Reading Journal: Oceanswept

My incredibly talented friend Lara wrote this book.  I know, right?  I feel famous just knowing her.  It's being officially released tonight (at midnight! get your credit cards ready!), but she let me have a sneak preview of it this week.  She emailed it to me on Tuesday; I emailed her back to warn her that I was totally swamped with obligations this week and that I might not have time to read it this week-- then proceeded to drag it around with me everywhere I went while my house fell apart, my children subsisted on fruit cocktail and hot dogs, and my sacrament meeting talk went unplanned.  So, um, sorry to those of you who have to listen to me ramble incoherently at the pulpit tomorrow.  Blame Lara.  But anyway....

Set in the 18th century, Oceanswept is the story of Tessa Monroe, a well-bred young lady excited to be moving from London to a new posting in the West Indies with her Admiral father.  After a hurricane destroys her father's ship, however, Tessa-- the sole survivor of the incident-- is pulled aboard a passing ship-- The Banshee-- and nursed back to health by a handsome sailor who, though kind, seems to be hiding something.  Something dark.    

And that is where the adventure begins.  Carried by action, courage, revenge, treachery, romance, and the fight for survival, Oceanswept is a lively and engaging read.  

Get it here.

If our family had one of those window decals...

To Breed or Not To Breed

Something I have been obsessing about since for the past year or so:  when (or whether) to have more kids.

I never thought I would only have two children.  Never.  When Abe and I got married we decided that six was a good number of kids.  Then we had one.  We brought him home and all through the first night we watched him sleep, terrified he might stop breathing or get caught between the bars of the crib.  Suddenly our tune changed from "We're going to have six kids" to "Let's take this one at a time and see how it goes."  Soren, as you can imagine, was not an easy baby.

When Soren was about fifteen months old, he started sleeping through the night (yes, you read that right. At fifteen (separate word) months he started sleeping through the night.) and we started to feel like we had a fairly good handle on the parenting situation, so we decided to try for another baby.  Eleven months later, we had Liam.

Liam was an easy peasy baby for the first few weeks-- until he got reflux.  Then he, too, became an incessant crier.  So between protecting the whiny new baby from constant physical assaults made by his extraordinarily jealous two-year-old brother, caring for the needs of said (needy and tantrum-prone) two-year-old, breastfeeding every three hours, changing two kiddos' diapers, cleaning up 15-20 spit-up messes a day, working part-time, and waking up constantly at night, I nearly lost my mind.

The only thing that saved me was working.  It was with great relief that I went each day to a place where there wasn't constant screaming and crying and where I could put something down and return a full fifteen minutes later to have it still be there.

Let's just say I'm not in a huge rush to go through that again.

I mean, I looooove babies, and I am gut-wrenchingly thankful for my two handsome and precious little boys, but I have no desire to endure months of constant on-the-edge-of-vomiting nausea.  I really, really, really, really don't want to have to wake up with a newborn baby every couple of hours for several months (or a year. or more.) I don't think I could handle another heavy crier.  I honestly haven't even worked up the energy to potty train my 3 1/2-year-old.  I'm clearly not equipped to manage the needs of a third human being.

And then there are financial considerations.  I have a full-time job.  I can't afford childcare for my two children.  I am lucky to have a husband and family members who take care of them while I work, but I would feel awful asking anyone to watch not one, not two, but three children for me for free.  If Abraham could find full-time work, maybe I could cut back on my hours and then consider having another wee one.

But on the other hand, I kind of like just having two children.  Life is not as hard now that they're three and five years old.  And I imagine it could just get easier!  And we could afford to go on more trips with just two children!  Maybe even visit the New Hampshirine Grandparents now and again!  Maybe we could decorate the house!  Maybe I could pursue a PhD!

And then I think, "It may be harder temporarily, but the sacrifices we make in having more children are compensated by the gift of love that will come through the addition of another child."  I'll look at pictures of families-- especially families with grown children-- and think, "Oh my goodness.  Look at all that life and love brought into the world by two people.  What a joy to grow old and know that you raised these beautiful children and that they are raising beautiful children."  These people count wealth in posterity, not dollars, and are very rich indeed.

