Merry Christmas!

 He seemed to be more interested in the ornaments than his presents.

 Playing with the cell phone he got from Aunt Lisa and Uncle Mark

 Hugging the stuffed doggie he got from Aunt Katie

The Christmas dessert platter I made (Snowflake cupcakes and Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies)

 I love this sweater I got him (a black Friday deal! woohoo!)

 My dad (in green) and 3 of his siblings playing Just Dance on the Wii! That game was pretty fun!

 Liam posing with his cousin Genevive

 Being swung upside down by Dad

"Where are my presents, dammit?"

Merry Christmas!

Christmas was pretty awesome, yet exhausting. We did my dad's side of the family for Lunch and my mom's side for dinner. And for those of you that don't know, Filipinos tend to go big on the holiday family get-togethers. Can you say sensory overload!? Liam hit the jackpot with the presents this year. Joel says that we could open up our own toy store with the amount of toys he's received. He got a TON of clothes too. Even people I don't know gave Liam gifts! (Some of my parent's friends) I know for next year, that I probably should only get him one big item (from Santa). His closet is FULL of unopened toys. I have to go through his current inventory and pick out the old ones he doesn't play with (or shouldn't play with, i.e. rattles, links, etc.) anymore and donate them to Goodwill. Thank you to everyone who gave him a gift. I am still working on the thank you cards for his birthday... I know I am so late!

So the past couple weeks have been HELL in terms of his sleeping. We have not had a solid night of sleep in WEEKS. Ever since we got back from Savannah, it's been like this. And I thought his rash was going away, but it's actually still there. I need to call the doc again because it's been 2 weeks. He's fine though, other than the sleeplessness. Well, he actually caught a cold this week (and looks like we did too), but there was only one day that he had the snotty nose drips. Then I thought he was cutting a molar (which would contribute to the night wakings), but I felt again and didn't feel anything. Hmmm. I don't know. I am having newborn flashbacks again.

Also, I mentioned in the last post that Liam is very clingy these days and wants to be picked up ALL. THE. TIME. And if he doesn't get his way, he will cry. I try to hold off on picking him up, but the kid just won't stop crying. He'll also throw fits/cry if he can't get to something, or even just RANDOMLY... like he'll just stand there fine one minute and then cry the next, as if he just thought of something that upset him! Man... I hope this is a phase! I like to tell myself that, anyway!

It's hard to get Liam to drink whole milk now. I don't understand why. He loved that stuff when we first gave it to him. The only time he will drink it is before bed. During the day, if we offer it, he will only take little sips. The doc said at his last appointment that he needs to be drinking 16-18 oz. of whole milk a day. He's probably only getting 9-10oz at most per day, of course we are giving him water and diluted juice if he won't drink the milk. I don't know how to get him to drink more. Maybe warming the milk will make it taste better for him? Anyone have any suggestions? (Hopefully this is just a phase as well!)

Despite all the crap we have been going through the past couple of weeks, he seems to be thriving: 

• He seems to understand more verbal commands and questions, although he doesn't really say much other than dad, dog, dat, ma... You'd think he'd pick up on more things, especially with 5 adults in the house and 2-3 different languages/dialects spoken here. 
• He is pretty darn strong: I let him play with an unopened carton of orange juice and he picked that thing up like it was nothing! I was amazed because those juice cartons are kind of heavy. 
• He has also discovered his boy parts... which he likes to tug on in the bath or when we're getting him ready for bed. It's funny. 
• He can climb up onto the sofa now by getting his abdomen up first and then kicking his legs up until they catch the edge of the seat. 
• He can spin himself around and make himself dizzy... which is actually kind of scary because he usually falls or runs into things afterward. 
• He has also learned to maneuver his push toys. Instead of just going in a straight line, he can turn now. But he still doesn't understand the concept of riding the toys yet! He'd rather push them than ride them. 
• Oh, he can also flush toilets now! He loves when the water goes down the hole! And now he's figured out how to do it himself! (Supervised, of course)

All the Christmas photos will be posted to the Shutterfly site very soon.

