More things that Will says

Erin has been making a list of the words Will says lately, the goal is that he will have 100 words by the time he turns two years old (next month). Pretty sure we're forgetting a few of them, but the list is currently at 52 words, and many of those he has only started saying in the last month. So his vocabulary is accelerating rapidly and could very well reach 100 in a month.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to share that list. It's kind of neat to look back 7 months ago and compare with what he can say now.

Will's word list:

Mama
Dada
Will (pronounced "Whyall" - refers to himself, anything he owns, or anything he wants to be given to him)
Grandpa (pronounced "Rah-rah" or "Bwa-bwa")
Ad ("Aht": Uncle Adam)
Duke (he clearly says "Dook" now instead of "doodoo" or "deekdee")
Otto ("ottott" - the nextdoor neighbor's cat that Will plays with outside a lot)

hi
bye/bye-bye
ow! (says this when he gets hurt or when something isn't going his way)
uh-oh!
yeah/yes
no
up
down ("dowww")
out (if he's somewhere he doesn't want to be, like the carseat or in a grocery cart, he will alternate the words up/down/out over and over until he gets what he wants or is convinced to stay there)
help ("hep dada": help me climb up so I can reach your computer and press buttons, dada)
mine (this one is fun, usually an exclamation: "MINE!")

juice ("dooss")
pie
hotdog ("hotdot!" - invariably, Will's answer if you ask him what he wants to eat)
two (as in "hey Will, you want a cookie?": "doo.")

neck (the body part, also the name given to his stuffed giraffe)
eye
butt

stinky ("dinngky")
yuck/yucky (often accompanies the declaration of something as "stinky")
hot
wet

bat (pronounced almost exactly like butt)
ball (applies to the object and to the sport baseball)
hit (he can say "hit bat" or "hit ball" but not "bat hit ball")
bus ("busss!")
kitty (prounounced "deekdee", formerly the label given to Duke)
this (a common response to the question "Hey Will, what's this?": "thissss!")
car ("gharr!")
mop
guitar (" 'tarr" - this applies to real guitars, Guitar Hero guitars, and a little mini broom we let him use which he plays as a guitar)
choo-choo
motorcycle (he just says "mmm" ok this one is a stretch, but he consistently refers to motorcycles as 'mmms')
bike (he calls them "bump-bumps", because it's his job to yell "bump-bump" when we go over bumps on bike rides)
hat
house (and he can identify "Wyall howwss")
tickle (hard to spell it phonetically, but there's a particular sound he makes as he's trying to tickle my tummy or piggies)

Animal noises:
moo
meow ("maow" - also all cats who are not Duke or Otto - including Clementine - are being called "maows" lately)
woofwoof
baa (this one is really funny, kind of sounds like he's trying to clear his throat)
hiss ("ssss!")
roar ("Rarr!" this is the sound that lions, tigers, and dinosaurs make. It's also the name of his lion that he sleeps with)
eee-eee (monkey noise, with accompanying armpit scratching)
tweet-tweet ("teet-teet")
hoo-hoo (owl noise)
quack-quack ("cuck-cuck")

first peepee in the potty

Will has been sitting on his potty chair a lot - often when he's hanging with me in the bathroom, and pretty much every night before his bath. He insists on it.

Anyway, last night before his bath, Erin reported that he sat down, did the tuck, and with some encouragement, he peed! Some of it got in the potty, but much of it was all over his legs and the floor, so it wasn't a completely successful tuck. To add to the fun, he had been playing outside and had dirty feet, so when he got up and was dancing around excitedly, he left little muddy footprints among the puddles of pee on the floor.

Here's hoping for more of this as we enter into the adventure of potty training.

Madison trip wrap-up

Hey everyone. Let me be the first to say I thought Erin did an excellent job as guest blogger while I was gone on my trip. But I'm back and there are a ton of pictures to catch up on. And Will is doing more and more blogworthy things each day so let's get going with these!



Here just-my-diaper-Willie and Grandpa are playing with Grandpa's toy car (btw - Will can say car now, sounds like "gahhrrr"). It's a remote control Humvee and Will had a great time driving it and crashing it into Grandpa and I.




