Cute Liam Movie

Liam Pictures

Stanley Pictures

Lyla Pictures

It's hard to be Stanley

Sometimes it's hard to be Stanley. The relationship between Stanley and his older sister is evolving. He's becoming much more interesting to her as he is very intelligent and engaging and on the verge of crawling. On the other hand, this encroaches upon Lyla's space.
She enjoys him most of time, plays with him and loves to make him laugh- but sometimes she struggles with control issues.
Yesterday, Lyla had a major melt down because Stanley was holding a plastic corn cob. She went into full emotional collapse and couldn't be comforted. Katie, Gaga and I all just gave a collective sigh and waited for the storm to pass.

Lyla's sad evening

Katie reports Lyla is sad tonight at their new house. I think maybe Lyla just wants to be sad and can't decide why. At first she told Katie that she was sad because Pop Pop and Gaga were going bye bye. Well, we aren't. Actually Kris just took her to the mall today and I saw her for a little bit this morning. We've been talking about going to visit Liam and I suspect she overheard us.
At any rate, Katie just sent a video that has Lyla saying she's sad because of a (non-existent) bug that's naughty.

Lyla and Gaga

Lyla is very fond of Gaga and not all that interested in sharing her with Stanley. She also gets very worried when Gaga goes to visit Baby Wee Wee (her name for Liam). When Gaga is gone, Lyla really loves me and wants me to play with her, but when Gaga is around, Grandpa is definitely playing second fiddle.
I don’t really mind and Gaga and Lyla have some natural kismet. One result of this is that I have spent much more time with Stanley and we get along swimmingly.

Six Months Old!

Stanley is now 6 months old. On one hand it seems like he joined us just yesterday and on the other hand it seems like he’s been here a lot longer than 6 months. Stanley is a big boy and a little on the fat side. He has recently started to eat large quantities of table food. One day recently his mom complained that he was grouchy all day. At dinner time he ate and ate and ate—she eventually concluded the poor little guy was just hangry. He’s a real sweetheart but can also be very opinionated. He has the very cute habit of sucking on the fingers of one hand to comfort himself.

Hello Liam!

June 2 and Liam Thomas Jones is now with us—what a wild ride it was! Courtney went in to have labor induced on June 1 in the wee hours of the morning, but nighttime she still hadn’t gone into labor. By the next morning, although there had been some progress she was still a ways from delivering and they wisely decided to have a C-section. Liam was born without incident, but his mother had an infection which landed her back in the hospital the next week. I stayed in Huntington for 4 days by myself in their apartment, helping when I could and coming to visit Liam and Courtney in the hospital. It was a tough time, but we’re tough people and we managed. Our reward is Liam who is the spitting image of his father and was a striking 21 inches long at birth!

GeeGee and Iggy

Gee Gee (Barbra Fymier) and Iggy (Becky Logue) came to visit us in Altoona this weekend. Lyla sometimes gets worried around new people, and she hadn’t seen her great grandmother for a while- so we were worried about it. Katie worked hard to prepare Lyla starting a week ahead of time talking about Gee Gee and Iggy, showing her movies and pictures…. But when they arrived, Lyla instantly melted down and cried and screamed for an hour. Typical to Lyla’s form, she came around and by the end of the day she loved them. She selected Gee Gee to go with her to play with the stones and snails in the fish tank, which was a pretty big honor.

New fish!

Gaga was very brave and took Lyla to Petco today to buy 3 fish for the big fishtank she found in the dumpster. The experience at the pet shop wasn’t great, but they returned with 3 Danios that have been named “Mommy”, “Daddy” and “Baby”. Lyla loves the snails and calls them “girl” (we don’t know why). She wants to get the “girls” out of the tank and hold them, which is very hazardous for the health of the snails. We ordered empty escargot shells to (hopefully) distract her and lower the snail mortality rate.

Stanley laughing for the first time!

Liam update!

Courtney reports that Liam is supposed to be sleeping 12-14 hours a day, but he is not. She says he’s a little jeebus and is always kicking and moving around--- in this way, he sounds a lot like Stanley and Lyla--- I wonder if this is a trend and all of the grandchildren are going to be little firecrackers…?

Stanley's Photo Shoot

Katie brought Stanley and Lyla over and we had Stanley’s unprofessional baby photo shoot. We covered up a chair with blankets and took some nice pictures with my good Canon camera. They didn’t come out bad. We tried some other poses but almost all of those turned out horribly. I did manage to snap a couple of cute pictures of Lyla reading a book that were pretty cute.For the photos, Katie dressed Stas in a fox suit he got from Brian and Colleen that was not my favorite. I much preferred his truck sweater.

