I’m a Dad

Liam’s First Birthday

Liam turned one last Friday. The most exciting thing for me was that he now gets to ride facing forward in his car seat. I was thinking he would be much happier being able to see us as we drove. Not the case. His first ride facing forward he had absolutely no expression. I turned around and smiled at him and asked him if he thought it was cool being able to see mommy and daddy rather than the sky out the rear window. He just stared at me. No smile, nothing. I looked back again a bit later and he was asleep. I think it might be dangerous having him facing forward, I keep wanting to turn around to look at him.

From the time we woke up Friday morning I was trying to teach Liam to hold up his index finger when I would ask him “How old are you?” He never quite got it though. I figure by the time he’s about two he’ll have it down pat.

He had a well baby appointment on his birthday. It was kind of a lame birthday because he got three shots. It’s hard to stand and watch when your child gets stuck with a needle and starts screaming. You’re torn between wanting to comfort your child and sock the nurse in the nose. Seriously though, I don’t think the nurse enjoyed it any more than we did. She was very nice and very apologetic, and I’m almost certain that Liam forgave her before we left, so I did too.

His birthday was Friday but we had a party for him in the park on Saturday. The party theme was “Veggie Tales”:http://www.bigidea.com/, at least that was the plan. Jen had a really cool idea of making a Bob the Tomato round cake and cupcakes with green frosting that would look like the French Peas. Well, in case you’re not a culinary expert, it turns out that it’s really quite difficult to make frosting a very dark color using food coloring. It takes about a gallon of red food color to get frosting the color of Bob the Tomato and when you use that much food coloring it changes the consistency of the frosting. So we had a big pink cake. Until Jen’s mom went to the supermarket and got some kind of cake spray paint. No, it’s real. It’s some kind of color spray that you spray on cakes. So we had a nice tomato-red cake that looked very much like Bob the Tomato. That brings up a whole different issue of kids eating cakes that look like their heroes. Bob was a carrot cake and all in all he tasted pretty darn good. (Sorry Bob)

Planning a birthday for a one year old is a fairly stressful ordeal. The only experience I can compare it to is planning a wedding. You have to think of a place and a time. If you do it outside you have to be very conscious of the weather. You have to buy and send invitations and hope that people will actually RSVP. You have to get table cloths and napkins and silverware and drinks and cake and ice cream. You’ll need chairs and tables, balloons and ribbons. You’ll make lists and lose them. You’ll have boxes and bags full of stuff you never would think you would need for a child’s birthday party. It is really and truly absolutely insane. And after all that planning, all that stress, the argument in front of a hundred people at the church rummage sale, after all that the child sleeps through the first half of his own party. On some blankets, under a tree, the child did not stir for over an hour. And now our already overcrowded house has a dozen more toys to contain.

To be honest, I’m not sure who the party is for. Liam not only slept through most of it, the part he was awake for he was grumpy and won’t remember when he grows up. I don’t know if the wife and I enjoyed it or not. I know we were running around even during the party and it was at least a hundred degrees Saturday. I brought the video camera and never got a chance to even get it out. I’m pretty sure Jen took some pictures with the digital camera. At least I hope she did. So was the party for the guests? I’m sure they would have been just as happy at home basking in the air-conditioning. For the 45 minutes I actually got to sit down, it was a nice gathering. Maybe we do it more because it’s tradition. Some day we can look back and laugh at all that went wrong. Not today, probably not tomorrow, but some day.

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Standing Tall

Liam started standing up last week. He’s been pulling up to things for a long time before he even started to crawl. What he did the other day was stand up while holding on to me (I was lying on my back in bed) and then suddenly he let go. He stood for about one second and then fell on his bottom. When I cheered and told him how good he did, I think I may have scared him a bit. He’s a trooper though and he got right back up.

Now what happens is that he will stand up and when he wobbles and falls we laugh and cheer and praise him and he thinks we’re laughing at the fall so he gets back up and immediately just throws himself down again and waits for us to cheer. So far I think the longest he has stayed up has been about 10 or 12 seconds.

He is also doing a lot of ‘cruising’ from furniture to other furniture or people or whatever is around that will support him. He’s having a great time and we’re really enjoying his curious nature and his boundless energy.

He’s going to start walking soon, and I think we’re going to be in trouble.

