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Liam is cuter than ever.  I think it’s his personality.  He charms everyone he sees with his easy smile and sparkling eyes.  He is happy right up until the moment he decides he is hungry or tired, and then it’s all over.  These pictures were taken just minutes before he decided it was nearing his bedtime, and then I had to scramble to get him into his jammies while he yelled at me the whole time.  He is a mama’s boy.  He’s also a daddy’s boy.  And no one can make him smile and laugh more easily than his sister (who can also upset him rather expeditiously as well).

At 8 months, Liam:

• Has SIX teeth!  He cut the first two right around 4 months, two more by 6, and another two at around 7 months.  Each time he is teething we go through about a week’s worth of sleepless nights, with several wakings each night.  This last time he also had a cold, and it was also right at the time of Bill’s surgery, and the whole deal really left me exhausted.  But I love his little gap-toothed grin!
• Still wakes at least once a night.  Boo.  I don’t know why — “they” say babies shouldn’t need to wake to eat in the night by this age, but eating (whether nursing or a bottle) is the only thing that will soothe him back to sleep.  He sleeps typically 7pm to 7am and, on a good night, he will only wake once, around 3 or 4am.  Other nights he will wake once sometime around midnight, and then again.  I tried once to get him back to sleep without nursing, and he SCREAMED for an hour before I finally gave in and fed him, which left me upset and feeling guilty for putting him through that.  So that was the end of that experiment for a while.  I talked to the nurse at the pediatrician’s office, and she said if you want to try letting baby “cry it out,” you really have to be prepared to let him cry for up to 2-3 hours for a few nights before you can expect to break the habit. I’m not prepared to do that, so I continue to (somewhat grudgingly) get up every night and feed him.  Occasionally I ask Bill to give him a bottle so I can catch a break.
• Weighs around 16 lbs.  We had him weighed a couple of weeks ago, and he was a little shy of the 16-lb mark, and in the 10th percentile for weight.  This bugs me a little, because he started off around the 50th percentile.  But the pediatrician is unconcerned, given our history with our peanut Lily.  Still, I am so insecure about breastfeeding when it is impossible to know how much he is getting, and I am always worried that it’s not enough.  However, I will note here that Lily did not make it to the 16-lb mark until after her first birthday!  That seems unbelievable to me now, seeing Liam, who is by no means a big baby.
• Despite the growth charts, he is still right on track with clothing sizes, wearing 6 to 9-month clothes.
• Is on the verge of crawling!  He gets on his hands and knees, and rocks and even starts to move forward a bit, but he gets extremely frustrated.  He seems to cover some short distances, but he’s not really crawling.  Bill says he just fusses his way from point A to point B — a little scooting, some fussing, a little pivoting, more fussing — and eventually he has moved.  He also takes his fair share of knocks, bumping his head on the floor, and I am reminded of how hard it is to have hardwood floors throughout your home when you have a baby who is learning to crawl and walk.
• Started pulling to stand in his crib yesterday (on his 8-month birthday).  We lowered the crib mattress last night, and Bill and I both admitted it made us a little sad.  He’s growing up so fast.  It’s kind of sad and kind of funny that he can pull up, but he can’t get back down.  So tonight when I went in to check on him after I’d put him down and he’d started crying again, I found him standing at the crib rail, facing the wall, unable to get himself back down.  We’ll have to practice that, I guess.
• Has sandy blond hair and sort of hazel-ish eyes, which are taking their sweet time turning brown — but they will be, we’re sure.
• Is babbling more and more, but no da-da or ma-ma yet.  He has imitated the sign for “more” a couple of times, I think.
• Eats whatever you put in front of him.  He doesn’t seem to have any preference, just a preference for food in general.  We think he’s going to be more interested in eating than his sister has been.  He is eating Stage 2 baby foods and loves the cereal puffs.  He can pick up small bites, like banana and avocado, and seems to like feeding himself.  Occasionally I feel bad about not making more of his foods myself, but that is one area where I decided to cut myself some slack.  We do have a food mill and have ground up some table foods a couple of times.  I think we’ll continue to do that, but I simply can’t find the time to steam and puree big batches of things for the freezer this time around.  C’est la vie.
• Takes about 5-6 ounces, when we give him a bottle.  He eats or nurses about 4-5 times a day, and usually once in the night.
• Has stopped spitting up for the most part.  Finally!  We have even weaned him off the Prilosec.  This is one development that makes me nothing but glad!
• Likes his lovey (soft little blankie) when he’s falling asleep.  He rubs it on his face, which is — of course — adorable.

