duck what?

Let's not dumb it down - sometimes dad's a little gassy in the morning. Yesterday I happened to be a little extra noisy as I was getting ready for the day. Erin was getting Will up and changing his diaper when I passed a particularly loud one from the bathroom, and I guess it sounded kind of like a duck's "quack".

So having heard this, Will exclaimed "DUCK!"
Erin laughed and explained that the noise was actually daddy's butt (Will knows what butts are).
So then he laughed too, and then corrected Erin: "duck butt!"

We thought the joke was over after that - all of us had a good laugh, but this isn't the kind of thing we want him laughing about at daycare. But later that night I was helping him wash his hands - which involves laying him on his stomach on our bathroom counter so he can get both hands under the faucet - when Will let out a little toot.
He got this huge grin on his face, turned to look up at me, and told me: "DUCK butt!" hahahahaha! It was hilarious. I couldn't help but laugh with him for awhile, so I'm afraid that this has reinforced the joke and he will inevitably say this phrase somewhere inappropriate.

hide-and-seek

Wrapping up our trip to visit Cate a couple weekends ago, here's a video I captured of Cate and Will playing hide-and-seek. Neither of these two is a very good hider - they didn't have a very hard time finding each other. Also in the video you can hear Will trying out his new phrase: "my turn" - which he repeats over and over, whether it really should be his turn or not.



Will is just starting to get this game, and will hide in various places around our house. He especially likes to hide after running away buck-naked when we're trying to get him to take his bath. Also, a big part of hide-and-seek is counting to ten with your eyes shut. We're working on this, Will is getting pretty good at it, but he needs help after about "sic" [six].

daddy's little ballerina

When we visited Cate a couple weekends ago, she had to go to ballet lessons before the Hawkee-guy game. When she got home she taught Will a couple moves and they had several impromptu dance sessions. Also Will does these pirouettes around the house with some of his toys that play music.

watching the Hawkee-guys and playing with Cate

Last weekend we went to visit Will's girlfriend Cate, daughter of Carrie & Jason, outside of Chicago. We have been visiting every couple months or so and Will and Cate seem to really like seeing each other and get along really well. This time we also met our friends Jon & Bri and Kristin & Mike as well, and enjoyed watching our Iowa Hawkeyes whoop up on Wisconsin (sorry Grandma Brenda and Grandpa Paul). Throughout the trip, Will announced to everyone that his favorite football team was the "Hawkee-guys". See his sweet Hawkeye bomber jacket in the picture below, where he and Cate are enjoying the tailgating food.



Since our last visit, Cate has a new baby sister, Claire. Will got lots of opportunities to play with Baby Claire - really liked holding her and tickling her tummy - and we reminded him he was going to get his own baby brother or sister soon. Won't that be fun?



Will got some nice presents from our friends for his birthday. Cate gave him a "Rocket" toy from Little Einsteins - his favorite tv show. Cate had the same toy and they played with them together a lot, including in the bath! Also Kristin & Mike remembered that Will likes choo-choos and got him a sweet Thomas the Train outfit, which we'll include in the Halloween collection to be worn next week.


They also got him a Thomas toy set, so Will and Cate set up the track and pushed the choo-choos around on it, good times.



Cate was once again a very sweet host and willingly shared all of her toys with Will. But this time Will was much more able to play with her I think - it was great because we didn't really have to worry about watching the kids all the time - they entertained themselves. There was a lot of running around in circles chasing each other, but a lot of other game playing which was very cute.



Cate was also nice enough to share her bath toys with Will.



One of the games they played a lot on the morning we had to leave was hide-and-seek. Except both of them kept hiding in the same place - behind the curtain. After they hid and found each other for awhile, the game became that I had to find both of them. I captured a video of this game in action - I'll post soon.

Will gots mad hops

Will has recently discovered he can hop - sort of. He can at least get both feet off the ground for a very small amount of time. Half of the time this results in a hilarious wipeout (hilarious when he doesn't hurt himself of course). When he hops, he also tends to yell the word "HOP!", which helps him get some air I guess.



If you ask Will to do a really big jump, he will get a running start of at least 25 feet, stop, then the jump itself pretty much looks the same as in the video.

pretend fishing

A couple weeks ago when I picked up Will from daycare, one of his teachers (I guess you'd call them that) asked me:
"Does Will like fishing?"
Of course, he does. The reason she asked was that when the kids were playing outside that day, Will had found a pretty good long stick, and was running around pretending it was a fishing rod - casting it and reeling it in. Since then I've seen him do this on many occasions with other long sticklike things, sometimes getting Duke involved, because it's fun to fish for Duke.

