a lion, tiger, and alligator play ball

Watch how these three ferocious beasts take on the game of baseball.

Trick-or-Treat

We had a lot of fun with Halloween this year. We let Will pick his costume, and he told us he wanted to be the "Rarr!" [lion]. The fun started right after Will's afternoon nap, when we went to the Red Cross to Trick-or-Treat there. Will got to roar at Erin's boss and coworkers and got lots of fruit snacks. Jenni (Dr. Meredith Grey, in the picture below) was thoughtful enough to give the fruit snacks out to the coworkers so Will could trick-or-treat at their cubicles/offices. Also, we got to see baby Justin, who was dressed as a monkey.



When we got home we got ready for trick-or-treaters and played outside until they started coming around.



Ambrose and some other neighbor kids came out to play too. Ambrose was an alligator. These two were a couple of fearsome animals.



Will was more interested in playing and protecting the hoard of candy we had than going out to trick-or-treat, despite our tries to convince him that it's something he would want to do. We had him practice with his mama.



Finally we convinced him that it might be fun to go trick-or-treating. We went to Moni's across the street first and that went ok, but he was his usual speechless self in front of people he's not very familiar with.



Eventually we made it to four neighbors' houses, and Will eventually gave out a few roars. He said (signed) thank-you at every house. Then he went home to guard our candy bowl until he started getting sleepy.



I think we ended up getting 60-some trick-or-treaters (Erin follows Grandpa Paul's practice of always gets an exact count), which was pretty good but significantly fewer than last year. But the difference was probably due to the scary lion guarding the candy.

Halloween cupcakes and "pumpies".

Halloween is right up there with Christmas for Erin in terms of holiday excitement. She loves to dress up, and now has an excuse to dress our cute boy in ridiculous outfits for the better part of the week. Before I get to our Halloween night, including Will's first trick-or-treating experience, there are a few activities we did during the week.

First, Erin made her famous Halloween cupcakes, which take about a whole day. She makes the decoration frosting from scratch and has some very fine icing skills, if I say so. See for yourself:



Anyway, Will helped out this year. And by "helped out" I mean generally interfered with the intense process of making and decorating the cupcakes. I'm sure there were plenty of "mistake" cupcakes that needed to be eaten, but the icing has dairy in it so Will couldn't eat it. But so he wouldn't miss out Erin made him his own cupcake, with a "Will" on it (he calls the letter 'W' "Will").




Erin & I worked late a lot of nights last week, but made sure we could both be home Thursday with enough time to carve pumpkins - the ones we got on Will's birthday - before Halloween on Friday. Will got to stay up late to help out. He colored on his pumpkin while Erin and I carved the big ones. We have a Halloween decoration which is a pumpkin that lights up and one of Will's jobs was to check to make sure that "pumpy"/"pumpin" - his names for the thing - was lit up. So during the carving and later when we played outside by the pumpkins, Will spent a lot of time talking about the "pumpies".



The carvings turned out pretty well. Scary!

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.