Hard to believe a whole week has gone by now, since Liam’s 3rd birthday! While Stephen & I were pretty wiped out by Sunday night, we definitely had four fun-filled days of celebration with our little guy 🙂
If you caught my last post, then you know that he had a special wake-up call on his big day. Most of those balloons are still hanging around his room. Not sure we’ll ever be able to pop those little suckers….haha! He’s really enjoying them.
We kept his birthday day pretty mellow, and it was just the 3 of us. We ventured to the movie theatre for Liam’s very 1st experience with the “Big Screen” and chose to see Disney’s ‘Planes Fire & Rescue’. He is in love with the Cars movies, and we watch those repeatedly. We got the 1st Planes movie through our DMC, but he wasn’t as into it. Thus, we weren’t sure how this trip would go over.
Walking into the theatre was exciting for him & we had to explain what everything was. We got lucky & had almost the entire theatre to ourselves so he could walk around. There were SO MANY previews! — that definitely was a bummer….lost his interest a bit.
Thoroughly enjoyed the movie theatre popcorn & his Hi-C drink 🙂
But folks….we only got through about 2/3 of the movie and he asked to go home….literally! Ha!
He was done. So, we headed out & went to lunch at Crispers. We’ll have to catch the end of the movie on DVD 😉
After nap, we headed over to Sweet by Miss Holly for our most fav cupcakes. I think you tell by this super awesome smile that we enjoyed this treat!
Later that evening, we enjoyed a visit from Mimi, Aunt Heather & cousin, Sierra. Liam was thrilled to get some awesome birthday gifts, including the Radiator Springs town from the Cars movie, as well as play with his cousin ❤
The next day, we headed over to Grammy & Papa Rock’s house for a visit. Of course, this guy got some more presents and was all about it. This time, it was Thomas!
My little conductor! All Aboard!!!!
The fun continued on Saturday, when we got to celebrate one of our very bestest friend’s graduation from UCF with her doctorate degree in Education!! We are SO very proud of her. I am loving this pic below, but have to laugh because Liam was NOT happy that I pulled him away from playing in the pool to snap a quick pic. Can you tell? LOL
We have TONS of birthday party pictures to share! I am working on those posts now.
Happy 3rd Birthday, our sweet little man, Liam Michael!
We love you SO much & are so proud of the strong individual you are becoming. It is definitely amazing to watch you grow right before our very eyes. Many times, I wish I could freeze time & hold you tight just a little longer before you take that next forward 🙂 …you are the light Mommy & Daddy’s lives!
A few nights ago, we sat down & “interviewed” Mr. Liam. That was pretty fun. He was both very thoughtful & serious with his answers. HA! We are going to start doing that from now on each year on his birthday.
I found this FREE printable interview sheet here via Pinterest (my fav!).
Other notable things these days….
1. He has started to do “pretend play” with his toys. He will talk to (or among) his toys as he is playing. Cutest darn thing. You can hear him making up stories now as he is playing.
2. He wants to do everything himself… or at least try. Makes for some difficult decisions, at times, but we manage. Gone are the days when I can pick out his outfits, too (insert my sad face…LOL).
3. Most recently, we have entered what I’ve been calling the “why” phase. He has started asking “why” to EVERYthing. Since we don’t want to diminish his inquisitiveness, we are answering him as best we can, but oh my gosh, dude….sometimes, it’s just because we said so 🙂
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Thanks to my obsession with Pinterest, we put a bunch of balloons in his room last night while he was sleeping and streamers on his door so he had something fun to wake up to this morning. He also got his present from us — his 1st watch (he had requested that).
When he came into our room this morning after waking up, he said: “Santa brought me balloons & a present” ….hahahaha! That was so cute!
Lots of fun planned for this little man the next few days. I’m sure he’ll be all tuckered out by the end of the weekend 😉
This post has been a long time in the making. Mainly because it took me forEVER to get all these pics & videos off my phone & organized 🙂 …However, I really wanted to share the journey we had a few months back of Liam learning to swim. It really was quite the experience — fun, tiring (for ALL of us), hard work for him, for sure, & at times, emotional for this mama.
We started lessons on Monday, April 7th & he finished the program on Thursday, June 4th. In our area of town, there’s a few companies that we could have selected. Obviously, some might say, why not just teach him yourself & save a few bucks…..Well, good point, I guess, but we just didn’t feel comfortable doing that. Florida is surrounded by bodies of water. We wanted him to be taught life saving skills in the water. In a split second the unthinkable could happen. We wanted him to be prepared for that, and bottom line — We don’t feel that you can put a price on your child’s life. Teaching him these skills was just too important to us, so we made it happen.
