Liam Had a Birthday

Last week, Liam had a birthday.  I can tell my kids are getting big by the food they choose for birthday meals. Liam's birthday dinner was chicken cordon bleu and his dessert a trifle. See?  I don't think I have anyone left who will let me off with a request for pigs in a blanket and potato chips anymore.  Okay, I don't think anyone has ever requested potato chips actually.

Anyway, Liam is 10 now!  Double digits.  Except, if you ask his siblings, I would be willing to bet that several of them would at first tell you that he is 5.  Really, that is the age that Liam is stuck at for many of us, and our automatic response to "How old is Liam?" is frequently "Five!"  I suspect that the reason for the confusion may stem from the fact that Liam was five longer than he was any other age.  In fact he was five for about.....4 years.  Really.  Okay, not really.   But he sure thought he was.  See, when Ronan turned five, Liam was so impressed by it that he decided to be five too.  So from about the age of 2 1/2, Liam told everyone who asked, and sometimes those who didn't, that he was five years old.  And we learned that a lot of people are fairly clueless about what an average five year old (or two year old for that matter) looks and acts like, because an awful lot of people took his word for it.  The only remnant of that stage of Liam's life,  besides our tendency to sometimes still think he is five, is his 'buddy,' an African Wild Dog named....you guessed it 'Five.'  I don't know, it was a special number to him.

Random Liam stories...

Once, Kris bought a fully cooked pot roast at a school fundraiser.  He brought it home after work, all wrapped in foil and resting in a disposable foil pan.  Apparently I said something like "Let's get this puppy in the oven."  I was later alerted by some older siblings to a serious conversation going on between Ronan (who really was five) and Liam (who really wanted to be five) in their bedroom.  They were very seriously debating whether or not Daddy had actually brought home a puppy for dinner .  And whether or not I had willingly put said puppy in the oven.  And whether or not they would be expected to actually eat the puppy.  Oops.

Liam likes to pick flowers for me.  On a walk one day (he was probably three, but he thought he was five), he was picking lots of wildflowers and I told him he better leave a few to drop seeds to make next year's flowers and he told me very matter of factly that seeds don't make flowers, Jesus makes the flowers and He makes them because girls like them.

Last month Kris and I took Liam, Fionn, Ronan and Noah to show them a footbridge that goes over I 25.  We stood on the bridge watching the traffic pass beneath our feet (If you have never done this, by the way, you are missing out on some serious fun in life.  I used to do this in LA when I was a kid.)  The kids started to wave at the passing cars and trucks.  Nearly everyone waved backed, many truckers honked, one person waved out his sunroof.  Eventually though we  had to go. When I told Liam it was time to go though, he loudly lamented: "But everybody LOVES me!" And then proceeded to wave a big, grandiose goodbye and blow kisses to his adoring fans below on the highway!

And a photo gallery, cause he is too cute for only one:

Being Seven

This is our baby.  She turned seven the end of last year, in fact this picture was taken on her birthday.  At the zoo, which is where Fionn typically prefers to spend her birthdays.  I realize that at seven she doesn't really qualify as a baby anymore.  But she is still our baby.  Anyway, some things Fionn has accomplished since turning seven:

She reads.  Really reads.  Like on her own, picks up a book and reads it because she wants to, not because someone told her to read it.  Yes, in this picture she is reading a comic book.  Baby Blues I believe.  You can probably tell that it is a very tattered and well worn copy too, so you might be able to surmise from that that I am totally okay with my kids reading comic books.  And you would be right.  One morning I came home after driving some older sibling somewhere and found Fionnula perched on the back of a living room chair contentedly reading all by herself because she wanted to. 

She earned a 'Green Band' at the YMCA.  Which basically means that the Y recognizes her as someone who can swim and thus is allowed anywhere in the pools without a parent hovering close by.  Funny thing about that green band, Fionnula has been in a pool on a very regular basis since she was about 18 months old.  And she has been a pretty confident swimmer now for probably 2 years.  But she was not at all interested in taking any  test  to prove her swimming ability to anyone else.  She was perfectly content to swim around in the area of the pool designated for the 'Red Bands.'  Until suddenly, she wasn't okay with it anymore and one afternoon while we were at the pool announced her intention of taking the test.  Kris ran her through it once, she asked the lifeguard to test her, and she did it. 

And this last week, Fionn learned to ride a bike.  Our kids don't ride bikes when they are tiny.  So she had never been on just two wheels until Friday when she and Kris headed to the park where she learned the basics.  And then Saturday she actually went on a bike ride with her parents and some brothers.  We went again today.  That isn't to say that there aren't some scary moments, like Saturday when Kris nearly leaped from his own bike to ensure that she actually did come to a stop rather than exiting the church parking lot at full speed right onto a busy street (but he didn't have to actually make that leap, because she did manage a screeching stop after all), or today when she suddenly careened off the bike path and down a relatively steep embankment full of cacti and yucca (she did eventually crash, disentangled herself from the bike, informed us she was okay and that she would need some help getting her bike back up on the path).

Also, she added to her collection of Disney Princesses that inhabit her bed.  Okay, so maybe this accomplishment may not seem to be of the same caliber as some of the previous ones, but it is equally important to her.  Plus, I like the picture, aren't they cute?  And anyway, she saved all her money to buy herself something awesome at Disney World and she picked out that Belle doll on day 2 there I think, stuck with that decision for the next several days of our trip and very proudly purchased her and brought her safely home.

Anyway, I look at Fionn and wonder: what have I accomplished since my last birthday?