The Littlest Penguin

Wow, a year already?

Monday, June 7th, 2010 | Liam, musings, travel | 5 Comments

A lot of “this day in my history” dates these last couple of weeks. May 15th marked one year since I left my job in Tennessee. I moved to Virginia on the 24th, and on the 29th William and I got married. It doesn’t seem like a year has gone already until I look at how big Liam is (9 months next week!), and then it kind of sets in.

Being stay-at-home is a little easier now that Liam doesn’t absolutely need me for everything at every moment of every day. Granted, he’s still got some separation anxiety, but now I can leave him on the floor with toys and he’ll poke the buttons on his radio and dump the blocks out of their bucket and generally amuse himself for a little while. I still need to establish a bigger circle of friends in the area; I miss the Tennessee crew pretty badly sometimes. But it didn’t occur to me that I missed my coworkers and professional conversations until a few weeks ago. I found myself posting in reference desk mode, answering questions and sharing a lot of “Facebook is in ur base killin’ ur privacies!” stuff to . . . Facebook. Ironic. Then, I was invited to a meeting of the local ARMA chapter and heard a presentation about the District of Columbia’s 5 year records management plan. You mock! But it was interesting! And humbling. Everyone in the room was (a) employed by (b) some terrifically important company, department, or agency. And there was little ol’ me. Eek. Unfortunately job searches take a lot more time than I’ve felt the ability to invest lately. I really need to step it up, because the little bit of poking around I’ve done has only turned up jobs in Maryland. That’s a little too much daily commute for me.

William and I didn’t do much for our first anniversary. We did some sightseeing of DC, but we didn’t stay long. Apparently, part of the problem with marrying on Memorial Day weekend in this area is the huge number of motorcycles you have to swim through if you want to do touristy things for your anniversary. I did get to see some places I hadn’t before: the National Archives building, the Library of Congress. Also, that day it threatened to pour rain. Which would have been fine with us – there was a torrential storm the day of our outside vows ceremony. It made things interesting, and the pictures are pretty funny. Liam kept us from going out to dinner the night of (we wanted him with us because he’s fun to take out lately), so we went to hibachi the next Monday. Liam got to watch the cook toss things around and make faces at him, and dinner was pretty yummy.

Liam’s fourth and fifth teeth broke through last week, so he’s all snaggle-toothed when he smiles. It’s very cute. He’s also gotten very good at pulling himself up into a standing position if you offer him your hands or if he’s near the couch. That took him less than two weeks to perfect once he figured out how to get onto his knees. The baby gates are up and we’ve barricaded off a place for the cats’ food bowls, so Liam has fairly free reign of the living room, kitchen and hallway. If I’m walking around doing chores he follows me going “rar! rar!” with a big smile on his face. Hard to believe he’s mobile already. . .

Not quite into the city

Sunday, March 7th, 2010 | Liam, family | 1 Comment

This weekend my cousin Jake came to visit us. He’s down at Yorktown for some Coast Guard training through the end of the month. I honestly don’t think I’ve seen him since late 2003, though he’s not a whole lot different than I remember. Older and more mature is all. Liam just stares like Jake’s the most interesting thing he’s seen all day. I kind of wanted to take him all the way into DC and show him the monuments, but our “quick” tour of Arlington Cemetery took two hours, and we didn’t even to go Grandpa Pete’s tomb. I feel sorry for not taking Jake to the Washington Mall, but I am not sure how I feel about not going to Grandpa’s grave site. Part of me feels like I failed to honor someone I really loved and part of me feels like I didn’t want to go to the site just to cry in front of my husband, 6 month old, and cousin. (Though restraining myself from doing just that while sitting here at the kitchen table typing is getting difficult.) Grandma sent me the visitor’s parking pass and the map to the mausoleum, and when we clocked it today we discovered that it’s only 8 miles from the apartment to the cemetery, so I’ll maybe go for some private time another day. I still occasionally wish that Grandpa was around to know Liam and William. One of my grandfathers was too selfish to have really built any type of relationship between us, but Grandpa Pete was an amazing grandpa and a genuinely good guy. I think he was like a second father to my dad and I know dad wants to be as interested and involved in Liam, Alyce, and Gibson’s lives as Grandpa Pete was in ours. We’re doing our best to make that happen from a distance. Skype is awesome — Liam loves to watch Grandma and Papa’s images talk to him.

Also, there are a lot of places I keep saying I want to visit in DC. I lived in Tennessee for almost a decade and never did half of the trails, parks, ect. I wanted to, so I don’t want to be lazy and not sightsee DC while I live here. If we had been a little more ambitious we could have walked across the bridge and seen the Lincoln Memorial. But the problem with DC is that everything looks closer than it really is. I discovered during a trip I made in highschool that it is not advisable to walk from site to site unless you’re 100% sure about the distance. I want to go to the Air and Space Museum, the International Spy Museum, the Baltimore Aquarium, and the Library of Congress. Liam was really good for this outing, so I think he’d be up for a museum. It’s just amazing to see how full of personality he is now.

Our Piglet at 5 months

Saturday, February 27th, 2010 | Liam | No Comments

Well, little Liam is almost six months old now. And even though he really HATES tummy time and has not yet made rolling over any kind of habit, he’s darned cute. He likes to be held up in a standing position, so about a week and a half ago I went out and bought him an exer-saucer. Cuteness ensued.

