happy birthday to dada, mama, duke, and clemmy

Happy Holidays everyone! Since we just celebrated baby Jesus' birthday, this video of Will singing Happy Birthday is remotely relevant. But really since none of us have any birthdays upcoming in the near future, this is just me taking care of my "to be posted on the blog" files before I upload the massive amount of Christmastime pictures and videos over the next few weeks. Some good ones coming soon!



I should say that Will has been singing quite a lot lately - with special thanks to the Raffi Christmas album. As you can tell by this video, he can sing pretty well.

how to make tooties

Will helped Erin and I make cookies ("tooties") for a Holiday party. We decided to make gingersnaps, my favorite. Will has had these cookies before, and they were a pretty big hit, so we thought they'd go over well with him too.

It was necessary to put Will in an apron so he wouldn't get disastrously messy, so Erin had a laugh by putting this apron on him, complete with pearl necklace.

haha, ok let's get something less girly on him.

That's better.

So we read through the ingredients together and started adding them to the bowl. Will helped in just about every step as we prepared the dough.

Then we were ready to roll the dough into balls and put them on the cookie sheet. Will was very helpful in this step. Notice how well he spreads the cookies out evenly on the sheet.

I gave Will his bath while the cookies were in the oven, then after he got his jammies on he got to come back downstairs and got 2 cookies, because he was such a special helper.

I'm not sure what he was expecting, but gingersnaps have a different flavor - I think he was a bit confused by the first bite.

But then he remembered how delicious these cookies are and ate em up.

rocket sledding

This is an appropriate post for the snowday we're having in Ann Arbor today. Last week we took Will for a fun sledding adventure one night and he loved it.



While technically not Will's first time "sledding", this was the first time on a real sled. A ROCKET sled. I pulled Will to a hill at a park near our house, we went down the hill a few times (and Will even went down by himself once), then we watched some guys playing hockey at a nearby ice rink for a little while. Then Will pulled me home on the rocket sled.

pirate attack!

Turns out Will thinks pirates are very cool. He gets really excited when we watch Spongebob together because there's a pirate at the beginning that sings the themesong. Also he and I have been pirate "Arrr!"-ing a lot lately and singing pirate songs (like the Spongebob themesong).

A couple weekends ago we went to a "graduate students with children" event sponsored by UM, where there were several fun events for kids. Will met Pirate Mike, who made him a pirate hat and balloon sword. He likes these props very much and has been playing with them for a couple weeks. The most fun thing to do is chase the cats and try to whomp them with his "piyat" sword. In the video below, Will introduces the poor cats to the game "pirate attack". Not too much fun for them, but hilarious for Erin and I. Duke finally figured out he can hide under the bed to avoid getting whomped with the sword. But he has to hide "pfarr" under the bed, as Will explains in the video.

ginberbread cookie

Will has been making many things at daycare lately. A few weeks ago he made this gingerbread cookie, I mean he decorated it, and so we let him eat as much of it as he wanted. He decided to share some of it with Erin and I, which was nice. It was very messy, which just made it more fun.

leaf shower

Our home is basically surrounded by some very leafy trees, so each year we have quite a task to get all the leaves off our lawn. And our roof. This usually takes multiple days and results in sore daddy. This year we had a good deal of fun with the raking though - much of the jumping-in-leafpiles fun of last year, but with the added fun of dad throwing huge piles of leaves off the roof and Will standing under the raining leaves.



These pictures were taken when "dayee fall ROOF!" - when I finished getting all the leaves off the roof, I jumped down and then stumbled a bit and fell into a pile of leaves. It was a controlled fall, but it was funny that when we met a bunch of family for Thanksgiving Will told them that his daddy fell off the roof.



I missed a bit with these piles of leaves, but this video basically shows what we did with almost all the leaves on the roof. Later that night when I was getting Will undressed for his bath, I found leaves under his shirt and in his diaper...whoops, sorry buddy!

I have to wert.

