Spring Break in New York and Boston

I know this post is late in coming, but it has been full speed ahead since we returned, so late is better than never!
The trip was an overall success, and though I wouldn't say the flights were easy, they certainly could have been a whole lot worse.  Jet lag seemed to affect him somewhat while we were in the USA, but we had no real issues transitioning him back to Swiss time.  Sometimes sheer exhaustion is the best antidote to a bit of jetlag!  We flew from Milan to London and then on to NYC and it actually was in some ways easier to handle as there was a break in the flying time for him to run a bit more freely.  On the way there he took a couple of 45 min naps but was otherwise awake the whole way, marching up and down isles greeting people with ciaos and big smiles.  The last 2 hours got a bit hairy as we entered exhaustion state for him (11pm his time!) and he was still awake.  After about a half hour crying he fell asleep on me for the last hour.  Still, he just took that as a nap, and we put him to bed closer to 8:30pm US time.  Sleeping wasn't all that bad except for early wake ups around 4am.  We did insist he stay in bed (or our bed) though, so we only actually got up around 6am.  Needless to say we had a lot of time in the mornings!

Staying with Matt and Karen was really great.  We were able to have our own space with little disruption to their routine.  I likened it to a homey bed and breakfast when we barely saw either of them for the first 5 days! Karen was studying for her final exam and Matt was working like a madman on a crazy case.  We had much to do with James' family though, so it worked out that we were able to spend time with them and catch up with people.  Of course the big event was Anna's wedding the day after we arrived.  We managed to be at all but the cocktail hour, and Liam attended the ceremony.  we put him to bed at Karen's during the cocktail hour and went back for the reception when he was asleep.  Karen says he didn't wake up!  We managed to have dinner out a number of times thanks to others willing to babysit - Kevin, Grandma Cathy and Grandpa, and Karen.  It was actually really nice.

 Liam running down the church isle at Anna's wedding

 Anna's wedding - at the ceremony

 Family photo - Anna and Sean's wedding

 Our little family dressed up for Anna's wedding

 Playing with cousins - Liam, Michael and Samantha

 Three cousins, one piano!

 Getting some Uncle Mike Love

 Meeting up with Ben from Bennington days

 More cousins - Liam hanging out with Isabelle and Connor

 Getting some Aunt Christy love!

In the midst of New York madness we made it up to Boston for a long (Easter) weekend, and got to hang out with Shirin, Mims and Nana.  It was a pretty smooth trip with record time drives, and despite some rain we had some fun times outside as well as in!  It is always so fun to get to see Liam interacting with family as he is more and more a little mr.  I even managed to squeeze in a quick trip to Dr. Choi for some acupuncture!

 3 generations in Boston

 Walking in the Fels - Liam climbs a rock

 Taking a stroll with Aunt Shi!

Back in Brooklyn with some warmer weather we could spend more time outside.  We also had a chance to visit with friends we haven't seen in a while!

 Spending some time in prospect park on a sunny spring day

 Meeting up with Laura at Le Pain Quotidien

Hanging out at Bryant park

Finally we had an evening out with Karen and Matt at the Bedouin Tent in BK!

Coming back we had an evening flight leaving around 6pm.  It worked out pretty well in terms of Liam's bed time, but the bassinet was pretty small so he had to kind of crunch up to fit in it.  He also found it kind of amusing and was messing around a lot at the beginning, and only a couple of hours into the flight finally went to sleep.  He slept about 2 hours and was then awake, at first unhappily, but then alright.  So that's what I mean by just being exhausted!  He stayed awake for the rest of the flight and through our transfer in London, and then fell asleep on me on the flight over to Milan.  And that was that!  Back home he went to bed usual Swiss time and slept in till 9am because he was so exhausted!

Other Bits and Pieces from the Beginning of Spring

So in the past few weeks Liam is loving his time outside, and frequently (at least once a day) brings us his shoes to put on so we can go outside.  Alternatively, he'll try and wear James', which is always pretty funny to watch!

We go to the playgrounds around here a fair bit, and take walks around Montagnola.  Spring is gorgeous here!  He loves going down slides and is always enthusiastic about digging in the sand pit.

PLEASE DO NOT  COPY THIS!! He was too cute one evening before his bath dashing around with the spatula and no clothes on.  I just had to take a few pictures!

