Hurricane William

William has always been a busy boy. Things haven't changed at all. If anything, he is getting busier and busier by the day. Here is a sample of his handiwork from yesterday. Please note: all messes pictured were made within a 15 minute time frame. This is what happens to me when I try to get ready for the day. What is sad to me is that I am capable of getting ready in less than 15 minutes for my day. However, I cannot get ready that quickly when I have one foot on the toilet lid and the opposite knee holding shut the cabinet doors (mind you, they do have "locks" on them) while ensuring he doesn't dig in the trash or play with the plunger.

Exhibit A: the living room
Exhibit B: the bedroom/bathroom
Exhibit C: The bathroom cabinet.
Not shown: Exhibits D-L including the kitchen, laundry room, pantry, his bedroom, and the hall closet.

In other random cuteness, we keep finding him doing things like this:

I was working on dinner when I turned around to find William cooking...
Frying up some goldfish while Mama makes dinner

I can't seem to find this one in any of my baby books? Does anyone know approximately how old babies are when they first master this?

Trying very hard to figure out the can opener
This would be one of his favorite things lately, except I've taken to hiding it away. Otherwise, when I need it, I'm reduced to checking under couch cushions and inside toy cars to find it. The problem with this set up is now I can't find it because I put it somewhere where William can't find it. I can't win.
Still working at it.
A few days ago, I was getting us ready to leave the house to run some errands. William disappeared. I finished rounding up the library books and putting together the stuff I was dropping off at a friend's house when I heard William crying. I found him here: in his exersaucer. The exersaucer is currently sitting out in his room because we don't have anywhere to store it currently. He figured out how to climb into it himself, but then couldn't get back out again. If you look carefully, you can see how outraged he is by his inability to get himself out of the exersaucer. Great mama that I am, I ran to get the camera and snapped a few pictures before rescueing the poor kid. Gotta get my blackmail now!

Funny kid

Today for breakfast, William and I both had bowls of cereal with milk on it. I finished first and then sat to watch him finish eating. After several minutes, he reached into the depths of his cereal bowl and pulled out a very squishy cheerio. He examined it for a few seconds and smashed it between his fingers before offering it to me. I wasn't interested, so I turned my head away. Then William put his hand up in the air and said "Oooooooo", trying to sweeten the deal. I still wasn't about to put the mushy, squishy cheerio into my mouth. He then upped the ante by turning his hand into a car and saying "Vroooooooooooom!" and swirling his hand around. He was really working it - I still wouldn't consider putting that cheerio into my mouth, but I was laughing very hard.

Why?

It was a dead on imitation of what I try to do when he isn't interested in eating.

Realization

Our carpet is a poop brown color. Ask me how I now know this. I dare you.

We shouldn't have laughed Part II

Tonight at dinner we had peas. Well, peas and other stuff. William is either gobbling up the peas faster than I can put them on his plate (this is NOT my child, we all know how I feel about peas) or refusing to let them get within 3 feet of his mouth. Tonight he was a'gobbling away with the peas when he suddenly stopped to examine the pea in his hand. He turned it around and around, carefully looking at all of the sides.

After maybe a minute he held the pea up in the air and pronounced "Ball!"

"What??!" We asked him..

"Ball" he said even more clearly and then he threw the pea. And then did it over and over again. This would be the part where we should not have laughed and did anyway. I'm not sure we'll be able to eat peas without the throwing for some time to come.

PS In other news, we pulled up to the gas station tonight to fill up the car. John hopped out to fill the tank and I was left in the car with William. Trying to be a good companion, I made some conversation to fill the time. "Where did Dada go?" I asked William. "Gas." was his reply. Good thing he was there to explain it to me - although I did have to giggle at the gas part...

2 Eyes Still in My Head

Yesterday I was driving home after running some errands. It was lunch time and I was trying to figure out what I could feed William quickly and get him into bed when I noticed something wasn't right. I was several blocks away from our house when I started seeing wavy lines through my vision and I was having difficulty focusing. Earlier in the day I had noticed my eyes weren't focusing correctly and made a mental note to call and schedule our yearly eye appointments. It was still happening when I got home so I made William a hurried lunch and tried to get ahold of our doctor. Of course, the office was closed for lunch. Every minute that passed made me more sure that I was probably in the process of going blind or at least loosing my eye due to low eye pressure (I thought my eyeball would deflate or something). My symptoms weren't changing and in a panic I called the 24 hour nurse line. As I wiped down a very tired William, the nurse reccomended that I go immediately to the ER - which didn't help my overactive imagination one bit. By the time I had finished washing William off, the nurse had changed her mind and told me I needed to go see an optimologist TODAY as most ERs do not have an eye doctor on call at all times. She gave me a list of numbers to call, I put William down for a nap and started making phone calls.

