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Monday, March 10, 2008

William Houdini

William's new trick from today. Well, those things were useful for about 2 weeks...




P.S. New picture in an entry below...

It might work now

It works! Here are pictures from the last week or so...



A picture from last week. It was time to clean out the refrigerator and guess who wanted to help? Please note: when all the shelves and stuff is in the fridge, he doesn't actually fit where he is standing now. I promise.


Still climbing every chance we get! Here he is trying to get a boost up by stepping into the colander. He got frustrated pretty quickly when this didn't work!

Last weekend we finally picked up a carseat for John's car. We were looking for a convertible car seat that had a higher weight limit while still being reasonably priced. We weren't able to find anything we liked, so we ended up with this forward facing carseat. Although he meets all the requirements for forward facing, we were hoping to keep him rear facing for a while longer as it is supposed to be safer for him that way. Now we're just hoping he doesn't mind staying rear facing in my car...


Although I wish he was rear facing, it is still kind of fun to turn around and see this when we're going somewhere! In his other carseat, all we saw was his kicking feet and sometimes a waving hand. Now I know exactly what he is doing back there!


I'm not sure how exciting this is to anyone else, but William is starting to stack up the blocks by himself. Here he is practicing.


Another tower. Please note one of his favorite toys in front of him: shoes. He loves to carry his shoes around the house and play with them. I've started hiding his shoes because we were almost half of an hour late because we were running around trying to find a missing shoe. Another interesting fact: we measured his feet this weekend and found he is between sizes 5 and 6. No wonder those 4.5's were getting tough to put on!


So proud of himself!

Another favorite toy: Mama's phone. Please note the cute new shirt from Great Grandma Gerry and Great Grandpa Tom! He was pretty excited to have a fire truck on his shirt. He was running around and playing and would have to stop every one in awhile to point to the "Brrrmmmm" on his shirt.

By the end of the day Saturday, we weren't feeling so hot. This is what we all felt like by the time William went to bed.

Childproof? I don't think so! These childproof latches were installed less than a month ago!

We're hoping this new skill doesn't translate to other cabinet doors...somehow I'm going to have to keep an even closer eye on him now!

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Well, you'll have to wait

I tried to upload pictures here tonight. No luck. I'll try again tomorrow night. We also have some words on audio files to post. But, not tonight. Blogger isn't cooperating with me and I don't have the energy to fight it.

So flu/cold/yucky stuff has landed at our house courtesy of the short one who licks things that have germs and doesn't wash his hands (good thing he is cute). William and I are both feverish and yucky feeling with a side dish of runny nose. Ick. William by far is the most pitiful of the two with the rivers of snot he wipes on my shirt at every turn.

We started the weekend with renewed energy to getting the basement done. Our goal was to have the basement ready to be taped by the end of the weekend. This whole basement project is quickly approaching the two year mark and we actually got a reasonable bid for taping the basement walls. So, on Friday night we started with the cleaning and rearranging to finish up the last small details that need to be done before someone ELSE can finish this leg of the project. The yuckiness has intervened and we are not ready for the taper to come and do his thing. Oh well.

I'm off to bed because the shortest one went to bed an hour early and that may mean he'll be up an hour early also.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Boo hoo, Boo Hoo

William's grandparents wrote:
wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wahhhhhhh,, sniffle sniffle wah wah.
blog blog blog blog blog blog blog
wah wah
???????

My Response:

I fear that this will continue for at least the next week or so. We finally decided to give up the morning nap time. The afternoon nap has been going wonderfully...sometimes. The first trial day produced a 2.75 hour nap! Heaven! But, I kept thinking he would wake up any minute, so I wasted the time doing stupid stuff. The next three days produced a 2.5 hour nap combined total. So, now I am down to a small amount of time to: clean, pay bills, make phone calls, make Big plans, meet with drywall guys, eat bon bons, write e mails to my grandparents, cook dinner, paint my toenails, etc. I am a busy girl. In the evenings we've been hitting the Y to train for our upcoming 5 K (maybe at the end of March?) and trying to prep the basement for the eventual drywall taping. I think I might post this exact e mail to the blog now...

The Next Big Thing

Today was the first step to working on the Next Big Thing for me. It really isn't a secret, but I'm not sure what direction I'm going in yet. Still considering my options. But, I want a marker here because I've taken the leap. It's off into the unknown for me (so what else is new?)!

