Everytime Liz (Daniel's mom) comes to visit us in Michigan, the weather is unbelievably amazing. And so it was this past weekend. They left yesterday and ofcourse, today the grey rain clouds descended. Boo hoo. We're sad they left ... for more reasons than just the rain :)

It was a pretty low key and relaxing viait for me anyway! On Friday it was Liz's birthday and we celebrated with Jet's pizza, pedicures for me and Liz and black forest torte with butter pecan ice cream!

Saturday morning started a little crazy though. Noah got up at 6:30 am, after we had been up until 1:30 am watching Mission Impossible 3. Daniel took care of Noah with cartoons and then we awoke to a crying Liam at 8 am ... but not just crying ... Daniel walked in to find him in his crib surrounded by mounds of poop that had spilled out of the back side of his diaper. He had poop all over his hands, feet and smeared on his legs .. but the worst part was that he had stuck his poopy hands in his mouth - yeah, poop in his mouth. I put Liam in the bath and Liz and Daniel cleaned up the crib and bedding. Kind of a rough start to an otherwise wonderful day!

Liz, Liam and I went to a nearby mall, bought sandals and came home for a yummy lunch and then naps! The boys went to the Henry Ford Museum and saw "Night at the Museum" at the IMAX theatre there. They came home, we all got dressed and Haley our babysitter showed up so we could all go drive through Mexican Town in Detroit and eat at "Mi Pueblo" (good reccommendation Mandee ... awesome food!!!). We also went to see the X-Men movie - I liked it, everyone else thought it was only OK and I'm pretty sure Liz hated it.

On Sunday we relaxed in the morning and prepared for church. While at church Liam came down with a fever, Ian had a horrible stomach ache and so Mark, Ian and Liam left after Sacrament meeting and all 3 went home and slept. We had "the ribs" after church and Sunday night was a favorite in my mind. We just sat around the living room and talked and laughed about how "Hell is a color scheme", marriage in the temple, and other random topics ... had to be there.

Now the weekend is over and I have grey skies and way too much sugar leftover in the house (black forest torte, ice cream, caramel corn, chocolate costco muffins ... ) but I've got some fun memories and some rad Franco Sarto flip flops that Daniel calls my "Sariah sandals". Signs of a good weekend or what??


Hours before the Forsyths got there, here is Liam dumping out all of the ground Thyme on the kitchen floor. It seemed liked the boys were purposefully trying to sabotage me as I raced around trying to clean the house. The day before, Noah pooped in his pants and with poop smeared on his bum cheeks, he sat unhappily on the hallway carpet and cried, "I flushed my underwear down the toilet!" ... yeah.


Daniel and his mom and dad.


My pedicured toes :)


Ian on Noah's Spiderman bike.


"the ribs"


We don't have enough seating in our house sround our dinner table ... so we ate all meals outside on the patio .. it was marvelous.


I know it's blurry, but one of my favorite pictures of Liam and Liz

Dancing ... With ... The ... Stars!!!!!!!!!!


love it.

Anyway, I was routing for Gilles and Daniel was routing for Melissa ... for obvious reasons ... well, I had a few favorite quotes from Daniel throughout this dramatic night of television entertainment:

Carianne said she underestimated Shawn Johnson's abilities at the beginning of the show and Daniel responded (unbeknownst to Carianne), "How did you underestimate a gold medal gymnast in Dancing with the Stars??!"

Daniel said of Gilles, "All he has is lack of pants" - referring to Gilles most well known acting part in a recent movie.

Anyway, Shawn Johnson won. Not bad. I thought she was good.

Liam's Birthday Dinner:



Liam's Birthday Dinner ... still going ...



Happy Birthday to Liam:



THANK YOU GRANDMA AND GRANDPA FOR THE SWING!!!



THANK YOU GAMMIE AND PAPA FOR THE BOOKS!!!

Liam - age 1

- he loves to suck/bite on cylindrical tubes (batteries, chapstick, etc). He'll crawl around the house with something sticking out of his mouth like a cigar.
- he LOVES food.
- he stands, crawls and walks along holding onto furniture these days.
- he LOVES the toilet and whenever we forget to close the bathroom door, we inevitably hear splashing and find Liam leaning over the edge of the toilet waving his hands in it, sick.
- he thinks Noah is hilarious.
- he LOVES it when Daddy comes home. If it's a nice day, I have the front door open with the screendoor closed and if he sees Daddy drive up - he climbs up at the screendoor and bangs on the door and says, "agah! adah!" and laughs and smiles.
- he LOVES to swing, giggling and laughing the entire time.
- he thinks sunglasses are hilarious and rips them off of anyone's face he can reach, including himself.
- he doesn't like hats or sunglasses or anything on his head.
- he knows what he wants. If you hand him something he doesn't want, he will throw it forcefully on the floor and exclaim, "agah!!" or yell and sometimes scream.
- he HATES his walker.
- he cannot play on his own or be in a room alone, he gets mad and cried, everytime.
- he needs his sleep - taking 2 naps a day and sleeps 12 hours at night (6:30 pm to 6:30 or 7 am) ... this is funny because I think Daniel would prefer the same sleep schedule as Liam gets.
- he looks JUST like Daniel.


Liam's birthday was on Thursday (May 14th) but we celebrated it on Friday because Daniel had class Thursday night and couldn't party with us. So, I will recount the "celebrated" birthday.

On Friday morning, Noah and I made a birthday sign while Liam took his morning nap - we made it out of brown shopping bags and a little paint. Then we went to IKEA. The boys loved it. They ate lunch there and then played in the staged children's rooms. While driving home from IKEA, Liam fell asleep for his afternoon nap. While he slept, Noah played with a friend next door and I made carrot cake cupcakes for the festivities that night.