I also feel an obligation to have children for the sake of the gene pool.  Not to be all vain, or whatever, but I feel that Abe and I -- while certainly not perfect-- possess the ability to bring healthy, contributing people into the population who will, in turn, bring more healthy, contributing people into the population.  With abusers and druggies breeding like there's no tomorrow, I feel there should be some sort of counterbalancing breeding force from the healthies of the world.

And then, of course, there's the question of faith.  This speech provides good insight regarding the religious significance of bearing and raising children.  I read this and think that maybe we should just trust God to take care of everything, let go, and (fertility willing) have another baby.  And yet, I don't want to put myself in a position where I've stretched my resources so thin that I can't give my already-existing children the love and attention and care they need.  And I certainly don't want to end up like Andrea Yates.  And, I'm just sayin', last time I asked God if we should have another baby, Liam woke me up four times in the course of the following night.  

Sometimes I find myself thinking, "Well, maybe if we had another child, it would be a girl.  A nice, well-behaved, docile girl.  Maybe we could try again and have a peaceful little girl."   

But here is the truth: having a baby isn't like walking into a store and picking out something new you want for your collection.  You don't choose who your children are, what their personalities are like, what their challenges will be.  You can't choose their gender or personality or intelligence level.  When you decide to add a child to your family, all you can do is just open yourself whoever that child  is-- give your heart to a whole human being and be willing to accept and nurture that particular individual.  And-- I hate to admit this-- I'm not sure I'm in a position to do that just now.

So I brood.  I wonder if and when we should have another one.  When I look at other families, I compulsively figure out how many kids there are and how many years are between them.  I evaluate the closeness of their relationships relative to their age spacing.   I yearn to know if people spaced their kids out like that on purpose-- or if it "just happened."  I ask myself if there's an optimal family size or child spacing. Will our family be better off if we have all our kids right away?  Would it be okay to have one every five years or so?  Will we regret it someday if we only have two?

It's a question that's been driving me crazy, like an incessant itch, or ever-present white noise.  Will someone just give me a definitive, specific, correct answer? Thanks in advance!

Reading Journal

A Practical Guide to Buddhist Meditation, by Paramanda

This is an excellent introduction to the art of Buddhist meditation-- Paramanda, a (British) Buddhist monk, clearly and lovingly explains the whys and hows of meditation, explaining how meditation is a process of changing your mind to promote an inner state of energized peace and compassion and love for yourself and others.  

Reading this book feels like taking a leisurely nature walk with a friend who knows every type of tree, every bird, every wildflower.  The author takes you by the hand and kindly points things out to you, gentle and patient and encouraging as he shares his life's wisdom.  

It even motivated me to take up meditation, which I did faithfully for about six weeks, and then dropped, which is what I do with every spiritual practice.   

However, it's a book I'll read again and again, just for the wisdom and insight.  And I just might return to meditating sometime too.  
  

1-2-3 Magic, by Thomas Phelan

I went on about this at length in a series of blog posts that begin here.  This  book continues to have a positive impact on my life with the kiddos.  I wasn't as excited about the second half-- it was stuff I was already doing and/or familiar with-- but if your kids have some tough behavior problems you'd like to root out, I can't recommend the first half enough.

Life After Life, by Raymond Moody, Jr.

My co-worker friend Eric picked this book up at the Methodist Garage Sale for 50 cents and loaned it to me when he had finished reading it.  "If you ever get real mad and want to kill me," he said, "Go ahead.  I'm ready."  

This is the modern "near-death experiences" classic, written in the '70s, if you couldn't tell from the awesome cover font.  Raymond Moody, a philosopher and psychologist, interviewed one hundred and fifty people who had either come very near to dying or who had been declared clinically dead and been resuscitated.    From these stories, he describes nine common elements that individuals independently described regarding their own near-death experiences. (My favorite element is the love-filled encounter with a being of light.)   

