Birthday and Santa

We were recently honored to be invitees to a friend's daughter's first birthday party.  Liam had a lot of fun visiting with his friends and seeing his Aunties and Uncles from Mama's work.

Pre-party picture.  Check out the handsome man!

Uncle Carl and Aunty Kayo

Dad and Liam

Birthday Girl Yuna and her dad Daren

Santa visiting Aunty Kiriko, with Christopher and Luca

Liam checking out Santa

Santa and the Ngs!

After a long day, Liam is napping peacefully (?) on Dad

Christmas Chaos

Apologies for the dearth of posts lately.   I don't think Mikey and I were quite prepared for the slightly manic chaos that marks baby's first Christmas.  After five months, we're used to things taking longer to do, but the holidays, with the concomitant parties and shopping, have proven to be a bit overwhelming.  But, I am happy to report that at a week before Christmas, nearly all of the presents have been purchased, most have been given to their respective owners, and we're looking forward to spending time with family this coming weekend.

And now for another installment of...Clothes That No Longer Fit Liam!

This is the "Beetles Rock" t-shirt that we got compliments of Uncle Brandon.  We really need to start trying clothes earlier...we've got a pattern of waiting a touch too long and then the clothes are already too small the first time we put them on!

And this is our handsome Japanese boy in the outfit Grandma and Grandpa Bob brought him back from Okinawa.  The shorts are pretty much done already, but the kimono top is still good for a little while.  Jeans, anyone?

Gravity is fun!

Apparently some people find gravity and things dropping to be a lot of fun.

Observe as I drop his mushroom baby toy (it's rubber - don't worry):

New Toys!

We got some new toys for Mr. Liam, primarily because he's outgrowing his old ones.

First up: a new chair!
He is literally bigger than his old bouncy now, so this one rocks.  Liam was a bit apprehensive about the newness at first:

Eventually he settled into it, and decided to devour his favorite book:

We also got a jumper for him!
Again, apprehension initially...

The final photo for the day is one of the poor little guy passed out.  We were on our way back home from Zippy's, and as usual, Mr. Fussy was crying.  As what usually happens, he falls asleep in the middle of his crying.  In this case, he fell asleep holding his cards.  Don't do that at the poker table, Liam!

...until next time!

Island Style Images

We had some photos done at Island Style Images up in Haleiwa.  (it's quite the drive!)

They turned out pretty well, although someone wasn't in the best of moods, as you will see.  Without further ado, here are some of the photos:

He started out on his tummy - he didn't know what was going on exactly, but it seemed okay with him.

And then Mama tried to make him laugh, and halfway succeeded.

He smiled with Dad.

We also took family pictures.  Here's one of the outtakes:

And Liam did some impressions...

Chris Farley

Chris Matthews

After all of that, he decided he'd had enough...

That's okay.  We got what we came for.

Tummy Time

Liam is not a big fan of tummy time and so we tend not to subject him to it as often as we should.  But subject him to it we must and today was no different--except that he surprised us by pushing up much farther than he normally does!

When he started this afternoon, he had both hands right under him, but by the time I got the camera out, he'd already begun to devolve into his standard Superman "I'm flying" pose.  But his head is up!

In fact, his head was up so high, I could take a straight on picture.  Go Liam!

After that workout, Liam relaxed with Dad.  And since there was a camera around, he made like Michigan J. Frog and just stared.

PS.  Hi Poppa!  Liam likes that you read our blog!

Crabby Bottoms

We had a little potluck with our parent hui and two of us Mamas must have had a psychic connection.

Boy crab and girl crab!

Notice the prim and proper young lady while Liam takes a wider stance as if to say, "Uuuhhh!!!"

Even us Mamas were coordinated--brown tops with cargo pants.

Post-October Halloween

A couple from Mikey's Iolani circle have a daughter with a birthday near Halloween, so every year they have a spooktacular birthday party with games, a costume fashion show, and a haunted house that all of the men help create and enact.  This year, although Liam was too young for the games and the haunted house, he was able to take part in the costume fashion show.

Liam the Owl chillin' with Dad pre-show.

