They grow up so fast

Liam has decided that he can read books to himself. He will say "I'm gonna read books" and go to his room and sit in his blue chair with a book. It is the cutest thing because you can hear him "reading" outloud to himself. He has such a good memory that he can remember lots of words and phrases that are from the books we read often. Some he even knows by heart and if you didn't know he was just reciting from memory you would think that he was actually reading! Yesterday, Dane told me that he walked into the living room and Liam was reading The Very Hungry Catapiller to Gavin.

It is fun to catch these moments when he doesn't know we are watching

For the last almost 8 months, Gavin has laid in his crib staring at this fish mobile above his crib. Last weekend, Dane and I lowered the level of Gavin's crib now that he is semi-mobile. I figured that since he will be pulling up soon, we should take off his mobile permanently as well. I set it on the floor while we were putting the crib back together and he scooted right over there and was enamored with this mobile. I guess to finally be able to touch something that you have spent a lot of time looking at would be a big deal. It was pretty funny to see his reaction.

These next two pictures are just of Gavin. Although his expressions show how animated he is these days, what you don't see is that Dane is playing hide and seek with him from the wall behind where Gavin is sitting. Dane would crawl around the doorway and Gavin would go nuts. Then as soon as Dane would be out of sight, Gavin would bend in half to look for him.

Found you Daddy!

Pool Days

With Labor Day approaching, Dane and I have been trying to get the boys to the pool as much as possible. Here are some pictures that I took from last weekend of us at the pool.

Liam ready to jump in

"Digging" in the fountain with his shovel

My little fish

Bargain Shopping

I went shopping today with my friend Valerie and her daughter. The outdoor pedestrian shopping area (known as town center) was having a sidewalk sale. We went to Restoration Hardware... I could have gone crazy there. They had all of these pillow covers on sale.  We are getting a large leather ottoman delivered next month and I thought that I could give the couch a makeover with some new pillows. This post is really for my mom to see...but I am proud to say that I did get the pillows for $7 each! That is practically free from that store. If money was no object, I would have an extremely well decorated house. Interior design is my secret passion.
Unrelated to pillows, my dad had his hip replaced yesterday and is doing great! Lots of people knew it was scheduled and have been asking for an update. He is on the orthopedic floor at St. John's now and got up and walked several times today. He is quite the trooper and we are all relieved that it went so well. He will be back to running marathons is no time :)

Dancing with the Stars

Who needs to watch TV when Liam and Gavin perform 24/7? Since the addition of Apple TV into our home (thanks to Dane's uncle Richard) there is much more music dancing in our living room. We can play children's music while all of our pictures from our computer scrolls over the television screen. Here are some pictures of the little men dancing to Rhino Tap. 

Baby Fat

While I have been going to the gym almost daily in attempt to lose the baby fat, Gavin is increasingly earning his. I couldn't resist the near naked pictures. He might hate me someday for pulling out these pictures to show a future girlfriend, but who doesn't want to squeeze those rolls?

                                                            My happy Gerber Baby!!!

                                            Big brother Liam playing with Gavin.

Say it ain't so

Well, I begrudgingly admit that tomorrow is my first day of school. The positive is that it is the last time that I will ever say that! This is the last of a long four year haul. I know I will be so excited to be done and that all of the stress and juggling of life will have been worth it, but it is hard to know that I have to increase daycare for Liam and Gavin just to finish school. 

Liam was almost 17 months before he was ever in daycare, so I feel extreme guilt knowing that Gavin will be spending three days a week with someone else. He started going one day a week at the end of July and is doing well. The caregivers tell us how happy he is and how he is really trying to become more mobile. Within the next couple of weeks once clinicals start, we will transition both of them to three days a week. 

I don't worry so much about Liam anymore as he seems to have really taken to "school". He has lots of friends and he likes his teachers. We always get good reports from the women who tell us frequently how sweet and kind he is. He is nice to the other kids and my favorite part is that now he can talk well enough to tell me things that happen at daycare. Liam will talk about the activities they did that day, and more comically, he will tell on the "naughty kids".  He will tell me who bit someone, hit someone and who was in time out. Occassionally I will ask if he has ever been to time out and his response is, "Oh, no mommy, I not go to time out!" 

