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.