So on Will's birthday when we went to the fruit orchard, Will found a long piece of straw and started doing this - all of us had a good time cheering him as he was pretend-fishing.

teeBALL

Will got a new teeball set from Grandpa and Grandma for his birthday. It was a very well-received gift, as he was starting to outgrow this other baseball toy. This way we can throw, as well as "HITTA BAHT BAHL". Here's a video of Will playing ball with grandpas and a few neighbor kids.

Where's the baby?

Will's going to be a big brother, and I think he's starting to understand what that means. He at least knows this much:

Two!

As you may have gathered from the most recent blog post, Will had his second birthday on Saturday. He knew it was his party and had a great time - two grandpas came to visit (and also two grandmas), he got some new clothes, books, and toys, and a choo-choo cake. I guess it was much like his first birthday, only with more running around (he couldn't yet walk last year), laughing, and fun.

After his birthday breakfast, which included TWO bananas, Will went to his first swim lesson. It went well. Then we went to our favorite fruit orchard to get donuts (Will got to eat two), more apples and pumpkins for Halloween. Check out Will's new orange and brown sweater that Grandma Susan made him!




When we got home Will played a bit with his grandpas and his new 3-foot basketball hoop I got him (he calls it "huup [hoop] ball"). We had tuckered him out pretty good so he took a really good nap. After nap we opened presents!




Will got all kinds of fun and heartfelt presents, thanks very much to everyone who sent something - he was excited about everything. He also shared his presents very well, with Duke (who mostly liked the wrapping paper and decorations) and with the neighbor kids (who came over to play with Will, his grandpas, and his new tee-ball game).



We had spaghetti, one of Will's favorites, for dinner. And afterward, a choo-choo cake, which Will had a fun time sharing with his grandpas.




HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILL!

bath pictures: 2 years

Will is "doo" (two)!
After last month's bath pictures, we have retired the blue bathtub, so now Will takes big boy baths. At first he was a bit apprehensive but with all the choo-choos and duckies and books, bathtime is fun again. We've been really encouraging Will to be the big boy, and he's been responding - for one, he insists on eating like a big boy. He also has been helping me out with jobs around (and outside) the house, and has been doing some big boy activities like starting swim lessons (saturday mornings with mom - just started yesterday), and playing baseball with dad. His language has exploded, he can string several words together in "sentences" and says at least one new word reliably each day. I'm pretty sure we easily made the 100-words-at-two-years goal. With all this new talking, we can have debates, and animal noise games.

He started at a new daycare a few weeks ago, at a church we've been going to called Vineyard and he has done very well meeting and playing with a new group of friends. It was very sad to leave Jenny's daycare, and we're sure to visit her once in awhile, but this place allows him to be in a "class" with several other children his age and there are more fun structured learning activities like music and art. He already has fit in with this new group and has been comforting some other new children who get sad by giving them hugs. Being a very nice friend and a big boy.

All this becoming a big boy is important... especially because of the latest big news.

What's hot right now:
"Ball" has been a major interest lately, in several senses of the word. Now that the Tigers' season is over, we've been watching a lot of football together, and Will watching with me is probably the only reason I can be a reasonably pleasant person while suffering through the last few heartbreaking Hawkeye losses. I've also been playing city-league softball (with our friend Neal), and finally had a game that was early enough in the evening that Will could come to watch - yelling "Nee", "dad", "ball" "bat" throughout. He has become enamored with a video baseball game I have, Mario Baseball, so he's always talking about playing "Marrna Ball". I mean always. I have a good trick in that game where I give him a controller that's not plugged in and tell him to press the button to throw the ball, etc, then I control the game with a different controller. It works pretty well. I also have Mariokart (gokart racing game) - "Marrna dhar" [car] - which he also likes to play, but I can't fool him as easily on that one so he gets a real working controller. Fortunately, he's happy driving the car straight into the wall, then whining until I help him get it back in line on the road.

What's not hot:
The potty. We had a good thing going a month ago, but he has not returned to it. We've been getting a lot of books about using the potty from the library, and he likes them, but still has no interest in sitting on it anymore, even with the bribe of gummy fruit snacks for successful use.

Anyway, we are just wrapping up a great birthday weekend for Will. Two grandpas came to visit (and two grandmas), and we played all kinds of games, got new toys, and had choo-choo cake. Look for an upcoming blog post on this. Anyway, since Grandpa Paul was here he helped encourage Will's smiles for these bath pics, and the pictures below were Will's mimicking responses to some faces Grandma Brenda was making at him, good stuff.

As of this post, 8314 views of Will's Page since Dec 2007.

 

no WAY

Will is kind of a negative guy - he says "no" a lot more than he says "yes". Much to Mom's chagrin, I like to challenge him and get into playful yes-no arguments. Mom doesn't like this because then when we have to be definite and tell him "yes, you are doing this" or "no, you cannot do that" - then he doesn't take us as seriously. And she's right, but I can't help myself.

Anyway, Will took things to a new level when he discovered he could emphasize his 'nos' as "NO WAY".