at least there's this manly behavior

As a rebuttal to tuesday's post, I have this video evidence that Will does, in fact, have very manly tendencies - he thinks stinky things are funny.

Here he's having a great time laughing at me while I change his diaper and tell him how stinky it is. He does this almost every time I have to change him - can't stop laughing.

not sure what to think about this...

Will has a fascination with shoes, but not so much with dad's shoes, mostly with mom's. He likes to go in her closet and choose the prettiest shoes, then parade around in them. Here he's modeling mom's new red princess slippers.



Actually, I'm not really worried. He puts my shoes/slippers on all the time and is equally pleased with himself, it's just I have far fewer and less colorful shoes to choose from. He even tried on Grandpa's slippers when he visited a few weeks ago.

shower-hugs

I've been riding my bike to the lab a lot lately, which means when I come home from the 25-minute ride, Erin usually insists I shower off before bed. So since Will has to take a bath every night anyway, sometimes we'll take a shower together. For whatever reason, when I'm holding him in the shower, Will insists on hugging on to my neck very tightly - like I'm going to drop him or something. We call it "shower-hugging", and it's my favorite kind of hug. He also likes them: when I have to put him down to wash myself he will whine until I pick him back up again - then he immediately locks his arms around my neck and holds on for dear life. When I come home and know there's a shower in my near future, I'll ask Will "do you want to shower with daddy tonight and shower-hug?" His response: "YAAAAAAH!!!!"

Here's a tip for those who will get a chance to see Will sometime soon: if we want Will to give us a really good hug (and we're not in the shower), we can ask him for a "shower-hug" and he'll squeeze really tight. It should work.

Here's a gem Erin captured on camera. Busted!

Pockets!

A few days ago we put Will in a pair of pants that had some really great pockets in them, and we showed him how he could put his hands in the pockets. This opened a door of fun for Will - he already was very interested in putting his hands in things (like mom and dad's gloves, or his socks). Now all the time he puts his hands in the pockets of his pants, coat, and even into dad's pockets sometimes.

Yesterday Erin put him down for his afternoon nap, and he insisted on keeping his hands in his pockets as he was picked up and laid down in his crib. So she put the blanket over him and he fell asleep lookin' very cool.

new car

A couple weekends ago when we were at Anne & Sean's wedding shower and Will got to play with Grandma and Grandpa, Will got a special surprise - a new toy, this awesome car. Erin and I had been looking for something like this for him on craigslist (used stuff ad site), but we couldn't find something that 1) allowed Will to propel himself (by pushing with his feet) and 2) allowed us to push him so he could just ride and honk the horn. Grandma Brenda found this on the Madison-area craigslist so brought it for Will.



It's been a big hit since we got it home. Will gets very mad at us when we go inside/outside and have to walk past the car parked next to our house, and he doesn't get to go for a ride. This past weekend Brenda and Paul visited again to help us do some painting and landscaping work (which, you may recall, requires at least one full-time Will-entertainer). So while I was at work and mom and Grandma were painting, Grandpa pushed Will and they went for several long rides in his car, it was very fun for him.

one year later: Yes?...No!

Hey everyone, remember this? One of my, and many of the readers', favorite set of videos. In fact, the 'Yes?...No!' videos won a reader poll for the best Will video last year. Maybe we should have another one of those, that was fun...

Well, one year later we have a new version of the game. Now, of course, Will can verbalize the word "no", instead of just shaking his head. It is particularly fun to get in a yes-no argument with Will lately, especially when you say the words funny - enjoy:

kickin' it with Grandpa Paul

Will's soccer ball has been one of his favorite toys lately. We used to play in the basement a lot, until we finally taught him to kick the ball - now it's an outside toy. We brought the ball with us on our trip last weekend to Gurnee, Illinois for our good family friend Anne's wedding shower - this was a good decision as it provided plenty of entertainment for Will and everyone watching him. This was Grandpa's first chance to play soccer with Will since he gave Will the ball for Christmas, and since he has figured out how to properly play with it.

I can feed myself, thank you very much

Will is such a big boy now, he can eat with utensils all by himself. In fact, he prefers to eat with spoons over using his hands (after all, spoons are much more efficient than fingers for eating straight ketchup), and he will get flat-out mad if Erin or I try to help him. Except for the generous amounts of yogurt/applesauce/pureed food that he tends to get on his bib, he does a pretty good job of eating all his food with a spoon. He's come a long way!

Ambrose and Will help us work outside

We have spent much of the past couple weekends working on spring landscaping and trying to restore our crappy, crappy looking lawn (with a good deal of success so far!). Because when we're outside it basically takes all of the attention of one parent to contain/entertain Will, most of this work was done while he was napping, but he definitely enjoyed "helping" while he was awake.