After describing the elements, Moody reviews possible explanations for these experiences, arguing that, while he personally finds them persuasive, the experiences do not provide incontrovertible evidence for life after death.    

The whole thing made me feel a whole lot better about dying.  Sounds downright pleasant, in fact. 

This is a fascinating read and I very much would like to read more about near-death experiences.  I would be particularly interested in reading a cross-cultural study on this topic.  Any recommendations?    

Family Vacation 2012: Days 2 & 3

These are actually pictures from the car ride on Day 1.  Shhh.  Don't tell. 

Day 2:
Our hotel room was a suite, which meant that Abe and I had a separate room and the kids got to camp out on the couch bed in the front room.  This would have been fabulous-- had the kids stayed in their own bed all night.  Let's just say we ended up doing a lot of bed hopping throughout the late and wee hours both nights.  On the first morning, the boys woke me up at five-thirty, so I found some Spongebob Squarepants on TV for them and snuggled back in with Abe, hoping to sleep for another hour or so.  The children, however, got bored after about fifteen minutes and decided to climb into bed with us.  This would have been all well and good had they not decided to start hitting each other over my head.  At first I was all, mumble-style, "Boys.  Knock it off."  Then, whinily, "Boys! Stop it!"  But after someone missed and hit ME on the head, I lurched up and screeched, "DO YOU WANT ME TO BEAT YOU?", then huffed off to take a shower.  Thus began Day Two of our family vacation.  

This is Soren feeling sorry for himself after I yelled at him.   

After making peace, we got ready and headed down to the Hogle Zoo.  

The day, in a list:  

1. The zoo was hot.  Very, very hot.  

2. And crowded.  

3. Soren would latch onto the idea of seeing one animal and refuse to look at anything else until he had seen it.  

4. It went like this:  "Soren, look!  An alligator!"  "Where are the elephants?"  "We'll get to those in a little while, but look!  A tiger!"  "Where are the elephants?"  "Soren, you've never seen an ape before!  Look! A grown-up ape!"  "Where are the elephants?"    

5. I saw a man with an argyle sock tattooed on his right leg.  

6. I saw a lot of tattoos, period.  Tattoos are The Things these days, apparently. 

7. Soren refused to hold his own damn carousel ticket while we were standing in line.

8. I may or may not have crunched the ticket into his hand and clasped my hand around his, forcing him to hold it.  

9. Then, on the carousel, he was too scared to ride on an actual animal.

10. Instead he sat on a the bench and clung fearfully to the side of the seat, as though the centrifugal force created by the carousel's breakneck speeds might fling him out across the crowds and into the bison cage.  

11. I was mired in shame because our children were the only children in the whole zoo over the age of 2 riding around in strollers.  

12. The children loved the animal-themed playground area.  

13. Liam was mesmerized by the snakes.

14. Soren could have spent all day in the prairie dog tunnels.  

15. The children were terrified of the giant elephant sculpture that made noise and spontaneously blew water out of its trunk. 

Soren is plugging his ears because those electronic elephant noises are just too darn loud. 

Liam hated even getting near the thing. 

This is what my sister-in-law Amanda calls Liam's "Gus Gus" belly.  

Soren holding on for dear life in the peacock seat on the carousel. 

Soren and Daddy on the zoo train. 

Soren the turtle. 

  Liam the bird embryo. 

 Cutest darn bird embryo I ever did see.

Better than the zoo were our lower-key activities for the day: returning to the hotel and swimming in the hotel pool, then eating dinner at Carl's Jr, where the kids were able to climb around in the play area.  We bought the boys an Oreo ice cream sandwich to split and Soren was in seventh heaven.  Sugar is like crack for him.  Afterward he talked manically about making a cake using ice-cream filled Oreos.