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First Haircut

Liam got his first haircut a couple of weeks ago. It’s amazing to look at pictures of before and after and compare how different he looks. He was really starting to look like quite the little ragamuffin. Now he looks like a little boy, practically all growed up. It’s a little sad. But he’s so darn cute, the sadness never lasts long.

I took along the old video camera figuring I’d get some good footage of him screaming and having a good old fashioned fit. Didn’t happen. He just sat there. The ‘stylist’ gave him a little basket of toys to play with and he amused himself, and us, by dropping them one by one to the floor and watching where they rolled to or landed. After the first basket was empty, she fetched him another and he joyfully proceeded to do the same thing. When we apologized for the mess he was making, she said she didn’t care if he emptied 10 boxes of toys if he was sitting so still the whole time. Turned out to be one of the most boring home videos ever.

For $25 we got the haircut, a nice little certificate telling his name and the date, a before picture, an after picture, and a small lock of his hair. I thought that was pretty pricey until the wife got her hair cut and highlighted last week and it cost $70. I like my nice dependable flat-top. $10 a pop, you just can’t beat it.

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High Five

It’s been so long since I’ve written anything, I get exhausted just considering it. That’s one reason it’s been a month and a half since I posted. At first it was because I was recovering from surgery, but then the time between posts became so huge, and the belief that I had to catch everyone up on everything that had happened since my last post became so intimidating, I did the writer’s equivalent of running and burying my head in the sand – I pretended this journal didn’t exist. Well, I’m done with that. I’m recovering very nicely from my back surgery so I can tolerate sitting in this chair long enough to bang out and entry every now and again. This chair is not good for my back, though, so I am in the market for a good, ergonomic computer chair.

Liam has been changing so much I don’t even know where to start. The most exciting thing is that he finally started crawling. I don’t remember the exact date, but I do know it was a Tuesday. He was lying on his tummy crying because no one was picking him up. I kept coaxing him to come to me and he eventually took a couple of tentative “steps.” He cried through the entire ordeal. He would take a couple of those “steps” and then fall on his tummy and cry. For the first couple of weeks of his new mobility his only destination was myself or his mom – he didn’t have any interest in crawling to his toys or exploring the house. All that has changed. Now he’s everywhere. It’s when you don’t hear any noises that you start to wonder what he’s into. His newest nickname (he has dozens) is Mr. Mischievous. Jen came into the living room one day to find him with her purse emptied, her wallet open, and her cards and money strewn about.

Liam gives “smoochies” instead of kisses. He just started responding to high fives a week or so ago. I say, “High five, buddy!” and put my hand up. Sometimes he touches my hand with an index finger, sometimes he actually slaps at my hand. He is a blast.

I never imagined having a child would be so amusing and fun. I love seeing him find something for the first time. The he looks at it, tentatively touches it, and then eventually feels it with his mouth. He was licking the sliding glass door yesterday. I guess it’s time to start making sure things are clean.

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Back from Surgery

I finally had my back surgery on May 7, and came home May 12. I still haven’t been terribly motivated to use the PC much. I’m in bed a lot of the time and trying to use the laptop is somewhat complicated and uncomfortable. I’m not yet able to sit long enough to use the desktop, plus it’s difficult to get into a chair. My surgery included three incisions: one across my abdomen where they went in to remove the bad disk, on in my him where they did a bone graft, and one (two small ones actually) in my lower back where they went in to add the bone screws to imobilize my spine to allow the fusion to fuse. Fun stuff. Recovery period is six to eight weeks, during which time I’ll be doing aqua therapy, physical therapy and walking up to five miles every day. I’ll probably be in the best shape I’ve ever been once it’s all finished.

Found out this past Saturday that I have pneumonia and I haven’t been terribly motivated to even turn on the pc. I’m feeling much better now, though, so I’ll try to start posting more regularly.

Liam has changed a lot since I posted last, I’ll need to write up a post all about him soon.

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If You’re Happy and You Know it

Liam has started clapping his hands recently. It’s so funny because he gets a big smile on his face when he does it, like he’s really happy about something. When he does something and I clap and cheer at him, he will just stare at my hands as I clap and then he will do it too.