Have I mentioned lately how much I am LOVING having a boy?  Everyone told me I would.  I admit I was thrown for a loop when we found out via ultrasound at 20 weeks that we were NOT having another girl.  I just couldn’t picture having a son.  And now I can’t picture our family any other way.  Liam is such a perfect compliment to our family, and I feel so lucky.  We are so enjoying watching his amazing little personality bloom before our eyes.  He is a joy!

Although I don’t think I’ll ever forget the many emotions I have felt so far through this experience, I feel like I need to make a notation in our family’s hisotry of this scary, humbling time.  The neurosurgeon neither emphasized nor downplayed the risks of the surgery — on the minor end of the scale, there was the possibility of facial numbness or weakness, more life-changing risks included hearing loss and facial paralysis, and serious complications included stroke.  So it speaks to the severity of Bill’s chronic pain that he didn’t hesitate much to choose the surgery, while I hung back, considering less invasive (though less effective) options.  Ultimately, though, Bill just felt he was ready to get his life back.  In the weeks leading up to the surgery, my mode was basically denial.  Up until the last minute, I still didn’t seem to think it was going to happen.

Yesterday still seems a bit surreal to me.  When I got home last night, and finally got the kids to bed and the house in order, I went upstairs to see the bed that Bill had made just that morning.  But by that time, he was lying in intensive care, head bandaged, in significant pain, nauseous, and more uncomfortable than I’ve ever seen him.  The surgery was a success, in that the surgeon did indeed locate the offending artery, which was embedded with the fifth nerve root (the trigeminal nerve), and he was able to separate the two.  It was just the outcome we had hoped for.  But as the day wore on and the anesthesia wore off, I could see that Bill’s recovery is going to be rough for a few days.  I guess the human body just doesn’t easily tolerate a hole being cut through the skull and brain being manipulated about.

But as always in times of crisis and need, I am amazed and humbled at God’s grace.  As always, I pray not for tangible outcomes, but for fortitude and the ability to cope with whatever the outcome may be.  I pray for Bill the inner strength to move through his pain toward recovery.  And I pray for a wordless comprehension on the part of the kids, that they understand why their world is a little topsy turvy at the moment.

And also humbled by the generosity of the people in our lives.  Our church community is the source of so many of our friendships, and both those and friends outside our church have stepped up to offer prayers, support, and the gift of their time to help us through this.  I am continually thankful for these people in our lives — this connectedness to others who will share our burdens, rejoice with us, and sincerely offer their assistance with everything including childcare, grocery shopping, meals, and even lawn mowing (offered by an age 60-something woman from church who reiterated she was quite sincere, and would happily mow while Bill is recuperating).  Of course all the help is wonderful, and I am glad to have it.  But even more, I am glad to feel so much loving support, giving me the gifts of strength and peace of mind.  God’s grace at work.

And it should not go without mention that I am grateful for the advancement of science, that there is an option for treatment for Bill’s pain, and also that there are skilled surgeons like Dr. Peter Basta to perform delicate operations that astound me (he even provided pictures to satisfy my scientific mind).

My parents just arrived this morning to watch over the kids so that I can get to the hospital.  I hope Bill has found some level of comfort and needed rest over the night, and I hope he will move from the ICU to a regular room today.  More updates to come…

Life is moving right along and we are suddenly on the brink of Bill’s long-anticipated surgery for his trigeminal neuralgia.  But, before that experience dominates our lives for the next couple of weeks, I need to revisit my super fun girls’ weekend from nearly two weeks ago!  I started to write a bit about it soon afterward, but I just have a hard time finding a space of time to complete any little project these days.  So, I’ll keep it to the brief summary that I started a while back and one photo…

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My college sorority girlfriends and I are back from our reunion in gorgeous Breckenridge, Colorado.  The twist on this trip was that no one but me, who planned the whole trip for the group, knew our destination until the last minute!  We called it the Sigma Magical Mystery Tour, and this was the kick-off of the tour.  We hope to gather annually, each year with a new trip planner and new mystery destination.

I could bore you with the many details of how I came to settle on Breckenridge as our destination, but I think I’ll just skip all that and say that it was a wonderful place for all of us to spend some quality time together.  While heat indices at home soared into the triple digits, we were comfortably in the 70s and 80s with very low humidity.  The scenery was astounding — beautiful views in every direction.  Although Breckenridge is undoubtedly a great ski town, it is simply stunning in summer, with flowers blooming everywhere.  We managed a perfect balance of activities and down time for laughing and reminiscing.  I think I had focused so much attention on planning the trip itself and ensuring every detail was taken care of, that I sort of overlooked the fact that I was going to get to spend FOUR DAYS with great friends, reliving our college and post-college years and catching up on each other’s families and careers.  What an amazing gift to have lasting friendships and the commitment to stay in touch, even though the miles separate us and busy lives make reunions a challenge.  Next year’s planner is already working on our next mystery trip, and I can’t wait to be on the clueless side of things, and to see all my best college friends again!