As Liam becomes more active and confident dashing around he also is adding onto his vocabulary.  In a new found obsession with blueberries he has worked hard to figure out how to say it so he can ask for them.  It comes out a bit like blue balls (which, fair enough, they are) but is a bit more garbled so it's more boobles.  Pretty funny.  He has also started to say thank you - Ta-tooo!  always said in the same intonation as one would say "thank you", and therefore easily understood.  Most of the time he says it as he hands you something, I guess because that's what I respond to him.  He still has trouble differentiating moving vehicles, and each time he hears a plane, he points to the sky and says "bussss".  Ok, we'll get there.  He said "hat" the other day so clearly James and I nearly fell over.  He is also big on asking for bread "bet", and points out birds "bert" if they fly by.  When he (or we) drop something he says: "Oh no!" and he can frequently be heard waxing on about how something or other is "dirt".  He says "keys", "cheese" but still no "please".

I've tried to post to videos to go along with this, but it isn't working out, so I'll leave it at that for now and hope that at some other point I can put them up!

Spring Visitors and a Cold That Won't Go Away

Liam has been sick since we left England.  It did clear up enough for us to think he was well, but there was still a lot of phlegm and a cough that wouldn't go away, as well as a runny nose.  Well I just found out yesterday that the poor guy has an ear and throat infection, which he's probably been harboring for over a month.  Luckily we caught it before we travel to NY this weekend, but I feel so bad for him suffering all this time.  Still, ever the trouper, most days you wouldn't even know that he wasn't feeling well.  He did his best to just get on with things.  We've also had two rounds of visitors, which was a lot of fun and a good distraction for him.

Char and Otto visited for a long weekend, and it was great fun to have the "birth friends" together again, as well as getting to see my friend too!  We had a lovely mom and tots get-together here so Char could see others in the group as well.

Leigh, Stirling and growing little bump!

 Drake and Otto together again, and of course Kat and Char

 Though Otto is not always the biggest fan of other babies there were some pretty funny and sweet moments in the weekend.  My favorite was him tackling Liam to the ground and pinning him down, and then giving him a quick pat to be nice!  We had some beautiful warm spring days and were able to walk downtown and in the park along the lake, as well as stop in to Al Porto for a chocolate densa.  We all went over to Kat and Eric's for a delicious mexican dinner with the three boys running around, and the last night of her visit we had some friends over for dinner and dessert and hung out  chatting a while.  All in all it was so lovely having them back in our world again!

Char and Otto at Al Porto, post chocolate densa

 Lunch downtown on the street corner - our favorite street pizza

 A fun dinner here - Kelly, Jen, Char, Courtney and Jay

 Just this past weekend we had a much anticipated visit from Julie, who managed to wangle a long weekend to nip down from work in Zurich, to see us in Lugano.  The weather has been ridiculous.  I mean summer time hot - 26ºC+.  We had a wonderful few days together and so nice for Liam and Julie to finally meet!  There was time for walks, gelato, letting Liam splash around in the water fountain at school, and a lovely lunch out in Morcote.  The time couldn't have been more perfect.

Julie reading Liam one of his favorite books - Room on a Broom

 Notice the shameless google plug!  Liam is, thanks to Julie, already indoctrinated into the world of google

   Ju basking in the aftermath of funghi risotto (the restaurant's speciality and certainly a heavy choice for a hot day in Morcote!

 Liam enjoyed sitting outside and eating from my pasta and Julie and James' risotto for quite a while

 Hiding in the shade before deciding on gelato - notice the new short do on me!  My hair hasn't been this short in probably 10 years.  And yes, at the moment I'm happy with it.  Ask me again in 3 weeks!

 I love this photo of James and Liam because you can see Liam's adorable outfit.  Dungaree shorts are so cute at this age!

 Post gelato walk along the water

Our Spring Visit to England

We've been back from England for almost two weeks and somehow still the cold we managed to catch (and share) lingers on.  I am so looking forward to a trip to England that doesn't result in us getting sick, but to be honest, for the trips to go so well in spite of the illnesses that have been around is pretty impressive!

This visit we spent the first 3 days in London staying with Keith, Char and Otto.  In our time there we saw Sonja and Sham and even got to see Sana and her main squeeze Kazuki.  As a nice celebratory Ayyam'i'Ha dinner we went to a Persian restaurant that happened to be right around the corner from Char's place.  Keith was kind enough to offer to stay with the babies and Char and I met up with the group and had a lovely evening together.  The area that Char lives in has many great options for babies including a fantastic library with a huge kids area.  There was a lovely cafe that was baby friendly, and on Sunday morning they hold a really fun soft play event in half of a gym.  Otto and Liam had such a good time!

The group of us out for Persian food

 Kazuki and Sana

 Me and Sonja - all the other photos we're making ridiculous faces

 Otto and Liam having a bath together -they were actually so funny to watch! 

