This particular treasure box was packed with clothes, toys, diaries, dolls, wallets, Donald Duck comics, my grandmothers tiny hand bible from her confirmation, dresses from special occasions, calendars, posters, phonics books…the list goes on. Anyway, I felt very nostalgic as I was going through it all and was compelled to take pictures of everything before I stored it all away again probably never to be looked at for another ten years but I only had a few hours before Liam woke up from his nap so I came up with the idea of making a short video instead. It was the librarian part of my brain talking to me. I just felt I needed to document the moment.

YouTube only allows a certain length of video so I uploaded to Vimeo but for some reason the Vimeo embed wouldn’t work in wordpress so I remembered that Flickr allows you to upload videos now. But they only allow you to upload 90 seconds worth. The entire clip is almost 15 minutes longs. I babble. I’ve been messing with this for a few days trying different ways to get the clip embeded into this post but you know, I’m on vacation, I’m not foolin’ with it so to view the clip just go here.

So, this is like, my first video upload where it’s just me and the camera talking. You’ll notice, I’m kinda flaky.

Which means he’s starting to do little boy/little kid stuff. He climbs things constantly. In fact, it’s rare his two feet remain on the ground because if they’re not climbing, they’re running somewhere and if he’s not doing that he’s on the floor trying to body slam the dogs, etc.

As Mike noted, we have started to potty train Liam. We’re doing it pretty informally for now, simply trying to introduce him to the contraption called “the toilet”, what it does, how to use it. He’s gone a total of four times now. He’s a very good student. But making him more aware of the potty process has also made him more observant about other methods, such as the way Turbo pee’s. It took awhile to figure out what Liam was doing when we went on walks in the afternoon and he’d stop short in the street to lift his leg against a nearby pole.

Somewhere I have counted all the words that he is saying now. “Ewww” is one of his favorites. We use it often to keep him from touching things that he isn’t supposed to, like trash can, trash on the ground while we’re on walks. He also uses the Norwegian word for bee (bie) to describe all insects including aunts and as we found out yesterday, spiders. He can also say most of his different body parts and many different sounds for different animals. He can also say mess. Not surprising since it tends to follow him around where ever he goes. I say that but have to mention that he’s also learning to “tidy”. For instance, one morning, early, just after we had all rolled out of bed, Liam walked into the t.v. room and noticed a plastic grocery bag on the floor. I had been organizing his old baby clothes the night before and used plastic bags to store them. I guess I left an empty one. After seeing the plastic bag, he promptly picked it up, walked into the kitchen, pushed open the door to the laundry room, and put the plastic bag in the bag where we keep grocery bags to be recycled, turned around, walked out of the laundry room, closed the door the best he could without jamming his little fingers, looked at us with a “why don’t you people pick-up after yourselves” look, and walked briskly back to his toys.

Cute things.

If you care to venture out of your rss readers you’ll note the change in template. Wordpress has been upgraded. I subsequently spent most of Tuesday night trying to master the widget feature…my twitter and shared items are available for view, as are the headings for Mike’s most recent post to his campaign blog, and the headings for my most recent posts on my library blog and brand spankin’ new yoga blog which is pretty much nothing but inspiring quotes, since I don’t really have time for anything else.

I will also soon be starting another blog that will chronicle my effort to teach my son Norwegian. This is going to be quite the task given that I am not actually fluent in the language myself. Who knows, he may end up speaking Dutch by the time I’m done with him at which point I’ll just send him down to live with Ellen and her family at their “compound” in steamy hot Texas land.

Work has been fun but busy these past months. We’re into the second month of our My Favorite Book Display. I also hosted a poetry night which was a total blast. I was also recently asked to help build a bookshelf out of books, a project meant to be a kind of collaborative out-reach thingy with the Price Tower Arts Center (they’re doing an exhibit on upcycling in August). So, I have about two months to figure out how to do this. Any ideas? (Please?) Step-by-step instructions will be very much appreciated.

Other than that, I am dazzled every day by my son who continues to suprise me with his curious and always adorable personality. Mike and I have been keeping note of his milestones on our wall calendar. Will post them at some point. Sigh. I have a few vacation days coming up at the end of May. Can’t freakin’ wait!

• We bought a Wii a few weeks ago. It’s sweet. I rock at tennis and golf, and I’m a fair shot at Bowling, suck at everything else. I also downloaded Super Mario 3 - nostalgia. Looking forward to getting Resident Evil 4 and killing me some Zombies!
• Liam is potty training! I’ve got him to go on the potty twice now (with lots of dry runs in between). He does really well and is very patient, he’s a good student, I like that.
• We’re almost finished with the 3rd season of Lost. There is no explanation convoluted enough to actually conclude this show with any amount of sense. ‘Nuff said.
• Watched Cloverfield last night - it’s chock-full of awesome! One hell of a monster movie. Night Vision + creepy alien + subway tunnels = some rockin’ scare scenes.

That’s it for this weeks update. Come back next week when Mike half-asses another blog post!

As to this weeks resolutions: I’m going to cheat and list some things that are done or half-way done. So without further ado, the list, week 2:

1. Plan a damn meal….dammit! Seriously, I’ve been whipping together meals with no fore-thought for like, weeks now, time to get my act together. I’m already working on this one - I have some beans soaking for some chili tomorrow. Just have to do some grocery shopping.
2. Get my bathroom to the point where I can actually take a shower in it. Done. Just finished taking one with Liam, instead of his normal bath. Awesome, I love my new shower. Pictures to come soon.
3. Get a haircut and get a real job Well, get a haircut anyway. Yeah, the guy I get a haircut from always bitches at me cause I wait too long to get my haircut (saves money, and gets me a few weeks of that shaggy….um….Shaggy look. Carleen digs scruffy dudes. Again, this one is pretty much done, I have an appointment tomorrow.

Totally unfair, I know, but this week was an absolute horror for both me and Carleen starting from Sunday night, so I’m gonna cut myself some slack for this week. In more positive news, on sunday me and Carleen went and played tennis for the first time since Savannah while MorMor (Grandma) and MorFar (Grandpa) watched Liam at the park. It was awesome - my body has been telling me to get up off my ass for months now, and I finally listened. It felt great to get back on the courts again - I my serves haven’t deteriorated quite as badly as I thought they would, so that’s a plus.

More posts to come soon, hopefully, I still haven’t told you about our new toy, I will surely get to that within, oh, the month or somewhere thereabouts.