Have a Happy New Year! Cheers!

My Week off...

...for blogging. Sorry, just been way too busy on my free time to blog. I can't think of anything really notable from last week anyway, aside from the fever and rash Liam got when we got back from our trip to Savannah. His fever lasted about 3 days, and didn't seem to phase him. Well, I take that back. A couple of those nights he woke up hungry and very hard to get back down to sleep. Then after his fever broke, a rash started to appear on his chest, neck and back. I called the pediatrician (that I picked for him to go to in this area) and a nurse answered the phone. I told her his back story and we decided that it was a reaction from either the MMR or chicken pox vaccine he received at his 12 mo. checkup the week before. She said we just had to wait it out and let it run its course, but of course if something worse comes up, to bring him in. I'm glad we didn't have to take him in because #1, I had a feeling they'd tell me there was nothing they could do and then have to pay the co-pay anyway; and #2 it was snowing that day.

Anyway, he's fine now, I think the rash is all gone. Now we are dealing with a very needy, toddler who throws tantrums and wants to be picked up and walked around a lot.

More next week after Christmas stuff dies down.

Also, if you feel like reading it, I updated my blog entry from 2 entries ago - The Happy Birthday to US blog from Dec 6, with more details on the party and with a few shout-outs at the end. My cousin Sharon also updated Liam's birthday party album with pictures she took from her camera.

And oh yeah...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Savannah Visit

I decided to cut out the "month, week" Blog title format since it's rare that people even describe their babies as being anything over 12 months old (other than 18 months or even 24 months). They're pretty much toddlers now and no one can really understand the whole age-in-months concept anyway unless you are a mother yourself!

So we had another busy week... it was basically an extension of Liam's birthday! Woohoo! We traveled (drove) down to Savannah last Wednesday night. It was horrible. I had not gotten any more than 3-4 hours of sleep all week due to work and other special projects, so I wasn't any good for driving any longer than 30 minutes. And them Liam cried for about 3 hours straight until we decided to stop at a rest area to power nap for an hour. THEN, to top it off, we were about 30 minutes away from our GA house and we ran into completely stopped traffic. What a horrible night.

When we arrived, Liam seemed to remember his old house. It was just empty and quiet and had significantly less dog hair (and dog smell) than he remembered. :) I had to make sure all the outlets were child-proofed and the kitchen cabinets were rubber banded (a makeshift way of keeping a toddler out of them) before we let him loose.

We met up with Joel's mom and sister Katie for some lunch downtown at SoHo South Cafe where I had some awesome tomato basil soup and a 4 cheese grilled cheese...mmmm. I shared with Liam, but he was more into the artwork and Christmas decorations hanging all over the place. The cafe is decorated with old books and local artwork. It's pretty cool.

At 2pm, we took him into his old pediatrician office for his 12 month checkup. He had blood drawn and FOUR shots. He didn't seem to mind them, except for the blood draw... he kept squirming as the nurse was trying to get a sample, so blood got everywhere: on Joel's shirt, on the nurse's scrubs, on Liam's body, on the exam table... Then after they put the bandaid on him, it just kept on bleeding. Liam kept messing with the bandaid which didn't help at all either.

His official 12 month stats:
27 lbs. 0.5 oz. (Thought he'd be heavier! He sure seems heavier!)
31.5 in tall
46.5 cm head

He's on the bigger side of the percentiles. I hope he is a tall guy! :) He's looking slimmer these days probably because he practically runs everywhere now.

Saturday was his second 1st birthday party with our GA family and friends. He got an AWESOME Madagascar cake from Publix and they also threw in a matching smash cake. He got to smash this one a little more than the one last week (of which only ate a ton of green icing). He got pretty messy, so we had to take a bath intermission before opening presents.

That night we decided to drive back up. Unfortunately, since Liam's presents took over our car, we were unable to grab some of the things we wanted to bring back up with us... mainly our running stroller! It's huge, so there's no way we would have been able to fit everything in there. :( We also decided to start front-facing Liam in his car seat. I think he likes it better... but I'm not sure yet.