        (Kerri, Janelle, Jenna, Jenn, Cynthia, me, Kelly, Hilary, Paige, and Melissa!)

Most of my life these days is spent trying to get my kids to sleep and to stay asleep, and — when that fails for at least one of them — getting that one to STAY QUIET so the other can sleep. Liam’s morning nap usually goes pretty smoothly, and allows Lily and me some time together.  Liam’s bedtime goes well, too, and while I put him down, BIll gets Lily ready for bed.  We are having a little trouble getting her to stay in her bed, and even in her room, these days — which is kind of weird because she’s been sleeping in there for months now.  But the real problem is afternoon naps.

Here was today’s afternoon, which is pretty typical:

1:30 - Liam acting tired, go to put him down
1:45 - Liam down
2:15 - Go to put Lily down (acting tired, so I’m hopeful)
2:20 - Liam wakes, starts crying; I’m still reading books to Lily, so I let him cry a bit
2:30 - Lily down, Liam awake and crying; go to try to put Liam back down
3:00 - Liam down, still crying a bit.  Meanwhile, Lily has wandered out of bed and upstairs, where Bill is trying to get her to sleep in our bed
3:15 - Liam asleep; Lily now screaming protests from upstairs
3:30 - Lily comes downstairs (upstairs nap = FAIL); I talk to her about the importance of napping or at least having quiet rest time in her bed.  Go to put her in bed again, promising to sing more songs.
3:45 - Lily finally asleep.  Liam still sleeping.  How long will it last?

Of course, the day I decide to blog about my typical exhausting afternoon dance from one child’s room to the other, soothing, reading, shushing, singing, it’s the one miracle day that they both finally submitted to sleep and slept for over an hour.  But man did I have to WORK for that hour.

To be honest, this was one of my biggest fears about having a second child.  Trying to align naps, especially with one three-year-old who thinks she’s outgrowing naps, and one baby who typically calls it good at the 30-minute mark, is really hard.  And most days it means NO BREAKS for mama.  How could I even contemplate a third?  One word:  kindergarten.

Six months old, I can hardly believe it.  It some ways it has flown, but when I think back to the early days with my tiny, boneless little newborn, those days seem like a distant memory.  Liam is a happy, sweet, solid little guy.  Anyone who pays him the slightest bit of attention is rewarded with a big smile and sparkling eyes.  As my dad says, he smiles with his whole face.  I love going in to get him out of his crib in the morning to find him smiling and flapping his arms and legs.  And he laughs and laughs!  He especially loves to watch his sister, who is ALWAYS doing something, and he frequently watches her with a big smile on his face, occasionally laughing at her silliness.  Although he can get pretty worked up when his needs are not met with a certain degree of punctuality, Liam is quite often the embodiment of JOY.

Liam’s half-birthday is the Fourth or July.  (I foresee it could be a nice alternative to January birthday parties.) At 6 months, Liam:

