drummin'

Instead of hauling things around the house anymore, we are basically keeping the different baby holders (bouncy chair, stein, bumbo) in dedicated rooms so we always have somewhere to put Will as we're going about our daily business. So since the bumbo is not nearly as interesting as the stein we give him a couple of cooking utensils to bang around when we put him down in the kitchen. He loves to drum, but usually he can only hang onto his drumsticks for about 10 seconds, then one ends up behind him or under the oven. Then he whines and tries to reach for them unsuccessfully and Erin or I has to get them for him before he falls face first from the bumbo.

Father's Day

Happy Father's day to everyone, from Will's proud and happy father. B.W. (Before Will), I couldn't have guessed how much love and joy my little boy could bring to my life. Every time I go to work or put him down for bed or a nap, I can't wait to get home or for him to wake up so I can see him again. Then I end up spending half of my time at work looking at pictures/videos of him and telling all of you about his latest little accomplishments. Every day is like father's day for me.
So today Will, Erin, and I want to say thank you to our fathers, and to remember the men who are no longer with us who have helped shape our lives. We love you.

Will and Great-grandpa Keith

Will and Grandpas Paul and Mike

Will and dad

Will in space

Thanks to Uncle Adam and a slow day for him at work, we have this awesome picture of Will on a trip to outer space. I had to share it. I've always been a big fan of photo art - keep the Will art coming.

Vote for your favorite Will video!

Hey everyone, I'm investigating new things to do with the blog site, so I thought I'd try to get some audience participation and set up a little poll. I'm also curious to see how many people out there check this site, and this will give an idea.

You may have seen the link on the left side of the page - under 'Will's favorite links' - to 'My YouTube videos'. Here you'll find every video that has been posted on this site, as well as a few extra little ones. One neat thing that YouTube does is it keeps track of the number of views for each video, so we can get an idea about how popular the videos are. But some of the videos have high viewcounts simply because they've been up on the YouTube site for longer. Also, I may be stuffing the ballot box a bit for some of those - I probably watch the "Dada" video just about every day.

So, in order to find out what everyone's truly favorite videos are, it will be fun to see how this poll turns out. I think it's set up so you can only vote once, so it should be accurate. At the end of next week, the winning video will be semi-permanently featured above the 'About Me' on the left side of the page.

So, here are the top 10 candidates. Some of the videos go together so I grouped them as one vote. Click on each link to review the video.

1.Dadada / time for bed
2.Put Messy Will in the Sink
3.Pbbbtht! / Pbbbtht! part 2
4.trying to suck toes
5.Will has a fun time in the car
6.Will likes AJ (Aunt Jenna)
7.Will: partyin' in the 'stein
8.Will: a sack of beans / Will: sack of beans part 2 / Will: sack of beans part 2 - 2
9.Will sits by himself
10.Yes? No! / Yes? No! part 2

If you want to vote for a different video which isn't on this list, you can make a write-in vote by posting a comment (click on the "comments" link at the bottom of this post).

>>>Click here to vote for your favorite video of Will<<<

Pbbtht!

These are so funny - a couple of my new favorite videos. This is a different type of conversation game we play.

Conversations

Here's a clip of Will and I having a "grunt conversation". We have had better ones, but it's hard to capture them on camera because when Will sees the camera he stops playing the game. Also, I had to compete with the remote control for attention, which usually doesn't go my way.


Here's another serious conversation we had last weekend. Very serious.

Wiggles: extreme napping

Every day Will gets wigglier. A few nights ago he wouldn't go to sleep (a separate issue - he had a rough dinner and threw up multiple times, once all over mom). Every hour after we put him to bed until at least after midnight he would wake up wailing. So we would go in to check on him (to make sure he hadn't puked all over himself again). And almost every time we did he had wiggled himself to one of the edges of his crib and I think a lot of times he was bumping his head on the wood and that's why he was crying. This picture was taken earlier in the day when we got him up from one of his naps, and it perfectly illustrates the chaos that has become Will's nap time.
Let me point out a few things in this scene, so you can appreciate how awesome this nap was.
First of all, when we lay him down, we put his head underneath the mobile (the green thing) and his feet toward the window (which is to the right in this picture). So he managed to wiggle himself perpendicular to his original position.
Second, the yellow blanket he has in his grip was originally folded up and used as a pillow.
Third, the blue blanket which was used to cover him was kicked off and in the far corner of the crib.
Finally, the blue-and-green patterned quilt to his right started off folded up and laid over the top of the back wall of the crib as decoration. It wasn't easy to reach, either, it was probably more than a foot from the cushion to the edge of the hanging quilt.
Yesterday he slept fine for all his naps and slept all night just fine, but it's always a fun surprise to see what position he'll be in when we get him up in the morning or after a nap.

Lazy Sunday reading

We had a very nice weekend, capped off by a nice lazy Sunday. Here Will is kicking back and enjoying a good book: Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb by Dr. Seuss. He's reading it to all his stuffed animal friends.

Will and Herky

I had to put up another post so that picture of Will that Grant made was no longer at the top of this site. Very nice work and good joke for sure, but Will is too sweet to make fun of on the internet like that...yet.

Last week when I was in Iowa City, with help from some friends, I found the elusive Herky doll that we couldn't find during our trip there for his baptism. It's a perfect size to hug and suck on, and Will took to it right away. Erin doesn't want to mess with Will's relationship with his lion-blanket thing but I am all for making his Herky the bedtime comfort object.

