a birthday in the mist

in less than a week Liam will turn 1. this time last year I was fat and miserable

and after a rapid fire delivery of a jumbo rocket, many stitches in areas I'd rather not mention, and days worth of the weird oxygen hood thing and UV light treatments, I brought home a wonderful (sorta) little guy.

and the big brother was ever so proud
of his new brother and relieved just to have me home again.

and now I have this most wonderful little boy. who is happy, lovable, and an all around great kid

Evan has also grown up this past year too! after the baby was born he took it upon himself to potty train himself! yee ha! he loves his brother soo much, that when Mimi (great gramma) threatens to keep him, Evan says "no! he's MY brother!" It's quite amazing really. only now Evan gets frustrated when Liam wants ot play with his toys or accidentally pulls his hair.

Now, the week of his first birthday he's a totally different kid than he was even a year ago. he is eating all normal foods like a giant piglet. drinking regular milk (at daycare, but not at home), standing on his own more and more, and using some sign language. it makes you wonder what is going on in their little heads as they go through life not understanding any of it, but taking it as it is becuase it's the way it is and they don't even know that things could be different and that there's so much mroe out there for them.

The love you have for your children is like no other you've experienced until you experience it. I had no idea.

Let it be known:

that I solved the great "Acetate Mystery" at work.

edited to add:
Camelia (Ph.D student) has been racking her brain trying to figure out where 70g of Acetate came from in her soil (for her research) that was dug up off of rt 25 in the basin where we have monitoring wells. They use an alternate decing agent there that is safer for the cranberry bogs, called CMA (calcium magnesium acetate) they haven't use any yet this season so there shouldn't be any in the soil. She also rinses it here at the lab. She needs that soil specifically because of the bacteria that is found there.
So for the past 2 weeks she's been testing any and everything and running soil samples to see where it's coming from. On friday we put the soil in the oven to bake it-to make sure it is dry.. we set it up to see if the shiny side of the foil had an effect different to the dull side. Today she says that the Acetate is coming from something to do with the baking, and the data from shiny vs. dull foil was the same.. hmm.. so I suggested that perhaps there is ambient acetate in the oven.. perhaps it got spilled or something.
We check the oven. Lo and behold! there is a dish of Acetate sitting in the oven drying. For it needs to be totally dry to make a standard. The oven has been cleaned, and now a test bake is in progress to see if there is any ambient evaporated acetate still in the oven.

I requested a full acknowledgement at the end of the dissertation. lol