Ben’s Blog

Luke and Liam are generally well-behaved. Liam approaches angelic on most days. Luke is certainly no worse than your average two-year old.

Yesterday we all went to Memphis for a little shopping. Shortly after 7pm we had secured a table at the Outback Steakhouse in Cordova. Liam was sitting in his high chair, quietly munching on sweet potato puffs, his favorite. Luke had ants in his pants. He couldn’t be still. He would periodically disappear under the table and reappear on the other side or with one of the many toys Liam had dropped. Cassie and I were getting a bit frustrated with him.

Shortly, a little old lady walked by our table on her way out of the restaurant. Her table had been situated such that she couldn’t see Luke, just Liam. She stopped and said, “It’s such a pleasure to see a well-behaved child.” Luke had recently departed on one of his trips under the table. I smiled and said, “Thank you.” That could have been the end of the conservation, but Cassie just couldn’t help herself. She smiled and said, “We have a two year-old under the table.” Luckily the little old lady had a good sense of humor and found the situation hilarious.

Unfortunately for us, things went downhill from there. Liam was well past due for a nap. Luke had only managed a thirty minute nap, well short of his standard hour and a half. I’m glad the little old lady wasn’t there to see it.

As I mentioned, Luke turned two on June 1st. We had a birthday party for him here at our new house the previous Saturday. We had his party at my parent’s house in Belmont last year, but we wanted our Oxford friends to be able to come this year, so we had it here.

It was a Wiggles-themed party. (More on them later.) We had pizza, cake, and ice cream. (All the major food groups.) I think everyone had a good time.

The pictures I took at the party can be found here. I think I got some good ones. I hope you’ll take a minute to look at them. I wish I had thought to use my flash. It would have taken care of some of those dark shadows. You’ll notice a new playset in the pictures. I’ll do a separate post about it soon.

Liam will turn one on August 19th. We have absolutely no idea what kind of party we’ll have for him. He loves the Wiggles too, but we don’t want to be redundant.

I’ve been promising an update on Luke and Liam for a while now. Here goes:

Luke turned two years old on June 1st, and Liam will be 10 months old on the 19th. They are definitely big buddies. Yesterday afternoon Luke drove Liam around in his jeep for at least twenty minutes. Luke can get a little rough with Liam sometimes. The problem is that Liam thinks it’s funny, which means Luke doesn’t listen very well when we tell him to stop. He occasionally makes Liam cry, but it’s pretty rare. Liam favorite thing is to steal Luke’s pacifier. He thinks that’s hilarious, and so does Luke.

Luke is still tall for his age. He loves to run around and is getting skinny and muscular. He gets into everything like any two year-old. While his motor skills are ahead of schedule, his verbal skills are a little behind. We’re not too concerned, but we’re definitely keeping an eye on it. He picks up new words virtually every day, and can say a few short phrases. We’re hoping for more phrases soon. Some of his favorite words are: mommy, daddy, eat, yum, TV, DVDs, candy, “tar” (guitar), dog, and book. He can say a lot more, those are just the words he uses very regularly.

Liam just recently started crawling. It’s still the “army-style” crawl, where he’s mostly on his stomach, not up on his hands and knees. He pulls up on things occasionally, but it’s not a regular occurrence. He started saying “momma” a couple of weeks ago. He’s a very good little baby. The only time he seems to get upset is when he’s teething. He has four teeth and is working on a few more.

Luke still has a pacifier, though he uses it less than he used to. Our plan is to get them both off their pacifiers as soon as we get Liam off the bottle. There’s no use trying to take Luke’s pacifier away if Liam still has his.

Luke is definitely a “momma’s boy.” Under normal circumstances Cassie is the only person that can get him to sleep. If Cassie isn’t there when he wakes up, bad things happen. When Liam was born, Luke was already well-attached to Cassie, so I often got to deal with Liam. As a result, he is definitely a daddy’s boy. When I come home for lunch or after work I get a big grin (complete with dimples) and lots of arm flailing. Luckily, since he’s at home with Cassie all day, he isn’t quite as exclusive as Luke.

Naps are getting to be interesting. Luke is down to one a day, usually an hour and a half starting around 2:30pm. Yesterday, probably because our traveling has thrown his schedule off, he completely skipped his nap and went to bed early. Liam still takes three to four naps a day. He is getting to where it’s much harder to get him to sleep. Often, Luke will keep Liam awake or vice-versa. Lately, Cassie resorts to driving the boys around to get Liam and/or Luke to sleep at least once a day, usually more.

Yesterday Luke and Liam had a joint pediatrician’s appointment. He said both of them were doing great. He’s a little concerned about Liam’s continued spitting up, but said he’s growing well in spite of it. He’s on special (expensive) formula and Prevacid, but still spits up four or five times a day. Our pediatrician is going to speak to his partners and get back with us about a course of treatment. He wants us to hold off on moving him over to milk for now.

This post ended up being much longer than I meant for it to. I’ll try to post shorter, more frequent updates in the future, but it seems like I’ve said that before.