This morning after I had left, Erin was in the bathroom doing her hair. Will came upstairs from where he was playing and stood in the doorway to the bathroom, then started the following conversation:

Will: "Byebye, mama"
Erin: "Where are you going?"
Will: "I have to wert."
Erin: "You have to work? What do you have to work on?"
Will: ...[no response - stares at her for a moment then heads back downstairs]

He came back upstairs with his laptop.
"Dis, mama." [shows her the laptop]

Then he went back downstairs, and did some wert on his laptop for awhile.

on mama's birthday

A few weeks ago we celebrated Erin's birthday with a full day of fun. After a lazy morning, we went over to our friends Jenni, Steven, and baby Justin's house for a surprise party, under the guise of getting together to watch Michigan get destroyed in the annual rivalry game with Ohio State. Will's friends Kaitlyn and Gabe came to the party, and they got hotdogs and cake, so it was a lot of fun.

Will helped decorate mama's birthday cake with candles and helped us sing to her.

After the stomping of Michigan went as expected, we went home to watch the Hawkeyes, open presents, and do whatever else mom wanted to do.

Turns out what mom wanted to do was set up the Christmas decorations around the house - including putting our tree together. As it was the week before thanksgiving, this made little sense to me, but we did what the birthday girl wanted. Will was eager to help and get into all the fun stuff he hadn't seen in a year.

Duke helped out too.

In addition to ornaments, we have a good deal of other decorations we got out and played with.

Erin had a great idea of starting a family tradition in which each of us gets a new Christmas ornament each year to put on the tree. Will got a choo-choo ornament and I got a guitar that sings "Feliz Navidad" when you push a button on it. Will has almost run the batteries out on the guitar for pushing the button so many times since I got it.

Time to put the ornaments on the tree... and push the "Feliz Navidad" button one more time...

Thanksgiving costumes

Will made these great Native American and pilgrim costumes at his daycare in the week before Thanksgiving. Also, he made a very special present for Erin and I - a painting of a turkey that he made with prints of his hands and foot. He was very proud of it, telling us all about how the pictures was his "hans!" and "foop!". We'll save it forever.

Rocked the vote

Ok, I realize this is a very late post, but the month of November was quite busy for all of us, especially dad. Since I was still posting Halloween pictures midway through November, these pictures got pushed back a bit. Then Will started counting a lot more and singing the ABCs so I had to post those, and... anyway, here are some cute pictures of Will in his Election Day outfit. PEACE!

Will visits his farm animal friends

There is a small barn at a park by our house that has some farm animals - goats, sheep, a horse, and some chickens. We visit them often on walks and Will has gotten much braver around the animals since his first trip to a petting zoo. We always point out and talk about all the animals and make noises to them. Also we usually give them some grass or something to nibble on when we visit - and fortunately goats will eat anything, including old leaves. So on this trip Will tried to give all the hungry goats a leaf to eat.

eightnineTEN!

Will has a good sense for numbers, as Grandma Susan says - he thinks about math a lot. But even up until about a month ago, he struggled with the numbers 1 - 3, and any other numbers might as well have been a zillion. In fact, he still gets those three confused a bit - when it's about time to get out of the bath but he wants to stay in, I'll tell him he has three minutes, and he'll argue back: "no, TWO!".
When we went to visit Cate last month, all of a sudden he was counting much higher. I don't know what happened, but I heard him count to six at the beginning of a race he was running against himself, when as far as I had heard before he could only reliably count to two. Turns out he could count even higher than that, just can't pronounce "seven".



Since this video, he can kind of say "seven" but usually just pauses and waits for Erin or I to fill in for him. But he also tries to count even higher than ten - usually goes a bit like this though: ...eightnineTEN!!! sicteen, farrteen, TEN!!

baby sittserr.

