Small roles with big impressions

Disney movies are great. There is usually a fun character who is the hero of the story that everyone likes such as:

Remy, the rat from Ratatouille.

Liam likes Remy and for awhile we would watch quite a bit of Ratatouille, in chunks of time. But recently Liam was looking through his movies and brought us this one with great interest. Thinking that he wanted to watch it I asked if he wanted me to put it in. He suddenly became very anxious and kept saying "No, pow, pow! I don't like it." Well, it took us a few minutes to figure this one out but than we realized that this part:

In the very beginning, where the old lady wakes up to discover she has two mice running around her kitchen and pulls out a rifle to kill them. Yeah, apparently that part has left quite the impression on Liam. We have assured him that we can fast forward through that part to get to the rest of the movie, which is not so "cary". 

But for now he wants nothing to do with Remy or Linguini. I guess he's not quite ready for The Godfather yet.

Howdy

BIG BOY BED

Well, I know I said that I wouldn't be moving Liam out of his crib anytime soon but with one month of potty training under our belt I thought it was time. He never did try to climb out of his crib but he is getting heavier and heavier to lift and I just thought it would be easier for everybody. 

The morning that I was considering converting his crib into his toddler bed I asked Liam if he wanted to say goodbye to his crib and get a new big boy bed. He very enthusiastically said yes. So, despite Evan and I misplacing the instructions on assembling our crib (does this really surprise anyone?) I went ahead thinking that it couldn't be that hard to do. Thankfully I was right. (but if we ever have to take this thing completely apart I will be in serious trouble)

My baby is no longer a baby!

So you might ask how are things going in the new bed? Well, so far so good. Liam continues to stay in bed even when he wakes up to let us know that he is ready to get up. I will say that it has probably helped that he has had several months of training at daycare with sleeping on the cot, and staying on the cot. Although for a good few weeks every night when I picked him up from the babysitters I would hear a new story about how he got everyone up from their nap so that they would play with him. 

Only once, a couple nights ago, an hour after laying him down did I hear little footsteps on the carpet and then BAM! Followed by many screams because in the half sleepiness he ran straight into the door. He has since recovered and now we have a cautionary tale as why one should stay in bed.

Because apparently us telling him that alligators are hiding under his bed and will chomp off his toes if he gets up didn't do the job.

Michigan Part Deux

My boss has a place in Michigan that he allowed us to use earlier this August. Even if it was just for a short weekend you can't go wrong with Lake Michigan. We had a blast with Aunt Emily, Uncle Blair, Aunt Stephanie, Violet and Eli. Well, of course we did....we were at the beach! Enjoy our pictures...

Buried in the sand

Sisters (minus one)

We missed Adriane the whole day but I think my favorite time that she was missed was when Emily said after dinner, "Man, I miss Adriane. If she were here she would already be up, clearing the table and doing the dishes." 

We love you Adriane!

Animal Behavior

Tonight Liam and I were doing one of his puzzles and he was asking me what the animals were. I told him the bird was a parakeet and he started laughing at the word parakeet and told me that I was wrong. So, I went to my trusty IPhone and brought up images of a parakeet so he would know that I was indeed correct. This resulted in Liam wanting to look up more pictures of animals, so we looked up images of a lion and also images for a shark.

Many images for the shark looked like this:

My commentary for the picture so that Liam wouldn't be scared was, "Wow, he looks hungry! What do you think he wants to eat?"

Liam's response: "Cheerios."

And then I decided I really didn't want that image to be the last image he saw before bedtime so I tried to think of a very gentle animal that does not have 5 rows of teeth. I went with this:

Seriously, when I typed in zebra images, this was the first one to come up. Much less scary than the shark for sure but I hope I will not be woken up numerous times tonight because of these two photos.

Exciting times

Yesterday we went out to Evergreen Lake to take Butters swimming and to have a picnic on a beautiful Sunday. We were extremely prepared for our afternoon at the lake including beach chairs for Evan and I to sit in during our lunch, a blanket for Liam to eat his lunch and even his potty chair in case the public restrooms were not the cleanest.

Butters went swimming first and had a great time. Evan would throw her a stick, she would go retrieve it and bring it almost back to shore. Liam and I sat on the grass and watched her for a good 10-15 minutes enjoying every second of watching her "work." And we thoroughly enjoyed watching Evan almost slip in the mud and fall in the water to get the sticks that Butters refused to bring all the way back to him. She was a happy dog after that workout.

After our picnic lunch and watching Liam play with a few of his trucks that we brought along, he suddenly stood up, and announced that he had to poop! As we have been potty training for a month now, we understood that we must move fast or we would be in serious trouble. I jumped out of my chair, grabbed Liam's hand and off we went at a sprint to the car which was a good 30-40 yards away. Yelling back at Evan who had the car keys I screamed, "Pop the trunk!" as this was where the potty chair was.

So, picture Liam and I running towards the car, Evan still sitting in our beach chair hitting the remote repeatedly, finally getting up as he was not within range of the trunk actually opening and now sprinting after us so that the car would register that we were in an emergency situation. I was continually asking Liam to hold it, we're almost there in a frantic frenzied voice.

Miraculously, he made it. Success in the potty chair instead of his underwear and I was so proud. Until about 5 cars drove by staring at us, while I tried to shield Liam from their site.

After I sent Liam back to our picnic spot with Evan I suddenly realized that I now had to figure out how to dispose of "our success." I have never been camping but I think what I ended up doing would be acceptable at most campsites. I won't go any further.

After our exciting moment we spent the rest of our time playing on the playground equipment and letting Butters dry off in the sun. It was a great afternoon!