Liam at 11 (months, that is)

So, let’s face it.  Most of the face time on my blogs is taken up by 1: yours truly and b: Lukas.  Sure, I mix a little Anita in there on occasion, and the youngest one gets at least the occasional passing mention.  But it’s hard to devote as much space to him.  His sort of cute transfers better to photos, most of the time.  Still, it’s worth scribing some of this stuff down now, before I forget it.  Lord knows he’ll be a completely different person again when he turns one!

• He’s fast.  Scary fast.  And sneaky.  The combination makes it tough to anticipate where one needs to be before he hurts himself or others.  He’s still crawling.  Sometimes in that low, army crawl that he perfected a few months back, sometimes in your standard hands and knees style.  And both are fast.  But his hands are faster.  Don’t believe me, just pick him up.  Hold him anywhere near your face and wait for the pain.  More than one person has been “marked” by this cute kid, when his fingernails got a bit too long.  But it’s the sneaky that makes the fast so dangerous.  He’ll really wait you out.  If he recognizes that you’re keeping him away from something, he naturally wants that thing.  But he won’t push it.  He’ll try once, maybe twice.  Then he’ll lie low.  Pretend to forget.  Lull you into a false sense of calm.  And then, when he’s sure you’ve forgotten, a lightning strike.  All too often, it works.  Because he’s fast.  And sneaky.
• He likes music.  Rock music in particular gets his attention.  He’s going to be my Zeppelin guy…
• He shrugs his right shoulder.  Kind of randomly.  Something he started a couple of months back.  Kind of like a nervous tic, but it all too often looks like he’s responding to something around him.  “Liam, how are you today?”  Shoulder shrug indicates “Eh, not too shabby.  You?”  It’s quite amusing.
• His teeth are coming in.  This makes him cranky.  He’s usually a very sweet baby (toddler?  Not yet, I think, but soon).  But the pain makes him cranky.  Mostly at night.  He’s not such a great sleeper anyway, but the teething is making a bad time worse.
• Fun story.  Put up a “Baby gate” in front of the computer room for a couple of days.  There were little Lego pieces all over the floor, etc, and I needed to control access.  Naturally, Liam hated this idea.  He would come to the gate and bang on it to get my attention, wanting access.  After it had been up a few days, he got another bright idea.  He was eating a piece of bread, part of a large pretzel, I think.  Anyway, he held onto it and crawled over to the gate.  When he was sure I was watching him, he deliberately reached his arm out over the gate and dropped the bread on the other side.  “Oops, papa,” he said (okay, it was all in the eyes, but I swear this is what he was thinking), “I have dropped my bread and must be allowed into your office to retrieve it.”  I reached over, picked up the bread and gave it to him.  Annoyed, he waited a beat, then repeated the action, again looking to me to allow him into the room.  After the third time, I tossed the bread.  I’m no fool…
• He loves to people watch.  Put him in the stroller and roll him around outside, where he can see a lot of people doing a lot of things and you have one happy boy.
• He loves his brother.  You can just see him light up when Lukas enters a room.  And anything and everything that Lukas does is just hilarious to Liam.  Laughs his little head off, that one does.

I’m sure that I could go on, but I’d like to bring a blog in with a reasonable word count for a change.  So, that’ll do it for now.  I’ll try to work a bit more Liam stuff into the general read whenever possible…  Cheers!