Our time down there was short, but it was great to see all our family and friends again. I hope we can visit again soon! And hopefully Master Liam will travel a little better next time!

More pics will be added to the Shutterfly soon, as well as I plan to elaborate more on last week's post. I put so much work into that party that it deserved a longer post than that! I don't expect anyone to read it – it's more for me anyway... as a reminder that a LOT of work and time and money go into a big party... haha, OK, well that and mostly because I want to document it for posterity, much like how I did with my super long birth story post about this time last year!

~~~~

P.S. My awesome, superly talented girl, Pennie (pengsarttable.blogspot.com) made this vector illustration of Liam as a birthday gift to me! (Oh yeah! It was my birthday, too!! haha) I love it!

P.P.S. My multi-talented older sis Jen sewed Liam a stuffed frog plush and also a SUPER CUTE lion head pillow! It's awesome. She just started making plushies. I told her she needs to start an Etsy shop! (Check out her work on her DeviantArt page.)

1 YEAR OLD! Happy birthday to US! (Edited on 12/16/10)

 

So much excitement this past weekend. The party was a success. I'm glad it's over. No more big birthday party planning for me anytime soon. It was fun preparing for it, though. It's just hard when it's so close to Christmas! I'm BROKE!

I posted ALL the pics I have on Liam's Shutterfly... more will come next week after his Georgia birthday party next weekend! Woohoo! 2 Birthday parties! I can't wait to visit everyone down there. Just not looking forward to the drive. Gotta have my coffee ready!

Liam's 1 year checkup is on the 9th in Savannah. I will update with stats next week.

I'm so exhausted, I can't think of what to write. I will probably make another entry later this week.

++++

EDIT: OK, here is a late continuation of this post.

The entire week before the party was extremely busy for me. I had way too many projects going on for work, freelance projects, personal projects and the party! The month of December started my lack of sleep schedule apparently. Well, I would stay up late working on projects one night, then another night crash at 9:30 after putting Liam to bed. It's working out so far! haha

Jen came into town on the 1st. She was a great help with Liam and with the party AND with running silly errands for me while I was stuck at the computer all day. THANKS JEN!!!!

On Thursday night, I asked my cousin Sharon to come over to help Jen and I make decorations for the party. It was awesome, she brought over a bunch of her old art supplies (all of mine are still in Georgia!) and we painted the night away!

Super Sharon did the huge giraffe, elephant, cheetah, alligator and snake.
Jen did the monkey, spider, toucan and cat... er, I mean tiger :)
I did the lion, hippo and zebra.

They were such a hit at the party that some of my guests asked if they could take them home! Then when kids saw people (the people who ASKED ME first) taking down the animals, all hell broke loose and everyone started going for the animals! I got pretty upset, but then let them go. We managed to salvage the lion (for some reason I associate lions with Liam) and Shonna was able to grab the cheetah for me. I originally wanted to keep most of them for Liam's room. Oh well.

Getting into the party... It turned out great! The photo booth and food were a hit as well. Props go to my awesome mom and auntie Letty. Mom and Jen prepared and cooked all the food. Auntie Letty reserved the hall for us and helped buy some of the food. THANK YOU!!!!!

Surprisingly, a lot of guests honored my request to wear animal prints! It was pretty cool. :) And it was a great extra touch to the party vibe!

We served a variety of hors d'oeuvres: spankopitas, BBQ beef AND turkey meatballs, chicken nuggets, pork egg rolls, pancit (rice noodles with veggies and chicken), fruit platters, mini-pastries, rolls, green punch and of course birthday cake (that I didn't get to try).

Jen manned the photo booth: a corner of the room with a palm tree backdrop, set up with props (safari hats, animal masks, toucan beaks) for souvenir photos for our guests. I bought a cheap photo printer from walmart (only $30!) and brought my mac. She took the photos and printed them on the spot, then double-sided taped them to these cards I had printed from Vistaprint (the order that was messed up - as stated in a previous post).

