Happy Birthday to YOU!

William got down into almost his birthday suit tonight to wish a few people a happy birthday: Grandpa Heidt and Uncle Joe! We hope you both had great days!

PS Okay, okay...I didn't take his clothes off for the picture. I was just too lazy to put clothes back on him for the 12345687th time today.

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Parents as Teachers visit today went well. Our teacher was impressed that William crawled on over to her bucket of toys and then pulled himself up. And then let go for a few seconds (our little daredevil!). As expected, he is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead on his gross motor skills and on track with everything else. She gave us some great suggestions to help us work with him on his fine motor skills and his babbling. She stressed he is NOT behind in these areas - he is just choosing to focus his time and energy on the gross motor stuff. Even if we try to work with him on some fine motor stuff, she predicts he will not be super interested and will attempt to go back to working on his walking skills. We'll see.

Late breaking news is I bought several bananas at the grocery store today to start William on. I mashed one up for him this afternoon. He wasn't crazy about it at first. We tried it again later in the day and he gobbled it right up. I'm wondering if the mashed fruit softened as the day went on and made it easier to eat? We'll have to try it again sometime soon!

Everybody now: " HAM ON A BUN!"

That's right! Sing it to this song! Oh yeah! We started the ham tonight with William. How could we not sing one of Grandpa's favorite songs? Ham on a Bun! It is a little boring, but he did a good job with the ham. No good faces or anything! We also tried a few real green beans on his tray tonight. I was surprised with how well he did. He picked it right up and put it in his mouth. THEN he made a funny face. But, he kept working at it until he finally dropped the bean inside the highchair.

Here we are with some ham...not too sure

Yummy and messy face!

Hey! Do you guys have these things on the side of your head? William has figured out he has EARS! Weeeeee!


Holding onto his green bean

Eating the green bean. His first funny face!

William helping me with laundry

William and Daddy hanging out


Oh! I have permission to post pictures of William's youngest cousins! Aren't they cute?

7 months, 6 teeth

Today, William is 7 months old and we discovered his sixth tooth coming in. No wonder he is such great company. We learned this morning that skipping a nap in order to go to church is probably not a good idea. Will have to come up with a new plan to accomplish this for now as he was exceptionally crabby for the rest of the day. We did our traditional photo shoot with the little stinker this morning. It took 2 of us to get even these medium quality shots. Definately not happy with them, but he would just NOT hold still. That is the name of the game lately. Constant motion. He has been fully crawling with the belly up for about 3 weeks now and is just getting faster and faster. We have master the sit down for the most part and when we are not crawling we are sitting down! Standing up! Sitting down! And trying to stand up while holding the pointiest/largest toy available. Once upright with said toy, we then shake it and shake it some more while laughing like a lunatic. John and I are tired. Tired of running after him (please note: we are not tired OF him, just tired from running after him).

A great place to stand! Hanging onto my ROCKING chair!


Most of the photo shoot, William was doing this: crawling away.

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Other news:

On Thursday I dragged the leaky pool out for a dip as it was nice and cool out for us (only 92 degrees! Almost jacket weather!). William was working hard on that new tooth and didn't really seem to notice he was in the water. Oh well. He was darn cute!

This is my teething look. Bottom lip sucked in. One hundred percent accurate as to predicting a new tooth so far.

Bathing beauty. In an effort to "help" him enjoy swimming, I put him on his back. Still chewing.

On Friday, we introduced beef. William ate it up, even though smelled horrible (yuck).

After beef. Also ate sweet potatoes. Honest, they aren't all on his face!

Finally, Saturday we made some important discoveries when we tried to eat out at our favorite restaurant. William WILL still take a bottle. William LOVES bread from the steakhouse. And, William does like to socialize (aka: Stare) at the people around him for extended periods of time. Stay tuned! Up next: Turkey!

Chicken Little

Several orders of business to take care of tonight. First, the things that were Ooooo-worthy today. Pulling my shirt top down in public, reading/ripping a magazine I haven't read, opening a cabinet door by himself and leaning into the air coming out of the air conditioning vent. I'm not sure what the criteria is for an Ooooooo, but I am sure enjoying how cute they are!

After Oooo-ing when the cabinet was opened, William enjoyed emptying the cabinet and "skating"around the kitchen floor with my cake pans.

Tonight, we introduced chicken. William ate it even though it smelled horrible. I was so proud!

Yummy Chicken!


We've also started these toast stick things. I think William likes them, but they are REALLY messy. He has only had this one in his hand for 5 seconds!


Is the face due to the chicken? I don't think so...

I love how the cereal provide the perfect glue to adhere crumbs to his face until he is 40....

Last item on my list. A friend of mine has e mailed me to let me know that as a twin, she HATED being referred to as "The Twins". As if she wasn't a whole person/individual on her own. After looking into the matter further by reading material for parents with multiples, I have found she is correct. Parents of multiples /multiples themselves do NOT like being called "The [insert multipleness]". My ignorance= blog foot in mouth. My apologies. From here on out, I will not refer to any child based upon their multipleness first. I will strive to make them their own individual. Thank you E. for making me aware of my mistake. Let us hope others can learn from me! (or at least laugh at my lack of knowledge).

Oooooo-Ah

The word of the day Ooooooo-ah. To be stated with expression of discovery similiar to "Ah yes, so that is how it works."