PS When/If I ever decide on anything, I will certainly share.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Happy March!

Happy March! We had a beautiful weather weekend with temperatures in the 60's and 70's. We grilled on Saturday and discovered an unexpected visitor. Sunday we worked in the yard, cleaned up the deck, and went for a long walk as a family. It was very nice!

Friday night, I noticed William making faces at me. This is what he looked like:


It was so funny, I started laughing. So he did it again:
And again:


And again:


Until my stomach hurt from laughing and we took some silly face pictures together:





I really don't have any idea where this funny face came from, but it still cracks me up every time he does it. We suspect it may be him mimicking one of the faces John sometimes makes...tough to be sure. This will go down in the baby book as William's first on purpose funny face. Other funny faces:


Cheesy smile

Silly grin

Happy face!



Mr. Helper with the crossword puzzle before going to bed.

Filling in the boxes - what a good helper!

Thursday, February 28, 2008

The adventures of a Thirteen Month old Boy

So, it was my birthday on Tuesday. John baked my very favorite cake:


We went out to dinner and everyone was well behaved. It was a good night. We came back from dinner and had cake after William went to bed. All in all it was a nice day with lots of well wishes arriving over the phone and in the mail.


Here is a picture of us last year and a comparison from this year. Last year: tired and sore. This year: still tired after chasing a little boy all day and sore from a 3 mile run this afternoon. But happy. Very happy.


One month old baby Thirteen month old baby

Although this looks like a cute picture, he is trying pretty hard to get away. There is work to be done.

Smile!

Babbling away. I'm working hard this week to get recordings of him saying some of his words. Maybe John will have time to help me post them this weekend. And maybe the birthday party video? We'll see what we can do.



Our climbing adventures continue. William figured out how to get on his push toy to ride it and how to push it forwards/backwards with his feet yesterday. However, he is not so good at figured out how to lift his leg over the body of the toy to end up facing the steering wheel. Wouldn't be such a big deal except he is MAD about not being able to reach the buttons that make noise when he is facing backwards. See above: Happy! I figured out how to climb on this thing! A short moment later he lost it because he couldn't reach the buttons that play music. I am absolutely certain I took several pictures of him riding the toy the correct direction, but can't seem to find them in the 56768765416576876854653 pictures we have of our kid on this computer. Seriously.


I am pleased to report that we have also conquered the scaling of the Coffee Table in the living room. I'm taking the next few days to see if we can't get this out of his system before I go ahead and remove this piece of furniture from the living room.

Here we go climbing again wearing one of my favorite shirts. More pictures of that will be below. Every time he manages to pull himself up onto either the couch or the coffee table, he spends a full ten seconds just like this. Resting from the extreme effort of pulling his entire weight up and over his cute round tummy to the top of whatever mountain he is climbing.


And...the new shirt. Mr. Mischief indeed. Do you remember those books from when you were little? I do...and this shirt totally fits us. John (who is a freak) claims he doesn't remember these books at all from his childhood. Someone better call, email or comment to let me know I'm not the only one who remembers these characters.

Mr. Mischief doing what he does best...

Looking for more trouble

More Mischief to be had over here...


This looks like something interesting (PS this is the assigned "camera" booger sucker, not "kid" assigned. I guess if you want to know more about why our camera has boogers you should ask John.)

Even Mischief makers need to take a break to rest...and plan.


If you asked me this week what William's favorite toy is, I would have to tell you the 5 pound bag of potatoes in our pantry. Even though he is not at all interested in eating them in any form (fried, baked, mashed, etc), he still loves his potatoes. He loves to tote them around one by one (shown above) or by the whole bag full. Earlier this week we had to hurry up and eat some potatoes because the bag was too heavy for him and he was quite upset about not being able to lift it by himself. He hides them in various places and rolls them around on the ground. Luckily, they are a pretty sturdy type food (as opposed to an egg) so I try to let him explore and play. However, it is a fear of mine that one will roll under the couch/steps/desk/furniture and we will not realize it until it starts to smell. Ewww.


Here, he has taken them all out of their bag and put them on a different shelf in the pantry. After this activity, he selected two of them to run around the house with.


Moving the potatoes around. And it appears that he is singing to them as well.


Running with Potatoes...harder than it looks


Smiling, happy, potato boy.