bath pictures: 23 months

Well, Willie is almost "doo" years old. And he's my little buddy. I've been quite busy and so the blog posts have been limited, but we've had some very good times together over the last month - highlighted by a fun trip to Madison to visit Grandma and Grandpa and play with his new friend, Connor. He is becoming a big boy now, with a developing sense of humor, an increasing vocabulary, and a strong sense of order that he probably got from his mom. For example, he will often rearrange his toys or stuffed animals to be just so, and gets frustrated if we mess with them after he's set them up according to an arrangement only he understands. Many times when he's playing with something, he'll insist that Erin or I sit in some particular location and watch him. If we get up or change seats, he will angrily insist we return to the location where he placed us in the first place. This makes for a fun game - I'll get up and move somewhere else when he's not looking, and then watch his reaction when he realizes I moved.

Another indication that Will is growing up: we are starting potty training, and we have thus far had two successful pee-pees. It has been very exciting to cheer along with Will for these successes.

What's hot right now: baseball, hotdogs, kitties, music, tickling, kitties, and choo-choos.



Will is also getting the hang of brushing his teeth, so we're letting him do more of it by himself. He still needs a little help (which he's pretty reluctant to accept), but he's getting better. We're trying to teach him to spit (see the picture below-left), and he knows to rinse his mouth when he's done (with bathwater).



Erin and I have decided he's finally too big for the blue bathtub, so this will be the last set of bath pictures with it. Tonight he took a bath like a big boy (in the regular bathtub), but I had to take a bath with him to show him it was fun and not scary. We played with his bath choo-choos.

As of this post, there have been 7117 views of Will's page since last December.

what does Will want for lunch?

a HOT-DOT! (hotdog)



He sure likes hotdogs.

a potty pee-pee PS

Will peed in his potty for the first time on Sunday. But I missed it (I was playing video games with my friend Dan). So last night I got Will ready for bath, he sat on the potty for awhile, did the tuck, and ordered me to leave (he insists on privacy when he's in the bathroom, even though he does not give it when the roles are reversed). I peeked in on him several times to encourage him, and each time he ordered me out of the room. But after several tries, running out of and back to the bathroom a few times and then resetting and re-tucking, he couldn't do it. Eventually I had to give him his bath, so even though he wanted to keep trying, I had to take him off of his seat on the potty, and he was not happy about that.

After his bath, I had him wrapped in his bath towel and he again insisted on sitting on the toilet. After an argument in which I told him he either had to take his towel off and sit on the toilet buck-naked or go and get ready for bed, he took it off, sat and tucked, and ordered me out of the bathroom.

I went into our room to tell Erin about this situation, and the next thing I know, I hear excited footsteps, and Will runs out of the bathroom with a huge grin on his face, and literally does a Tiger Woods fist pump and yells "YEAH!" Sure enough, I checked and there was pee in the potty. We were very excited. Will got a gummy dinosaur (he gets a treat after every successful use of the potty - a trick we learned from Cate's parents), and he just beamed for the remainder of getting him ready for bed. So we'll see if he can do it again tonight!

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.