No Looky Looky

I love this picture of Liam and his cousins at the local Easter Egg Hunt here in Upstate New York. Not a single one of them looking at each other or the camera, just stonewalling me and my picture taking. Hrmph.

We've had a great Easter with the family and particularly in watching the cousins play together.

My favorite moment was this morning in church after the opening hymn/song when the church fell completely silent and he started chanting, "more song! more song! more song!". Kind of adorable and he quieted down until they sang another song and then when it was over he was back to chanting again "more song! more song! more song!". But, once the priest started in on the homily he drifted off to la-la land for the rest of the service.

It's one of those moments when I was really proud of him and me. I had thought on the drive to the church that I could just go to the "cry room" and hang out back there with the other kiddos since he's not really used to church. And, then I stopped myself and thought, "Why wouldn't I allow him the opportunity to be successful?" "Why would I take him to the cry room expecting him to "fail"?" Not really fail but be noisy. My job as a parent is to set him up for success and to allow him to be successful in his own right. And, he delivered as he almost always does. Anytime we are nervous that he'll act like...well...a kid. He delivers a rock star performance.

My blessing to be especially thankful for this Easter is the honor of having him in my life.

Playing in Traffic

I'm not normally a parent who tells their kid to go "play in traffic" but since the highway we took to New York today was completely closed not once but TWICE on our journey we decided to let him stretch his legs. He thought it was pretty cool, although the "mother of the year" police will be happy to know that I did make him hold my hand to cross the highway. I figure I at the very least get partial credit for that.

These agonizingly long trips up the East Coast I dare say are becoming normal. At Christmas time it took us 9 hours to this trips 8. But, that time was because we left all of our clothes at home. We tried to use our iPhones to find an Old Navy, but it took us instead into the projects of Podunk, PA to what we can only assume used to be an old Army Navy surplus store. When we finally did find a place to pick up some duds it was two days before Christmas and picked over as one can imagine. So we had to pick up things that "fit" and not things that we "liked". Here you can see that I made sure we packed the clothes this go round by putting them on our tree as we packed the car.

In a final note of humor, we let the little guy run around naked all morning as he has had quite a battle with Mr. Diaper Rash these days. And, while buck naked he found a pair of bunny ears, fastened them to his head and popped out from behind a container of blocks to proudly delcare, "BUNNY HEAD!!".