I'll spare you the details of the crying, vomit and running around that happened (William did all three, I only participated in the running) in order to be seen by an actual real eye doctor. The results? I had an ocular migraine with aura.

They are supposedly common in women my age and all parts of my eyes checked out a useable. I'm so glad to have 2 eyes in my head and they both work! Yeehaw! Eyes!

Fargo Schmargo (1500 miles in 4 days)

We spent our holiday weekend mainly in the car. John's family had a family reunion planned in Fargo, ND. So, we hopped into the car on Thursday and drove to Grandma and Grandpa's house in Rochester to spend the night. On Friday we got up and did it again (the riding in the car thing) and made it to Fargo just in time to check into the Howard Johnson hotel (I'm not recommending this one, if you're interested in why we can talk later) and put William down for a nap. Friday afternoon we met up with the family to play at the park, visit, have taco's for dinner and play some baseball. The excitement of the day caught up with William and I decided to take him back to the hotel while John stayed to visit. I was feeling very sorry for myself sitting on the tub in our hotel room waiting for William to fall asleep because we were missing the fireworks and 4th of July celebration. One of the things I've always been looking forward to is having kids and bringing them out to watch the fireworks and sharing the evening with our family. The red/white/blue outfits, the snacks, the anticipation, the music, the bugs, the heat, the glowy necklaces that only work for 3 hours. THAT is the fourth of July I've been dreaming about for years. However, when I really thought about the last few years, fireworks have NEVER been our priority. We've always chosen to use our vacation time for other stuff than sitting and watching the fireworks and listening to music. Here is an example:

2001: Watched fireworks with family/friends in Rochester
2002: Camped at Sinclair Island, WA. Fireworks illegal
2003: Watched fireworks by the river in St Charles, MO
2004:Camped with friends in Canada (What? They don't celebrate the US Independance Day? Obviously, no fireworks)
2005: Watched fireworks at the end of our driveway with the neighbors. And a beer.
2006: Isle Royal, MI (no fireworks because it is a national park)
2007:Sleeping in Grand Forks, ND

2008: Hotel room in Fargo, ND

2009: Watching fireworks as a family, somewhere

In the end I realized that I needed to get over myself and I enjoyed some quiet time to myself uncomfortablly seated in the bathroom tub. The other thing I realized is now that we have a kid, it must be time to make some old fashioned 4th of July plans we can enjoy as a family outside of riding in a car.

I love sign pictures! This parking space in Fargo was saved just for me!
Jim, Mike, and Ben playing baseball
William doing his best to get in the middle of the game. Kendra and Becca are playing the field while my job was to make sure he didn't get in the way or hurt.

Those are almost ALL of the pictures we took while we were in Fargo! Can you believe it? The rest of Friday and Saturday we focused on keeping our kid out of trouble and took turns visiting with family. While I'm talking about Fargo, I need to recognize the real rock stars that made our trip awesome: Jim, Kendra, Ben, Becca, and Mike. They were awesome! They included William in all of their games, played gently with him, helped him realize that he liked strawberries again, swam in the pool with him, let him nap in their hotel room and let him take a bath in their hotel bathroom before we left! They were AMAZING - thank you guys! It would have been T-O-U-G-H without you!

Saturday morning we checked out of the hotel and spent most of the day with family playing at the park. Saturday evening, we headed back to Rochester for the night. We got a late start, which means we arrived at Rochester close to 1am. None of us were looking forwad to hopping back in the car again to finish the trip back to St Louis. With a little arm twisting we were convinced to stay another day to take a break from driving and running around. An added bonus was the excellent steak dinner, cool temperatures and trip to the park with Grandpa and Grandma.

No, we don't let him drive. But, he'd like to!
Weeeeeeeee! Slide and swing were two new words on Saturday. Picture taken on Sunday.

Even though the extra day was wonderful, we still had to get back in the car early on Monday morning and drive back home bringing our trip mileage to right around 1500 miles total. It was NOT wonderful driving, but it did feel good to be back home again. Now we just have to figure out how to do it all over again in another two weeks! (Yep, you read it right. I'm going back in 2 weeks for a reunion my Grandma is planning. Should be a lot of fun, but I can't say I'm looking forward to the driving part!)

More sliding! He is getting brave by going sitting up and by letting himself go faster down the slide now...and every time he says: "Weeee!"
More sliding
John plays on the balance beam - check out the calf muscles! We both took a turn trying to walk across the wobbly balance beam and afterwards agreed that one of the best parts about having kids is that YOU can play at the park without anyone thinking you are a freak.

Probably the area he spent the most time in: driving the truck.
Big boy blue eyes

Oh no! Our kid can drive! William would not cooperate for this picture!

Happy July!

How can it be July already? My list of things I want to do with William this summer is still a mile long! We are off to a family reunion for John's family this weekend in Fargo, ND. It will be fun to see everyone and reconnect with some of John's family we haven't seen in several years.