Edward and Jacob are no match for him.

Sleeping is no mean art:  for its sake one must stay awake all day.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Nothing in this world can calm me like watching Liam sleep.  It is a beautiful thing.  Lately though, we've been seeing too much sleep in the day and not nearly enough in the night.   The past two nights Liam has gone to sleep at 6:30 in the morning.   He sleeps in the morning and again in the afternoon but refuses to sleep between midnight and 6am.  Now before I get emails of tips and tricks let me assure you that we have tried it.  What can I say?  He likes the nightlife, he likes to boogie.

Part of it may be that he's teething.  Incisors too.  The top two have poked through those gums in the past two days.  It occurs to me now that while his fangs are growing in he has been unable to sleep during the night.  He does brood most of the time and nearly every lady he meets ends up falling for him.  Thank god I haven't seen him sparkle yet.   The world isn't ready for Team Liam. 

Our new daytime nurse is great.  A bit older than our other nurses she has that crazy, fun, aunt feel about her.  She's loud and  she's funny and she is wonderful with Liam.  She tries as hard as she can to keep him awake for her shift so that he will turn this thing around but Liam refuses to co-operate.  This morning as I rushed to get ready for work I saw her set Liam in his stander for his standing exercises with every loud blinky toy he owns on a tray in front of him.  From barnyard noises to 'little brown jug' she had them all blaring their annoying best while holding his arms above his head with a mobility exercise.  All the while Liam kept his eyes closed and snored.  He can do that.  He's been sleeping through physical therapy appointments for half his life.  

The big Liam news last week though was that we came home on friday with our Passy Muir valve (also known as a speaking valve). Its a basic one way valve that prevents Liam from exhaling through his vent circuit.  Air will now be forced out through the mouth and nose forcing him to relearn how to use his vocal chords and giving him a more robust swallow.  This is a very big deal and as he tolerates its use more and more we will be able to feed him more solid foods.  We have been working towards getting one for months and Liam has done so well with using it.  We are so proud.  Karin has been trying to capture some good audio of Liam flexing those pipes of his, I'll try and post here if she gets something good.

That's about all I've got for now.  Its 1am and so Liam is just getting warmed up for playtime naturally and I've got some Bugs Bunny cartoons cued up on the netflix.  That's all folks!

Oh!  Except that I took this picture over the weekend and I like how it came out so I'd like you all to meet Gary the Garden Gnome who roams my side garden protecting my tomatoes and cucumbers from the neighborhood riff raff.