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I am soaking up every milisecond I can get with my charming, chubby baby monkey right now because we are very nearly into single digit count down days until we head to Orlando, sans this bundle of toddler sweetness.

I'm not particularly excited about leaving him, but I have SUCH things (and PEOPLE!!) to look forward to.

Before I get to the topic I intended for this post, I have to post some funny pictures of Mr. Man.

Liam has been branching out in the food world- but not tooooo far. He got his teeth SO late, and he's not a chewer. I have to cut his food up itty bitty because he just smashes it in and swallows. So, he's still pretty limited, but I was feeling particularly inclined the other night to making him a fan-tabulous dinner.

I whipped up a pot of rice, and when I started cooking it, I added in sweet corn, a small squirt of Caribbean Jerk Chicken Marinade and a large package of Gerber's Sweet Potato baby food. It actually came out quite tasty. Then I pulled out my "Cooking for Baby" cook book and found an all purpose cheese sauce and made it too. I poured a little of the sauce over the rice for dinner and he slicked it down. Then I went looking for ice cream and discovered there were only a few bitefuls left. So I put it in the cup for my hand blender, and made a milkshake with the remaining ice cream and some of his organic chocolate milk.

Needless to say, HOG HEAVEN:

And as Mr. Man had a bad day on Friday-- his tummy was upset-- and he didn't take a nap, I failed to take out meat for dinner. So, I high-tailed it to our local Chinese restaurant for take-out. I sat at the table and ate with Liam, who could NOT take his eyes off the Sweet & Sour dipping sauce that came for our crab puffs. When I was picking up the cup he threw on the ground, he snatched up the lid of the dixie cup and proceeded to suck it dry.

Now... shoes.

Oh I know, I am blogging about shoes AGAIN.

I promise you, I'm not that shallow.

I did make a decision about what to take to wear with my dresses, with my Mr.'s help. He pointed out it would be a waste of money to get a cute pair of wedges or heels because I'm always so uncomfortable in them. He knew I wouldn't wear them, I'd probably end up in a pair of flip flops I brought along, so he said I should just get a pair of shoes I'll actually wear. So I did. And they were cheap:

{j. crew}

I so appreciate all the help you sweet girls gave me, and had he not intervened I don't know that I would have been able to narrow it down to just one pair! They were all so cute!! But... with the seemingly permanent damage to my ankle, I cannot pretend to be able to wear the cutest of shoes.

Tuesday, we went for sushi for lunch, and then headed to Kohl's for Zach to try on Converse high-tops. And so I wandered around with Liam, to the children's shoes and found these:

And he LOVES them.

He stomps around on the tile in them, and giggles like a fool. He loves to run in them, and trips over the toes and laughs.

And I picked up a pair myself. I had intended to buy the same color as Liam's, but when I opened the box, this shocking blue was there and I fell head over (skydiver blue) heels! They had pink, and navy, and silver and blah blah blah, but the blue is fantastic! I plan on busting them out this winter-- I typically wear flip flops all winter long, but I'm trying to be more reasonable now that I have a little person to set and example for. I think they'll look quite spunky with a pair of skinny jeans and one of my chunky cable sweaters.

Won't we all be so cute, in our Converse? Zach's should be here next week, and I hope we can get a picture of all our feet together at some point.

... speaking of packages coming: We have a backpack and lunch kit on order for Liam with Amazon. The order was placed on the 27th of August. They waited 5 days to ship them, and now they'll arrive while we're on vacation. The whole point of them was that Liam could take his toys in the backpack and I could pack water and snacks in the lunch kit to take with us to the beach. I'm beyond put out about this. Why is it when you think you've done something in plenty of time, they inevitably mess it up??