Tomorrow Erin's working all day so Will and I are having another dude day. I'm considering my options for what to do to have a super fun day with him. Since we have the new chariot, it opens a lot of options: disc golfing, bike ride, or a trip to a park. Also I'm thinking about taking him to the campus dinosaur museum. I'll make sure to report back at the end of the weekend with what we do, hopefully with a few new pictures!

A window into the future: Will in college

Uncle Grant has just successfully finished his first year of college at the University of Denver (congrats you weiner). Anyway, he couldn't help but notice how some dooods around campus like to dress to go out for an evening and how apparently Will has the same fashion sense.
- Grant's nephew Will and his apple juice

Will's First Fight

Today Will and I (mom here, writing my first blog entry) went to our monthly moms and babies group at St. Joseph Hospital here in Ann Arbor. One of Will’s friends, 10-month-old Owen, who we get together with each week for a walk or cup of coffee, was also there. Will and Owen were sitting on the floor, checking each other out, when both noticed the other had a pacifier in his mouth. Of course, each decided he wanted the other baby’s pacifier instead of his own. (Will decides he is entitled to whatever anyone else is using at least 25 times each day. In the mind of Will: “mom’s cell phone = mine, dad’s water glass = mine, remote control = mine.”) Will’s pacifier proved tough for Owen to grab, but Owen’s pacifier was more accessible as it had a ribbon on it, clipping it to Owen’s shirt. Will instigated the confrontation as he grabbed the ribbon and pulled the pacifier right out of a surprised Owen’s mouth. Owen frowned slightly, obviously troubled that he was now without his pacifier, and proceeded to confiscate Will’s toy dinosaur and swing the dinosaur at Will’s head. At this point Owen’s mom Jill and I stopped laughing long enough to block the swinging dinosaur and return the pacifier to its rightful owner. Will and Owen agreed to still be friends.

bath pictures: 8 months

Today Will is 8 months old, as time flies by. These are some of my favorite pictures yet, what a cute guy. I would guess that from this point on, Will stories will come much more frequently because he is this close to being able to crawl, and basically he can wiggle around enough that we can't really leave him on his own for too long before he gets his hands on something he shouldn't. He's appreciating his toys more, and has figured out how some of them work, like his little piano. So we can sit him on the floor of the living room and surround him with toys he can entertain himself for awhile. But his favorite toy is probably Duke the cat, who is just curious/friendly enough to approach Will and nuzzle him, but enough of a jerk that we have to watch them so Duke doesn't bite Will (or vice versa?).
I already reported and caught videographic evidence of Will saying 'dada' all the time. The baby chatter is a lot of fun, and he's now discovered that making as LOUD a noise as possible is even better. A new game which we have been playing is we have grunt conversations. Will gives a satisfied grunt, and if you repeat it, he will give another one, and this can go on for a long time, with each grunt getting a big smile out of him. We did this several times yesterday when we were walking at the mall, loudly amongst the groups of people, much to mom's embarrassment.
One other thing, Will definitely likes us. When either of us is gone for the day and he spends all day with the other, when we come home he is SO excited, flailing and laughing each time he sees us. It is the sweetest thing.

7 months
6 months
5 months
4 months
3 months
2 months
1 month
first bath

Baby food standoff: Will vs.Dad

This is a daily duel in which Will engages Erin and me: resisting our attempts to get the last bites of baby food, or food that he doesn't like, into his mouth. It happens that I recently got some good pictures, but this basically happens with every meal.

It is a constant battle. Every once in awhile we come up with a new trick to get him to open his mouth, and he comes up with new ways to keep food from getting in his mouth. Some of our best tricks we came up with were to get him to smile and then slip in the spoon, until he learned to smile with his lips pressed together. Some meaner tricks are to give him a sippy cup or a finger to suck on, and when he opens his mouth to do so, sneak in the spoon of food. Some of Will's defenses have been to shake his head 'no', which makes it very difficult to land the spoon in his mouth, or what I call the "goalie" - putting both hands in front of him and deflecting the spoon up or down, or putting his hand on it to knock the food out (and then wipe it everywhere).

The two videos below chronicle this epic battle. The first video is a victory for Will, and the second one is a victory for dad.

Will's new chariot

Grandma Brenda and Grandpa Paul got Will an early birthday present so he could go on bike rides with mom and dad. This vehicle, made by Chariot Carriers, is really a very cool thing. Not only does it attach to my bicycle as a pull-behind cart, but it can also very easily convert to a comfortable jogging- or regular-stroller. Here we're trying it out for the first time. Will was really liking it and it appeared that we could have some fun rides with it in the near future...



...until we got him his helmet. We had to go to a couple places looking for one because it seems to be the season for infant helmets so they're hard to find. Good thing Will has a large coconut like his dad so the toddler helmet fits him ok. Not that he liked it any better.



So we went for a short ride around the neighborhood - once we got going he wasn't so upset about wearing his helmet. Here he's recovering after we got home and finally took the helmet off.



Here you can see the chariot transformed into the stroller. We went for a long walk this afternoon, and let Will hold his helmet so he would get used to it. Another cool thing about this stroller is that Will can have some toys with him and there's enough of a recessed, enclosed area that there's little chance that he'll be able to throw things out onto the ground.


We'll try another bike ride very soon!