it's FINAL

monday was a big day for our family. we drove to columbia, through the freezing rain and ice, to finalize liam's adoption. i got extremely car sick, and it rained the first 2 hrs of the drive. not a GREAT time, but we made it. got to see bill's cousin tyler. we changed clothes there (into our "nice" outfits, which is funny because bill had to borrow pants from tyler when we were there for TPR.) next we stopped by the NICU to see one of liam's former nurses. she was happy to see him and how well he is doing.

court was fine. we both raised our right hands and sat on the witness stand. liam was more impressed with banging on the table. we took pictures with the 3 of us; steve, our lawyer; the judge and the guardian ad lidem (sp?) i tried to get them uploaded today, but i have the wrong cable. all my friends here at work say they are very nice pictures though. :)

we got the decree saying that we are his legal parents and that his name has been legally changed (only his last name changed.) apparently, it will be several months while the state gov't workers laboriously type up the new birth certificate. oh well.

6 month check up

liam had his 6 mo. pediatrician appt. this past friday. he is 17lbs 13 oz and 26 inches long. he was 25%ile for height and 50%ile for weight. he seems to fluctuate between 25/30%ile then back up to 50%ile on height. so my guess is that at his next appt he will be back up at 50%ile. he seems to be doing very well overall. the dr. said his head shaking trick is just that - something he figured out he could do. my guess is that it makes him a little dizzy, and he likes that. he handled his shots like a pro again - crying until he realized the nurse was a pretty girl. :)

after that, we made a trip to grandpa ken's office where liam had quite a bit of attention. we also went shopping at the dreaded babies r us and got the baby gates for the house. bill installed them on saturday. i put in all the annoying electrical outlet covers. (bill says he hates safety, mr. fireman that he is.)

liam has also moved onto stage 2 foods, which includes meat. bill is happy that liam is a carnivore now (he's never gotten over lincoln loving canned pumpkin.)

everyone check out our agency website. the blog entry for this past week was about a comment i made to our social worker. she summarized my feelings well.

6 months old!!

yesterday, liam turned 6 months old! what a big boy. he has 2 teeth, he can crawl, he can play with his toys and he can use his voice for fun things.

he had a big weekend leading up to that day. on thanksgiving we went to great aunt dot's house. he had lots of family telling him how handsome he is. we also did some "adoption education" with some friends of family members. i guess this is something that we will always be doing that fertiles never, ever think of.

thursday night we left for a weekend in branson with both sets of liam's grandparents and his aunt, uncle and cousins. he did extremely well in the car all weekend and just went along with the flow. he got to go shopping in the outlet malls and ride in a boat for the first time! liam, bill, liffey, lincoln and i all stayed in the camper, which was interesting the first night when it got down to about 14 degrees. but the campsite was nice, and we had a spot right by the river. i had fun finally being able to shop for my baby in branson. what a difference a year makes. that trip last year we were losing our triplet cycle, which was our last hope of ever having biological children.

looking forward to our court date to finalize the adoption!

fun at flyball!

liam had another exciting weekend. this weekend we had a flyball tournament close to home. liam LOVES to see all his friends there, and he seems to like watching the dogs run! and of course, he loves to hear how handsome he is, which is what he hears all weekend from his friends. :) we are very lucky that he is so laid back and will go visiting from person to person while our teams are running.

and a little brag - liffey ran her fastest time ever - a 6.5 second heat! i am very, VERY proud of her.

an exciting weekend

looks like liam's other tooth just couldn't stand it, and it has started to pop through! so hopefully we will have two handsome teeth in the next few days.

liam had a fun day yesterday. we went geocaching (www.geocaching.com), and the WHOLE family went. liffey and lincoln are old pros at it. this was liam's first trip. he seemed to enjoy himself, mostly because he was in his stroller and outside. we found several caches (and didn't find 2 of them!) hopefully as liam gets older, he will be more helpful finding them than he was yesterday. :)

could it be? maybe??

after much speculation over the last month+, it looks like liam may be getting his first tooth. it is still even with his gum line, but there is a white line there now. i could feel it last night while liam was eating his carrots (carrots are GOOD!) and thought i saw something. it was definitely more pronounced this morning. so we will see!

he is EXTREMELY good at blowing raspberries after our instructional session the other night. he is starting to experiment with intonations in his babbling, along with trying different places of articulation (making different sounds, for those of you not in speech and hearing sciences.) :)

will be checking the tooth progress this evening!!

rocking and rolling

well, he's been rolling for quite a while, but liam's newest trick is to get up on his hands and knees and rock back and forth. he can move around on the floor already, so crawling is not too far into our future!

liam is enjoying his food more and more. he ate half a jar of green beans last night, instead of his usual 1/3. i think we'll be adding more and more "food" to his diet over the next few weeks.

liam went bowling for his godmother's birthday this past friday. he seemed to enjoy the cosmic bowling the best, with all the lights flashing and moving. on sat., we went to watch bill help with a fire training class. liam got to see his dad all dressed out in his bunker gear, complete with air mask. bill looked at liam and said - LIAM, I AM YOUR FATHER - through the air mask, but liam was COMPLETELY unimpressed by bill's darth vader impersonation. oh well.