Today is Liam’s birthday.  It’s been three years since that wonderful, AMAZING day where he was born.  I can say without hesitation that it was the best day of my life.   Even now, thinking of it brings a big smile to my face.

It has been a wild and crazy three years with little Liam in our lives.  He’s the sort of child that will NOT be pushed to the side, that will NOT be not noticed, that will NOT be just your average “middle child”.  He quite deftly marks his place in our lives and it’s all we can do to just keep up with him.

He’s a ball of energy, a life-force to be reckoned with.  It’s easy to forget that he is small and just as frail as the rest of us.  Because he’s a “tough guy”.  I’ve never seen a child fall down quite as much as Liam does.  And mostly, he picks himself back up with a yell of “I’m okay!” and he’s back at it again.

Three is the age I dread.  He’s already such a handful, that I’m afraid of having more heaped on my plate.  But at the same time, I have to admit, this new age and maturity has been kind of… FUN.  He’s talking more, doing more and actually even listening more.  Still, I don’t want to make it sounds like he listens to us often.  Just more than NEVER which is how he was before.

He has great capacity of cruelty when it comes to his little sister.  He sees nothing wrong with running up to her and smacking her on the head, pushing her over, tripping her as she takes her first toddling steps and stealing toys from her on a whim.  I get the impression that he feels entitled to rough her up a little, seeing as she just waltzed into his life and took his position as “baby”.   Plus, she is JUST a baby, she doesn’t need that doll/sippy cup/car/book.  Liam finds himself in “baby jail” (aka the pack n’ play) quite often because of this.

He also has great capacity to love.  Perhaps, he’s the most loving of all the kids.  He’s the most likely to run up to you in the middle of playing to give you a spontaneous hug and kiss.  Despite the frequent brutalizing of Evie, he shows a great deal of concern for her when she’s unhappy.  And he just idolizes Harry, following him around like a puppy dog and clamoring for his attention.   He’s a papa’s boy at heart and would quite happily go off to work with Kile every day, just to be near him.   His favorite place to hang out in the mornings is on Kile’s lap, sippy cup in hand and stuffed dolphin tucked under his arm.

He loves cars.  Like most boys his age, Hot Wheels cars are his vice.  And the movie “Cars” is arguably his biggest obsession.  He would watch that movie 24/7 if I let him.  I have a strict “1 ‘Cars’ per day” viewing policy.  It’s adorable to watch him get so into something.  His fondness for Disney comes next and for months now he has been able to identify the Disney logo.  And while no Disney movie is quite as fabulous as “Cars”, it still is a cause for celebration.  And I may be scared of traveling across country with this wild, ball of energy, but the look on his face when he first sees Disney World and the cruise ship will make it all worth it, I am sure.  I literally cannot wait to see what he thinks of it all.  What will he do when face to face with Mickey Mouse himself?  The child’s head might just pop off his shoulders.

This isn’t a terribly eloquent post and it’s hard to be eloquent about a child like Liam.  He’s a do-er.  He’s a mile a minute.  He’s a lot of everything in a small package.  And quite simply, I cannot imagine our lies without him.  Quieter and more peaceful, perhaps, but also emptier.

So happy birthday, Liam.  I can’t believe how fast you’re growing.  And I look forward to watching you grow some more.

Life has, for now, returned to semi-normal.  Harry went with my in-laws when they left on Sunday, and took his pup with him, so the house is a little emptier than usual.  Kile has gone back to work after working hard day in and day out on the sprinkler system for our backyard.   The schedule has righted itself.  Peace (sorta) reigns once more.

Want to see some pictures of the finished projects (to date, more are planned!)?  Too bad if you don’t because here they come anyhow….

Kile and my father in law putting the finishing touches on the swing set.

Beetoe watches the progress but is careful to not actually GO outside to do it.

The swingset, in all it’s glory.  So far Liam’s favorite thing to do is climb up into the tower and send cars down the slide.  We plan to get a toddler swing in a couple of weeks for Evie (and for Liam too since he’s sorta unsure about the “big boy” swing seats).

See how it has a little picnic bench on the back here?  Harry has plans of eating lunches out here, right now Liam likes to pile rocks on it.  And the small square in the middle of the base, we plan to build a little higher and put a liner in so we can pour sand in there.  Clever, huh?