The three of us - Erin, Will, and myself - went yesterday morning for the 5-month ultrasound for the baby in mama's tummy. We had been asking Will for the last week or so if he wanted a baby brother, or sister, and he pretty consistently told us he wanted a "baybee sittser". This could have been influenced by recent visits to Cate's house, where he got to play with and hold Cate's baby sister, Claire. Then he changed his mind a couple days ago and started saying he wanted a baby Elmo. So when we went into the ultrasound, we were hoping to just have a healthy version of one of those three types of baby.

The baby is a girl. This is good because Erin has an excuse to fill our house with pink stuff. Also, figure maybe there can be tradeoffs between Will and his sister for what they play together - maybe they'll play a little baseball, then do some ballet. He has promised me he'll help teach her to brush her teeth. Also, he thinks she should be named "Claire".

AyBeeCeeDees

Will's vocabulary is growing too quickly for me to keep track, but one thing he is really into lately is singing. Until recently it has been too much for him to apply the words he learns to the songs he likes to sing. For example, he likes Take Me Out to the Ballgame, but can only sing the "one-two-three" [strikes your out] part, and otherwise just sings "ball" over and over. Also, he likes "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", but only sings the final word of each line, the rest is too fast.

As his vocabulary grows, he can sing more and more of his favorite songs, which he will request we sing with him (more like demand we sing with him) at any time. The video below has him singing the Alphabet Song (which he calls "AyBeeCeeDees"), with just a little bit of help from dad (he has trouble with pronouncing "W" - which he calls a "Will"). Also note how he argues with me at the end of the song about who you should sing with next time - sometimes we go on for quite awhile with that part.



Will has been singing this song quite often lately. A lot of times when we put him down for bed or nap, we'll hear a few rounds of "ABCDs" before he finally drifts off. Sometimes he only wants Erin, or only I, to sing with him, and sometimes he demands a solo. Yesterday he demanded that we sing it together: "Wyall dada aybeeceedees". When Erin tried to sing along too, he stopped everything "NO NO! Wyall dada aybeeCEEDEES!!". Ouch, sorry mama. He says similar phrases so often sometimes he accidentally applies them to situations that don't fit. For example, I might try to help him get his socks on when he wants to do it himself - in his excitement he may yell "NO! WYall aybeeceedees!!!"

lion racing

When a ferocious lion like this comes up to you and demands you give him a ride, you do it.



Actually, this is a game Will and Ambrose really like to play - no matter what vehicle they're playing with - Ambrose seems to really like to push someone, and Will really likes riding. So they're a good team.

a lion, tiger, and alligator play ball

Watch how these three ferocious beasts take on the game of baseball.

Trick-or-Treat

We had a lot of fun with Halloween this year. We let Will pick his costume, and he told us he wanted to be the "Rarr!" [lion]. The fun started right after Will's afternoon nap, when we went to the Red Cross to Trick-or-Treat there. Will got to roar at Erin's boss and coworkers and got lots of fruit snacks. Jenni (Dr. Meredith Grey, in the picture below) was thoughtful enough to give the fruit snacks out to the coworkers so Will could trick-or-treat at their cubicles/offices. Also, we got to see baby Justin, who was dressed as a monkey.



When we got home we got ready for trick-or-treaters and played outside until they started coming around.



Ambrose and some other neighbor kids came out to play too. Ambrose was an alligator. These two were a couple of fearsome animals.



Will was more interested in playing and protecting the hoard of candy we had than going out to trick-or-treat, despite our tries to convince him that it's something he would want to do. We had him practice with his mama.



Finally we convinced him that it might be fun to go trick-or-treating. We went to Moni's across the street first and that went ok, but he was his usual speechless self in front of people he's not very familiar with.



Eventually we made it to four neighbors' houses, and Will eventually gave out a few roars. He said (signed) thank-you at every house. Then he went home to guard our candy bowl until he started getting sleepy.



I think we ended up getting 60-some trick-or-treaters (Erin follows Grandpa Paul's practice of always gets an exact count), which was pretty good but significantly fewer than last year. But the difference was probably due to the scary lion guarding the candy.