Liam 10 months Old

 He *loves* cheese. He'll eat an entire string cheese and still want more. He also likes yogurt. Most other foods he'll try a bite or two of but then loses interest. He still nurses every 2 hours during the night but last night Lamoni was able to get him back asleep at 1 am (after I nursed him at 11 pm) and he slept all the way til 4 am!! I should feel great today, except that when I fed him at 4 my body thought it was time to be wide awake since I had so many hours of sleep in a row! So I couldn't fall back asleep til 5:30. 😏 I'm hopeful that we'll see progress with his sleeping now though. 

When Peter was a baby and slept like a dream, I remember reading a blog post from when Benjamin was a baby that said I hasn't slept more than 4 hours in a row by the time he was 10 months old. I was so judgmental of my myself thinking, "why did I let it get that bad?? Why didn't I do something about it?" Well here we are with Benjamin's mini-me. I would be thrilled with 3 hours of sleep... I can't imagine 4!! And nothing works. Nothing. We can let him cry for hours and when he finally goes to sleep he'll wake up 20 minutes later. He also won't take a bottle. Here's a typical night for Liam: 

7-8 pm Put him to bed (he goes down just fine)

10:30 wake up to nurse. If I don't nurse him then he'll scream bloody murder till he eventually falls asleep an hour or two later but then he'll wake up 20 minutes later screaming.

12 a.m. Give up on trying to get him to sleep without nursing. Get up to nurse. I still haven't gone to sleep yet. 

2 a.m. Wakes up again to nurse. Repeat above unless I nurse him. I usually just bring him to bed with me at this point so we're not up til 4 with him screaming. 

6 a.m. Lamoni's alarm goes off so I nurse the baby again then put him in his crib. 

7:30 a.m. Wakes up to nurse then is up. 

It's a vicious cycle. Sometimes I get hopeful that we're making progress, though. Teething doesn't help.

Anyway, besides getting lots of opportunities to practice being nice when I'm tired, things are going well. 3 kids is definitely harder than 2, though. 

Since Liam is so similar to Benjamin and Benjamin said "Jesus" when he was 10 months old, we all went on a quest to teach Liam how to say Jesus too. Well, we did it!! It's adorable. He loves the pictures of Jesus we have the wall and says "Zhee zhus". He always says it in a strong whisper (he loves speaking in a whisper) and raises his hand to the sky everytime when he says it. It's adorable. It's like his own special baby sign of Jesus.

He started doing more baby signs and love to wave goodbye. He babbles a lot in conversation with us and mimics sounds and movements we make. He's a little observing parrot and is learning so much! He is always moving and investigating. He knows every single cupboard that does not have a baby lock on it and screams in protest when a door is closed in front of him.

Lake Winnie

 We were so happy that Lake Winnie happened this year. It was our first trip not to be canceled. We also got colds shortly before, and we knew we couldn't go sick but luckily we got better just in time. Grammy is high risk but she still came! Joseph is the only one who wasn't able to come. It was such a nice break to get out of town. Charity and Jarrett were able to borrow his parents' RV and invited us to ride with them which was really nice since Liam is not a happy car baby. We attribute that to the lack of road trips since they were all canceled, so he never got practice!

I think the kids probably watched 10 movies on the way there. It's a 24 hour drive. We had them take occasional breaks from the TV...

A rare nap. I thought I'd get past my anxiety in the RV but nope, it stayed the whole time!

This is on the way back. We stopped at Culver's for dinner since we were too far from a Brahms.

All the kids wanted to hold Liam.

On the dirt road just coming to the resort it's a tradition to let the kids drive.

I was looking for the boys one day and walked into the bar and found this! They had all begged Shirley Temples from the bartender and she had caved. There wasn't a single other person in the bar haha.

Peter was overly tired most of the time from the late nights.

It was cold and stormy a bunch of the days, but we still had fun!

We caught some sweet fish! I went on my obligatory sunny fishing trip and casted for Northern Pike for awhile and caught this huge bass!