We were thrilled that we could get him onto the schedule with SwimSprout. This is THE most fabulous group of ladies, and I am saying that because I am a happy mama whose child can now swim…not because anyone asked me to say that. Liam loves these ladies, and even two months since he finished lessons and he is still asking to go to Ms. Heidi’s house for swim lessons when I pick him up from school. To me, that tells you something special 🙂
What Liam was taught over the 9 week period that he went for lessons (our schedule was extended because of weather delay’s & sickness) was basic water safety & survival. I feel like I could write you a book about all that Ms. Heidi & Ms. Katie taught us, but I’m not the expert in all that jazz, so if you’re interested in it for your little one, please go to their website or link to their private Facebook group from their site. If you’re not in our area, you can find more info by searching Infant Self-Rescue.
Now, for the good stuff! Here’s some highlights from our swimming adventures 🙂
Waiting patiently to start lessons on Day #1
Our lessons started with correcting Liam’s posture in the water from us using one of those puddle jumper vests all last summer. Oops! We honestly had no idea that it was actually “bad” to use that and does nothing to teach a child life saving skills if they fall in a pool without it on. You just don’t think about it. Lesson learned! 😉
Week #1
Week #2
It was a running joke that Liam would smile & say “yes” to anything that Ms. Katie or Ms. Heidi asked of him. Hilarious! Besides the first day or two, this kid never cried. He loved it!
The puddle jumper vest just allowed him to kinda float along in the water and not use his legs, so it was hard to get him to start kicking at first and get moving. Here’s some early video of that process….
Week #3 — learning to float with Ms. KatieWeek #3 — floating with Ms. Heidi — ‘airplane arms’Liam really loves his SwimSprout shirt from Ms. Heidi & wears it frequently to school. Here he is one day before school during mid-point of our lessons.
Once we got his feet moving, we couldn’t get them to stop 🙂 — part of learning to float is having what Ms. Katie called, “quiet toes” — Liam did not like having quiet toes…lol, as you can see in this clip below:
Week #5 — listening closely to Ms. Katie
Once he got the floating down, he was taught to roll from his back into the water and swim again. Essentially, putting the whole process together was called swim/float/swim. Here’s a clip when it first clicked and he put it all together — then, in a rare moment for him, he got ticked off at the end 😉
Week #7 – cheesing it up!
Toward the end of his lessons, he got to be quite the strong swimmer and got awesome at holding his breath. Almost, too good! Ms. Katie had to keep putting him further and further away from the steps because he kept reaching them so fast AND not rolling over onto his back to take a breath….what a stinker!
6/4/14 — quick selfie to show how excited we were on swim test day — NOT so excited once he actually got into the pool, but he did AWESOME!
June 4th was his swim test day & he did great! I think it was harder for us to watch than anything. I video-taped it, but it’s a looong video & the lighting is terrible so I chose not to post. Instead, here’s a clip of little man from just over a month ago. We are proud that he is still swimming strong & having fun in the pool. On this day, he wanted to swim in the deep end with Daddy 🙂
the FABULOUS SwimSprout teachers who made all this possible — Ms. Katie & Ms. Heidi. WE LOVE YOU!!!
What a great experience this has been for our entire family!! We can’t wait to catch up with Ms. Heidi & Ms. Katie in the fall for a refresher session.
This little man is like a sponge when it comes to learning. In the midst of playing this weekend, I asked him if he could still count to 10 in Spanish for me and this is what he rattled off…..
We were honestly astounded that this little tike counted all the way to TWENTY!! I’m not even sure he could make it all the way to twenty in English but he’s got Spanish down pretty good. Thank you to his teacher, Ms. Laura, as this accomplishment is definitely due to her skill 🙂
We spent some time Sunday afternoon playing picasso out back with chalk. He was drawing rivers with sharks in them….because ya know, that’s how we roll 😉
We ended our weekend by celebrating National Ice Cream Day with a tasty cone! Yummy!!
Today, I would like to wish my Grampy a VERY Happy 89th Birthday!!
I am so thankful that are we able to create wonderful new memories with him. For those of you who know, the last few years have been rather difficult since my Grammy passed & we figured out that he was progressing with Dementia. It’s gotten worse more recently, and I give huge kudos to my mom for taking such great care of him. It’s definitely not an easy task on a day-to-day basis.
However, we had a great afternoon with him on Sunday to celebrate his birthday, and I was thrilled that he was feeling good and seemed to really remember everyone. We took him out to lunch and met up with his sister, Frieda and her two daughters (his nieces).
Liam colored a picture on his own birthday card for Grampy. It was really cute. We all know you can’t make an almost 3 year old do anything he doesn’t want to do, so it was awesome that he said yes to me when I asked him if he wanted to color a picture, and then he told me when he was done 🙂
This was our group picture taken at lunch. It came out really awesome!
