Category Archives: The Boy

Photo Album Update

I’ve been behind on collating Liam’s online month-by-month photo albums, and these aren’t actually wholly complete; they only collect the various pictures that have already been posted in this journal. But still, for those of you who want them all in one place, we now have months seven, eight, and nine put together:

Photo Album: Liam – Seven Months Old

Photo Album: Liam – Eight Months Old

Photo Album: Liam – Nine Months Old

New pictures will be added to them as I find them and the time to get it done.

I’ve accomplished a lot of web-based work today, actually. I finally got the sidebar to work properly as well as reorganising a whole bunch of files on my server, setting up killer spam filters, and assembling these albums. Plus I practiced cello for an hour (and rewrote that damn IBFKATCS to simplify it one more time).

It Begins

Liam just turned the TV on without using the remote, which means he’s discovered the button on the unit itself. Apparently putting the remote on a high shelf isn’t going to keep us safe any longer.

It’s a gardening show, for those who are curious. He is his father’s son.

Invisible Live EP!

I just put Liam down for a nap while he was still awake. There have been no earthquakes, tsunamis, or other natural disasters. So far, so good.

I previously mentioned that this past gig was recorded. Invisible have generously made the live EP of their originals available for download in mp3 format, which should thrill all of you who screamed for an encore of Zombie Chickens.

Alas, the Random Colour cover of ADE has not been made available due to rights issues. (Namely, we stole their song without their permission. Even though they love us for it.)

Go, click, download, and relive the side-splitting horror of the clucking from the barn, coming for your brains…

Insert Title Here (For I Am Unimaginative This Day)

And the baby’s down for another nap. I like this long-nap thing. It’s cumulative.

I find it very amusing that my site stats indicate that this journal’s popularity has plummeted since syndicated feeds (LJ and otherwise) have begun publishing the whole entry instead of just a link and a slug. Not many people come here any more. Which doesn’t mean no one’s reading, of course; it’s just that the owlies are lonely. Ah well; more whiskey sours for them, I suppose…

Weekend Catch-Up

Happy Beltane!

Not turning on my computer for four days running is a very good method of dealing with stress. I like it. It does, however, mean that I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on when I get back to it. The good thing is that it was over the weekend, when there’s generally less stuff to handle anyway.

Let’s see. My parents were in town for a conference, so they came over Friday night and I cooked a belated birthday dinner for my Dad. Roast breast of duck glazed in ginger marmalade and soy sauce, wild rice with oyster mushrooms and toasted almonds, organic spring greens salad with homemade vinaigrette, followed by a dessert of chocolate sponge sandwiched together with strawberry coulis folded into whipped cream, then topped with fresh strawberries and chocolate ganache. And my parents brought an excellent Australian shiraz called [yellowtail] and it was the perfect accompaniment. It was so incredibly perfect. I’m not sure what happened, but it all worked. I’m always surprised when special dinners work.

Band practice was very okay. We miss our drummer something fierce when she’s not there. We talked about what to drop for the upcoming private gig (we’re playing a wedding! okay, it’s the guitarist’s wedding, but still!) and ran through stuff. I think most of us feel better about the gig in general after a week of distance.

Liam’s naps and sleeping-through-the-night went out the window again. Saturday was very, very bad. Last night he only woke up once around midnight, and today when he woke up after a scant twenty minutes of nap he was soothed back to sleep, so I am cautiously optimistic. We thought a tooth had made its appearance Saturday morning, but it’s still covered by a thin bit of skin, damn it. Like the other three, now.

We had coven yesterday and wove a beautiful Maypole. We slipped the weave off and tied it into sections and everyone took a bit home. Our feast was really good, too.

I’ve been going to bed very early to cope with the sleep fragmentation I’ve been suffering courtesy of the waking baby. It seems to be helping a bit.

Reading an excess of Connie Willis (not that there really is such a thing) makes me want to write desperately again.

Okay, baby’s awake! That makes for a total of over an hour of nap this morning. Hurrah!

Liam Update

Twenty-one pounds, ten ounces. Yikes.

Today was the follow-up appointment to the research project Liam was involved in at Ste-Justine hospital for premature babies and the prevention of respiratory illnesses. We got there, I fed him his oatmeal, they weighed him, asked if everything was okay, and we all shook hands and wished one another well. The results of the study won’t be available for a year or so, but in the meantime he didn’t get sick and we helped advance the development of a valuable vaccination.

He slept through Tuesday night. Then he had four (four!) naps yesterday, two of decent length and two catnaps, and he slept through last night as well. (He woke up at five, but them’s the breaks.) I’ve been whisking him off to his room to nurse him to sleep when I catch him rubbing his eyes, which has the added bonus of increasing his nursing as well, something that he hadn’t really been interested in doing during the day recently.

He’s cruising around pieces of furniture really well. And now he’s trying to share his toys with his other toys. The other day HRH found him holding one of his little rolling balls out to the stuffed turtle Luanna gave him.

Nap’s over! Back into the fray.

Hi Cat

We tried Liam on yoghurt again today. This time it was a success, which is a relief because this container won’t get thrown out like the last one did. Of course, I used a half cup of it making scones this afternoon. And I could make lots and lots of my special pancake batter, because there’s no way I’d eat it; I hate the stuff. But still. And he may have liked it this time because I swirled some fruit into it. Whatever.

Jan was in exactly the same sort of mood I was today, which is a good thing. There were books, and tea, and cats indeed. Liam was by turns charming and cranky. He said “Hi cat” a lot. And I got him to sleep at naptime with only a cry or two, in about twenty minutes, and he slept for forty. Not as long as he used to, but better than the twenty or thirty he’s been taking lately. Damn teeth.

Once he’s in bed and I’ve eaten, I too am bound for bed. Maybe this way if he wakes up in the middle of the night, I’ll have had enough sleep to be functional.

I’ve stopped being less happy with the gig because Jan pointed out to me today that it was only the third time the band had played live, which means it was only the second time for me. I keep forgetting that. I’m really tired of not enjoying myself because I’m not being as good as I know I can be. Part of me just wants to give it up because I’ll never be satisfied, and I don’t mean in a striving-for-excellence way. I’m just too damn hard on myself, and I know I resolved to be less hard on myself, but it’s hard. You know? So now I’m not unhappy, I’m just neutral about it.