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: