Since our return

This posting is for our own memories because some things are pretty momentous moments in our little guy's life, but don't necessarily get accompanied by photos.   Feel free not to read!

Upon our return to Lugano we had already made the decision to transition Liam into his own room and crib for nights as well as the naps that he'd been doing.  We were not sure how long of a process it would be, and with James starting up work right away I think we both were nervous.
For the first week back we put a mattress on the floor in his room so that when and if we needed to hang out in there, we could at least be comfortable.  Amazingly enough, probably a week and half later we took it out.  This is not because he is sleeping through the night, but he has made some major strides in that direction.

Remember, we're talking about Mr. clockwork who HAD to eat every 4 hours.  I wasn't even sure how we would get to skip 1 of those feeds!  So needless to say I am both shocked and amazed that less than a month later he has gone from 4 hours between feeds to up to 12 hours!  (For the record, 12 hours was last night!).  He is still waking a few times, and so I would say on an average night these days, James might go in once in the late evening, and I often end up in there for an early morning feed (around 4 or 5am).  He's generally going to bed between 7:30 and 8:30pm, and quite often doesn't wake up till 8am (with little wake ups in between of course.)  But still, that's really impressive to me.  We are allowing him to cry for short periods on his own if he doesn't settle into sleep in a reasonable amount of time, and that is by no means a piece of cake, but knowing that he's eating so well during the day, I definitely feel less concerned that he's not getting what he needs.

In fact, little wonder over here has graduated from simple pureed packages of food back to Mama's home cooking which includes a delectable menu of anything from banana and avocado mash, to alphabet pasta with a cheese and vegetable sauce.  He's tried pureed chicken and beef, but from jars as I haven't yet tried to make them on my own, and mixed with other stuff.  He's not a huge fan of the chicken yet so I end up disguising it with fruit and vegetables and potentially sometimes yogurt, to make it tasty enough for him to eat.  The beef on the other hand was a hit mixed with creme frais and pasta, or sweet potatoes.  His favorite is his morning smoothie (banana, mango, some other fruit, oats and rice cereal mixed with yogurt) for breakfast.  It's so sweet.  Every morning now that James is on his healthy kick, he gets up and makes the family smoothie.  Love it!   

We have also just discovered some mom and tots groups in the greater Lugano area that are for English speakers.  Today was our first visit to one that was held at St Edward's church.  It went quite well, and I'm excited to have a place for Liam to interact with more kids.  He is also getting the opportunity to hang out with his pal Drake 2 mornings a week for an hour or so while I am working.  It's actually really sweet to see how interested and playful they already are with each other.  And on top of all that, we have our other mothers in the area and are still getting together once a week or there abouts to hang out with the wee ones.

Life is good here.  Busy, but good.  I am grateful to be able to pretty much be a stay at home mom, but still fit in some part time work, and I think Liam enjoys all the time he has with us, but is also learning to socialize so well.  He continues to crawl, pull up and walk as much as he can, and I have no doubt he'll just get more and more confident till he's walking all on his own!  This really is such a fun age.