On Day 3 we were even more tired. Soren woke up at 4:00 AM and never did go back to sleep.  And those of you who know Soren will also know that if Soren ain't sleeping, ain't Mommy sleeping.  When Abe and Liam awoke at a reasonable hour, we drove back into the city and dragged the kids through the Utah Museum of Natural History.  The museum is fabulous but we were all too worn down to truly savor the experience.  Plus, of course, Soren latched on to the idea of seeing dinosaurs and wouldn't look at anything until we got to the dinosaur section.  Then as soon as we'd seen the dinosaurs he was all, "I'm hungry" and preceded to focus on getting food, rather than interacting at the museum.  

The best part was the kid's room, where Mommy and Daddy could sit very still while the boys were able to scoop plastic fish out of a pond with a net, dress up like a housefly (Soren) and a butterfly (Liam), and climb through a cave.  We took pictures but the camera didn't save them. 

All in all, however, despite some fatigue and some frustration, it was a good vacation.  We'll definitely take another one next year.     

Right, honey?

Family Vacation 2012: Day 1

I have a lot of good memories of family vacations growing up so I've been anxious to begin going on trips with my own little family.  This year the boys seemed big enough to handle a short trip without too much drama, so we decided to try something fairly close to test the family vacation waters: Salt Lake City  

On the first day of our vacation, we also found ourselves testing the waters of the Great Salt Lake.  

My big bro Seth (highest above), and his beautiful wife Karen (directly above), and their gorgeous newborn baby Sylvia (with Mama) were lovely enough to take us on a trip to Antelope Island, which is just a short drive from their home in Layton.  



The water was surprisingly warm and you could walk out into it for quite a distance without it getting much deeper than two feet, making it a perfect water play place for little boys. The Salt Lake also lived up to its reputation of super buoyancy.  Abe, a natural sinker, was excited to be able to actually float around without any effort at all.  The water was a wee bit on the gross side, particularly with little salt fly pupate shells floating around on the water, but that's just one of those things you don't think about too hard.  There were lots of other people playing in the water too, so we figured it couldn't be too bad.   (And the people were surprisingly diverse-- I heard two or three other languages being spoken.)

Then we came ashore. 

Doesn't Soren look like he's on the catwalk?  You strut that stuff, boyfriend.

Both the children felt compelled to wear my sunglasses.  Liam does look pretty hip wearing them.

We spent a few minutes on our beach blanket eating goldfish and granola bars and then, due to Liam's casual sand-walking pace, made the longest-ever recorded trek from the beach.  It was so very, very hot.  Liam looked every bit the part of the desert-stranded wanderer.  He even started smacking the side of his head like he was having some sort of hallucination (but no-- he wasn't-- he just does stuff like that). By the time we reached the top of the hill at the end of the beach, we were sweaty and crusted with salt and quite grateful for the free showers provided by the park.

Doesn't this picture just look classically American?   

We drove around briefly in the 90 degree weather looking for wildlife but the bison and deer and antelope are all apparently much smarter than people and had holed up until evening. 

Then we went back to Seth and Karen's house.  Seth grilled us some DELICIOUS corn-on-the-cob, burgers, and hot dogs.  Karen made her prize-winning fruit salad.  We sat on their porch and talked while the kids wasted their food and played in the back yard.  I cuddled that tiny little Sylvie as much as I could.  It was a perfect evening.  

Then we checked into our motel in Bountiful (which was fabulous!) and began the first of two horrible nights'  sleep. 

Reading Journal: The Sociopath Next Door

The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout

Abe brought this home for me from the library (one of the joys of having a librarian for a spouse) because he was certain I would find it fascinating.  He was right.  The basic premise of the book is that a sociopath (aka psychopath, aka someone with anti-social personality disorder) is not always the deranged serial killer we might imagine.  A sociopath is defined as someone who doesn't have a conscience, conscience being a sense of responsibility to and love for other(s).  So a sociopath is a person who is incapable of building meaningful human connection.  Someone who, as the author often reminds us, is someone who can do anything they feel like doing-- "anything at all"-- without feeling remorse or guilt.   She posits that a sociopath's primary objective in life is to "win"-- exerting control over whatever facets of their lives and the lives of others they can.