• Weighs around 15 or 16 lbs, I would estimate.  His check-up isn’t for another week, so we will find out the stats then.
• Is right on target with clothing sizes; he has just started moving from his 3-6 month stuff into 6-9 month clothes.  (This is hard for us to believe, as we got so used to Lily wearing a size much smaller than her age.  Just recently I bought her two new skirts at Old Navy that are sized 6-12 months and are a perfect fit.)
• Rolls all over the place.  Today Bill laid him down on the playroom floor, and I soon heard him rummaging around in Lily’s dollhouse several feet away.  Time to baby proof!  On his tummy, he holds his head up very well and is able to reach up for a toy.
• Sits for up to a minute, but is not stable enough to be left alone without some cushions around him.
• Has FOUR teeth.  He cut the bottom two right at four months, and the top two came through just days before he turned six months.  Today I caught him grinding them.  I know it’s just a typical thing for babies to experiment with, but the sound drives me NUTS, and I hope it doesn’t become a habit!
• Is now eating solid foods 1-2 times per day, including rice cereal, bananas, sweet potatoes, peas, applesauce, pears, and avocados.  We really haven’t done much making our own baby food this time around.  There simply isn’t enough time in my life.  I’m happy for the convenience of jarred organic baby foods.  Liam also likes to gnaw on Baby Mum Mum rice rusks (easily dissolvable rice crackers).  Really, he wants every food he sees.  He frequently grabs food out of our hands or pulls our plates toward him.
• Nurses on demand, and to be honest I haven’t even bothered to decipher a schedule.  He does pretty predictably eat three times within the first two hours of waking.  He will nurse briefly about 20 minutes after waking, then again a half hour or so later, and then one more time when he is ready to go down for his first nap two hours after waking.  After that, I would guess it’s every 2-3 hours during the day, always at bedtime, and then usually once in the night (around 4 a.m.).  We are in the habit, as Lily was too, of nursing to sleep for naps and bedtime.  I’m not too happy about that, because it is just really not always convenient, and it makes it hard for anyone but me to put him to sleep.  At night he will take a bottle from someone besides me and fall asleep.  And sometimes, like tonight, he will fall asleep nursing, then wake when I put him down, but I can sing to him until he is smiley, and then he’ll fall asleep on his own.  We’re working on breaking the nursing to sleep habit.
• Goes to bed around 7 pm, wakes once around 4-5 am, and then will hopefully go back to sleep until at least 6.  But sometimes if he makes it all the way through until 5:30 or so, there’s no more sleeping for Liam or mommy.  I’m not sure it’s such a great trade-off.  Either way, I’m envious of those people who’s babies have been sleeping 12 hours straight since three months, but I feel luckier than those who are still getting up three times a night.
• Takes a pretty solid 1.5 - 2 hour nap in the morning, and is a little less predictable with afternoon naps.  It usually ends up being a couple of short 30-45 minutes naps: the first ends just as I’m trying to get Lily down for her nap, and the second nap begins soon after Lily gets up from hers.  I feel like I spend most of my days trying to get someone to sleep and get someone else to keep quiet so the other one can stay  asleep.  No one ever wants to sleep at the same time, but I’m still trying.
• Loves to ride around on my hip in the sling.  Grocery store trips got a whole lot easier once I realized this.  He does NOT like to be in the infant carrier, so we have pretty much gone to leaving it in the car and just carrying him around (sling, sometimes the Ergo, or just in our arms).  He does pretty well in the stroller, too, but prefers to keep moving.
• Continues to spit up all over himself, us, and our home.  The pediatrician promised me that starting solid foods would help, but now he just spits up in color.  It’s gross, and we are all SO. OVER. IT.  He is still on Prilosec (2.3 mL) twice daily.
• Has sandy blond/light brown hair (changes in the light).  His eyes appear sort of hazel for the moment, on their long journey to their inevitable soulful brown.

I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say Liam is an “easy” baby.  I think when people say that, they mean babies who sleep long and often, who rarely cry, and who can sit or play happily for long periods.  But Liam is CLOSE to that, or at least way closer than Lily ever was, and for that we are grateful.  He is so smiley, so charming, and so much fun.  I don’t want to say negative things about Lil, because although a challenging baby, she was worth every bit.  But Bill did say the other day that, if we had had Liam first, we probably would have had a bunch of kids.  What a lovely balance we have now, with two amazing and unique babes.  Sometimes I can’t believe our luck.

Busy, tired, busy, tired.  Bloggable moments keep coming and going without a word.  It’s just that my days have been starting pretty early, like 5:30, because Liam has thankfully started sleeping through most nights.  His definition of “night” just doesn’t quite match up to mine.  So at 5:30 a.m., he’s awake and cooing and ready to play.  This morning we spent two hours together before anyone else stirred, and then he was ready for his first nap of the day just as Bill and Lily were waking.  Since I can never seem to get the kids on the same afternoon nap schedule (IF Lily naps at all), there are really no breaks until both kids are asleep, which is sometimes not until 9 or so when Lily finally relinquishes her hold on the day.  By then, guess what, I’m ready to hit the hay.

Oddly, BOTH kids went to bed about 7 tonight!  Lily had no nap, and Bill took both kids on a quick grocery store run around 6:30, during which she apparently threw a WHOPPER tantrum and then sadly asked Daddy to carry her to the car because she was too tired to walk.  So she willingly went straight to bed, still in her dress (not fighting that battle tonight) with no books or songs.  Liam soon followed suit.  Wow.

Mostly right now Bill and I are just counting the hours until he has his appointment with the neurosurgeon to discuss options to treat his trigeminal neuralgia.  Although surgery is nothing to look forward to, I really hope that the surgeon will just say, yes, Bill’s an excellent surgical candidate for some procedure with high success rate and low risk, and he can schedule him within a week.  I just can’t believe Bill, and all of us along with him in some ways, has been dealing with this issue for months.  I kind of feel like it has cast a shadow over our lives all this time, and we’re both so anxious to move forward.