He had his first experience with snow a couple of weekends ago when we went to Markleevile, which is near Lake Tahoe. I had him outside while it was snowing and his hood came off of his head and the flakes were landing on him and melting and he was just kind of looking around and smiling. I wonder if the sensation of the landing snowflakes was interesting to him. I picked up a handful of snow and held it for him to touch it. He tentatively put a finger on it and then pulled it back and wasn’t too interested in having anything more to do with it. I tried to get him to look up into the sky to see all the falling flakes, but when I would point he would just stare at my finger. We got some pretty good pictures of the snow. As soon as I get them resized I’ll post them in the “Photo Gallery”:http://www.aaronjen.org/gallery/

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Ear Infection

Finally heard back from the wife. Liam has an ear infection and he’s back on the Amoxicillin. Poor little guy. Then again, when I heard him in the background on the telephone, he sounded like he was having a grand old time. At what age do kids start faking sickness? If he’s anything like his mom, he’ll be a sneaky, devious boy who will get away with everything because of his cuteness.

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House of Sickness

Everyone at our house is sick. Except me. Jen found out Monday that she has pneumonia. It’s rather strange because she doesn’t feel sick, other than a nasty cough.

Liam is going to the doctor this morning, a week ahead of his regularly scheduled check up. He always seems to get sick and need to go in just about a week early. He had a fever this morning, has had a runny nose for several days, and is starting to cough more and more. Jen said he drank a bottle this morning and immediately threw up what seemed like all of what he had just drunk. She said she’d never seen him throw up like that before.

He should be at his appointment now. I’ll post again when I hear what the doc says.

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New Photos… Finally

I finally uploaded the pictures I’ve been promising for the last couple of months. There are about 50 new picutures in 5 albums. The new albums are 14 – 18. Enjoy! “Photo Gallery”:http://www.aaronjen.org/gallery/babyliam/

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Catching Up

I’m ashamed that I’ve only been writing about one post a week. That’s just not acceptable. I promise to do better. I know I’ve been promising new pictures for months now and I haven’t delivered on that promise. I will, though… I promise.

Liam has teeth now, two of them, and this has made me afraid to put my fingers anywhere near his mouth. Not that he would bite me on purpose. He would hurt me without realizing it, and his lack of understanding is what makes it such a scary thing. That unpredictability is, well, it’s just pretty darn unpredictable.

He just recently learn about throwing. It’s developmental milestone when babies learn how to let go of things at will like that. When I first noticed it, I though he was trying to pick something up and because he was so excited his jerky movements were causing him to lose his grip. When he kept picking the thing up (it was a rattle) and throwing it down and picking it up and throwing it down over and over and over, I finally realized he was doing it on purpose. I thought it was pretty funny. Luckily he was sitting on the floor and he could retrieve his own thrown object, because the baby-throw/daddy-pickup game I do not find particularly fun. However, now that I realize it’s part of his learning about cause and effect, I will be more understanding.

He likes to bounce. When I get home he will give me his big “Daddy’s Home!” smile and bounce and nod his head emphatically – like some kind of crazy future head-banger. If I get down and put my forehead against his, he will bang his head into mine – it’s kind of a sick, painful game we play.

He is incredibly ticklish on his ribs. If I zerbit him there, he laughs uncontrollably. It’s really very funny. His feet are also ticklish and chewing his feet also makes him laugh. Zerbit: that’s a reverse kiss – you know when you pucker your lips and blow so that it makes a raspberry (aka “Bronx cheer”:http://www.onelook.com/?w=bronx%20cheer) sound.

He’s not real fond of being on his tummy, and that’s probably part of the reason he’s not crawling yet. He starts to fuss and cry and we pick him up. Sometimes, though, we do let him deal with it – he does need to learn to crawl. He scoots backward pretty well, it’s forward he has trouble with. He gets up on his knees, he just hasn’t figured out the forward movement. I tried helping him last night. I’d put him on his knees and move his legs forward. Of course, he wouldn’t move his hands and he would fall on his face. He thought it was great fun – I don’t think he learned anything.

Jen took some really cute pictures yesterday of Liam and his cousin Myles. Myles is about a year and a half old. In these pictures, Myles is not smiling, not even a little, but Liam has the biggest, goofiest open mouth grin I’ve ever seen. I made that picture my desktop background (saying desktop wallpaper just doesn’t make sense) and every time I see it I just start laughing. I’ll try to get it posted tonight. No, I’ll do better than try – I’ll *do* it. I promise.

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