Sociopaths are difficult to discern.  They are typically quite charming and good manipulators.  Stout cites research that estimates that approximately 4% of the human population is sociopathic-- if the estimate is correct, that means 1 out of 25 people does not have a conscience.  And don't go fooling yourself into thinking that all these people are concentrated in prisons or big cities or foreign countries.  Sociopaths are distributed fairly equally among all populations-- both in and out of correctional facilities.

This lack of conscience can manifest itself in a variety of ways, ranging from horrific violence to extreme risk-taking to serial sexual relationships to ruthless business practices to lazy and parasitic behaviors.  It all depends on what the sociopath's main goal in life: stimulation?  relaxation? power?  control?

The Sociopath Next Door provided a stimulating introduction to the concept of sociopathy, but it seems to have been written more as a warning ("don't allow yourself to be hurt by one of these maniacs!") than as an introduction to the personality disorder.  I was left with a lot more questions than I was with answers.  I wanted to know more about the origins of sociopathy. Where does it come from?  It is written into DNA, completely unchangeable, like eye color?  Is it a genetic tendency that can be worked against?  Can people start out life normal and healthy and then become sociopaths, either because of their environment or because they have chosen to completely stifle their consciences?   If this is the case, are they truly sociopaths?  Or do they just look like them?  Is there a reliable way to determine if someone is, indeed, entirely without conscience?   Can one measure conscience?  Is there a certain brain structure or pattern that would enable us to identify a sociopath?  Is sociopathy curable?  Are there degrees of sociopathy?

I have to admit that after reading this book, I have found myself evaluating peoples for signs of sociopathy.  If the statistical estimate is accurate, I've likely got two or three co-workers who are sociopaths.  And surely there are others wandering around in my immediate world.  I'm constantly wondering who they are.  The mailman?  The co-worker who told me a joke this afternoon?  That lady across the aisle in Sunday School?  It could be anyone!

Who is the sociopath in your life?  

Reading, Writing, and.... Marxismitic

I love reading.  My brain loves it.  It just feels good to have words and thoughts and perspectives and ideas and experiences and concepts skipping across my brain...leaping cheerfully from dendrite to axon to dendrite again.  I love writing because it enables me to pin down all the thoughts swirling in my head, to make them concrete, to make them readable-- so I can understand them.  And once the thoughts are out, I enjoy finding ways to make them clear and interesting and fun.

In college I decided to major in English because I loved reading and I loved writing and I figured studying literature would afford a magical way for me to do what I loved while earning a college degree.

Yeah, right.

What the English major turned out to be, actually, was a whole helluva lot of skimming, followed by hours of pretentious classroom discussion and paper writing.  It turns out one does not simply read and experience and respond to a text-- one is expected to analyze the literature into a pulp, drain out its joy, smear it with words like "juxtaposition," "dichotomy," and "phallic," shape it using Marxism or Feminism or Freudianism or Deconstructionism or Someotherism, and serve it with a side of smug symbolism.

I will admit that formal literary analysis can be entertaining in small doses.  It also, however, carries the side effect of robbing a story or a poem or an essay of its spiritual essence.  You break something down into its component parts and it ceases to be what it is--particularly if you then take those component parts and shape them into what you want them to be.  Reading Shelley's Frankenstein and analyzing it from a post-modernistic perspective can certainly be interesting, engaging, and even have a insightful end result-- but it's kind of like taking a cookie into a science lab, reversing the effects of the baking and mixing, and using the raw ingredients to make a cake.  Nothing wrong with it, really, but why not just enjoy the cookie?  And wouldn't it be more efficient to just bake a cake from scratch?

I suspect my inability to fully connect with my own chosen field of study is somewhat related to my refusal to pick favorites.  I dislike questionnaires that ask about my favorite color/movie/book/TV show/vacation spot because I am completely incapable of ranking things in order of goodness.  I think each color can be perfect under the right circumstances.  I believe different books are good for different reasons.  On a vacation, a soul's current needs might best be served by something nearby and simple-- or maybe something far away and exotic would be best.  It all just depends.  There are things I love, and things I don't love, but it's hard to rate such subjective and personal things on a cold hard scale of "best" to "worst."  (This is also the reason I despise beauty pageants, but that's a rant for another day.)

