Mother's Day, My Birthday, and Beyond!

For Mother's Day this year, we hosted a brunch at our house.  All the non-mothers cooked an array of food while we moms watched, sipped mimosas, and played with the littles (once they're old enough to help, we'll put them to work too.)

The boys delivering flowers to me

Aunt Kat about to flip Robin over

Mid-flip

Wearing Lego glasses

We chopped down some dead trees in our backyard recently.  Robin wanted to "help"

Helping to chop the felled tree into pieces

Robin using his body to show me the length that the logs need to be

Dean decided to make a log cabin out of the chopped-up trees...

...which Robin LOVED!

Liam enjoyed it too, and it made a fun, impromptu play pen in the yard (although we had to stay with him becuase it wasn't sturdy)

All my boys having fun!  This is a great picture!

I resurrected the sensory bin recently, and decided that Liam could join in for a brief time

It couldn't last, of course.  Beans straight into the mouth!

We had a party to celebrate my 31st birthday, since we weren't in the mindset to celebrate last year when I turned 30.  Dean made me castle-shaped cakes with our fancy bundt pans, and we had family and friends over to mingle and enjoy.

In other news, Liam has started talking!  He clearly says "uh oh," often before dropping something on the floor (yeesh.)  He also says "fish," although you usually have to be in his room and see him pointing to his mural to realize what he's saying there.  He says words that sound like "this" and "that," usually when he's pointing at osmething.  And, of course, he says "Mama" and "Dada" a lot, though pretty indiscriminately.  He also babbles a lot and much of it sounds like words, just not clear ones yet.

Liam has started drinking whole milk, and he's sucking it down.  We never really got him to use a bottle and sippy cups are still iffy, so we just give him and open cup at meals and hold it for him.  After the first few meals, he took to the cup and milk like a fish to water and has started drinking significant amounts.  Our nursing sessions have dwindled in response, and I expect him to wean himself pretty soon.  We've cut back on the number of nursings, mainly for convenience, but the amount of time he nurses at his remaining sessions is getting much shorter.

He still isn't walking yet, which surprises me considering how early he cruised--and the fact that he cruised before he crawled.  He'll walk behind Robin's push truck now, but hasn't ventured across a room by himself yet.

Robin is getting a lot more social.  He's now comfortable going up to other kids, talking to them, and playing with them.  He still takes a while to warm up to a new situation, but after he's acclimated he'll plunge right into the thick of things.  We've found a playgroup that seems to be relatively stable, so I'm happy about the friends for everyone and the chance to get out on a regular basis.