Crozet Music Fest

A couple of weeks ago, we all took off for the Crozet Music Fest accompanied by Mary, Chris and Talia. It was a super fun night, filled with great food, great people and great music. Talia and Liam had a great time together, and she took him off for most of the night.

What a little mother she is!

Don't you think they're going to be great friends?

Liam got plenty of time to run off on his own too..

And time for airplane rides!

And for sitting on trucks

He really liked the sitting on trucks part :)

And just to prove that there were grown ups there...

One day I'll photograph all the other grown ups too... :)

Happy weekend!

Wee Ooos and Aah Ooos

Some days, I just want to pause time. Days like when we roll down our window as an ambulance passes by and Liam yells with sheer glee: "Wee Ooo, Wee Ooo, Wee Ooo!" And when he sees his favorite monkey towel and he squeals "Aah Ooo, Aah Ooo!" I know his little phrases will soon all be gone, and only real big kid words will be left in their place, and his high pitched sweet little voice will be all grown up. But for now, we still have our Wee oos, and Aah Oos.

What we've been doing when we haven't been blogging

Blog posting seems to be tricky to get tricky lately, so I will be brief :)

Kyle's boards (the 3rd of his 3 boards) are coming up week after next, so he has been spending much of his time studying. He will celebrate the completion of boards by spending 11 days in the MICU. Yay.

I am continuing my clinicals and work and looking forward to christmas break, a mere 2 months away ;-) This past week was slow as the clinics have just started their new electronic medical record, making getting clinical spots tricky. This has meant 4 days in a row at home with my little one, which makes me very happy.

Liam had "surgery" today. Surgery would be in quotations because this did require general anesthesia, but it lasted about 10 minutes, and there were no scalpels involved, thank goodness. He had a clogged tear duct, which has now been opened. The anesthesia was the only scary part, but luckily he did just fine, and woke up starving like I have never seen him before. He has barely managed to stay on the weight charts, but he woke today and downed 9 ounces of milk, ate 2 cereal bars, graham crackers and many, many bunny grahams. One hour later he ate a huge lunch. I guess Liam, although he did not complain once the little sweet heart, did not like being NPO until 11 am. He was subdued until after his nap time, but woke up rearing to go, all signs of subduedness (is that a word?) were left in his crib.

I have pictures to post from our latest adventures, but those will have to wait until tomorrow. I just got photoshop (a real yay this time!), so I will need to do lots of practicing editing and lots of posting after. Photoshop will have to wait beyond tomorrow as I will be in clinical or work for the next 4 days... But for the mean time, soon, I will post my unedited pictures from our weekend.

Goodnight!

Crozet Fireman's Parade

Kyle, Liam and I went to the Crozet Fireman's Parade last weekend and had a blast. Luckily, Liam did not learn that what was being thrown by the parade participants was candy (nor does he really ((yet)) no what candy is) so we were able to just sit back and watch, rather than fight off the 6 year olds around us :) Here are a few photos from the day.

Somehow none of my photos of the fire engines

were blog worthy, so here is one that I found,

very similar to what we saw at the parade

and another, likewise stolen from the Crozet

fire department's website :)

The actual fire engines were pretty loud, so this is how Liam

spent some of the time, while waiting for the "Wee Ooos"

Oh but how excited, if not just a little amazed we were!

There were plenty of his favorites...

In a variety of colors

and even some horses too

We saw lots of old cars

And an ambulance or two

(see all the 6 year olds, ready to pounce :) )

I couldn't get away with posting a CARS ambulance

and not a WARS one,

so this one is courtesy of the WARS website

And just because I couldn't resist,

here is Mr. Independence himself, headed home

after a great time at the parade :)

Tractor gifts

Earlier this week Liam received a special gift in the mail...

And main did he love it! (I couldn't get a picture of him looking up

because he wouldn't stop staring at it)

He wanted to take it outside to try it out with his big tractor

Yup, there it is :)

All ready to go now

Thank you Aunt Lois! As you can see, Liam loved it :)

tractors, donkeys and rubber boots

It's an almost wordless Wednesday. This is what I heard as I was cutting up watermelon in the kitchen tonight: "Liam, don't put the watermelon in your belly button!"

In non-belly button related news here are a few pics from the week.

This is the tractor that Mary brought over for Liam to play with.

Liam thought it was fantastic, as evident by the wagon holding

Liam's most prized possession: his sippy cup of milk.

My beautiful boy, almost unrecognizable since he is clean after a bath :)

Other evidence of us living in the country: We feed donkeys in our PJs.

This is no ordinary donkey by the way, this is Poncho,

who is actually a burro rescued from the Grand Canyon many years ago.

Liam loves Poncho and does a lovely impression,

which sounds very similar to someone faking an asthma attack.

I saw these boots at target a few months ago, and Liam has been interested, but a little afraid to put them on his feet and actually walk in them, until tonight that is....

ahhh, have you ever seen anyone look so pleased

with a pair of rubber boots?

Children's museum in Short Pump

Two weekends ago, while Kyle was busy in the MICU, Liam and I took off to Richmond for the day to visit Noah and Michelle. It is always fun getting the boys together, and something we don't get a chance to do nearly enough. We realized it had been six months (!) since we had seen each other last, and oh, how the boys grew in the time between!

This was Liam at the last play date with Noah. Check out that hair! So red! We're soon going to have to change the name of the blog as blonde as he is getting lately!

Michelle and I always have a great time, and tend to pick up just where we left off. Hopefully we won't let it be six months between visits next time.

We spent the morning at the Children's Museum of Richmond in Short Pump, which is right near the Short Pump mall and a fun way to spend the morning with toddlers.

The museum had many different "exhibits," for different play areas for toddlers, and in the middle a safari train ride.

No, we don't know these kids, but as I did not get a picture of the train,

I was forced to borrow the one from the museum's website.

When Liam spotted the train, shortly upon walking in the doors, he was 100% done with the rest of the museum. Needless to say, we rode the train, many, many times. I unfortunately did not get any photos of Liam on the train as I was always riding with him, but I did snag a few photos of the boys at the museum and a bunch of them at Michelle and Allen's house after.

Michelle and Noah on the train from a few cars back.

See the animals?

I told you it was fun!

Whoops! Forgot to mention that this was how Liam spent a good portion of the day. See... the museum makes the kids wait in line, and then, every 30 minutes or so they take a fifteen minute break. The museum's brochure touts that this is to help the children develop self-regulation. Hmmm... I don't think we quite managed that on our two hour visit, but it was a nice thought. Perhaps a repeat visit is in order.

On the (rare) instances that Liam was not on the train, or pouting that he was not on the train yelling "choo choo? choo choo?" over and over again, he did have fun doing other things. Here's Michelle showing the boys how the water exhibit works.

After the museum we headed back to their house for lunch and the boys' naps, and so that Michelle and I could catch up. Here's Noah having fun taunting Basil from behind the baby gate!

Aw, but they both love it!

having fun in the kitchen, and see how blonde Liam is from 6 months ago!

Check out that beautiful face!

In other non Adventures with a Red Headed Boy News, I have started back to school full time, which means three 8-10 hour days doing clinical of some sort and my regular (thank goodness it is) part time schedule. Kyle has begun his in-patient rotations for the year, and is pretty much on every other two week block until after Christmas. We will try to keep our heads above water and keep providing pictures of the boy in the mean time :)