However lovely the swing set is, a swing set does not make a backyard a habitable place all on it’s own.  We also need some trees, grass and a patio.  This weekend also saw significant progress towards a sprinkler system though!  Kile dug enormous trenches for the water lines, a feat which earns him a gold medal because we officially have the rockiest dirt on the face of the planet.

Yikes. Some of those are the size of a watermelon.

Trenchy goodness

More trenchy goodness

A few adjustments….

It works!  Woot!

Next we need to lay some sod (or seed if we choose that route).  Pick out some landscaping.  I’m thinking of using sand with a little rock here and there for the edges of the yard.  We’re thinking of putting rubber mulch under the swing set.  The big question right now is the patio.  What to do?  There’s pavers, concrete, deck…. what would be the easiest/cheapest to do ourselves?  Anyone have any experience with this and want to chime in with your two cents?  I’m open to any and all inspiration here!

The important thing is… we’re MUCH closer to an actual backayrd.  It only took FIVE YEARS.

Yesterday, we roused ourselves out of bed at 6:30am.  On a SATURDAY.  We put on warm clothes, purple shirts.  We got the kids out of bed.  We packed them all into the van and drove off towards the Sparks Marina, after only having a few sips of fabulous, life-sustaining coffee.  We stood around in the chill air before subjecting our lazy, inert selves (okay that may have just been me) to a long but scenic walk around the marina.

It was all for Maddie.

Well, it was for premature babies in general, yes.  But Maddie was my focus.  Maddie was the reason I got up at 6:30am on Saturday and subjected myself to all of that.  If not for her, I’m not sure I would have had the motivation to do it.  I’m not sure I would have had the drive.

I didn’t raise much money sadly.  Or, you know, really ANY.  But my good friend Jenn, who joined us with her young son for the walk, did raise some money so that is something.  Every little bit, right?

We joked that it should have been called a Munch n’ March for all the goodies there made available to us.  Lots of granola bars.  Lots of water.  Fruit.  Juice.  Yogurt.  Muffins.

We joked but the entire time, Maddie’s smiling face remained clear in my mind.  I was doing this for her.  Because she couldn’t do it herself.

_{(so it’s a day late… so sue me)}

Hmm. I see a lot of people writing posts today about ways they and their families are trying to be more environmentally consious and I feel a little guilty because I’m not doing anything besides what I normally do. It takes me a minute to realize it’s been about a year since I started using clothdiapers, and hey, maybe that counts as being environmentally conscious, no?

Yer darn tootin’ it is.  At least as far as I’m concerned.

So yeah.  We’re still cloth diapering  And I’m still loving it.  I maybe even love it more than I did last year when I first started out with my bumGenius pockets and gDiapers.  And from where I’m sitting, I can’t believe I didn’t try this before.  I have a good amount of misconceptions I’ve made in my life and the hassle associated with cloth diapering is DEFINITELY one of them.  But you know how it is.  It’s always easy to fear the unknown and I had no way of knowing that cloth diapers wouldn’t be any hassle at all until I went ahead and just DID IT.

People who are anti-cloth diapering (and who would these people be, besides disposable diaper manufacturers and their families??), always like to argue about the water/energy required to clean diapers.  I always roll my eyes when I hear that because, SERIOUSLY?  That is somehow worse than sitting in a landfill, poluting the ground water, for 500 years?  REALLY?  And, just so’s ya knows, Kile says our water bill hasn’t gone up at all in the last year since I’ve been cloth diapering.  And I wash about every other day without fail.  So you tell me.  Our electric/heating bill?  No different either.  HMM.  ISN’T THAT INTERESTING.

Anyhow.  I’m actually kind of sad that we’ll be taking disposable diapers with us this summer when we take our Big Trip to Disney World and Beyond.  I know it’s not feasible to cloth diaper on that trip and we’ll need less hassle (A LOT LESS HASSLE) instead of more but… dangit.  I kinda like my cloth diapers.  I’m gonna miss them for the week we’re gone.  YES, I’M SERIOUS.

I can’t tell you how glad I am not only to not be buying package upon package upon package of diapers each month, but not to be dragging out bags of dirty disposable diapers to the garbage all the time.  For the month that we had two in disposables, I honestly felt that not only was I literally throwing away money, but that I was single-handedly contributing to the problems our Earth is facing.

