It's Little Changes

I've been thinking a lot about how much William has changed in the last year and how much I write about him every day. Last year it seemed like I couldn't get in to blog it fast enough. The milestones and growth were just astonishing. His growth and development are still amazing, but now he is working on bigger things. These bigger things take longer and he works on them over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over until I think "ENOUGH already! I'm tired of spotting your fearless climbing of the kitchen chairs!" And then, all of a sudden he masters it. But, it seems silly to run to the internet and shout: "He can scale the kitchen chairs!"

And yet here it is: the first independent scaling of the kitchen chairs. Please note two of our children are sitting at the table. I am certain the kitchen table is next.

We are doing what feels like an extreme amount of no-no-ing and William has had several of the all out down on the floor tantrums as a result today alone. His vocabulary is growing and improving everyday. Last week he told John "Me milk, milk me". Which we believe means :give me my milk, please. We are hard at work identifying parts of the body (eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair, belly, toes, legs, arms, hands, feet, fingers, and knees) and I feel like we are close to knowing all of the list. We are also working on animals (dog, cat, cow, pig, lion, bears, duck, chicken, sheep, birds, snakes, monkeys, fish, and giraffes). Again, I think William knows all of them. Last night we were in the car when I handed him a book. "ow, ow, ow de deba..." is kind of what I hear. I turned to look at what book he had and it was: Row, Row, Row your boat. I think we sang that song close to 45638746874163521354 times in a row. Just because we were so excited about him learning that song. And because we totally rock it out when we all sing that one together.

Here are some pictures from last weekend to hold you over until I get the ones from a very special first birthday party we went to on Thursday.

I thought it would be fun to go to O'Fallon's heritage days last weekend. William very much enjoyed riding on the old style trolley.
Too bad it was freezing cold and windy! We enjoyed a little music and took 1/2 of the tour of the historic house before heading back home.