Liam is 6!

I can't believe I have a six year old!

I realized that this is the first year since he was born that his birthday is on the same day of the week as the day he was born. So we've come full circle. 

I don't think that I have adequate words to describe how much I adore this little boy. He is silly, kind, curious, smart, energetic, helpful, and so, so loving. 

Anytime Liam randomly decides to help out around the house, he lets me know that it's because he loves me. He also likes to tell me when he's done something kind for someone else, like playing with a kid that no one was playing with, or doing really well at taking turns on the slide. It's so sweet to see him recognizing good things that he's done and being excited about it.

Helping shovel out a spot for Daddy
to park in when he got home from work

Helping Grandpa rake leaves

Liam can be very determined. We made a fire recently to burn some fallen branches and broken down boxes. Liam decided to pull an entire tree branch to the fire by himself. He was fully aware that help was available, should he want it, but he was determined to do it by himself. He had to stop every few feet, but he eventually made it all the way! Part of me was a little bit exasperated that he wouldn't accept help, but another part of me was really proud of him for not giving up.

Liam loves his family a lot. While he can definitely be a bit of a butt with his sister, he is often very loving towards her, even when she's being crazy (which is often). He loves spending time with my family in Pennsylvania when we're able to visit, going on trips with grandparents and cousins here, playing board and card games with me, and doing tickle armpits with Jonathan. He often tells me that tickle armpits is his favorite thing.

This year he's started saying that he loves me "infinity infinities" 🥺

He also loves being outside, finding bugs, collecting rocks, playing old Nintendo games on the Switch, making pillow forts, painting, climbing, doing puzzles, and "flipping" (flipping while holding onto rings, vaulting onto my bed, doing somersaults on the bed, etc).

This and the next picture are actually from today,
with him using one of his birthday presents

Finding rocks near the sink is a very common occurrence
 these days as he likes to wash all of the rocks that he collects

He was very proud of himself for finishing
all of the dog puzzles from Grandma Laulusa

This is (apparently) his "regal" face.
Since he was sitting on a throne of pillows

Liam would have lived outside in the snow if we'd let him. He LOVED being out in it; sledding, making snowmen, throwing snowballs (mostly at me), and making snow angels.

Our first big "snow" this year was actually tiny balls of ice.
So we couldn't make snowballs, but
could grab chunks of ice to ninja star at each other

Liam's favorite color is still purple this year. He likes all animals except for zebras (and can't tell me why), though his favorite thing to do at the zoo is pet the manta rays. His favorite meals are salmon and rice (the way Daddy makes it. Jonathan is REALLY good at salmon) and shoyu chicken with rice (doing the Kretchman side proud). He really likes anything Spiderman related.

He's gotten really into Tom and Jerry and Looney Toons lately, which has been a lot of fun. He likes to go "Meep meep!" and then run across the house and flip onto our bed.

This year, he went through a phase of only wanting to wear his Paw Patrol rainboots everywhere. 

I think that one of my favorite things about Liam right now is when he says that something is beautiful. I don't know what it is about hearing a little boy call something beautiful, but I love it 😍

Something else that I really love about Liam is that he is fully confident in the things that he likes. He loves purple and rainbows. He likes having his toenails painted sparkly gold (and is extremely conscientious about making sure that they are totally dry before he does anything). He loves searching for cool rocks and finding worms and making sure that they're in a moist place. He is confident that he is excellent at the things that he does, whether that be painting or building with Picasso Tiles (which he IS extremely good at). He still loves vehicles and gets excited about shirts with construction equipment on them.

I KNOW that I have more pictures of his creations somewhere, 
but this is the only one that I could find at the moment.
He seriously comes up with the coolest things

We went to Walmart last week to pick up some stuff for his birthday party and I couldn't help but laugh a little bit about what we ended up with. We had maroon and purple balloons, blue and purple plates, and he picked a burgundy food coloring for his cake, but it ended up bright pink and he loved it (even though he's not usually a fan of pink). My niece was trying to figure out if there was a color theme and I told her that it was "whatever he wanted at Walmart at the moment". 

One of the only pictures I took at his birthday party
because I always get so caught up in the moment that 
I forget to take pictures 😅

We actually thought that the one pack of balloons was brown and I was highly questioning that decision, but he was sure, so we (thought that we) bought brown and purple balloons.

I hope that he can find a way to always be confident about who he is, because who he is is absolutely amazing.

I like to think that we have the best six year old around <3

PS- Some notable things that Liam said this year:

• "Darngit!" Not darn it, not dang it, but darngit
• For a while everything was a verse or an aisle (ex- "I'm on verse two!" instead of level two. "Where's the clothes aisle?" while looking through my storage in Animal Crossing)
• "Queem" in stead of queen (we played a lot of Sleeping Queems for a couple of months)
• "Mila, that was not the greatest helpfulness"
• "I was thinking about Jesus and he told me to keep cleaning"
• Liam is amazing at naming things. One of his Picasso Tile creations was called a "Drill train smasher spiker burble" another was an "Upside down flipper gimber". One snowman was named Scootle, the other was named Beebabeebaba. He got really into playing cafe. One day I asked him what the name of the cafe was and, without skipping a beat, he said "Saltines Rip-Race Cafe". 
• Me: This level is driving me crazy!
• Liam: It's driving ME crazy! It's driving my cheek!
• *In a singsong voice* I want to smell these up! (about candles, we've been really into smelling candles lately)
• Liam said that I'm a weasel because I "sound like a weasel... like a leaf falling from a tree... like a dinosaur"

And now for some extra pictures!