I’m a practical gal and I will ALWAYS prefer the option that is easier on my pocket book.  When I’m out of diapers, I just run a load of laundry.  And voila, I’ve got diapers.  It’s SO much nice to be able to REUSE something rather than continue the cycle of purchasing, using and throwing away.  And when I’m done with a diaper or want to try something different, I sell the old diaper (there are HUGE communities online for this and you can get quite a bit back on your investment, depending on the diaper) and use that money to buy something new.  I don’t have a single diaper now that I had when I started out a year ago.  And I’m selling off some of my (once beloved) Goodmama diapers and am getting four square into Bagshot Row Bamboo diapers.  It’s like crack man.

And Kile loves not seeing the constant drain on the bank account too, I’m sure.

And if it weren’t for cloth diapers, I would have never discovered knitting the way I have.  And I wouldn’t be making some decent cash knitting up pants, shorts and skirts the way I am either.  So there’s that.

Cloth diapers, man.  They aren’t the prefolds and plastic pants your mother used (though you can do that too, if you really really want to).

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Last week was a pretty dull one at our house.  Harry was on spring break and not feeling well on top of that so he pretty much laid on the couch all week long.  I spent a lot of time in the house trying to get some knitting done and watching Liam and Evie try to take each other out.  Dull, dull, dull.

So, Kile took Friday off of work and we packed up the family and drove down to Carson City.  It’s an easy drive, since Reno is just a northern neighbor to the state capital and even though we live on about the absolute opposite end of town, it took us no time at all to get there.  We wanted to take Harry to at least one museum while we were there, that was the big purpose of the trip.  He’s in the Cub Scouts now and visiting a museum is a badge requirement for his “Bear” badge.  Plus, he was genuinely interested in going to a museum.

First things first, we needed to hunt down lunch.  We parked the van, loaded the wee ones into the double stroller and headed down the main drag.  And the iPhone came in VERY handy, making it easy to find a nearby cafe that was well rated and just what we were looking for.  It was “Mom and Pop’s Diner”, across the street from the capital and the state assembly buildings.  The day was very nice so we sat outside and enjoyed the atmosphere.  I definitely recommend that place if anyone is looking for lunch while in Carson City.  Their Tri-Tip BBQ sandwhich was simply fabulous.  I’m drooling right now just thinking about it.

After that, we took a stroll through the capital and the surrounding grounds and I took an obnoxious amount of pictures.  But it really was a gorgeous day and with all the flowering trees doing their flowering thing, I couldn’t resist.

We made our way back to the Nevada History museum, with me snapping pictures all along the way.  I didn’t have an issue with taking pictures like a cheesy tourist.  My family may have been a little embarrassed, but that’s their problem.

We finally made our way to the museum and it was very interesting!  There was this completely awesome underground mine replica that went on and on and I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone who is claustrophobic.  But it was very cool.  There was also a whole room on guns and other weapons and that was cool too.

And it wouldn’t be a Nevada History Museum without at least one obnoxious display of silver.  I think there were four or five.

It also wouldn’t be a Nevada History Museum if there wasn’t at least ONE nod towards Las Vegas Showgirls and YAY, there was one!  I kinda got skeeved out looking at the thong/g-string/whatever the heck it was because DUDE, someone totally wore that (see the picture in the display case) and chances are pretty good that she was a skank of some kind.

It was after that that we went to McDonalds and the infamous ice cream incident took place.  That was a hoot.  We headed to the railroad museum next.  One of those places you always hear about, living in the area, but never go to because you’re not a tourist in your own town, right?  But that day, we were tourists.  So we went and looked a bunch of completely awesome (and completely HUUUUUGE) trains.

After that, everyone was pretty spent.  So we headed back to Reno and I swear we hadn’t cleared the Carson City city limits before our backseat was filled with this:

And this:

I know we don’t go anywhere all that often and tend to hole up in our little house because it’s safe and quiet and simple and easy and SAFE.  But it was a lot of fun to break out of our shell that day and enjoy it together.  It was a real family day and I think all of us will remember it (well, maybe not the two young ones) for a long time to come.  And we definitely need to do it more often.