Here he's clapping and high-fiving with mom's work gloves.




Our next-door neighbors were working outside a lot of the times we were as well. They have two children: Hannah, who is probably about 4 or 5, and Ambrose, who is just 1 week older than Will. Ambrose goes to the same daycare as Will so they play with each other every week, but otherwise until the past few weeks we didn't really get them together very often.

It worked out pretty well for both families to keep working while the two children played with each other, because then only one of the four parents had to make sure they stayed away from the street and didn't wander too far away. They mostly just ran back and forth across our two lawns, chasing each other and making happy noises.

Below Will and Ambrose went for a little ride together on their respective vehicles.



Ambrose is a very good sharer - he happily let Will ride his car-thing.

Will is not yet a very good sharer. Below he is getting upset because when he was on Ambrose's car, Ambrose was trying out Will's tractor. He did not like that.



It was pretty much the same with all of Will's toys. He wanted Ambrose around to play with him, but he didn't want him to touch any of his stuff. It was kind of funny when Will was kicking his soccer ball - he would kick it towards Ambrose and then beam and make sure everyone saw his awesome kick, but then as soon as Ambrose tried to pick up the ball he got mad.




Here's Will's new superfun outside toy - a slide we found on craigslist. He really likes it, and he can climb in and slide down all by himself (but always makes sure someone sees him do it - "mom, watch me!"). As you can see below, he had a particularly hard time sharing his slide with Ambrose.



We're working on him though - he hasn't really had many other chances, if any, to practice sharing his stuff. Jenny the daycare woman says he is a pretty good sharer at daycare, so I guess he was either having a bad day or he's just very particular about his own stuff.

the way bathtime goes these days...

I mentioned in the latest bath pictures post about Will's frequent tendency to run away cackling and squealing when we ask him to come to us. Here's a perfect (and funny) example of this behavior in the video below.

Note how there's the distinct pivot point between good boy - putting his dirty clothes in the hamper (btw, he always puts the one sock on his hand when we do this) - and naughty - as soon as the last item of clothing is put in the hamper, it's time to run off.

bath pictures: 19 months

Wow, this is the 20th installment of Will's bath pictures (since I include his first bath). The past month has been the best for Erin and I because the weather has been nice enough to play outside with Will and he LOVES playing outside. We have spent much of the last two weekends working on our yard and landscaping, so while we work Will gets to help by pushing the wheelbarrow, running around chasing the cats, kicking his soccer ball and riding his tractor. Last week we found him a used play-structure thing that has a slide on it, it's been a big hit (look for a blog post on this soon).

We've been going on a lot of walks and have even played a few rounds of disc golf. Also we make lots of trips to the park, where we swing and go down big slides. Bike rides are in now, too - sometimes we go on bike rides that end up at a park for a quick slide-break. A couple weeks ago Will and I went on a bikeride park-crawl when mom had to work late - we hit all the slides at 4 parks in one trip. When we're riding together, Will likes big bumps for some reason, probably because he can yell "buhp buhp!" after we go over them. He definitely likes bike riding much more than he did last year. He at least likes his bike helmet more, wears it around the house even - also, like the Tigers caps, he prefers to wear my giant helmet.

Will has been playing very well with his friends lately. He got to hang out with his buddy Gabe a few times, and has gotten lots of time to play with our next-door neighbors Hannah and Ambrose when we were working outside. And of course, Will got to visit his best girl, Cate. When he decides he just wants to hang out with mom and dad, we do a lot of singing and dancing, and we talk about animals and the noises they make. Will is also getting very good at identifying things - buses, trucks, trees, doggies and kitties, balloons, and many different kinds of balls (he can sort of reliably distinguish basketball, baseball, tennis ball, soccer ball).

He is becoming something of a disobedient little monkey, which is funny but we have to try to stay serious about it. He has a very predictable tendency to tell us "no!" to basically anything we ask him to do. Here's a good way to sum up his general attitude about obeying his parents: we'll be walking somewhere like a store or something, he'll start to wander away. Then we ask him to stop, or come back, and he immediately starts squealing and cackling hysterically while he runs away. So we have to keep a good grip on him in most places.

As you'll see in the next blog post, this running-away-squealing behavior is something we deal with nightly when we get ready for his bath. He also really fights us when we try to brush his teeth now (he used to love brushing!).

Number of visits to Will's page as of this post: 4039

Red Cross celebrity

Guess who's on the website for the Washtenaw County Chapter of the American Red Cross? (you can probably guess)

Red Cross website

look under the "About Us" tab, click on "Publications". What a buddy.