One of the great aunts came one of the days and brought a great-horned owl, falcon and hawk. Benjamin was in heaven. He LOVES falcons and hawks, and went to a summer camp this year all about them. She stayed all day and did presentations on them outside our cabin. I don't think Benjamin missed many of them.

It was so nice having so many hands to hold the baby. 

Peter literally swam every single day (actually, the last couple days were too cold so he didn't then). It was his favorite thing to do. One day he was at the pool from 10 a.m. til 4 p.m. and only got out when I forced him to have lunch. He had so. much. fun. His swimming actually regressed because I made him wear a life jacket when I wasn't in the pool with him, which was 75% of the time. It's too easy to get caught up in a conversation and not watch him and he's a little daredevil.

He also enjoyed the beach.

We shared a cabin with Charity and Jarrett and it because a fun hangout spot for the kids to have ice cream and watch a movie.

Michael challenging the kids to foosball in the lodge.

Venturing into the lake. 

We barely ever saw Benjamin. He was in cousin heaven. 

Grace was in charge of the daily kid activities (she works there now).

On the way home. It was ridiculously long. I honestly don't know how we survived it. There were some tired fussy kids!!

I know I have more pictures than these, so I'll add to it later.

August 2020

 Liam is crawling and cruising! I think he'll be walking any day. He cruises the entire house by holding on to the walls. He can get into anything and finds great satisfaction in dumping things! He can pull himself up and is trying to figure out how to open up cupboards. He did his first sign last week. "All done" He "says" it too and it's adorable. He seems intrigued by other signs but hasn't tried them on his own yet. He loves giving kisses and has recently been very attached to me and cautious of others, although they can easily distract him. Oh, and he also figured out how to pull my phone charger out of the socket so he can suck on it! He has his 2 bottom teeth and 3 more teeth are on the verge of coming through. We went to Minnesota last week and any progress we made with his sleep is now gone. His naps during the day are great, but he only sleeps an hour or so at night at a time. He prefers to sleep-nurse all night. I don't prefer that. ;-) I remember when I had Peter, who was a great sleeper, looking back a blog post that said I hadn't slept more than 4 hours at a time when Benjamin was 10 months old. I was so critical of myself, wondering why I let him get that far without doing something about it. Well, here we are again. Liam turned 9 months old yesterday and I haven't slept longer than 4 hours. In fact, if I even get a 3 hour chunk I'm really excited!

Benjamin learned how to change wet diapers and can change the baby's clothes. Having a 6 year old with a baby is a game changer.

Benjamin and Peter discovered the "Blue" song, and then dressed Peter up to match.

This is the day we got back from Lake Winnie.

Lamoni has been working Wednesdays from home.

I finished teaching a lesson and came into the kitchen to see this setup - Benjamin practicing typing, and the baby having a snack.

Hanging out in the car while we refinanced our house (and got 2.5% interest rate!)

Benjamin has been very interested in earning money for a costume. He works for my mom cleaning her house and helping with her business. His first goal was to earn money for Lake Winnie, but when he found out they weren't selling ice cream cones because of Covid, he changed his goal. It's October now, and he still hasn't spent any money because he keeps changing his goal.

The school cupboard is Liam's favorite mess-making location.

Benjamin is in a ninja stage. Each day he looks like a different ninja.

We kept doing school all summer because there was no reason not to. This is what our mornings look like after breakfast. Peter has enjoyed doing his pre-k work too.

"Look how tall I am!"

Liam isn't a big fan of the Ergo, but it has saved us a few times, especially while we're out. My hips were too messed up from his delivery to wear it for a few months but after numerous trips to the chiropractor they're mostly better now.

We are doing a primary activity of building a house out of cards then blowing on it, then building a house out of legos to show how important a strong foundation is. Instead of blowing on the blocks we unleashed Liam on them to see how strong they really were.

He's still the blue man in the song.

At our home school group

The moms in our homeschool group arranged someone to teach us flower arranging. Here's my creation.