Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Infinite Liams

Spokane, as a small city, goes out of it's way to host some amazing public events. There is Bloomsday (a huge road race) HoopFest (basketball on downtown streets), concerts in the park, symphonies on the green, the list goes on. It's quite amazing, really.

Recently there were two interesting conventions that Spokane held. The first was for Vespa owners, the slogan was "Vespas are the Harleys of the Scooter World." True enough. Quieter, too.  We're guessing not too many out-of-towner Vespa owners made it to this event, given their max speed.  

The second convention didn't make the paper like the Vespas, but was even more amazing. Katie and I were downtown taking care of some business when we saw what looked like a queue of unaccompanied babies lined up outside an office building. To our surprise every single one looked like Liam! We followed them inside, where they were having some sort of beaner convention.



The convention was in an odd room full of glass panels that separated the little buggers into miniature triangular transparent rooms. This didn't seem to stop them from discussing their business, though:

If only we could decipher their strange little language. But alas, no use.

After a while, they all removed their outer garments and the atmosphere became decidedly more relaxed.

During the shuffle, I put Liam down somewhere to take the pictures, and when I'd turned around he was lost in the crowd of infinite identical Liams. Exasperated, Katie just grabbed one, and we drove home. We'll never know if it was the right one, but chances are it must be one of the clones.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Liam gets his passport

So, babies are now required to have their own passports--gone are the days of hitching a ride on the mom's little blue book. The trick is that a passport requires a birth certificate, and for a while we thought a social security number, though that turned out not to be the case. As a result, we drove straight from the hospital after Liam's birth to the social security office. Bad choice.

Another trick was getting an appointment with a passport agency given this season's backlog, but in the end, Liam had a passport by his third week. One of the funniest moments of the whole process was taking his passport photo. When we got to the shop where they take the photos, Liam was uncharacteristically dead asleep. We blew on his face, shouted his name, and he remained unconscious. We went home and then ran back to the store when he woke up. The trick then was getting a shot of the kid without our hands showing and with his eyes open. These are some of the takes, and out takes:

Oh, those fluorescent photo lights are so perdy...


Check out my tongue, guys...


Wait, what are you doing?


I'm tired...


Armageddon!!!!!


Take this!


The final photo that earned us the passport--Liam the Terrorist!

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Lemur Beamer Inherits a Major Motor Corporation!

Out little boy is growing up fast! First diapers, then sucking on out fingers, then his own fingers, and now: he owns a major motor company. Bavarian Motor Works (owned by Daimler-Chrysler entirely sold out to our chubby little entrepreneurial boy. The first thing he did was go about remaking the logo. He says he has equally radical changes in store for the vehicles themselves:



Liam's been growing too. Here's the most recent chart. Names befitting of his level of Chunk: Fatsy, Chubster, Mr. Blubber, and The Piglet. Here's the Chart:


He's already reached 15 solid pounds, and we've just shed almost half of the clothes we own for him. He's 1 pound short of doubling his growth weight. The only silver lining to this unbelievable unending growth spurt is that, as you can see above, it's slowing. (Thank God!)

Liam's parent's growth spurts are done, however. Kaput. Here's what happened to us since January. Notice Katie's precipitious drop around June 11th.