happy birthday, liam!

Here's Liam ringing in a whole new year. While he slept peacefully, dreaming of what it will be like to be three years old, his parents toiled away finishing the painting in the boys' rooms (more on that to come). We're sure that Liam will have a wonderful day, and we'll do everything we can to make sure the year to come is his best yet.

max thinks he's people too!

welcome to the circus forticus nature preserve

double trouble

So Mike and I were in the bedroom, trying to figure out how to remove the evil Kodak Easy Share from our computer in favor of something like Picasa that doesn't crash the machine every single time we look at an image, when we heard a suspicious rustling sound in the next room. Odds were 1:1 that there was trouble. We looked around the corner and found this:


These guys are getting a little predictable in their mischief!

too hot to cook

...so the boys decided to do some grilling.

a nice change

New curtains in the kitchen! My mom made them and they're beautiful. Too bad the walls are still bright yellow, but in time that will change too (the kitchen will eventually be green).

Here's a close-up of the pattern:


And in case you were wondering, here are the old aprons .... I mean, curtains. They're on the counter because in my excitement over putting up the gorgeous new curtains, I forgot to take pictures of the old ones "in situ."

which describes how you're feeling all the time

Liam is working on learning how to express his emotions in words and expressions rather than, say, hitting or kicking anyone who gets in his path. At dinner one night, we were talking about what it feels like to be happy, sad, and angry, with accompanying facial expressions. This one was supposed to be "sad" -- see how his lip is sticking out -- but he kept breaking up laughing while showing us how sad he was.


Guess which one this is?

max takes a walk

There's just something about this picture that I really like...

cousins meet

Today, for the first time, Liam and Max met their cousin Gabriel. The boys had a great time playing outside, inside, all over the place. Liam and Gabe bonded very quickly by pushing a toy tractor back and forth to each other, and then it was off to the races. Sidewalk chalk, hot wheels, stump climbing...you name it, they had fun doing it. We all had a nice dinner (shish kebabs, yum!) and the boys even got to sit at their own special little table (they're not old enough yet to recognize or resent the implication of sitting at the kids' table, thank goodness). After dinner there was more playing, then Gabe, Matt, Kelly, and Grandma and Grandpa had to leave. We threw two tired, grubby, and happy litle boys into the tub, scrubbed them off, and once they laid down they fell right asleep from exhaustion. I guess that's the REAL trick to sleep training! Anyway, they all had fun, and nobody was hurt, except for Max, who took a header down the side of the big stump and scraped his little face. All in all, a very fun visit! The boys can't wait to go to Chicagoland tomorrow to see their new best friend Gabe again.

cookie time!

This morning, the boys and I decided to make cookies. Liam was very excited because he got to be the one to measure out all the ingredients.


Then Max got into the act to help stir the dry ingredients.


Once the dough was done, it was time to lick the beater. The first photo is for my grandpa, number two in the series "The Haves and Have-Nots."

one step forward, two steps back

Friday afternoon my mom and sister Avalon granted us the rare pleasure of a child-free afternoon! We used the time to work on the house, of course (tho I'm eagerly looking forward to the day when we can use a child-free afternoon, to, say, go on a date or something). Mike and my dad replaced the dangerous microwave cord with a brand-spankin'-new outlet (Thanks, Dad!) while I went upstairs to slap a layer of primer on Liam's room.
Regular readers may remember the many layers of wallpaper that were on one segment of Liam's ceiling. Well, we thought we had them pretty much sanded down and ready to be sealed in with the primer. Ha! Once I put the primer on, the wallpaper started coming down in strips:



So now we have to go back and figure out how to get all the wallpaper down before we can proceed with the ceiling and the room. Last night we spent hours after the boys went to bed spraying fabric softener on it and scraping. Damn you, Nancy Warren, whoever you are. And your evil sticky washable wallpaper too!

