Psychobabble

I have not posted in a while! After all the excitement of the holidays, life has been just moving along and has been pretty cookie cutter! The kiddos continue to be our light and joy! Liam is growing insanely fast. He is standing and walking along furniture, eating all kinds of "big boy food" (his fave is bread dipped in hummus...I cannot get it on his tray fast enough), and even talking some. He says "Dada", "Mama", "All Done" and "no no no". "NO" is always said in threes. He also makes animal sounds. He will tell you what a bee says, what a cat says, what a mouse says and what a snake and lion say. I have to say, he is THE SWEETEST, snuggliest most good-natured little boy!!!!!! He is just a delight. He is very very curious and is always getting into things, but not in a destructive way - he just really wants to know how things work! He literally can get into any corner or onto any shelf. He climbs like a monkey. I always ALWAYS have to have an eye on him.

Because of the fact that no matter what I am doing I have to watch him, Kate has begun to feel a little overlooked, I fear. While I have her snuggling on the chair with me and we are reading books, I have to keep one eye on Liam. Or I may be playing "dollhouse" with Kate and be in the middle of a sentence and have to lunge away to stop Liam from climbing the bookshelf. Hence, I think she feels like second fiddle and is acting out. I am going to go out on a limb and play shrink and say she is having some regression issues - always wanting to be treated like a baby, asking to be held like a baby. We caught her playing in Liam's playpen and then another time she climbed into Liam's crib. She always asks for stories from us about when SHE was a baby. We have tried to counter it by a. involving her in caring for Liam and telling her what a big girl she is and b. doing special things with her that don't involve Liam and stressing that it is a big girl thing! Last weekend we got a sitter for Liam and then Nick and I took Kate to the kiddie indoor amusement park and dinner at her FAVE restaurant - the Rainforest Café - complete with a "Volcano Dessert". She LOVED it. I have to say that helped things a lot. And it was just SO much fun to have time with just her. But you can still really see her vying for our attention and affection. Let the sibling rivalry and the tallying of "who gets what" begin, I guess!!!!

Liam, though, thinks that Kate hung the moon. He follows her everywhere. No one can make him laugh like she can. I guess if some sort of normal psychological manifestation is going to occur, I would rather have it be Kate looking for attention through snuggling me and wanting to always be held as opposed to her being aggressive toward Liam - or to us. I hear that can happen.....luckily in all of this she still is crazy about him and sweet as can be to all of us.

Anyway - this is getting long. It is time for me to - as Kate would say - "cwose the bumputeh" (the way she says "computer"). Here are some pics I took of Liam recently. Kate has not been in the mood for cameras lately. I asked her to please pose and smile and she told me "No thank you, Mom, I don't really feel like it right now". Well - ok! How can I argue with that?!