Will went to visit Casey, the stylist who cuts Grandma's and Aunt Sara's and Erin's hair. He got a totally stylish 'do, does it look familiar?




Of course, Mom's post already detailed the fun Will had with his new friend Connor.




We went to the zoo! I had to work a lot during our trip, but I escaped for this trip. We rode the carousel, and Will picked out his "horse" (it was a rhino) and mine. In the picture on the left, he is telling me where I need to go.



There was also a CHOO-CHOO at the zoo!!! We rode it, it was pretty great.




Finally, one morning Will got to drive the boat with Grandpa (when Gramps wasn't skiing).
A very fun trip, next time I hopefully won't have to work the whole time!

Will & Connor at the Splash Pad

Erin here, filling in for Tom while he's off on a disc golfing extravaganza vacation in Wisconsin. My blogging skills are not the best (it'll be a miracle if I can remember how to put pictures in this post, and I'm pretty sure I don't know how to line the pictures up correctly), so bear with me as I give it a go!

When we were on vacation a few weeks ago Grandma Brenda, Will and I met my friend Katy, her son Connor, and Connor's Grandma Mary Jo at a brand new splash pad in Madison. It was Will's first time at a splash pad and he loved having the freedom to run around in and out of the water streams.




The sprays of water would occasionally turn on and off without warning, and to see how they would react, Katy and I put Connor and Will near one of the turned off nozzles.

Chatting...


Water surprise!


Run!


Oh wait, Connor can't run yet...


After the surprise spraying, we took a little snack break. I encouraged Will to share his animal crackers with Connor (we're working on sharing), so Will offered Connor a cracker. When Connor didn't reach out and take the cookie fast enough (at least according to Will's standards) Will just put the cracker directly into Connor's mouth. This continued for quite a while, and we had a good laugh over how Will kept the crackers coming and Connor just sat there with his mouth open waiting for Will to feed him.



And finally, a picture of the moms and the boys, and a picture of Will and his mom and grandma.

virtuoso!

Grandma and Grandpa got this toy synthesizer for a dollar at a garage sale, and it is about the best spent dollar ever, at least as far as Will is concerned. Sorry for the voice-overs.



Perhaps Will was inspired by his rockin' family? Or a certain inspirational hairdo/musician we recently saw in concert?

PS - The video is finally working (sorry, sometimes youtube takes awhile), and Erin reminded me that he actually took a very cute bow after his last song (the one where he has the costume change - following the triumphant "yaaah!"). Really too bad we didn't catch that on video.

Will's new potty chair

According to the books and potty training experts (Aunt Sara), Will is approaching the age of potty training. We've been slowly easing into the training by taking steps to help him recognize when he has to go to the bathroom, like asking him if he pooped his pants whenever we're sure that he has. A few weeks ago, we got him his own potty so he can practice sitting on it and reading Sports Illustrated.

imitating dad's toilet mannerisms

So he sits on it all the time now, and we encourage him to. He makes sure to sit on it before and after each bath, and gets mad when we pick him up before he's done having his sit. We've also been working on a technique called the "tuck" - following advice from Aunt Sara based on her experiences cleaning up after potty-training toddlers. Will has gotten good at the tuck, so when he starts using the potty instead of just sitting on it, this will hopefully result in a higher ratio of pee in the potty and less everywhere else.

meet my choo-choos

Will is pretty interested in trains (choo-choos, sounds like "doodoo"). He has been for a long time now - ever since he got his first choo-choo book (still one of his favorites which we bring out for long car trips). He has a few choo-choo toys, and any group of non-train toys can become a choo-choo by placing them in a row. Also, when he rides on my shoulders, we call it riding the "dad train" - similarly, Will likes to ride grandpa and uncle trains - and when Will yells "choo-choo!" and pumps his arms the dad train goes fast.

Anyway, these choo-choo bath toys have become some of his favorites, to the point that he has named them. The blue one's name is "dada", the green one's name is "dukie", and the red one's name is... "dada". That's right, there are two dadas. He consistently refers to them this way. For the record, this choo-choo is named "mama" - in the video, when I ask him which one is mama, he's confused because the mama train lives in the downstairs toybasket, not with the bathroom toys.