cable guy

It's been a long struggle getting actual channels on our TV out here. Monday morning, the dish guy came and said the trees were blocking the sattelite view, but the other dish company should have a clear view (apparently their satellites look the other way). Tuesday morning. New dish company, same result: either cut down the trees or get cable. So we swallowed our hatred of the cable giant, agreed to their exorbitant rates, and made an appointment. After a week of watching Elmo in Grouchland and Finding Nemo practically in a loop, Friday morning and the cable guy finally arrived. The boys were in a high state of excitement and were waiting for him at the front door:

The cable guy had to do a lot of work in the yard because apparently the hungry area squirrels chewed through the cable coming through the house and he had to replace it (they'll be back to bury it in a couple of weeks). Still flying high, the boys raced from the front door to the back door to follow the proceedings:



Of course, once the cable was finally in four hours later, they were all worn out and ready for a nap on the drive to Yami's house. Figures.

daycare disaster

So today we visited the boys' new daycare (yay!), and guess how Liam introduced himself to all his new friends and teachers? Whatever you're thinking, that probably isn't it, unless you were thinking that he managed to pull the fire alarm, causing the whole place to have to evacuate. Luckily they're not connected directly to the fire station, so no trucks arrived. Liam was pretty scared of the loud sound and started crying about it when he realized it was because he pulled the alarm. Also luckily for us, everyone at the daycare was really gracious about it, or else our first visit there would also have been our last. Sigh.

well, we're in...sort of

The move was, as Mike said below, hellish and exhausting. Four days later, it feels a little less like camping and a little more like home. We've unpacked a million boxes. Since their rooms aren't ready yet, the boys have been bunking in our room. We've got a pretty big room, but it gets small awfully fast when you try to shoehorn in our furniture plus Max's crib and Liam's bed. But we're making it work. I've spent the last few days calling daycares for the boys, and it seemed that every last daycare in town was full and had a waiting list. I was just about to give up when I got a call from one of the centers saying they have openings. Whew! We're going to visit tomorrow, so keep your fingers crossed that we all like it. Once the boys get settled into a routine, we'll be able to start getting more done on the house, and before too long it will be all the way like home.


Check out this giant stack of Fiestaware that I found over the course of the move. These are just the extra place settings (I have about 20 out in the cabinets already). I had no idea I had so many. It's easy to lose track since we just shoved them wherever they would fit at the apartment. Seeing them all together like this was a little bit of a surprise. But I love them, and it makes me happy to see the table set -- it always looks so cheerful with all the colors.

night falls on plymouth

i could do a big, dramatic, picture-heavy post about our hellish yet (sadly) commonplace and pedestrian move, but instead, i thought i'd do something quick and dirty and pretty and be done with it.

here's a pic of venus rising (setting?) at about 10 p.m. sure, i'm no ansel adams, but still neat, huh?

trouble loves me

Bored on a Thursday morning? Try climbing up onto the windowsill and standing behind the blinds to hide from your father. It's an activity that Liam highly recommends. Or at least he did before he got into trouble for climbing up there. Don't worry, the window was closed. We also have them set up so that they open from top-down to avoid falling accidents.



Also, I'm hoping that at least one keen-eyed regular reader of circus forticus will appreciate the use of Morrissey in the post title. (That's you, Val!) Points for anyone else who gets the song stuck in their head for the rest of the day after reading this.

it's time to put on makeup, it's time to light the lights...

Yes, it really is makeup. The little bugger got into my foundation, eyeshadow, and even mascara before Mike caught him. Will this bedevilment ever end??

max loves liam's hat

we're almost packed!

Our dining room has turned into box central:


And that's not counting what's in our basement storage unit, or the 18 trips we've made back and forth since we closed. Wait, are we forgetting something? Oh, yeah...

max loves to talk on his cell phone

part 14 of our ongoing series, "terrible toddlers"

Not ten minutes after his father told him not to put his head through the rails because it would get stuck .... Liam put his head through the rails and got stuck.


Luckily my dad came to the rescue, unscrewed the rail, and let the boy out. Note that Liam's shirt reads: "I tried to be good, but I got bored." Truer words were never splayed across the chest of an almost-three-year-old!