I know that daycare has become a part of life for most families and I am trying to accept that it is now part of ours. Dane and I make lots of choices about how to spend our time, and although we are committed to our careers, family comes first. I just think that finishing school will be the best thing for us as far as job opportunities, flexibility and more money (hopefully) so we need to just get through it day by day until May! But alas, I am mourning the end of summer vacation!

Gavin Checks in on the State of the World

We all probably remember the pictures of Liam "reading" newspapers (I'm still trying to track down the picture to post). Well, now Gavin is following in his brother's stead, updating his daddy on the Russia-Georgia conflict and the latest moves in the market.

Our Backyardigans

With the mild August weather, we have been spending a lot of time in the backyard with the boys. Gavin is evidently our budding soccer player (although Liam has unbelievably coordination in kicking a ball), and Liam is apparently headed for a career in landscaping.

A Boy and his Trains

Liam loves trains. He is obsessed with them actually. His daddy loves to build track configurations for Liam, even though "Liam-zilla" usually makes an appearance to (accidentally) destroy portions of the new track set-up. But we love it. Just in the last year, we have amassed quite a collection of track and engines, as you can see from these pictures. 

Like anything, Liam's interest in his train table waxes and wanes--we are currently in the midst of a particularly obsessive period during which all he wants to do is play trains. We can tell his imagination just keeps getting more expansive and more vivid. He puts twelve trains together at once and attempts to lead them around and through the various parts of the track. Almost unbelievably, he knows the names of all his trains without hesitation--we even have to read the name sometimes to remember ourselves! And we know, in a year or so, Gavin will also love to play with all these trains. He has also quickly learned the magnetic attraction between trains, turning trains around to get the magnetism right. (Physicist!)

His trains also bring out the eloquence in Liam. Our favorites: "The train chugging along on the track." "I need to go upstairs and play trains." "Should I play trains with [wif] you?" "Oh, excuse me, Daddy." (When he is circling the table and needs to get by.) "Cool track, Daddy." "I got fix track." "Choo choo choo choo. All aboard!"

It's impossible, of course, to convey the funny inflections in his voice as he says these: the pauses, the high voice, the cute mispronunciations. "Skar-WO-ey." (For Skarloey, one of his current favorites.)

So now allow me to wax poetic (again). What did children do before trains? Trains have only been around for less than two hundred years, and their period of dominance was, in historical perspective, quite brief. Yet children absolutely love them. What did children in the 1600s and 1700s do? (One answer, of course, is that life was short so there wasn't really "childhood" in the sense we know it today--young people went to work on the family farm or in the family craft shop.)

And is there something about trains (and trucks) that innately appeals to children's brains? Or something wired into our brains that is attracted to them? Is this an example of one level of evolution and its recursive relationship with technology and economic progress?

When the moment is right...

I love pictures. Anyone who knows me will tell you that fact. I always have the camera handy in hopes of catching a cute moment with the boys. They grow up too fast to not give it my best shot. I work with a nurse (Josie!) who shares a mutual love of photography and also has two children. She warned me (before Gavin was born) that taking pictures of two children together is nearly impossible. One will inevitably close their eyes, fall over or cry. 

I now know what she means. Especially now that Gavin is rolling around and scooting, it is nearly impossible to get a good picture of Liam and Gavin together. In the age of digital I have the opportunity to take countless pictures in hopes of getting one that is decent. But sometimes the moment is just right. This morning, after Dane and I got the boys dressed, Liam and Gavin were both in playful happy moods. All of the stars were aligned and I got some great pictures. If only I could learn to photoshop a nicer background...we could skip the professionals!

A Boy and his Puppy Dog

Monona provides an endless source of fascination for Gavin as well as a motivation to crawl. We always thought that one of Liam's big motivations for wanting to become mobile was to reach Monona, and that's also proving true with Gavin. Liam loves Monona, too, and is always trying to play with her or give her kisses or feed her from the table.