Liam moving

Lyla and Eddie

Lyla enjoys our cat Edward Munch (who she calls Eddie). She comes in to our house looking for him yelling “Eddie!” which is super cute because it sounds like “Eh Eee!”. Eddie is part Maine Coon and a very curious cat, and he really seems to like Lyla (think about that, have you ever known a cat that really likes a toddler??). He hangs around her the whole time she’s at our house. Eddie likes to bite and claw when he plays but seems to know never to be rough with Lyla. This afternoon they passed about thirty minutes playing together with Lyla throwing a little red ring and Eddie chasing after it, with Lyla giggling every time this happened. It is a very unusual relationship.

Stanley

Katie had a bit of a minor break down the other day. Stanley had been crying on and off for most of the day. Of course this set his big sister off and Katie had spent most of the day trapped in the The Brown House with two crying babies. Late in the afternoon, I got to be the relief pitcher with Stanley and he spent an hour snuggling in my arms farting like a mad man—which I think was the source of this problems all along. Little Stanley is a prodigious farter. Katie and Grandma took Lyla to the mall, which is Lyla’s favorite thing to do—especially seeing the “daddy bus” and the “baby bus”. After this break, the Biem family seemed to have put themselves back together and everyone went home happy.

Liam update

We received an update from Courtney on Liam Sunday. Everything is going very well. She reports he reacts to stimulation now—if Daniel puts his hand on Courtney stomach and presses down, Liam will kick back. My favorite part of the medical section of the update is the information that Liam’s skin is transparent. Personally, I think that would be a really awesome super power.

Emma Wiggle

Lyla is deeply impressed by Emma Wiggle, from the Australian kid’s show. Emma is a red head who dances ballet, signs, and plays drums- she also wears bows in her hair. Lyla loves to wear bows now—sometimes as many as five or six at one time. She also enjoys dresses and skirts and loves to wear them when she “dances like Emma”. It’s pretty cute!

Coconut!

We got an update from Courtney last week that Liam is now the size of a coconut. It must be the small kind of coconut because if he’s the size of a big one, it’s some kind of record. Courtney is due in early June, which is about the same time they should know where they’re moving to after Daniel’s internship in Huntington is over. We worry a lot about that—It’s been a real joy to see Lyla and Stas so often, I know Courtney and Daniel need to do what’s best for them, but I really hope they aren’t too far away so we can see Liam often.

Maizy and Lyla

We have a fuzzy little Golden Retriever puppy named Maizy(Who Lyla calls Mimi). Maizy loves Lyla and Lyla loves Maizy but they can’t seem to play together. Maizy loves to bite and play fight, but inherently seems to know not to do that to Lyla—still Maizy gets up in her face and can’t seem to leave Lyla alone. Lyla, on the other hand, gets all excited to see Maizy and yells and waves her hands, which just gets Maizy more excited. I’m sure they’ll end up buddies, but it’s a difficult relationship. Lyla’s favorite dog is our decrepit old dog Butters (who she calls ba-ba), for reasons I cannot really figure out.

Uncle Pee-Poh

During the last family get together, Lyla cried at first when she saw Kurt, Samantha, Courtney and Daniel. Oddly she seemed more concerned about Kurt and Daniel. She learned to call Daniel “D”, and Aunt Cooper “Gokky”, but the real winner was Kurt who somehow became “Uncle Pee-poh”. Not sure how that happened but we’ll see how long his name remains “Uncle Pee-poh”.

Snuggly Stanley

For the first few weeks, Stanley was all snuggles. I think he was growing so fast (and eating so much) that he was just exhausted. Now we’re starting to see Stanley’s personality come out—you can tell that he share some of his sister’s spicy attitude. He does seem more laid back than Lyla- which isn’t saying much. Lyla is a little high maintenance, like her Dad and her Aunt Cooper.

Lyla counting

Lyla, at 19 months, has become a very interesting person. She enjoys fake counting and enjoys counting to 3 while waving her hand in the air (imitating us raising 1, 2 then 3 fingers). She can’t really count yet, but seems to enjoy the concept of counting. She like the Wiggles song “Dr. Knickerbocker” where they count to 9 and she laughs while she waves her hand in the air while they count with their fingers.

Liam Thomas Jones

In a rare, pre-COVID almost-all family get together (only Tot missing) we had the gender reveal for Courtney and Daniel’s baby. It’s a boy! For the first time, I incorrectly picked the gender of the baby (I was right on both Lyla and Stas). They let us know a short time later that they picked out the name “Liam Thomas Jones”, Thomas being Daniel’s grandfather. I was a little surprised because June has had a list of baby names for years and “Liam” was never on it.

Stanley Daniel Biem

We were all very happy to welcome Stanley Daniel Biem to the world on January 12, 2021. He's a handsome little boy with dark hair, but I think it'll turn light later. Sadly, little Stanley was born during the lengthy COVID pandemic and we weren't allowed to go to the hospital to see him. We had to wait three days until he got to come home with his mother--- even then he had very few visitors-- Kris and I and our kids, Brian, Collen and Alex (the Biem's by looking through the front door window only, the Grossman's in person being much less cautious people).