Will shares his cheerios with dad

bath pictures: 10 months

This bath picture entry is about a half week late - sorry, you ravenous Will fans - because the poor guy has been pretty sick for the last half week. He was pretty much constantly miserable - feverish and slobbery and snotty, not eating, and not really wanting to do much other than cry on our shoulders. But yesterday he woke up without a fever and got better and better throughout the day, and I'd say this morning he's close to his wiggly old self again.

Over the last month, we've had plenty of interesting experiences. I reported on our long vacation in Wisconsin, where Will developed a number of new 'firsts'. The biggest change is he is very mobile now. Last month I reported how he could scoot himself - backwards only - but now he can full-on army crawl pretty much wherever he wants to go. Don't worry, we spent much of last week babyproofing the house. He's getting faster, too - uses his little legs to push off, I call it the froggy-crawl. Cats beware - he's getting fast enough to give Duke and Clementine a good chase!

With this new mobility, Will is constantly discovering more interesting things around the house to get into. For example, we had several near misses of Will almost getting to the catfood bowls in the kitchen before he finally got his hand in there and ate some Science Diet. Also, since mastering the ability to open and shut cabinet doors he has been getting into as many cabinets as possible, and pulling everything out. Then he cries when there's nothing left in the cabinet to grab!
Will has been eating a lot more solid foods. We give him at least one solid for every meal, and I think he could eat 100 Cheerios if we let him. He has demonstrated that he understands the concept of sharing, by throwing his food on the floor -for the cats, I assume. I have another video we took of him sharing Cheerios which will be posted soon...
Will's waving is more reliable, and he actually shakes his arm up and down now, so it's a little closer to a grown-up wave. He also can give a good 'five.
He still talks a lot, and he's tried out almost every syllable there is. Except 'mama'. So Erin is referred to as 'bwa bwa' (although she's not too happy with me when I refer to her that way).
As Will's motor skills develop, he's getting better and better at fighting Erin and I. So he's pretty good at struggling against being diapered or dressed, having his nose wiped, being put in his highchair, getting that last bite of food in his mouth, and having his face washed (this is the best move - he grabs your hands and holds them tight to the sides of his head so you can't touch his face).
We've had a lot of fun playing in water the last month, whether it's naked swimming at the Lodge or in Lake Mendota, in the local pool or in his sled pool, or playing in the sprinkler or the rain with mom and dad, Will has really seemed to enjoy it. However, when you dump water over his head in the bathtub, he still gets mad about it, as you can see below.

But you can still cheer him up by making a few goofy faces.

9 months
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first bath

High five!

Will only gets high fives from his dad when he eats all his food. This video was taken several weeks ago when he first started catching on but by now he knows he's earned something when I offer up the 'five and he enthusiastically returns it. Never leaves me hangin'.

This is the way the farmers ride

Here's a video of Will and mom playing a fun game.

vacation part 9: dinner at the UW Union

Will and I returned from the Lodge to "help out" with the big garage sale at the end of the 3rd week of our vacation. It was a very big sale, I had no idea. We were only there for the last day of the sale so we missed a lot of the action, but still witnessed some shrewd salesmanship on the parts of Grandma Brenda and mom. Will spent a lot of time in the front yard, playing in the 'stein and showing off how he can eat Cheerios. We at one time started a tally of the number of garage sale shoppers who asked "and how much for this little guy?" or something along those lines, but we gave up counting because there were just too many. Seriously you could sit outside by Will for 10 minutes and have at least 3 people ask a similar question.

After the successful sale we took some of the proceeds and went out to dinner on the U of Wisconsin Union Terrace, where you can buy burgers and brats and beer and sit by the lake. It was a beautiful day to be there.

Will brought his shades and shared them with these jokers.



There's a giant chair which is a pretty popular picture setting, so we took pics of Will in it. We had to wait in line to get him on there and there were more people waiting so we didn't get the best combination of looking at the camera and smiling, but I think these turned out pretty well. That's me hiding behind him in the first shot, I guess I wasn't very hidden.



After dinner we messed around a bit before heading home. We needed everyone to get as much Will lovin' as possible before we hit the long road home to Ann Arbor. Here Uncle Jeff and Aunt Sara pose with Will for a picture to be put in his "Who Loves Baby?" book (Will likes to play with/chew on the book even though there are no pics in it yet).

Which picture should go in the book?


This blog entry concludes our vacation series. I realize it took almost a month to get it to the public, so thanks for being patient.

Now we can get you updated with Will's current escapades. Unfortunately, the little guy has been sick for the last few days so we haven't been able to get in the 10-month bath picture, but we'll get that done as soon as he's feeling ok and he takes his normal bath. He's been running a fever and extremely slobbery and snotty, so we're thinking he might be getting a tooth (about time!). But he's pretty miserable so we're really hoping, for everyone's sake, that he feels better soon.

vacation part 8: back to the Lodge

Will and I spent a good part of our last week of vacation back up at the lodge with Grandma Susan and her friend Maryanne, who came to visit. Also we hung out a lot with Ron and Becky Hubbard who have a cabin nearby. We spent most of this trip going for walks, reading books, playing with the clothesline, knitting (which involved Will throwing and trying to eat a ball of yarn Grandma gave him), scooting (he was getting better at the army-crawl), playing the piano with me (we left the keyboard at the lodge), banging on pots and pans and eating cheerios. We planned on a bunch of naked swimming but it was too cold and windy that final week. We did manage to put our piggies in the water a few times though.



We went out to dinner a few times, which was pretty fun for Will. On the left, Becky let Will play with her straw at the Black Bear (total northwoods bar, it was great). And there is the famous red cup, a great toy. On the right, Will met a new friend, Noah, at the Minocqua brewery. I took lots of pictures of the two of them checking each other out. Noah was very good at looking at the camera but Will didn't even one time, so that's as good as it gets.



All those trips into town for dinner gave us plenty of time to play in the car. Usually Grandma drove so I got to sit in the back with Will and make faces at him. Below is a video of us playing peekaboo in the car. Notice he's wearing his yellow beach sweater - Grandma made that for him and he wore it every day we were there.

open, shut, ouch.

Ok, I thought I had some better video clips of this game, but this was the best I could do. Just believe me, Will was doing this a LOT and thought it was a great game, but then he gets camera shy.

So the game is called 'Open, Shut' and basically you hold Will near a cupboard and he opens and shuts it over and over and over. We were joking that he could be preparing for a career at Ikea, taking the place of the robot arms that open and shut cabinets thousands of times to prove their durability.

In this clip, Will slams his fingers a little bit and everybody cringed, but he actually didn't cry or even seem phased by it. So it looks bad, but he wasn't hurt.

I'll try to get a better clip of the game in action at our house, but we don't have handles on our cupboards so we might have to wait until we go back to Grandma's. He still manages to get cupboards open at our house, but then he's more interested in crawling inside to find things to put in his mouth than shutting the cupboard. Don't worry - we have purchased cupboard locks and will be installing them this weekend.