William the Helper

William loves to be the helper. He is totally in love with the fact that he can do Things All By Himself. Sometimes these things are even helpful around here, which is great given that he isn't even 2. Find that hard to believe? Some things that he can do to that are actually helpful:

1. Opening doors for Mama and Daddy (only the ones that don't have the knob protector on them). William loves to open and close doors.

2. Empty dishes from the top rack of the dishwasher. The majority is plastic stuff that can't be broken. I call him over and he hands me the containers to be put into the drying rack on the counter. I am too lazy to towel dry them and too cheap to use the extra hot dry cycle on the dishwasher.

3. Puts dirty clothes in the washer when I hand them to him (when I tell him what to do, obviously since he doesn't understand the concept of dirty yet).

4. Puts wet clothes into the dryer when I hand them to him.

5. Puts the clean/dry clothes into a laundry basket from the dryer.

So proud!

6. Most recently, he has started helping me pick up his toys at night before bedtime. It took a few tries, for him to understand what I wanted from him. But, now that he gets it, he is usually pretty happy to help me pick up the toys - it helps when I have a Fun! Exciting! bath as a carrot.


We are so proud of how well he is listening [some] of the time now. It is so exciting for us now that when we ask/tell him to do something there is actually a 12-50% chance he will actually follow through with the request. Amazing!

Announcement

The phone situation is now fixed. New phones arrived yesterday and they are beautiful and fun. As an added bonus, they actually work. I will now be at my regular number and John will [*not] be at his.

*John doesn't ever answer his phone during the day while he is at work. Unless you are calling his work number.

Words

William is talking more and more all the time. Currently I am very much enjoying getting to hear a portion of what goes on inside his head all day long.

Tonight after dinner we were relaxing in the living room making a halfhearted attempt to play blocks. My back has been hurting me for the last few days (I'll admit this is completely my own fault. I do not know the definition of time to stop) so I was stretching in such a way that made my petite belly bump look HUGE. William stopped his stacking and looked with amazement at my belly. John saw the look on his face and asked William "What do you think Mama has in her belly? Do you think it is a baby?"

William looked back at John like he was absolutely 100% crazy "NO!" he replied.

Obviously he really isn't understanding about what is really going on here.

Which really isn't a surprise because we really aren't pushing it either. William doesn't have any sense of time. If you ask him if he'd like to go to the park, you better be within sight of the swings or a meltdown will occur. If you ask him if he would like to eat, he will run to his chair in the kitchen expecting food immediately.

What I'm getting at is that we have some time and even if he understood there was a baby in there, he would be expecting it to arrive sometime before he eats his next meal. We're good with waiting.

My Boy

Last night, I walked by William's room on my way to do Something Important. It was also Very Late at night, so when I realized his light was still on, I opened the door to turn it off (he can reach the light switch from his crib). As it was an hour after bedtime, I was surprised William wasn't sleeping at all. No, he was laying on his belly cuddled up with his favorite blanket reading a book. He looked up at me when I opened the door and then went back to looking at the pictures in a book.

Anyone knew me growing up knows that if there was a way to sneak in extra reading time after lights out I was totally doing it. Reading by nightlight: check. Reading by flashlight: check. Reading with the door to the hallway open: check. Taking a book to the bathroom tucked inside my pajamas: check. Trying to read by light of the streetlight: check. Pretending to still have homework so I could read: check. All been done. I was a rebel of the worst kind. All out cheating and lying in order to read a book.

So, it was very sweet to see the possibility in William for similar rebelious acts at a very unexpected time. Don't worry people, I will keep my eyes on him and the dangerous reading in check.



PS I was ahuggin' (yes, I just made that word up) William tonight at bedtime and he was hanging on to the crib rail and bouncing. At one point he bounced enough that he was able to pull himself up on the crib rail to mid thigh level. This would mean roughly 3/4 of his body was hanging out over the top of the crib. It would then appear he is physcially capable of getting himself out of his crib. I am going to go ahead and say that it is just a matter of time before he actually goes ahead and climbs on out. The crib is probably on its way out. Baby coming or not...the crib will be done soon.

Veterans Day

We want to wish some of our favorite Veterans and active military family members a happy day and send them a big thank you!

Great Grandpa Budd
Great Grandpa Tom
Uncle Mike

Fall Time Take 2

Sunday, John wanted to mow up all of our leaves and I just wanted to get a few pictures with William IN the leaves. Here are our best shots - most of them are in motion, as you would expect.

William notes: I HATE the leaves touching my skin! Make it stop!

Peek!
William: Tree- bumpy. Wow.

Some Random Pictures from this week

Well, by request, here are some pictures of William. Enough with the stories and on with the pictures. These pictures are of one set - just ones we've taken this last week.

Helping Mama with laundry (more on this later - he actually does help with laundry. This day, not so much)

We pulled out the bouncy seat when my neighbor asked me to watch her 1 month old baby so she could run to the grocery store. Ummmm...well it did entertain William the whole time the baby was at our house. Think it will work in March?

Mr Cool in his chair. Can you believe how big he is? For more bouncy chair pictures, click here.

Brrrr...it got cold here at the end of the week. Temps in the 70's on Tues/Wed and then Thurs/Friday it turned to 40's. Where did fall go?

Mama and William warming up their tootsies together over the heat vent.
Finally, a picture tonight of building blocks with Daddy!