Recently...

Our life speeds along as life tends to do and in its course this poor little blog gets neglected. It's a good thing I do not care one whit for blog stats because I'm sure mine would be in shambles.

Anyway, recently we've been spending a lot of time doing Playdoh. For real, that is my life. Liam wakes up talking about Playdoh and goes down for his nap talking about doing Playdoh after his nap. Playdoh time mostly consists of mama making "peas", "swirls", "noodles" and cutting out animal shapes with cookie cutters. Currently Liam's favorite thing to do with it is dump it in and out of the containers. I can't honestly say it is my favorite time of day, but I make the most of it and try to be cheerfully involved with Liam.

Playdoh nose! 

Liam has also discovered singing which is a joy. My heart rejoices when I hear "Jesus loves me" and a church song based on Psalm 8 that he loves. It is so funny to hear him singing the words and getting them all mixed up. I got him up the other morning and he told me he was singing and talking about packages in his bed. The kid loves a good package and is delighted to see the UPS man pull up.

We are also experimenting with "mama's quiet reading time" which means about 20 minutes a day of Liam reading or playing quietly by himself while I read my own book. This might not seem like a big deal if your kid is a good independent player, but mine is not so this is huge. So far we've had two successful days so we'll see how that goes.

We still have A LOT of Liam and mama reading time! 

Each day has joys and challenges and I am trying to remember that the years are short and these days at home with just Liam are so precious. That is not easy to remember when he is pushing my crazy button, but I try. God's grace is sufficient for each day and I am so thankful for that.

Here are some other random pictures from our life lately: 

We had some gorgeous late fall days with temps up into the 70s. We busted out the shorts and t-shirts again and spent some time "painting" with water on the sidewalk. 

Liam's two best buds, Peter and Lucy, joined in the fun

Rob went for four days to a conference in Florida at the end of October, so we stayed as busy as possible. Here we spent an afternoon and evening with Liam's other best bud, Liam Tucker. 

Also while papa was gone we had dinner at Steak 'n Shake. I hadn't been there since college and it was just like I remembered. 

We had a pumpkin carving party with our small group one Sunday. Liam loved the candle in the pumpkin after it got dark, but not the yucky stuff inside. 

Roasting marshmallows over the fire

Loving on that s'more!

We didn't celebrate Halloween, but Liam did get a cookie with black icing that he thought was delicious...

We've been trying out Kefir {store-bought - I'm not adventurous enough to try making my own!} to get more probiotics into Liam before the winter rounds of stomach flu hit. Contrary to this picture, he loves it and calls it his "smoothie". 

Our last batch of cherry tomatoes before we pulled the dead plants up. 

Helping mama make pumpkin bars. Liam is fascinated by the kitchen and loves to "help" cook and bake. 

Liam loves games, particularly marbles, dominoes and Rumikub. He obviously can't really play, but I've found it's a great way for him to learn numbers, colors, counting, sorting, etc.  

I snapped this picture before church to send to my mom and brother because Liam is wearing a cardigan my brother Ben wore in the late 80s.