The last few times that we have visited with Grampy, I have asked Liam to take a picture with Grampy but he has been too shy. So, I didn’t force. Let me just tell you that he was very loving and affectionate to Grampy on Sunday. It was awesome!! I know that in those moments it really made Grampy feel special. It warmed our hearts! I am treasuring this picture. When we brought Grampy back to his apartment that afternoon, Liam even went over to him and gave him a hug & a kiss all on his own. It was adorable ❤
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRAMPY!! WE LOVE YOU!
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So, I was a little behind last week with my posts & didn’t get a chance to put up our 4th of July pictures. After much debate about where to go to catch fireworks, we ended up going back to Lake Eola & it was a great time for us, again….despite the rainy afternoon. Thankfully, all that cleared up just in time for the sun to go down 🙂
Here is me & my little man hanging out on our blanket and waiting for the festivities to begin.
Snack break!
Even though Liam has seen fireworks on tv several times since we saw them here last year, in person, nothing compares to the BOOM you experience live…well, it scared our little guy at first this year. This picture shows that emotion. I actually think it turned out pretty sweet. After a few minutes he settled down and sat up and watched the rest of the show. Afterwards, he said he had a good time and liked it 🙂
It really was a good show!
Hope everyone’s July is off to a good start….can you believe we are already half way to August?!?! Where is the summer going?? Crazy!!
We recently headed over to Downtown Disney to check out the Cars Master’s Weekend Show. They had life size versions of Lightening McQueen & Mater, as well as these fun topiaries. Let me tell you that this expedition spawned a new marathon of watching the Cars movie, peeps. Liam hadn’t been really into watching the movie before this, however, we have watched it EVERY.SINGLE.DAY since 🙂
Super excited to find his pals Woody & Buzz. We love us some Toy Story!
This show also had many cool race cars & older hot rods on display. Little man was NOT pleased that he couldn’t get in these race cars. LOL!
Daddy tried to appease him by having him sit in this supped up Camaro….while we thought it was cool…. he still asked to go back over to the race car afterwards. Hmm…I wonder if I have things to worry about down the road?? 🙂
Lightening McQueen & Mater. Got to say, I was less then thrilled by Disney’s choice to make you stand in line to take your picture with these guys. The line was SUPER long, so Liam was not interested in waiting for that. Luckily, he was fine with just catching a glimpse as we walked by.
On Father’s Day, we had our community pool to ourselves for a bit. That was SOOO nice!!
I found this FREE download on Pinterest here. I laughed my bootie off asking Liam these questions. We gave it to Stephen on Father’s Day. If you can see the scribbles at the bottom of the page…that was Liam asking to also write on the page. So cute!
Last but most definitely not least….Liam recently moved into a new classroom at school to start the summer off. He is still in the Early Preschool Department. I was hesitant for this move because there was no transition period, as in other moves he’s done, and I thought it would be hard on him. However, he has totally proven us wrong! He is doing awesome & we are loving his new teacher, Ms. Laura.
I have to brag now a bit because Ms. Laura (in just the 1st 5 days that he had spent in her room) taught him to count from 1 to 10 in Spanish. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty incredible! She’s working on getting him to go to 20. I’ll keep you posted! Here he is on our drive to Downtown Disney showing off his new skills:
If you’ve been following us, then you know that we’ve been in this potty training race for about 4 months now. I kept promising an update on our progress, but we were running into different obstacles along the way, and I just didn’t feel we were “there” yet.
Then, recently, a NEW exciting opportunity came my way that allowed me to share our potty training adventures! I am SUPER EXCITED to share with you all that I am a GUEST CONTRIBUTOR today on the ORLANDO MOM’S BLOG!!!! Please click here and go over and check it out!
Here are some additional pics that I did not share as part of that post:
Throwing the last of his diapers away back on the “Potty Training Boot Camp Weekend in February….Liam was VERY excited to do this!
We quickly got rid of the changing table and gave little man a nice, new bookshelf!
It took awhile & some diligence, but we have a Potty Star at school!!! 🙂
Hope you all enjoyed your Memorial Day Weekend 2014! It was for sure a H.O.T. one in our neck of the woods. My, oh my, were we feeling the summertime temps, or what, already?!?!
When Liam gets a little older, we will explain to him the real reason for the holiday this weekend. Until, then, it was just an extra long & fun weekend for him. Overall, though, we kept it pretty low-key. He & I battled a stomach bug most of the week, so we spent the 1st part of the weekend playing catch up with chores & what-not. Daddy was a trooper with helping to take care of both of us & the house!
Once everyone’s bellies were feeling better, we indulged in some yummy ice cream cones after dinner. 🙂
Daddy says this was Liam’s FIRST ice cream CONE …I haven’t been able to locate any other pics of him eating a cone, so he may be right because ya know I would have documented that! LOL …He wouldn’t stop moving while eating this one, so it’s not the best shot, but here ya go:
On Sunday, we decided to head out to Cocoa Beach for a day of fun in the sun. Two things I learned after our trip. One, Liam needs a bigger sun hat (last years is too small….yet still so cute). Two, if we’re going to frequent the beach this summer, we need an umbrella. The Florida sun is brutal.
