Day 7 (1/7/11)

Today was a much better day for my little man! Grandpa Fuzz Face (my father) helps us out and watches Liam on mornings when M and I both work. Liam is Fuzz Face's "first mate" and is completely crazy for my father. I mean, this child just lights up when he see him, its so sweet!

Once M and I were both home from work, we took a nice long 2 hr walk around the "neighborhood." I use that term loosely, as we currently live in an apartment complex that backs up to a shopping center, with another shopping center literally across the street.




Liam decided to play in the clothes on the bed before we left for our walk. Silly baby!

Our walk was really nice, although COLD considering it was 31 degrees. We stayed warm though, Liam was snuggled nicely against M in our Babyhawk!



My handsome boys!





One more thing: today Li is 21 weeks old! Where did the time go?!?!

Day 6 (1/6/11)

Apparently today was a hard day for my little man while I was at work. M said he barely ate, was sad and cried a lot and spent a good portion of the time looking around (for me, he assumes). Once I got home, Liam nursed for a little bit, then was happy and ready to play! I guess my little guy really did missed me!

One of the few things that kept Li from crying during the morning was being in his exersaucer. Since it is rapidly becoming one of his favorite toys in our place, I figured I'd better document how much he enjoys it. Thus today's pictures!

Having a ball!

"Oh hai Mom!"

Day 5 (1/5/11)

Today was a family day. M and I were both off work, so we spent a portion of the day just lazing about, a portion cleaning out our loft (an everlasting work in progress), a portion going for a nice long walk and a portion visiting with M's family. And of course playing with Liam all day long! We introduced him to his exersaucer today and he absolutely loved it! Pictures from today are from M and Liam playing before going on our walk this afternoon. This kid just loves his father, as you can obviously tell!

Day 4 (1/4/11)

Even though we got some shots at the doctors last night, aside from being super sleepy, Liam has been in a really good mood the majority of the day! Go Li!

Those of you who know me, know I'm a bit on the "natural/organic if possible" side of life, or at least I aim to be. Part of my goals in 2011 is to do my best to try buy local, organic and healthy food and upcycle unwanted things, among other things. One of them is to switch Liam over to the cloth-side. Cloth diapering that is. CDing today is waaayyy different then it was back in the day. Our stash is very small right now, we only have 3 GroVia shells and 9 inserts, although I will be expanding it as finances allow!

Todays pictures show off one of his CDs!

Day 3 (1/3/11)

We're back from the doctors and the verdict is:

We passed!

No blood was found in his diaper, which means no additional testing needed! Hooray! While we were there, we decided to get his 5mo shots done rather then going back in 2 weeks. He took his shots like a champ, barely cried! I'm so proud of my big guy! Did I mention he's weighing in at 19lbs, 3oz? Yup, big guy is right!

Here's my happy boy earlier today:

Day 2 (1/2/11)

And we are up and running!

Li had his first boo-boo today :( He and M were checking out the other baby in the mirror when Liam decided he'd like to faceplant to his left. M was all set to catch him when he fell backwards, but I guess my sweet baby boy had other ideas. He ended up with a few little scratches on his noggin and a lot of tears, but he was okay.

Backstory time: Today's backstory is about our fight with allergies.

When Liam was about 5 weeks old, we noticed he was a completely different baby whenever I had anything with dairy. He spat up a ton, slept awful, had foul diapers, and ended up with eczema all over his body. We cut out all dairy from my diet and saw a major improvement, but we were then faced with "what can I eat now?"

We started using soy milk for cooking/baking and we slowly found alternates for snacks and meals. Then, we realized he started reacting again. This time we cut out eggs, peanuts and treenuts. Once more, he went back to the happy baby.

During the times when we were figuring out his allergies, we noticed some specks of what we thought was blood in his diapers. We brought it up to his pedi (whom we LOVE, if you need a recommendation and are in my area, just ask) and she tested his stool and confirmed it was blood. From that point on, she's tested his diaper and its been positive for specks of blood every time.

After the initial test, we met with my allergist (again, LOVE him) and cut out soy as well. Did you know 80% of infants with dairy intolerance's also have a soy intolerance? From that point on, we had only seen blood once in his diaper and we (us and the pedi) think it was due to a fissure.

End backstory.

Tonight we are going back to the pedi to have another diaper checked and have blood drawn for an allergy test. She fears that if he's still bleeding even teeny tiny amounts, he'll become anemic. If the diaper tests positive, she wants us to do a 2 week trial with formula. If its negative, we keep doing what we've been doing. Fingers crossed its negative. I'm super anti-formula for me/Liam. I have zero opinions on others using formula, everyone has their reasoning and I respect that, but for me its just not for us. If the diaper tests positive, I'm going to see what else we can do besides formula, maybe cutting something else out of my diet. As of right now, we are dairy, soy, egg, peanut, treenut, fish, shellfish and beef free. Yup, that's right. 7 out of 8 major allergens, plus an additional one just for fun. I have to say though, this is probably the best diet I've ever been on. I've lost all the baby weight plus another 10lbs. I guess that's the positive out of all of this.

I'll update after our appt. Wish us luck!

Happy New Year

Liam has a few words he'd like to share:

Today is the first day of our challenge and I'm ready to go! I love that through this blog, I'll be able to look back and see how much my darling boy has changed over the course of a year. I can't wait!



Backstory time: The other part of this blog is to share our experiences learning about who this new little guy was. Every post I'm going to try and play the catch up game until everything is completely update! Today's backstory is how we welcomed Liam into the world.



Liam (or Li, as his father M and I refer to him as occasionally) was due on Friday, August 13th, 2010. At midnight on the 13th, I pointed at my huge stomach and give the eviction notice. Our baby offically had 24 hrs to make his way out. A few hours later (at 3:13a to be exact), I was awoken by my first contraction. Around 5am, I woke up M because they were about 5-6 mins apart. By 7:30 they had reached 3-5 mins apart and we were on our way to the hospital. We get checked in, hooked up and monitered and by 10am I was in a room with an epi on the way!



Fast forward several hours, my water had been broken and I was slowly getting closer and closer to delivery. Everything started getting blurry memory-wise, so from here on out if what M has shared from the day. My pain was really bad and I burned through the epi's like candy. At one point, I was feeling the contractions in my chest and thighs, but not in my pelvis like I should have been. I started running a fever and was put on oxygen because I was having a lot of trouble breathing, in addition to having blood in my urine. Liam's heartrate was dropping and I was stuck at 9cm. We ended up with an emergency caesaren section because of the above mentioned issues, plus it looked like my poor little baby's head was stuck in my pelvis.



Everything was even more of a blur after that point. By now it was after 11pm and I had been in labor for almost 20 hrs. I remember seeing M in blue paper scrubs, being wheeled down a hallway, and then a bright, white operating room. During the procedure, I could hear voices but not conversation and could feel tugging. Lots of tugging and pulling. Then the words "Dad get your camera ready," a cry, and then "it's a boy!" Liam Michael was born at 11:18pm, weighing in at 8lbs, 2oz and 19.5in long and absolutely perfect!


(yes I know I posted this picture yesterday, but its the only "freshly hatched" photo I have my laptop)