September pictures

More pics.  Perhaps I'll keep up with them more regularly--I've finally caught up.  Or perhaps not.  But here are the ones from September.

Liam's a pro at keeping his head up

Riding in the baby swing at the park

Robin's first ice cream cone!

Playing in the fountain outside the library

Puddles are more fun than fountains

We got to see a polar bear being very active at the zoo

Robin pulling Liam at the zoo

This was Liam's first trip to the zoo, by the way

Robin enjoyed helping me make frosting for Dean's birthday cake

Robin is getting very good at climbing

I wanted to take a nap on this day, and my window while Robin is napping was small.  Liam fell asleep while nursing, so I figured I had better odds of napping with him than transferring him to his crib.  This is how Dean found us when he got home.  (I noticed the flash--I dreamed a lightbulb had gone 'pop' right before going out.)

Liam has started scooting!  Not regularly yet (thank goodness!) but one night he moved forward at least a foot.  (He started completely on the green mat.)

Liam is also starting to sit up.  He did it for the longest on this day, when he had another baby to look at.  He sat, albeit slightly flopped forward, for several minutes.  (The other baby is an old friend's nephew.)

Robin prefers to run away from splash parks rather than get soaked.

This is now the wallpaper on my desktop.

Other news about Liam:  he's rolling over in both directions now (he did back to front once first, then front to back once, then took a week or so off, and then started again.)  He smiles a lot and intently watches all of us--especially Robin.  I think he's going to be an early mover, in part because he'll be chasing after his big brother.  He's already stretching some of his 3-6 month size clothes to the limit and I just unpacked the 6 month size (Robin used to fit them until about a month after the range was over.)  He's a champion nurser and sleeps pretty well, although hopes of sleeping through the night already were dashed and I get up with him an average of twice per night still.

Robin has recently started acting extremely stubborn.  He seems to think listening and obeying is optional and he pushes nearly every limit set him, making life a bit more stressful and full of discipline lately.  I think it's partly that he's finally realized that Liam isn't a temporary state of affairs--he isn't hostile toward Liam, but he seems to be seeking my constant attention these days, which I (obviously) can't give.  But we still have fun and he's (slowly) learning that he can't get away with pushing his limits.  He's a very energetic little boy and loves to be active.

He's also starting to give up naps.  I insist on a stretch of "Quiet Time" each day, where he can nap if he's tired or play quietly in his room if he's not.  But even the last few days, when I know he's been tired, he hasn't napped.  He's napped once in the last week.  Boo.  I think I'll have to move his bedtime earlier, though, because he's been acting more cranky and tired, and I think it's because of the lack of napping.

On the plus side, his language skills are really taking off.  I still have trouble understanding some of it, and I know strangers understand a lot less, but the amound we all can understand is growing rapidly.

Below is a list of fun things Robin does (or did recently) that I wanted to write down and remember in the years to come:

• For a while, he was calling Liam "my baby"  (awww)
• Until the last few weeks, instead of pronouncing "Liam," Robin pronounced it "lee-moo"
• He often refers to himself as "boy."  Not so much in the last few weeks, he's finally mastering pronouns, but he would often say things like "Boy eat," "Boy hide," "Boy play," "Boy want that," etc.  It usually made me think of Oliver Twist and I wondered if anyone ever thought we called him "Boy" in an imperious tone of voice at home.
• Until right around the time that Liam was born, Robin pronounced his own name "Robbie" (though I asked people not to repeat that back to him)
• He constantly jumps off things.  If it can support his weight and is raised above the ground, Robin will jump off of it.  He's jumped some considerable distances, too.
• We finally finished off toilet training (we resorted to bribing him to use it for #2) and have had few accidents.  Robin has even started doing more of it himself.  A few times he even locked us out of the bathroom so we couldn't help him--though unfortunately he seemed to get bored with that idea pretty quickly.
• One time, after I put our last Scooby-Doo band-aid on Robin, I mentioned that I would need to buy more fun ones because all we had left were plain ones.  He then lunged for the first aid box, which I had just put away, saying "Airplane band-aid!  Airplane!"
• One day, after Liam started getting bigger, I asked Liam what he did with my itty bitty baby.  Then I turned to Robin and said "For that matter, what did YOU do with my itty bitty baby?"  Robin responded "Hold."  Then I said "You held him?"  Robin: "Yeah."
• Robin likes the idea of burping Liam, and sometimes helps.  He's also burped his monkey, his cup, and various other objects as they come to hand.  The day he burped his cup, he used his napkin as a burp rag.  (I've heard girls often nurse their dolls when mama has a new baby, I guess this is Robin's version.)
• For some reason, I don't know why, Robin calls m&ms "beans."
• Even nearly a year after last Halloween, Robin still calls candy "Ding Dong."  (This came from trick-or-treating last year, when he couldn't manage "trick or treat" but could say "ding dong."  Then "ding dong morphed into the name of the treats he received while doing this.)
• When we recently went to Toy R Us, Robin called it "Toys R R Us."
• Right now, when Robin wants things, he say "I need that."

That's all folks!