A Week Of Firsts

This past week was a lot of fun for us. First, my mom came for a week-long visit. It was so nice to have her around. Of course it was great to have her here for all the help she offered, but it was also great to see Liam with is other grandma! Liam sure must've been excited to see her, because he decided to unveil two "firsts" for her. For a while now, Liam has been SO close to rolling over from his back to his belly. On Monday, my mom was able to be the first to witness a successful roll over from back to belly! She yelled for me, and I quickly joined her and Liam, and he rolled over again for me. By Tuesday he was an old pro! He loves rolling over! He gets a huge smile on his face and plays on his belly for a long time. The second "first" was that Liam is now finding his toes and playing with them. He hasn't started sucking on them... yet :) 

  

We also decided to take Liam to the pool for the first time. (There are pictures up on the smugmug site). He really enjoyed himself! We went late in the evening so that it wasn't too hot (its been consistently about mid-90s here for a while). He probably thought he was just in a big bath tub cause thats how warm the water was! We took turns helping him float/swim, and he also enjoyed sitting in his floatie. Grandma enjoyed getting to play with him in the pool. We stayed for about an hour and afterwards Liam was all tuckered out!

  Its been amazing to see Liam's growth and development even in just the last week or so. He's now mastered the rolling over, and he's definately not there yet- but he's looking like he's wanting to crawl. He can get up on his hands momentarily, and today Shawn found him in the crib on his tummy with his knees brought up all the way underneath him. He also enjoying kicking his legs a lot. These things are all new within the last week! Its so exciting to see him getting so much stronger. 

  Next up for us, in this busy summer, is a trip to Indianapolis next week. We're very excited about this! Liam will get to meet his Uncle Joel and Aunt Tiffany, his great-grandma and great-grandpa Hunt, and great-grandpa Rapp all for the first time. We're also so excited for him to meet Kristen and Jonathan (our best friends from college), and for all of us to meet their son Ethan. As some of you may know, Ethan was born in December and was over three months premature. It was so hard for me not to be able to be there for them in that hard time or get to meet Ethan. Well, now he's doing great and we couldn't be more excited to finally get to meet him! We also get to meet Abby, who is my friend and old college roommate Michele's daughter. She is about a month younger than Liam. We also get to see a whole lot of friends from high school/college/church. We're really excited! 

First Trip to Erie

  Well this week we made our first roadtrip to Erie. We left Monday morning with Liam and the two dogs in tow and drove all day. The trip went fairly well, and we arrived in Erie around 8pm. On Tuesday Liam was able to meet his great-grandma Dorses. We enjoyed the beautiful day with a ride down to the Pennisula and dinner at Sara's, a 5o's style diner. After dinner Shawn and Pam rode motorcyles around the Penninsula. We spent the rest of the evening enjoying the outdoors, sitting on the back porch. 

  On Wednesday evening John and Pam had an open house for friends and family to come and meet Liam. The party was great, and it was really nice to see so many familiar faces and family members. Liam got to meet his great-grandma and great-grandpa Mayle, along with great-aunts and uncles and a lot of other people, that quite frankly, I'm not sure what the proper titles are for how they are related :) Liam did pretty well with the party, although it was a lot of stimulation for him. By the time the party was over, he let us know he had had more than enough! (by screaming, screaming, and some more screaming).

  Our short trip came to an end with us leaving Thursday night. We tried something new with Liam and decided to drive through the night. Although it didn't go quite as well as we had hoped, it still worked out. Enjoy the pictures from the trip on the smugmug site!

Grandma and Grandpa Rapp

Liam enjoyed another visit from family this week. Grandma and Grandpa Rapp came down from Indiana to visit for a few days. They sure did enjoy their time with Liam! They kept saying how good of a boy he is (which is the truth, we're so lucky!) They enjoyed helping take care of him. Grandma and grandpa both helped feed him his bottles, play with him, and hold him.

The weather has been rainy for a couple weeks now, so we couldn't get out and enjoy the outdoors too much. We did get to enjoy an evening of shopping and a great dinner out on Memorial Day though. We also were able to get out and take a nice long walk with the entire family and the dogs Tuesday evening. Liam received some more gifts from grandma and grandpa- more clothes, sandles, and a book. I think Liam has more clothes than Shawn and I combined! He's one well dressed boy! He's also one growing boy! He has been eating like a champ, and I can tell he's gaining weight. He's starting to fill out quite quickly. Although, I do think he is still on the thinner side for a baby (he doesn't have the roles anywhere). 

Well, my parents left this afternoon, and Uncle Curt and Aunt Melissa will be in town for a wedding this weekend and will get to see him! We're so happy to be spending time with family!