Examples of use:

1. I opened the freezer to see if there was anything more interesting in it than 30 seconds before. William stuck his head in, looked around and said "Oooooo-Ah."

2. While changing William's diaper, I set the dirty diaper to one side and set to the task of trying to button up his shorts as he rolled over and over. Somehow, he managed to get ahold of the (wet) diaper, he swung it around towards me so it opened up. He peered inside and commented "Ooooo-Ah"

3. While William was napping, I snacked upon pretzels while paying some bills at the computer. I set them on the floor when I heard William wake up from his nap. I brought William back into the computer room to finish up what I was doing. Then, I went back to his room to grab some toys so he wouldn't try to pull up on the fan or chew on the fan cord. While in his room grabbing 2 toys, I heard a delighted "OOooooOO-Ah!" coming from the computer room and the sound of the plastic pretzel bag rustling. I ran at the speed of light in time to just catch the bag from being totally tipped upside down.

4. I was getting ready for the day in the bathroom. William was on the floor, playing with one of his books...until he wasn't anymore and was pulling himself up on the small trashcan (full). He pulled himself up to his knees and peeked over the top. As he peeked, he tipped the trashcan over. "Ooooo-a" he said wisely.

There were other events today that were "Ooooo-ah" worthy, I just can't think of them now. Onwards to other things...
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Food Update:

William had prunes yesterday for the first time (besides his prune juice). This is the last Stage One baby food we had left, so now we are on to the stage 2 stuff. And hopefully other solid stuff. Solid food stuff I mean. I think we will start meats sometime this week. Not looking forward to that - they look yucky to me. I guess I'll have to wait and see what he thinks.

First taste - kind of looks like chocolate, doesn't it? Sure doesn't taste like it. I promise.

Halfway though

All done! And trying a Gerber Puffed Sweet Potato thing.
The eating real! solids front: The Gerber puff things are WAY easier to handle than the Cheerios. We'll have to go back to those again later.

Crunching it between his teeth/pushing it out of his mouth with his tongue


Those puffs are REALLY hard to catch! Trying to figure out what to do with it now that it is in his hand. Funny, because everything else ends up in his mouth.


Trying for the mouth. The whole opening hand thing is very difficult.

Happy Back to School Day!

Here is the photo slideshow I have been working on:

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Today the buses came through our neighborhood and picked up the kids with shiny new backpacks standing at the corners. It was a little bittersweet. It is one of the first days of school in twenty eight years I am not going back to school also. The three of us (John, William and I) were all invited to a wonderful back to school party at Jeff's house on Friday night. Jeff gave us this:

to commemorate William's first hike. It is a picture of all of the hikers in a frame with rocks from the creek bed along the hike craftily attached to the frame. Very, very special! It was fabulous to relax and hang out with everyone again. William crawled around and pulled himself up on all kinds of dangerous objects and all kinds of people watched out for him and put him back on the ground (or picked him up and cuddled him). It was just what we needed. I love my coworkers. And yes mom, I'm writing my thank you note right now.

As this weekend was also our ten year class reunion, I also have been thinking back to the first day of school 10 years ago when I started college with my bestest friend Jessica by my side. Aren't we cute for our first day (this picture is posted without permission)? Anyway, I just wanted to also wish Jessica happy 10 year anniversary of our first day of college. And we survived. More impressive, we are still friends. Even if we didn't go to our reunion.

Now for the reason we didn't go to the reunion. We have done a lot of driving this summer and although William has proved to be a champion traveler, we felt bad asking him to sit for a long time in the car two days so close together. John and I talked it over and couldn't decide...still couldn't decide. I leaned towards going, he leaned towards staying home. So, we based our decision on something completely shallow. If I could find something appropriate to wear, we would go. If not, we would stay home. I couldn't find anything to wear. The shorts in the above picture might have covered up my post baby belly nicely, but I sadly don't own those any more. To be fair, I did quite a bit of shopping with William and the two of us couldn't agree on anything. So, in the end we stayed home. All (sort of) because I couldn't find something to wear. Oh well...


Finally, evidence of childproofing at our house from this evening:

Oh, yeah...

How could I forget? Tooth #5 made its appearance yesterday. If you are hoping for a picture - you are going to be disappointed. You try and put your fingers in his mouth with all those other teeth! Ouch is right!

Where have you been?

I'm not sure where we have been. There has been things going on this week, but no more than usual. I am going to point the blame at the little boy who is becoming busier by the moment. I'm also working on some snapfish stuff and another photo slide show. It is coming, I promise. Here is some examples of my busy -ness.

William helping load/unload the dishwasher. Any moment now, he'll shift his weight which will cause the dishwasher rack to move and he will knock himself out. What do I do? Grab the camera.

On Thursday, we introduced barley cereal.

At lunch on Saturday, we gave Cheerios a test run. William wasn't so sure.

Although it at least slowed him down enough we got to eat more than a few bites at a time.

Otherwise, one of us stuffs our face while the other one chases him around.

Still not sure about the Cheerios on Saturday

William helping me by emptying the lower levels of the pantry.

We have some serious baby proofing to do. I'm committed to trying to work on it this week (watch out!). I'm tired of chasing him between the electric cords, brick fireplace, dishwasher door and other dangers around the house. It is time. It is also time for bed. More tomorrow, I promise!