox this afternoon and consequently lost the ability to view a bunch of web pages. I allowed this to lurk in the background of my mind as I collected the boy from daycare and by the time he was eating dinner the common element between them all had become clear. I sat down and clicked through the Options until I found the Java and Javascript radio buttons, clicked them on, and all’s well again.

Also, I have discovered BitTorrent.

Liam had his first bubble bath last night. Hilarity ensued as he repeatedly ducked the ducks under the bubbles then let them go, giggling as they rose from the depths. Splashing is also more fun in a bubble bath, because he can’t see exactly where the surface of the water is.

I’ve been remarkably cold these past couple of days. I’d forgotten how damp and chilly my office gets in fall and winter. I have to remember to wear slippers and have a cardigan handy. I may find a small rug for under the desk itself; that would help too.

We watched the first episode of the second season of BSG a couple of nights ago (yes, we are way, waaay behind; no cable, remember?). Blade lent us the entire second season on DVD, so I think we’ll be watching another episode tonight.

We lost a fish today. She somehow got her tail stuck in the intake for the filter, and we surmise that while wriggling desperately to get herself out she managed to kind of crush her back end and wedge herself in more firmly. ‘Twas a goodly fish, though dumb (hello, goldfish?), and we will replace her this weekend. Most likely with two fish, because three seems to be a good number for Liam’s tank.

That is all for now.