 

Mimi is in town!

Well Mimi (Shawn's mom) came into town last Wednesday. She came to see Liam- oh wait I mean "all of us" haha. Liam and Mimi are having a blast with each other. Mimi has been helping feed him, change him, and bathe him. They're also reading and playing together too. Its certainly been heaven for Mimi to get to spend all this time with Liam. She also brought Liam a lot of new clothes, which we all love. 

Its been so nice to have family around (and not just because of the extra help). We really enjoying Liam being able to spend time with family because we don't live around any, so its special when he gets to. Mimi leaves on Wednesday and then my parents come into town Saturday. Then next Friday, my oldest brother Curt and his wife Melissa will be in town for a wedding and will get to visit with Liam as well! We will for sure be visiting Erie in June, and we're really excited about the trip!

Three Months Old

Its hard to believe, but Liam is now three months old! He really seems to be growing and changing so much. This month we are going to have visits from Shawn's mom, my parents, and my brother and sister-in-law, and we can't wait. We're excited for them to get to see him and how much he's changed. We're also planning a trip home to PA in June and to Indy in July! We're hoping our plans work out! 

 

Liam is doing pretty well. He's been a bit more fussy than usual... we're suspecting he may be teething already. I guess we'll keep you posted on that. He's still becoming more and more interactive. He loves to smile and "talk" to people. He's discovering how to make new noises with that mouth of his. Its quite fun. Since Liam is now holding his head up quite well on his own, we got out his jumperoo for him to play in. He's still a little small for it, but he seems to enjoy it well enough. I think as he gets bigger he'll like it even more. I added more photos to the smugmug site... enjoy!

A Day in the Life of Liam

 Well another week has gone by and really not too much has changed. Liam continues to do very well. He's sleeping through the night about once or twice a week, and by through the night I mean from 10pm - 6 or 7am! We are blessed! The other nights he sleeps from 10pm - 8am but always wakes up around 5am to eat. We're trying to teach him to go back to sleep on his own, so we'll let him cry. Unfortunately, he never stops on his own. We'll let him go for about 20-30 minutes, and then I'll go feed him. But we're still very pleased he does so well.

  We've really gotten into a pretty good routine with Liam. It really does feel like normal life finally. Liam likes to get up around 8 or so and he eats. Then we let him "play" for as long as he likes. He likes to play the most in the mornings. To play we set up his play gym and tummy time mat. We'll have him do some tummy time- which is just spending time on his belly so that his neck and various other muscles strengthen. He really doesn't like this much. He'll do well for about 5 minutes max and then SCREAM! He likes to lay on his play gym and swing at the hanging toys. He's getting more coordinated and hits them a lot now. He's also starting to open his hands more and intentially grasp onto things. He also likes to sit up on the couch. Usually we prop him up between cushons so that they hold him up, but sometimes we sit him up so that he has to hold himself up. He can do this for a short period of time, but he's still not quite ready to sit up on his own. After he tells us he's done playing (by screaming of coarse) we usually put him in the swing for a nap. And generally speaking the rest of the day is a rotation of diaper changing, eating, playing, and napping. He eats about every 3-4 hours. I'm still breastfeeding him, which is still going great. At night he gets a bath (which he loves), one final feeding, and goes to sleep quite easily around 10pm. Its wonderful.

    I added some more pictures to the April 2009 album on the smugmug site. Enjoy! Oh, and we will eventually post more videos. They just take a whole lot more time to do. Shawn is recovering this week from a root canal on Monday. Perhaps next week? We'll see!

Ten weeks old

Shawn taught me (Angie) how to update the blog, so hopefully between the two of us we'll update it more often. Well Liam is doing great. Monday he turned 10 weeks old! It's so hard to believe. Time really does fly by. 

This past weekend was the first Saturday that Liam was with the babysitter. All went very well. She sent home a little "report card" of what he did for the night. Jenny (the babysitter) has two kids, Joshua- 3 and Emma- 15 months. Evidentally Liam loved to sit in the bouncy seat and watch the kids play. He did great with the bottle (which is sometimes a struggle) and he slept 8 hours straight for her! She said he  was such a joy (which is no suprise to me). Shawn and I had good nights at work, but weekends are going to be very tiring now for the both of us. But we're happy to do it so we can have more time together and more time with Liam. 

Today, I went crazy with the camera and took a bunch of photos of Liam (hey I'm a new mom, what do you expect!). I added them to the gallery. Today I decided to sit Liam up on the couch and see how he liked it. He really did! In fact, he started kicking his legs around and "found his feet". He would just sit and stare at them as he kicked his legs- almost like "Wow, look what I can do!" He is a wonderful little guy and we couldn't love him any more!