Mohawk-Yogurt-Fingers

TT came over last night and decided Liam needed a new haircut after playing in the sprinkler. We were all a bit surprised that his hair dried this way and HELD this way. Looks like he may have some body in his hair, considering this is without any hair products whatsoever - just water that dried.

Mohawk baby forgot that he is supposed to eat yogurt with his spoon.
His new Indian name is Mohawk-Yogurt-Fingers.

Speaking of Indian names - - Liam is now also in the toddler tantrum phase. (What is the word for 'tantrum' in German?) This new phase has Mami auditioning for the role of Shouts-With-A-Fist!!

Stroller, wurst, and iPad

Here are some miscellaneous pictures from the last couple of days . . .

Liam now prefers pushing his stroller to riding in his stroller.
This was a walk to Nanna and Poppa's last Sunday.

Liam trying his first Bratwurst.
He liked the Bratwurst but did NOT like the potato salad!!

Liam and Tobias both like the iPad!!

Kitchen fun

Last week Tante Christina came over and taught Liam how to make Spiessbraten. Liam had a blast and we had a yummy dinner!!

Patsch! Patsch! Patsch!
(Hit! Hit! Hit!)

Reiben! Reiben! Reiben!
(Rub! Rub! Rub!)

Cool sunglasses and cool cousins

We had a very busy and fun Father's Day yesterday. More on that to come later. For now, I wanted to share two pictures of Liam playing with TT's sunglasses and his cousin Abby yesterday.

Wagon time and the store front

About a week or so ago GG decided to put Liam in her wagon for the first time. He LOVED it. His normal routine when he visits GG in the evening is to take his toy elephant in pull it up and down her driveway. Now that he knows about the wagon, he pulls the elephant once and then runs to the garage door and asks for help (which means he wants the wagon). A couple of nights ago GG combined his two loves and tied his elephant to his wagon and pulled him around. He was one happy kid!!
And now for something totally different - We FINALLY took possession of our store on Monday. We have put up lifestyle signage in the windows and our Landlord was supposed to install our Coming Soon banner today. The installer was not paying attention and hung the wrong side of the banner so it now says we are open to buy. Hoping to get that fixed tomorrow. Our tentative Open To Buy date is 27 July 2010, assuming we have no further construction delays!!

First time swimming

Liam went to visit Nanna and Poppa at Virginia Beach yesterday. The last time we took him there with Oma and Opa he was afraid of the ocean. To be fair, we had just woken him from a nap before hitting the surf and sand, so it may have just been post-nap grumpy. To be safe this time we decided to start him in the indoor wading pool. This turned out to be a good decision because it was oppressively hot and humid yesterday so being outdoors, even at the beach, wasn't really fun.

Here are some pictures of the day.

Liam in his beach shirt.

He loved looking out at the beach and boardwalk

All dressed up for a swim -
We cracked up at the flotation padding.
He looked like Superman with bulging muscles!

We had to ease him in the water, literally.
Started with toes and worked our way up.

After about ankle deep he jumped in.
Liam screamed with delight.
Mami screamed because the water was COLD!

Wading in . . .
We only had one face plant into the water.

Since Nanna thinks of everything, she had lots of water toys for Liam.
His favorite was the this one!

Jumping with Papi

21 months old

21 months old

Liam had a rough couple of weeks, but he has more teeth and a bigger body to show for it. In terms of language, here is a list of Liam's current words:

hot
knock knock (as in the beginning of a knock-knock joke)
goldfish (pronounced 'gaagins')
GG
TT
Nanna
Poppa
Momma
more/mehr (pronounced 'mah')
help (pronounced 'Nanna')
bye bye
car
grill (and in German 'grrrrrrr')
guck! guck! (look! look! in German)
ball
nein! nein!
pop
Caillou (one of his favorite cartoon characters)
clock
puffs
Hund (pronounced 'hah')
uh-oh
Elmo (pronounced 'E-mo')
glass (glahhhh)

The first picture is Liam's 'don't-I-look-like-an-angel' pose. Now, for the outtakes:

Liam went to VA Beach today to visit Nanna and Poppa during their beach week. I will post those pictures tomorrow.

Our little helper

For the past several months I have given Liam a spoon during feedings. Sometimes he would feed himself, other times he would just play with it. Now he has taken to feeding me . . .




Liam loves to help with anything and everything. Just before I got this picture he was helping Tobias vacuum. I am adding this pic because we thought Oma and Opa would get a kick out of his shirt.

In addition to helping with the trash can and recycling, Liam has taken to wearing this biking helmet at least once a day. Normally he turns the lights on the runs around the house and/or yard for about 15-20 minutes.
And for his next trick . . . potty training. We were a little surprised to see that Liam is showing early signs of being ready to learn how to use the toilet. We were not expecting this until closer to 2+. We are not stressing over it and we figure we will follow his lead, but he did sit on the potty today for the first time. He loved having a seat where he could sit comfortably. Now we just need to keep his hands off the toilet paper!! We shall see how it goes.