The boys playing on a Saturday

The Rugby Gap

Gavin lobbies for more rugby in the United States (thank you Colleen and Eileen!).

The Tech Gap

It's funny, and a bit disorienting, to think about technological and economic change over time, rather than at fixed moments. Consider this: when Katie and I were toddlers, there were no cellphones (or possibly, at least, the only non-landline phones that existed were lumbering car phones), and while the personal computer had been developed, they were quite sparse and decidedly second-tier behind big mainframe computers. (Apple and Microsoft were still in their corporate  childhoods at the time.)

Now, our two-year-old, Liam, takes my cell phone (tiny compared to its predecessors) and pretends that it is a computer. Let me repeat: a two year old pretends that one technology is another technology, neither of which existed or were widespread when his parents were two! And Michelle Obama thinks this country is getting worse . . . 

Meanwhile, Liam became frustrated the other night when our Skype connection with Gram and Poppo was not good and we resorted to talking to them on our landline. Again, let me repeat: a two-year-old was frustrated that our web-based video phone was not working and refused to talk on the "ancient" technology of the telephone. 

So imagine what technological and economic change will occur in the next two decades of Liam and Gavin's lives: we can't even fathom it, really. And, as an aside, imagine the different wiring of their brains this will result in--in a good way. They will be x orders of magnitude smarter and cognitively advanced than their parents.

Days with Daddy Dane

Since Katie worked yesterday (Thursday) and is working tomorrow, I've had a lot of time with the boys before I leave for Skaneateles on Monday. Yesterday, I took Liam and Gavin in the double jogging stroller down to the Tomahawk Creek Trail with Monona. After heavy rains the day before, the trail was extremely muddy. If you ask Liam what we'll look for on our walks, he'll name several creatures: hawks, cardinals (recently spoken as 'cardinal birds'), owls, ducks, baby geese, chipmunks, and, lately, snakes, after a sighting along the creek. Liam has always loved walks and now enjoys them even more with all the things we can see along the trail. Gavin has quickly taken to them as well and just stares at the flora and fauna.

After our walk, I took the boys to the Farmstead, an Overland Park recreational area with walking paths and, well, farm animals. There are goats, rabbits, chickens, geese, ducks, goats, horses, a red-tailed hawk, an owl, a bald eagle, goats, bobcats, a single bison, goats, a solitary Texas longhorn, and goats. (There are a lot of goats. This is the very place where Liam had part of his pinky torn off by a goat. Perhaps the preponderance of goats at the Farmstead creates some sort of aggression: it's basically a goat farm with a playground and some other animals. Rest assured: Liam seems to have forgotten the trauma of the goat bite.) 

Liam loves the Farmstead and gets excited for every single animal and plant and slide. He's getting adventurous on playgrounds and climbs around them heedless of whether a parent is with him or not. His height threshold for slides also seems to keep increasing.

After the Farmstead, we went to our grocery store, Hen House. By now, saying "grocery store" to Liam has become code for "doughnut." (Courtesy of third grandmother, Aunt Lynnie.)

After lunch and naps, I took Liam and Gavin to the pool at "the J," the Jewish Community Center. Both boys love the pool. Gavin will sit and stand in the water and experiment with the size of splashes his hands make. He is also completely fascinated (or perplexed, or both) by the ten-foot buckets that continuously fill up and dump water on unsuspecting swimmers. We think Gavin will be our water boy: he will kick and kick when you hold him out in the water and simply loves to be in water. Liam is becoming increasingly bold in the pool: he will venture into the water until it is up to his neck, and only then will he reach out and grab your hand. Yesterday, he was up to his shoulders, and jumped up, but pulled up his knees so he executed a completely submersed landing. He was under for about a second and a half before I pulled him up, yet he simply blew water off his mouth and continued swimming as if nothing had happened.

It was a fantastic day and I look forward to tomorrow.