Liam loved the playing in both the sand and the water. While he would be in the water with us, he would sing, “we’ll be swimming in the ocean all day long…splish, splash”.
The other highlight of our weekend was that Mr. Liam taught himself how to do a somersault. Well, I guess, I should 1st clarify to say that I believe one of his little friends at school helped show him how, as I observed this from my glimpses on the camera. It was actually pretty hilarious and I wish I had been able to catch that on video. He must have felt confident in his new skill to show it to us because this is what he did on Saturday.
To end our weekend, last night, after bath, he proceeded to tell us that he loved us & that we were “the best day ever” ….I don’t think it gets much better than that, folks!
Believe it, or not, I started this post about 3 weeks ago. It was definitely not my intention to be just sharing about our super fun Easter holiday almost a month after the fact, but it’s been crazy times around Casa de Murphy, peeps. Both Stephen & I have been working hard & on the weekends, swim lessons are still in full swing, and life has been charging on 🙂
Liam got to participate in his 1st real Easter Egg Hunt with our Meet Up Group of friends, the Sunshine Babies. This is a super fun group of parents and we really enjoy spending time with them! He had a blast!
The park we went to was in Baldwin Park. Really great space & this fountain was beautiful. Of course, little man was hamming it up for the camera.
Special buddies since they were babies…so cute!…Kenadie & Liam
Family pic!
The Easter Bunny came!! …all of Liam’s current favs…Thomas the Train, Toy Story & Tinkerbell.
The Easter Bunny hid some eggs in the yard for Liam. He also planted lolly pops in the ivy…WOW! 🙂
A couple of eggs had treats for Timber in them. The boys were sharing them directly after coming inside. HA!
We had dinner with Grammy & Papa Rock on Easter. It was also great to spend time with my Grampy (Liam’s Great Grampy). The Easter Bunny got a tad bit carried away with his delivery here…lol.
Liam was SUPER excited (hence this expression below on his face) to see that he got an Olaf from Frozen. We are loving that movie in our house right now.
He had also been asking us EVERY day (really, NOT joking about this) for a vacuum. He had one that was a hand-me-down from one of our friend’s & it recently broke. This kid loved to use that vacuum around the house and was pretty upset about it. So, every day, he had been telling me he needed a new vacuum, and he wanted one like our Dyson vacuum. Well, unbelievably, they actually make a toy version of our Dyson Animal that we’ve had for years. It was love at 1st sight 🙂
The afternoon would not have been complete without another egg hunt, right?!?!
Such a sweet picture between Liam & his Great Grampy!
And, if this little dude is not spoiled enough…..
He got ANOTHER Easter basket from his Mimi & Papa D. He loved his Mickey cup, puppy & the baking set for his kitchen.
It was really exciting for us to see Liam get into the Easter holiday this year. He enjoyed all the decorations and the eggs (and, most surprising for me…the CANDY…lol). I guess it’s another sign of the times….our baby is getting bigger…growing up some more!
Recently, we attempted to visit the Easter Bunny for our yearly memory making pic. I have to say that we were successful with this for Liam’s 1st Easter back in 2012. Here’s that pic {not the greatest quality, sorry}, which was taken on March 25th, 2012…
After that 1st year, he figured out that a giant bunny was not so fun, so last year & this year were a no go in the picture department. Luckily, last year, we opted to trek over to the Millenia Mall, as my OCD self wanted to do pictures with “that” bunny. Yes, I know…I am crazy, but to me, how the bunny looked, mattered 🙂 …When it became apparent that the picture wasn’t happening, the guys working the station motioned us over to the side of the area and asked us to do these candid spring time pictures. I guess it is their business that they run along side the Easter Bunny get-up and it’s a quick session but you get all the pics they take on CD for $40 with no sitting fee. Not a bad deal, at all, in our opinion. Plus, we think the pictures turn out pretty darn amazing!
Here’s a look back at last year’s pictures that were taken on March 10th, 2013. ….
Since we were figuring Liam was not going to be friends again with the Easter Bunny, we planned a trip back to Millenia. Last year, the two guys who took his pictures told us they would be back again this year, so I was counting on that. Not gonna lie when I say I was excited to see them when we arrived. Liam said he was going to sit with the Easter Bunny as we were on the way there, but as soon as he saw the big guy, it was a big, fat, NO…lol. We were not gonna force it.
This year’s pictures were taken on Sunday, April 6th…so, just over a full year later. We got almost 40 pictures this time around. Here are some of our favs. What a difference a year makes, right?!?!
Casa de Murphy 