It was a long day. Liam enjoyed being passed around. He wore the personalized Lion shirt (with his name on it) that I bought from an Etsy shop. He turned it green after he dug into his smash cake (made my Jen). He actually didn't really smash into the cake, but he did manage to scoop off and eat a TON of green icing with the spoon that we would not let go of.

By the end of the party Liam got cranky. Apparently he was hungry, because as soon as we got back home and fed him (REAL food as opposed to icing), he was back to normal and ready to open his presents! He even stayed up a little late that night: went to bed at 9:30! Too much excitement!!!

Also to note, that 2 hours is not enough time to set up a party. Well, we had allotted 2 hours, but we got there 30 minutes late because we had not anticipated the time it would take to get all the food packed into the car. Also, it was only me, Joel, Sharon and Jen setting up the hall. I had to figure out the layout of the tables (not knowing what I had to work with before hand), where the food / photo booth / presents / etc would be... Then I had to give instructions to Mr. Balloon-inflater Joel as to how I wanted the balloons to look. Luckily Sharon is a graphic designer as well, so I gave her free-range on how I wanted the animal window collage to look... her layout turned out even more awesome than I had envisioned! Jen heated up and set up all the food. I was left to set up the computer and printer for the photo booth, set up the speakers, and set up the tables. Can you say scatterbrained? Well, it all worked itself out. We had some early guests, but they helped us out too.

I collected a bunch of jungle-themed songs, as well as some dance tunes to play in the background during the party. I was hoping I could get more of the kids to start dancing, but it didn't work. D'oh!

I handed out party favors to the kids: I bought some animal crackers and cookies and placed a bag/box of cookies in a treat bag with either a plastic jungle animal head sippy cup or a jungle animal beach ball... both ordered from the great Oriental Trading Company. I had 20 bags total and ended up with 4 left over, which I saved to give to kiddos at Liam's GA birthday party. I was honestly afraid that I would not have enough to give out! Luckily some of the "kids" I offered them to were more mature than they looked because they declined the "juvenile" treat bags! haha

Things I would have done differently... Hired a photographer! I had no time to take pics. And Jen was too busy at the photo booth to go around and take party pics. I wanted nice pictures of the food setup, the table setups, the window mural, candid party guest pics, etc. You know, the details. Also, I forgot to set my camera's ISO back down to 400. For some reason, it was WAY up to 1600. I think I messed with it a couple days before and never turned it back down. So the photos that Jen took with my camera were all grainy. :( Of course that is just something that would bother my detail-oriented self. The photos that were printed look fine. What else...? I would have designed my own invitations, but I wouldn't have been able to use the awesomeness of eVite.com. Unfortunately they do not give you creative freedom to supply your own invitation design. You have to pick from the designs they have. Luckily I found a Jungle-ish type invitation. I collected photos from Liam's 1st year to play as a slideshow at the beginning of the party (to be played on my iMac), but it only played for maybe 15 minutes because we had to use the computer to print out the photo booth photos. Ah well.

So, that's the recap of the party. Someone at the party said I should go into party planning. Ummm...Hell no! haha Too much work man!!

SPECIAL THANK YOU SHOUTOUTS:
Mom - Preparing, buying the food
Auntie Letty - Buying the food, renting her church's banquet hall for us to use
Jen - Helping with making decorations, setting up food, making the smash cake, cutting the fruit for the fruit platters, taking and printing photo booth pics at the party
Sharon - Helping with the decorations, letting us use her art supplies, setting up for the party
Shonna - Letting us use the helium tank they didn't use for Scarlett's party
Joel - Blowing up the balloons for the table centerpieces and kids
Dad and Grandma - watching Liam while we were setting up
Everyone who stayed to the end of the party to help clean up the joint!
THANK YOU!!!!

I do want to design Liam's thank you cards. I'm really late on that, but hopefully I can mail them out before January 6th rolls around!