After Liam's afternoon nap, he and Noah pulled everything out of my spices drawer and destroyed the kitchen, it was great - they really enjoyed it :) Then we ate dinner - tortellini, asperagus and fruit salad and ate cupcakes. Then we opened a gift from each grandparents. Daniel and I actually didn't even buy anything for him this year. He has way too many toys and tons of clothes.

I think Liam was pooped out by the end of his busy birthday!!! Check out the pics:

Today Noah, Liam and I went to the gym in the morning then on the way home, we stopped by Home Depot and bought stuff for the tomato plants I got for Mother's Day. We ate lunch, I put Liam down for a nap and Noah and I spent the next few hours outside - planting tomato plants, talking to my neighbors, Auggie and Rita and putting bricks in the front yard around my boxwood bush. When Liam woke up, Noah and I made Family Home Evening treat (Oatmeal Chocolate chip bars) and then the boys played together in the front room (when I say "played" I really mean Noah attacked Liam over and over again and Liam cried, but sometimes laughed) and I made dinner. All in all, a good day I'd say.

Right now, I am checking emails, Liam is asleep for the night, Noah is putting together a train track that is taking over the front room and Daniel is doing dishes. I just read an email from Liz, Daniel's mom, about being a mom and it fit my day and thought I'd share. I've read the article before but forgot parts and especially liked others. It is "On Being A Mom" by Anna Quindlen, I am only sharing two paragraphs from the article, the parts I related to most ... especially today - I want to remember today and live in the moment:


But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting on the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6,4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing : dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and getting it done a little less.

...

The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact, and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That`s what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.

It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

Noah can be the cutest, sweetest little man in the world - giving hugs and kisses, and the next moment he can be trying to stuff his finger up your nose, yelling full volume and spitting in your face - all at the same time ... he has a true talent of the most invasive and disturbing thing one can do to another human being.

Maybe it's just a 3 year old thing, or maybe it's me - I don't have enough patience or perhaps I am parenting all wrong ... OR maybe it's just Noah. He's a very good boy, but so completely exasperating too.

Just the last 35 minutes is a good example of completely exasperating:

I was getting him ready for bed. We had to brush his teeth, so I asked him to come in the bathroom to brush his teeth. He runs full speed into the bathroom colliding into my legs right at my knees, causing me to buckle and almost fall over - and it HURT! I tell him to be more careful and that there's no running in our house, "It's our house rules, remember?" I say. He doesn't seem to notice that I am talking at all, he's just giggling. So we move on to brushing his teeth.

I pull out his toothbrush and toothpaste and start putting toothpaste on his brush and he screams, "No!!!!! I wonna do it. I can put the toothpaste on BY MYSELF". I say, "fine" and hand the toothbrush to him. He proceeds to wipe the tiny bit of toothpaste I got on his brush off onto the tube and then he starts over, squeezing way too much on his toothbrush, whatever. He sucks all the toothpaste off his brush before actually brushing his teeth, then starts rubbing his toothbrush on the grimy drain in the sink. I take the toothbrush away and say, "it's time to go potty".

He leaps off the stool he was standing on to brush his teeth and says, "I don't want to". I tell him he needs to and ask him to go potty again. I ask him 2 more times before I start counting to 3. He finally starts taking his underwear and pants off. He stops 1/2 way through taking his pants off, squats on the floor in front of the toilet and gets involved in the snowman characters on his pants, outlining each one with his finger. I tell him to keep taking his pants off and to go potty. He yells at me, "I AM!" and I tell him to be quiet so he won't wake up Liam. He finally gets on the toilet and talks incessantly about what clothes he needs to take off for when he pee pees versus when he needs to poop. He finishes and we go through another long ordeal trying to get him to put his pants back on now and he puts them on backwards and has to do it over again, ofcourse, all by himself. If I stopped and tried to do any of this for him, he would have a fit, throw himself on the floor and insist on undoing whatever it was I was helping him do, only so he could start over doing it himself. Besides, he should learn how to put his pants on and off by himself, right?

I ask him to wash his hands, so he stands on the stool next to the sink and squirts the foamy soap - only getting a few bubbles on his hand, the rest goes on his arm and the wall behind him. I am now exasperated. I have been standing in the bathroom coaxing him through a 3 minute process for 12 minutes now. I wash off the wall and his arm and dry them both and he starts over on washing his hands. In the process, he splashes water all over the front of me and in my face.

We go say prayers, relatively uneventfully and then I say, "OK, time for bed". Noah gets up super slowly from prayers and starts tip toeing toward his room and says, "I going REALLY slowly, see mommy?" He sounds pretty proud of himself.

Finally, he makes it to bed. He asks me to tuck him in. I do. Then he says, "No, say 'snug as a bug in a rug'". I do and tuck him in again. I walk out and close the door. 25 seconds later I hear him leap off his bed and land with a loud BOOM on the floor, then he comes running out of his room and he shoots out both of his arms at me and says, "I need lotion on my arms. I'm all scratchy". I put lotion on him and he gets back in bed. I go to close the door and he says, "tuck me in! Snug as a bug in a rug!" I tell him no and it's time for bed. And that actually worked. He stayed in bed. Phew. He can just be exhausting. I thought I should write it down, so one day I can tell him what it was like.

For Family Home Evening on Monday night, we made Mother's Day cards. Noah has the best concentrating lips while coloring. Here he is concentrating on making a card for me:






I know this one is blurry, but still worth it.