The paparazzi waiting for the stars to hit the runway.

The Owl makes his fashion debut.  Hand in the mouth is all the rage this season.

Hanging out with Mama after all the excitement.

Yup, the hand is still in the mouth.  And those little Owl booties are SO fashion forward.  Tim Gunn would approve.

Happy Halloween!

It's Halloween!  Mama decided to dress Liam in a "First Halloween" onesie.

Here's the two of them!

Liam and Mama

 and a full body shot - for reference.  So that in the future, we can show Liam just how small he was.

Full body

Dad is noticeably absent from the pictures because 1) someone has to hold the camera and 2) Halloween is for small children.

Hodgepodge

No coherent narrative today--just a bit of randomness...

We went to Poppa and Granny Sharon's house to celebrate Aunty Jessica passing the Bar and to see Aunty Geri, who was visiting from New Zealand.  Here's Aunty Rachel with a sleepy Liam.

Aunty Kiriko gave Liam Monsieur Champignon.  He's a fun guy!

Waving hello to Daddy.  Don't seem too excited, there Liam.

Our sitter, Aunty Lani mentioned that Liam sleeps with his arms behind his head.  Yeah, that's because he's Mr. Cool.

Mama is a self-professed bookworm and I am so happy to see that Liam seems to be taking an interest too!  His favorite book of the moment is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?--we pretty much have it memorized at this point.  The other books we read quite frequently are Not the Hippopotamus and The Going to Bed Book by Sandra Boynton.  Those are Mama's favorites.  Dad prefers to read whatever is on hand.  Here, he's reading the HGTV magazine, but he's been known to read "The Economist" to Liam.  And that's okay...it'll give him a fairly balanced perspective on politics and the economy.

Flashback: Office

We're going vintage, Liam-style!  (In other words, not that vintage).  I finally got my hands on a couple of the pictures we took the first time Liam and I visited the Capitol, when I was still on maternity leave.

He was only a month old, so he was sleeping more in the daytime than he does now.

Everyone was kind enough to take a picture with us.  These are the best coworkers around!

Liam has since had several visits to see his aunties and uncles, and they were only too happy to take pictures while he was there.  Here are some random photos from his various visits.

Shoulder munching with Aunty Rebecca

Looking dubiously at Uncle Steve (He's going to help teach you Mandarin, buddy!)

Showing Uncle Roger how skilled he is at screaming

And charming Aunty Alicia

I can't wait until he gets big enough to start tearing around the office.  That's going to be all sorts of fun!  And thanks Aunty Susan and Aunty Doreen for taking the pictures and sending them our way!

Cousins

Aunty Carol was in town this past weekend, so the whole clan went over to Mom's for a little lunch.

Here's Liam hanging out with his California Aunty.

Cousin Shanti wanted to see what all the action was about.

We also figured it was high time to get some photos of the two newest Ngs together.  So we laid Liam and Abigail on a blanket together and snapped photos while waiting for the camera magic to happen.

Why are you guys staring down at us?

 Mom?  Dad?  What am I doing here?  And who's this person next to me?

Oh...you mean look this way?  Well, sorta...

Good thing we have digital now.  If it were still all film, this would have been one expensive photo shoot!

Incidentally, today marks our one year anniversary!  A lot has happened in the past year (did we mention that one of those new Ngs is ours?) but we've both decided that we're already an old married couple.  Mom was kind enough to watch Liam this Saturday so we could have a nice dinner out at Roy's in Hawaii Kai (my first time!) which was wonderful.  Then we took a day's vacation from work, dropped Liam off at the sitter, and ran errands and cleaned the house.  Oh yeah, and we took a nap.  I would say we've settled into married life quite nicely.

We also followed tradition and pulled out the top of our wedding cake to eat.  I have to say, for year-old cake, it wasn't half bad.

All wrapped up nice and tight.

Sitting in front of the microwave, waiting to be devoured.

I wanted marbled yellow and white (I'll leave you to guess why), but they could only do the standard marble.  Close enough.  :)

Yup, not bad at all.  Two small pieces are in the fridge--dessert for lunch tomorrow!