He will obey

I try to keep an open mind about Liam in all respects. He can do and be anything he wants (within the letter of the law) and it will be OK by me. But one area where both Chad and I intend to push him is with respect to school. We don't care where he goes or what he studies, but we want him to finish some sort of post-secondary degree or diploma.

With that in mind, we packed up and went down to the bank this morning, and Chad and I are now a few thousand dollars poorer and Liam is the same sum richer. We opened an RESP for The Dude. They actually require, when you open this account, that you state which school the beneficiary will be attending, never mind that he is only six months old and can't even sit up (reliably) let alone decide his entire future. The PBR is very quick to say that it doesn't matter at all what you fill in on the online form - so why do they ask? As of right now, Liam will be attending St. Clair College (which I suppose also means he'll be living at home for another few years!) I'm sure that in the future this will probably change - so the next question is, will he be a Queen's grad, a Mac grad, or do something altogether different? I'd be willing to bet on the latter.

Chad will be home in a matter of hours, so tonight will be spent straightening the place up a bit. It will be awesome to have him back. When you are a small family, the absence of one person is definitely noticed! And I know that Chad misses us - who am I kidding, my position has been usurped - he misses The Dude most of all. I got a call from him this afternoon after he left F.A.O. Schwartz, New York City's premiere toy store. We had a (very brief) discussion about whether or not Chad should return to the store to purchase a life-sized $10,000 stuffed giraffe and accompanying $15,000 life-sized elephant. We decided against, but only because we live in an old house and aren't sure we could fit these beasts up our narrow staircase and into Liam's room. Yeah, that's it.

So now I have to remember all of what's happened here this week, in order to fill Chad in. We have had some successes and some failures. At the top of the success list: Liam has slept through the last three nights. This is a welcome change after 3.5 weeks of night waking (which is either the longest growth spurt ever, or just him being a stinker). On the failure list, I tried to switch him over from Nestle to Heinz oatmeal, and he would have none of it. Went on a three-day cereal strike, refusing to even go back to rice. I caved and bought another box of Nestle today, and he gobbled up a ridiculous enough amount that I was sure he was going to puke by the time he hit the bathtub (we are still vomit-free, knock wood.)

I'm off to tidy up... who am I kidding... will he even notice? (Check out Megan's blog for more on that story...)