Baby’s first Christmas

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 | Christmas, Liam, Playgrounders, family | 4 Comments

First off, I don’t know why folks buy babies clothes for use on specific holidays. The fact that the kid will only ever wear the outfit once makes it all seem wasteful. That said, Liam in the reindeer hat his G-G gave him is easily the cutest thing ever. I saved it in his box of one-year-old clothes just in case we can get another use out of it next year.

Christmas was a bit of an adventure, toting Liam around airports and seeing how well he handled the airplane. He actually did very well, though the unavailability of wiggle space eventually annoyed him on the flight home. (This kid is all movement.) He also had a rough first night while he adjusted to new surroundings. Thankfully we were staying in the neighbor’s house while they were gone, so we didn’t keep anyone awake and Liam didn’t have too much overwhelming him at bedtime. The rest of the time he charmed everyone and got to meet his cousins and other extended family. Gibson had a great time ripping into his presents. (And would not let the Thomas the Train toy carrier we gave him out of his sight!) We had a relatively small crowd at Christmas dinner this year, mostly mom’s family. It was warm outside, but still nice enough to sit on the patio. The Sunday after Christmas Rue’s crew and some of dad’s family came over to meet Liam and William. It was cool enough to have a little fire and make s’mores.

Zeb, Alarra, and Ceika drove down to Johnson City for New Year’s at the New Hippie Hut. We wanted to join them, but we didn’t want William to be that exhausted when he went back to work on the following Monday. Also, we weren’t sure what kind of shape Liam would be in after the trip to Florida. We opted for a shorter trip to visit Kevin and Stephanie instead. We missed hanging out with everyone in Tennessee, but we were kind of right about Liam. He would not have dealt well with a longer trip than the 3 hour ride to Durham. Not after the Florida trip, at least. We’re aiming to go to Tennessee over William’s spring break if all goes well. We didn’t do much in Durham, but we had a nice visit. Kevin and Steph have learned to make candles and showed William and I. Kevin also showed William how to make “bath bombs,” scented and molded bath salts that fizz when you toss them in the tub. Very nice, very nice indeed.

It was all fun, but it’s good to be home. Today we’re back to our regularly scheduled week, though we do have piles and piles of laundry I should be folding instead of updating my blog. Tonight we’re playing Star Wars with Mike via Skype and tomorrow Nick might come over and hang out with us before he has to fly back to Saudi. And maybe I’ll be able to catch up on some sleep, too.

Updating fail

Monday, December 7th, 2009 | Liam, musings | 8 Comments

My last post was apparently submitted sometime after midnight on Sept 10 – 11, because I know for fact I didn’t blog the day of the 11th. It was kind of creepy, though,seeing that date posted and knowing that it wasn’t too many hours later I was checking myself in to the hospital prepping for a c-section. I dread surgery and I was in tears calling around to William and my parents. I’m under the impression that the preeclampsia they found was worse than they let me believe, because they wanted the baby out now. They waited just long enough for William to come and the 8-hour waiting period after my last meal to pass before I was on the table talking to the anesthesiologist.

Just shy of three months later, surgery wasn’t all too bad. And the end result is pretty darned cute, though the first month and change of mommyhood wrecked my nerves. Liam would hold his breath and then inhale with a loud gasp. I’m told this is totally normal and he is growing out of it, but holy crap was it unnerving. He still does it every so often, but at least now I’m a little more confidant he’s not really dying. Also, because he came c-section I didn’t start producing milk for nearly a week, so I was constantly worried he was hungry. And of course he cried most of the time he was awake and he woke at weird hours and all that normal stuff. Thankfully my mom and William’s mom took turns staying to help those first two weeks. They made sure I got some sleep and some alone time with William and didn’t have to cook while my stitches started healing.

They say that the first 6 weeks are the hardest, but I declare shenanigans on that. Liam only recently started smiling, so I’ll say things were toughest through about the 9 week mark. It’s still not easy, but at least now he looks around, grins when we’re in the room and munches on his hands when he’s starting to get hungry. It’s a little easier to figure out what he wants when he cries and he makes a funny little squeak when he tries to laugh. He’s napping less during the day, but will sleep for longer stretches at night. He’s also not quite so teeny-tiny, which makes us a little more confidant when we’re holding him. He was born at 6 ponds 14 ounces, and weighed 10.5 pounds at his two month checkup. He’s also grown about two inches.

I miss having coworkers and having an income to contribute, but that’ll come again soon I hope. The smiles and snuggles are a pretty good reward, too. (Though I could do with less spit-up!) I really miss being in the church choir and all the activities I had there. I found a nice congregation, but I’m not 100% sure they’re where I’ll end up. I might try one other place before talking to Little River’s choir director and starting to make that place home. The gaming group William, Mike and I do over Skype once a week helps fight the boredom and missing my friends. And Zeb and Alarra and Cieka aren’t very far. Also, and I almost hate to admit it, messing around World of Warcraft with the Circle of Fear guildies also helps. The cats help, too, when they’re not tearing the apartment down or demanding as much attention as Liam. So I think I’m settling into this new groove pretty well.

Now I just have to get back into a blog-updating groove.