So the question arises: why am I going on about this?  The short answer is that I seem to be incapable of brevity.  The long answer is that this is my way of  explaining why I've decided to change the title of my "Book reviews" posts to "Reading Journal."   In my mind, the purpose of a book review is to analyze a text and describe its worth to others, and that's not really what I'm attempting to do when I write about the books I've been reading.  Mostly I just want to share my reading experiences because they are important to me.  I want to talk about why I read the books, what they meant to me, how I felt, and the questions they made me ask.

So, anyway, you members of my vast and loyal readership, just know that I know that this big change is going to rock your collective world, and that I hope this essay has sufficiently prepared you for this blog-shattering change.  Hopefully sometime this week I will have time to actually post my most recent reading journal entries.

Soren Update: July 2012

These are the notes I've taken on Soren's life over the past few months:

One morning Liam ran into the kitchen crying.  Before I could say anything, Soren asked in a genuinely sweet voice, "What happened, Liam Baby?"

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One day Soren told Briar "I'm going to be an inventor--and you're going to be an explorer and find new stuff me."
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At night Soren likes for me to tell him a story.  I'll make up random stories using whatever comes to mind, things like, "Once upon a time there was a family of badgers who decided to move out of their badger den and into a condo in the city.  The badger kids started wearing name brand sneakers and playing at the park every day.  The mother badger had her hair set once a week by the beautician whose shop was around the corner.  The father learned to golf and went nearly every weekend with his friends.  They all enjoyed traveling on the subway together.  They lived like this for quite some time and were generally happy.  The end."  But if I tell a story like this, Soren will say, "But you forgot about 'and then one day,' Mommy." "And then one day" is apparently the phrase I usually use to introduce a conflict into the plot during story time.   That kid, he's a stickler for plot.  
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One of Soren's greatest fears is that a truck will come while he's using a portapotty, load it up, and drive away while he's still inside.  My job while he's doing his business at the city park is to stand guard and make sure no trucks take him.

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The boys and I were playing in the sandbox one evening and Soren was flooding a corner of the sandbox with the hose.  "Look, Mommy!" he told me, and went on to explain that he was flooding outerspace but that he lived on a crater and the people who lived out in space thought he was a giant machine.  A very important giant machine, apparently, because he then added:   "They even pray to me!  They start their prayers, 'Dear Heavenly Giant Machine'..."

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After work one night Abe was watering the lawn and Soren wanted to play in the sprinkler with me.  I was reluctant-- didn't particularly want to get cold and wet-- but I finally took his hand and we ran through.  After two giggle-filled passes through the shockingly cold sprinkler, he wrapped his arms around my legs and exclaimed, "I love you, Mommy!" Totally worth it.

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Mommy: Soren, how can you stand to sleep in this filthy room?
Soren (surveys the mess for a minute, then shrugs):  It doesn't make any noise!

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Soren amazed us on Father's day by making a very nice Father's day card.  All by himself he wrote "Dad" and "Soren" and drew a bunch of hearts.  At church he answered a questionnaire about his daddy too.  According to Soren, Abe's favorite thing is ice cream and his favorite food is ice cream.  He also remarked that his favorite thing to do with his dad was go to the Army Surplus store. (You know you're from Idaho when...)

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The first thing Soren said to me upon waking one morning was, "Why is every day so dumb?"

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Soren told Briar that the only "fing" he liked to do in the back yard was watch the garden grow.

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I was doing a fingerplay about Joseph Smith at Family Home Evening.  Liam happily chanted along with me, doing his best to match my actions and words; Soren covered his ears and said, "Blah, blah, blah!"

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One night when we were camping Soren was having a hard time settling down because he's so scared of the dark.  Finally, out of the darkness, I heard his little voice begin a prayer.

"Dear Heavenly Father...."