Visiting Daddy at work after finishing
up at the library's Grinch themed
pajama party

One Year of Mila!

My goodness. I can't believe Mila is already a year old!

Everyone that meets her instantly loves her. She is such a happy, smiley baby! You look over at her and she will give you the biggest grin. She also does a lot of giggling and jabbering and has recently started randomly doing a little dance thing kind of like The Twist, but sitting.

I've had quite a few strangers see her out in public and comment on how chill and quiet she is. I always laugh and say "Chill, yes. Quiet, no." But in their defense, she does tend to be much more reserved in new places and with new people. But she's loud enough the rest of the time that I still wouldn't call her a quiet baby. We call her our little gremlin because of the way she sounds and moves a lot of the time. She doesn't laugh so much as cackle and never really made cooing sounds. She went straight to kind of guttural noises and now does a lot of jabbering and happy yells.

True to form, on her birthday yesterday someone asked if she's six months old. Double that! She's just REAL short. She is finally starting to wear more 6-9 month clothes instead of 3-6 though!

Mila loves raspberries, red bell peppers, water (drinking and playing in it), being tickled under her chin, playing tug-of-war with the wash cloth when I wipe her off after meals, sitting with one foot up, me picking her up and shaking her off when I pull her out of the high chair, clapping, smushing anything flat that she finds into her face (phones, books, Magna-tiles, and she even tried to do it with the dustpan (I caught it before it happened) or lifting things over and behind her head, treating everything possible like a cup for her to drink out of, chasing her brother around the house, and climbing all of the things.

I made her a raspberry cake since she loves them so much!
She started by picking all of the raspberries off of the top and
eating them before trying any of the rest of the cake.

I call this her Picasso picture

Trying to drink out of the cupholder of
Liam's carseat

She also loves her mama. She is MUCH more attached to me than Liam was. He went through phases of wanting to be glued to me, but she has pretty consistently wanted me and only me when she is upset. Poor Jonathan has had to pass her off to me and watch her immediately start calming down after he has tried to soothe her for quite a while. She tends to follow me around the house with he noisy slap crawl. She'll also often crawl up to me, pull herself up using my shirt, and then lean on my shoulder and suck her thumb when she's starting to get tired. She's not super snuggly though. Lately when I've tried to snuggle her before putting her down to sleep, she's just started reaching for the crib. Which is especially odd since Liam hated the crib and had to be snuggled into submission every single time.

I'm not used to seeing pictures of myself, 
but Liam has started wanting to take pictures
all the time. I thought that this one was pretty good!

On the tram at Dollywood!

Mila has gotten much better at using soft hands on the cat and enjoys him rubbing on her.

She still hasn't really gotten waving and signing "more" and "all done" yet. She was doing great at "all done" the couple of days we were visiting my parents this week, but hasn't really done it again since we got back. She definitely knows the motions for both signs (I see her sign "more" out of context all the time), but simply doesn't use them. And while she has occasionally sort of looked like she might be waving at someone, it hasn't been very consistent. She does however often just raise one hand like she's hailing someone and instead of signing "all done" when I ask if she's done, she'll sometimes start handing me food off of her high chair tray instead. Or she'll just start swiping or dropping food off of the tray. 

Seriously though, seeing her raise a hand to someone and loudly jabber at them is my favorite, it crack me up every time!

Mila discovered this past month that she really loves playing in water. She is convinced that she can swim (spoiler- she cannot), and loves splashing and trying to chase down toys in the pool. She generally showers with Liam, but likes to crawl in and out and in and out of the shower (we only have a standing shower at the moment but I can't wait to have a bathtub for her!).

Grandma Laulusa very kindly got this floatie for Mila
 so that I don't have to always be sitting in the kiddie pool holding
Mila and making sure that she doesn't "swim" herself into danger

Loving one of the splash pads at Dollywood!

Where she used to have to have her head covered with a blanket in order to fall asleep, now she almost immediately throws blankets off when she's in the crib. She does snuggle blankets though and likes to have something hooked in her thumb before she sticks her thumb in her mouth. This is usually a bit of blanket or my shirt, but she has also done it with a piece of peanut butter toast, a piece of waffle, and she often tries to scoop her own onesie up (with little success generally).

Comfort waffle

The rest of these pictures are mostly random ones from the last month:

Mila finally met the last of my siblings!

At Kipona

I love this picture that Liam took of Mila.
You can kind of see how her hair is just
starting to curl

We just got these little bow clips last week
and Liam really likes them.
I came out of the bathroom the other day to
find that he had taken it upon himself to accessorize his sister

Picnic lunch

After Pinewood Derby

Love that it looks like she's posing

There was something so sweet about looking over
and just seeing her little toes poking out

This just cracked me up. That can NOT be comfortable.
But she often does this when I put her
down and she's not happy about it.
She kind of folds herself in half so that she can
cry facedown on the floor.
This is the only time I've seen her fall asleep that way

And these pictures are from her birthday and birthday celebrations (neither of which were on her actual birthday, haha)

This is from our visit to my parent's house this week. We had a Boston creme pie and the first thing she did was dump it off of her plate and put the plate up to her face, and then behind her head.

These were taken on her actual birthday:

And these are from our little celebration here at home with family and our awesome neighbors:

I had high hopes for this cake, but it really
wasn't all that great unfortunately

I still can't believe that we've had a whole year of Mila! Yet at the same time I can't imagine my life without her. I love this happy little gremlin girl so, so very much and am so grateful that I get to be her mom!

Happy (late) Birthday Mila!