 Monday we took the train up to Nass's and descended on them after they just got back from SA.  Thank you guys for being such generous and gracious hosts, despite fatigue!  The week was good even though I managed to get so sick.  The kids had a great time together for the most part - though after a while Lua started letting Liam know that she needed her space!  Leo and Liam had some good times together, and even the sharing issue wasn't too big of a deal. 

Liam is a big fan of laundry, and apparently, laundry baskets!

 This was such a sweet time.  The three of them were really playing together some sort of tea party game.  I loved watching them!

 The train became a slight point of contention in the mix because such exciting things are hard to share, but they did manage to take turns enjoying rides, and since then, Liam is definitely much more interested in sitting on, straddling his legs over, things.

Liam's first Music Class

I forgot to post pictures from a little music class that we went to about a month ago.  We did it with all the other moms and wee ones in our little group, and it was quite sweet just to see what they all got up to.  Liam sat and paid close attention in the first few minutes, but later seemed more interested in hiding and laughing under a table with Drake and Stirling.  He did like shaking his maracas though!

Stirling and Leigh with Alison and Elle in the background

Liam watches the teacher bunching up a scarf - Christina and Sam and Courtenay and Isla

Stirling returning the scarves to the hat - Pei Ling and Isabella in the background

Here's a sweet video of them playing under the table!

Day Trip to Luzerne

A few weeks ago we felt very proud of ourselves for taking a spontaneous day trip to Luzerne.  It's a 2.5 hour train ride and more often than not that can feel quite daunting.  However, a fellow colleague happened to have 2 transport passes for just 35CH each so that we could go anywhere in Switzerland on any mode of transport for the entire day.  We decided it was as good a time as any to give it a whirl, especially at such a great price, and off we went!

Despite 5 hours total on the train, we felt it was a lovely day.  The weather was perfect and we had a good 4 hours or so in Luzerne itself.  We wandered around the old town, checking out the farmers market, stopping for a very special lunch at Hotel Balance while Liam napped in his stroller, and made sure to pick up a brezel or two before a visit to Starbucks.  We felt rested, happy to be out and about and quite separated from our normal routine in Lugano.  It was lovely!  And best part yet is that it didn't involve any compromising of Liam's schedule.  We left around 8am and were back by 6pm so it was business as usual with him in bed by 6:30pm.

Here's a funny picture of him just waking up from his nap.  For some reason the second upper tooth has been taking forever to come in and the one in already just keeps getting longer, so here he is with a real of a  chicklet grin.

Here's Liam being attacked by one of the swans on the lake!

Words

I'm a bit sad to not have been more diligent with recording some of the recent happenings with little guy over here.  It seems like in the last month he's really growing into a full-on toddler, and each day brings some new little surprise.  Most noteworthy is his talking.  As we all know, he's never been shy about expressing himself, and he has certainly been talking in his own language for a very long time, but recently he's been very clearly and specifically trying to say some of our words. I think his first set of words really was "dis", "dat" and "der", but he soon moved on to many more.
This is what they sound like:
Ah daaar
Ah taar
Ah dooh
Ah dawh
It's sometimes quite tricky to know what he's talking about.  We use indicators like what he's pointing at, or the noise he makes after to make the most educated guess we can.  We now know that the words above refer to a car (well any moving vehicle really), a door, or a dog.  They can seem interchangeable at times, but more often than not they refer to cars - his new obsession.  It really came out of nowhere but all of a sudden he's thrilled with cars and plays with them all the time.  We hear him exclaim: "Oh! Taah!" All the time, often followed by: "brrroom, vrroom" noises.  He also talks about dogs and then does a small high pitched bark to follow.

Besides these words, he says Mama, but with a real intonation, and more recently, he says: "da-oow!" - ciao - and gives a little wave.  He also says "bifis" sometimes referring to breakfast, or he indicates he's hungry by clicking his tongue and saying "nana".  "Nana" also can be banana, in which case he is more likely to say "anana".  For a while now he has been saying "dirt" for dirty and uses it whenever he's trying to touch garbage cans, or outside if he's picking something off the ground.  If I tell him something is dirty he follows it by saying "dontush", meaning don't touch.  A child after my own heart!
In just the past week he's started saying "bah" for ball, "booh" for book, and "ah dah" for all done.  He also sometimes says the name of his favorite sleep companion Bertie (he says Bert).  He can also frequently be heard saying "oh yisss", or his favorite alternative: "oh, no!"
It's quite astonishing how quickly all this is coming about!