Little Liam chimed in with his own nonsensical words and they prayed together in the darkness.  Their prayer went something like this:

"Fank you for this day.
Fank you for Mommy and Daddy.
Please somehow make this trailer less scary.
Name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

Then there was silence.

Then: "Mommy?  I'm still scared."

I climbed down form my bed and lay down with the boys until they were asleep.

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Soren helped push Grandpa's pickup truck into a jump start while we were camping.  He pushed all his forty pounds into it and was very excited when it started to go.

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One night we gave each of the boys a cup of water, kissed them good night, and closed the door to their room.  Sweet silence.  Then, Liam started screaming.  On investigation, Abe discovered that Soren had emptied his cup onto Liam on the bunk below.  "Soren, why did you do that?"  asked Daddy.    Soren looked bemused.  "What else was I supposed to do with it?" 

Playing (and hamming it up) at the park with daddy.

Behold: The Giant Machine God. 

Soren made a robot out of yogurt containers, pom poms, and an empty paper towel roll.  They played together all morning.  Here, they're playing under the rug. 

Now they're posing for a few pictures.

Soren will probably use these exact same faces in a photo booth someday.

Soren's preschool class had school pictures taken.  I paid for the group picture.  It was quite adorable.  This, however, was his individual photo.  I thought it was hilarious but was unwilling to pay the package price to get it in duplicate.  He's so cute it hurts my heart a little. 

Soren loves Briar's ferret, Mice.  Mice is a bit of a nibbler, though, so Soren always makes sure to wear shoes on his feet and socks on his hands when they play. 

There are truly no words to adequately describe this child.  He is just....so....much.  So preciously much.  So intensely much.  And I love him so much.    And "much" no longer sounds like a word.  

The end.

Liam Update: July 2012

At bedtime, Liam asks me to lie down with him by patting his pillow and saying, "Bed!"  Once I'm lying next to him, he'll insist on giving me kisses.  "Kith Nose," he'll say, and kiss my nose.  "Kith Eyes," is next, and he'll kiss my eyes.  Then, "Kith Hair," and he kisses the top of my head.   Last is "Kith mouth," and he'll plant a peck on my lips.  When he's done with kisses, he'll say, "Enough!"  Enough, Mommy!"    

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One day when his Uncle Quentin and Aunt Tailour were visiting, Liam was playing a game with them that involved sneaking.  He has a very exaggerated, squatty sneaking-up technique that involves a lot of elbow swinging and knee bending.  They both thought it was hilarious.    
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Liam taught himself how to jump, finally.  Legs shoulder-width apart, feet splayed out, he swings his chubby little arms and clears the floor by about a quarter inch.  He is in ecstasy.  I overheard Soren say to his Aunt Tailour: "Isn't it 'coo' that Liam can jump so well even though he's so little?"  
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Liam's new favorite word: "Nnnnnnnno!"
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Whenever Liam hears a rooster crow, he says, "I'm coming, Rooster!"  One day he was flying jellybeans into his mouth and making them say, "I'm coming, Liam!"
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One morning I told Soren that if he hurt Liam again, we wouldn't go to the park as planned. He was offended by this, and spent some time pouting around ostentatiously.  I was doing my best to ignore him but Liam, seeing his brother distressed, toddled up and offered him a hug.
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One evening Liam expressed an interest in going potty in the potty.  He sat down on the training toilet and Soren immediately rushed in with a stack of books to keep him occupied. He also planned to do a pooping demonstration on the big potty but Liam got bored (or maybe uncomfortable!) and decided to quite potty training for the day.
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Liam does this adorable thing where he'll be running along and suddenly stop, back up a few paces, get a grim and determined look on his face,  then barrel forward.  It reminds me of a cross between a toy cars you wind up by pulling backwards and a football player heading in for a home run.  

He climbed into bed and fell asleep all by himself.  What kid does that?  

Liam is a joy.  Everyone loves him.  Even when he's being obstinant and defiant, he's adorable.  Even when he's woken up for the sixth time in a single night, he's precious.  It's just impossible to be mad at him.  He is my snuggly buggly cuddlebucket of love.