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How many steps must a child walk, before you can call him a toddler? He’s gotten 12 consecutive steps done.

Liam took his first steps on Tuesday night, and then even more on Wednesday. He’s still pretty timid about it but he thinks it’s really funny, and has a big proud smile on his face when he tries to walk!

It’ been so hot lately ad Liam loves to play in his water table outside in the shade to cool off. Its the greatest table, my sister got it for his birthday, here is a photo.

Liam successfully turned One on Friday! To celebrate I took the day off work and we all headed up to the Long Beach Aquarium. There were tons of big, huge fishes and Liam loved it!

On Saturday he had a birthday party, attended by all of his favorite little pals. He got a ton of gifts… our living room looks as if Santa Claus exploded in it. The weather was perfect for the party… warm with a breeze. Two of the balloons got loose and lodged in a tree, but were retreived when four fathers got together and came up with a plan.

Thanks to everyone that made Liam’s first birthday so special!

Last weekend we went to Grandma’s pool for a swim!

Liam is recognizing so many words. When we ask him, “Where are the trees?” He points outside to the trees. When I say, “Go get Dada!” he turns to Josh and starts bouncing on him and patting his arm. Here are the other words/phrases/requests that he understands (or the ones we’re actually aware of!):

Kitty, doggie, monkey, zebra, birdie, trees, binky, ball, water, fan, mama, dada, baby.
Jump, Shake it, clap, dance, look!, come to mama, come here, go get dada, kiss monkey, gimme five (he’s still learning this one).

He’s so smart!

For awhile we’ve been joking that Liam says “dada”, but it’s only been about 50% accurate… sometimes he’d call his foot “dada”.

Until this morning!

This morning while I was sleeping he’d turn to me and start saying “dadadada” until I’d recognize it. If that didn’t work, he’s start smacking me. It continued throughout the morning. So cute!

We went to the San Diego Zoo for my 30th birthday! It was great, a beautiful sunny, breezy day, wasn’t too crowded since it was a Friday. Liam liked it, but I think he is too young to really ‘get it.’ He was very excited t see the large cats because that was something he recognized, since he’s in love with our kitty at home. They were BIG kitties and pacing at the front of their cages so we got a real good look at them for a long time. He seemed to like the elephants and the alpacas too. There was a lot of walking involved since they spread out the animals so far, so we got tired pretty quickly. We didn’t see everything, but it’s okay because we bought year passes, so we can go back whenever we want to! We were there for over three hours, came home and Josh made me a birthday cake!!

We were starting to think he was going to go straight to walking! He’s been much more interested in standing and walking along the couch and other things. But finally (at Week 38) he crawled a few steps, waited a couple of weeks, then crawled across his room. He’s much happier now he has some freedom, but we’re teaching him the word “No” now! He’s pretty good, although he’s obsessed with the laptop and any wires associated, but he’s not hyper or unmanageable, which is a relief.

Liam is 9 months now, and is such a happy baby, and we have so much fun with him! He taught himself how to play peek-a-boo and now he puts everything on his head. He’s eating more table food (although I’m still nervous about it) and is learning to recognize more words. He now knows: kitty, jump, shake it, clap, yay, hi, bye, daddy, mommy, and is very good at waving to everyone in the grocery store He’s been babbling alot more too, which is fun because Liam has been pretty quiet these last few months.

Here’s a video of Liam’s first week of crawling (he’s much better at it now!). And here’s a video of him playing peek-a-boo!

Yesterday was Josh’s 30th birthday so we took Liam to Disneyland for the first time! He LOVED it and we had a great day! Liam did so much better than I expected, so we stayed there for six hours. He was in awe, and definitely overwhelmed but he didn’t cry once. He ate his lunch and even took a half hour nap while Mommy went on Space Mountain. He did get a little scared on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride but he just buried his little head in Daddy’s chest and peeked out with only his eyes showing timidly, so sweet.

We also went on It’s a Small World (which I think was his favorite), Peter Pan, Jungle Cruise, Alice in Wonderland, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and Pinocchio. He had wide eyes on all of them, as you can imagine. Luckily the park wasn’t terribly crowded so the wait times weren’t too long, I can’t even imagine waiting longer than 20 minutes for a ride with Liam squirming!
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This is a photo of me (Clare) when I was a baby… It looks just like Liam! Yes, that’s my dad with a big ol’ beard.

Liam just turned 8 months old last week. He’s really not interested in crawling, no matter what we do. He’s pulling himself up, getting more steady on his feet, and walks along the couch. He grabs your hands, pops himself up to standing and smiles like he’s so proud of himself when he takes steps. I’ll have to find a good video clip for Josh to put online soon…