Liam is six months old now.  People across the nation celebrated his six-month birthday yesterday with backyard barbecues and fireworks.  He took it all in stride.  I took some great pictures of him, and even got a good one of both kids in their red, white, and blue.  But our USB cable for the camera is not cooperating, so I can’t post any pictures right now.  And his six-month check-up isn’t for another week, so I don’t have any official stats.  So I think I’ll just hold off on that post.

I guess this post is kind of rambling and directionless, which is how I feel a lot of the time these days.  Bill and I have talked a bit lately about whether or not to move, what is the next step in our future, and we really haven’t gotten too far on any of it because our conversations are limited to a few minutes here and there, whenever the kids give us a rare moment’s reprieve and Bill’s jaw pain subsides long enough for him to speak for a bit.  And I really haven’t had the time or energy leftover for blogging.

But, we’re here.  We’re managing.  And there are some good moments, like tonight at dinner, watching Liam laugh out loud repeatedly at his sister making funny faces for him.  For now I’m going to enjoy the last few minutes of summer daylight and get to bed early with a good book.

I haven’t had the energy to update the blog, even though I have missed Liam’s 5-month update (feeling a good deal of mommy guilt over that one), and our seven-year anniversary has come and gone without so much as a mention.  But Liam’s nice little predictable 12-hour nights with only one brief waking have changed dramatically over the last few nights, and his naps are no better, and I am struggling.  I did take pictures of Liam near the time of his 5-month birthday, so I have that documented.  And Bill finally got tired of my pleading for him to update the banner (which was TWO YEARS old).  But for now, I just need to go to bed.  Hoping for a change for the better soon…

We were reading a bedtime book about different careers tonight, and afterward I asked Lily if she knew what she’d like to be when she grows up.  “Mm hmm, ” she said, nodding earnestly.  “A kangaroo rider.”  I’m not sure which university carries that particular degree program, but we’ll look into it; I always said I’d support my children in whatever they want to be.

This past Saturday night we hosted a rowdy pool party at our house.  There was beer, there were cute girls, and there was even some skinny dipping by one boy.  (That same boy later upchucked all over me, so I think maybe he partied a little too hard.)  It was a pretty crazy time, and about half of the partiers were passed out by 8.  It was a lot like my college days…but somehow WAY better.  It was one of those great early summer evenings, and everyone was in a good mood, and Bill and I just looked at each other, toasted with a couple of cold beers, and felt like the luckiest people in the world.

We’re having some tough days around here.  For starters, the weather has been awful — chilly, rainy, and gloomy.  It just sets the stage for moodiness, especially since we can’t get outside and enjoy what should be gorgeous May weather.  Worse than the rain though, by far, is poor Bill’s state.  He is suffering — and I do mean suffering — from what we now believe is called trigeminal neuralgia.  A quick Google will tell you that it has often been called the most excruciating pain known to humanity.   The trigeminal nerve, which runs along each side of the face, gets irritated and sends electric shock-like pain to the areas of the upper and lower jaws.  It is a chronic condition, and he has had frequent flare-ups over the past couple of years, without a clue as to what it was.  After seeing multiple dentists, oral surgeons, and a neurologist, even after an MRI, we still had no answers and, in desperation, Bill finally opted to have his wisdom teeth removed in hopes that it would alleviate the pain.  In fact, the surgery worsened the pain, as the nerve became even more irritated, and Bill has been in periodic excruciating pain over the last two weeks (not helped by the dry sockets from the tooth extractions).  He has difficulty eating and is often rendered unable to speak due to the pain.  Needless to say, Bill is not his usual self, and I miss him.  Seeing him in so much pain is awful.

And perhaps that is why the kids’ behavior of late seems so difficult — because we are dealing with it on top of this constant presence of pain.  Liam is not napping well, which makes him fussy a lot more of the time.  And Lily is — well, she’s just being Lily, but that can be a challenge on our best days.

So, as we await another neurologist consult and investigate treatment and surgical options for Bill’s condition, we’re kind of just hanging in there.  Tonight, after a day of crummy, brief naps for Liam and no nap for Lily, I told Bill both kids were to be in bed by 7:30, no matter what it took.  Now, at 8, Liam is sleeping sweetly, and Lily is at least quiet, and possibly even asleep, too.  I’m having a beer and hoping for sunnier days.