Three quickie videos

Hey everyone, well we had to take a hiatus from bloggin' for a little while because I was on vacation, camping in Iowa all last weekend. So to make up for lost time, here are 3 quickies. Enjoy - more to come soon!

Dada

Will's first and only word so far has been "dada". Actually, we're pretty sure he's not really intentionally speaking, but his signature noise so far is "dadadadada..." So you can hear for yourself. On another note, he had a really good time playing with Erin's shoes today.

Bed time

These first two videos were shot tonight while we were killing time before bath/bedtime. When he was done saying 'dadada' he started to break down and whine - you can tell he's tired when he starts making noises like this.

Don't eat me!

I took this video a little while ago but it had to sit on my camera until I downloaded everything to the computer. Here I was trying to capture him making noises on camera, but I have to hide the camera because as soon as he sees it he clams up. Or, as I discovered in this case, just like anything else that's small and expensive (or more accurately, just like ANYTHING), if it's within Will's reach he will grab it and put it directly in his mouth.

New trick: standing up by himself, kind of

Will has always been a stander - in fact, before he could sit up by himself, he would cry when we tried to hold him in a seated position, and would stop when he held him in a standing position. This was especially true when we would burp him after feedings. He even falls asleep standing up sometimes! Now he's getting sturdier, and we found that as long as he can hold on to something, he can kind of hold himself up for a little while. At least for as long as there are enough things to keep his attention directly in front of him, like the TV remote. As soon as he sees something interesting on either side, we are ready to catch him as he nosedives.

Yes?...No!

We're not sure if he actually knows what he's doing or if he's just wiggling, but Will has been shaking his head "no" a lot lately. It started when he figured out that when he shakes his head back and forth it's very difficult for Erin or I to get food in his mouth (which, as you know, is a constant challenge). Sometimes he teases us by opening his mouth while shaking his head. Anyway we're trying to teach him to also nod his head yes, but so far his answer to every question is "no."

So what else did we do this weekend?

In between all of our fun with phones, we chewed on a few other things this weekend. Since mom worked all day on Saturday, dad and Will went disc golfing:


Then later that afternoon we watched some TV. There was a Ninja Warrior marathon on all weekend, of which we watched plenty:


And then of course we got some video game time in. Will has his own controller all to himself:


All this hard work left us with a very slobber-soaked shirt!

Let's call Grandma

Basically if anything expensive and colorful enters Will's field of view he very badly wants to hold it and put it in his mouth. So last thursday he and I were hanging out and decided to call Grandma Susan while she drove with Grandpa Mike and Jake up to the lake cabin for a fishing weekend. I put the phone on speaker and Will insisted on holding it while we talked.



He does this frequently and usually manages to press or bite different button combinations which have interesting consequences. This time he started chewing on the bottom end (as in the picture above), which is where the microphone is. So Grandma couldn't hear us, and when I tried to pull the phone out of his mouth, he starts a little tantrum. To quell this, Erin gave him her phone, so he could have something to hold while we kept talking. But the slobber damage was done and my phone dropped the call with Grandma twice, and starts randomly switching into "Car Kit Mode," which is what happens when you plug a remote microphone into the bottom end of the phone (for hands-free use in the car). So Will's slobber shorted out that connection and it took a bunch of cleaning to get it reset. In the meantime, he's chomping away on Erin's phone. When we finally finish the call and Erin takes the phone back, it reports that Will had somehow logged onto the wireless web (which we're not paying for) for 3 minutes of airtime! Then, the kicker - a few minutes later, Grandma Brenda calls Erin's cell:
"What's going on, are you ok?" She asks.
"Yes, what do you mean?" replied Erin.
"You just called me, all I could hear was Tom talking and a strange chewing sound..."
So Will called both Grandmas!

Mr. Wiggles makes the news

This morning we opened the Sunday paper and were surprised to see that the Red Cross put their latest newsletter with the paper. This is the same newsletter that talks about the volunteer recognition event held in March, and to highlight the article, there's a picture of Will in his tux on the red carpet with Mikey (the first picture in this blog entry). Very cool.

pictureful weekend

With it being mother's day weekend, and with all the time we're spending outside since the weather has been so nice, we took a good deal of pictures last weekend. Come along with me, I'll walk you through a few of them.



On Friday, mom took Will to the park. Duke helped mom pick out some awesome short shorts to wear.



Then he went swinging for the first time. Weeeeweeeweee!



On Friday afternoon and most of the day on Saturday, we cleaned and restained our deck in the backyard. This stalled our plans of mowing the lawn since we didn't want to get grass clippings on and around the deck, so our backyard was a jungle. Our friends Casey and Rachel came over to help with the deck and also took Will on a little safari adventure.



Sunday was all about mom. We had a nice breakfast sitting at the table like a real family, but Will was constantly distracted by Duke, so Erin took him over to visit after we ate.



Then we went to one of our favorite parks - Gallup park, which connects to the U of M Arboretum, for a nice long walk to burn off the donuts and bacon we ate.



That afternoon, we had baby food chicken for the first time. So Will is no longer a vegetarian. That stuff is pretty gross, and Will did NOT like it very much. The picture on the left is his reaction to the first bite, and then he did his best hockey goalie impression to deflect attempts to feed him subsequent spoonfuls. These pictures are funny because whenever he sees the camera, especially right in front of his face, he automatically smiles right at it. But he also knows that when we're feeding him, we always try to get him to smile so he'll open his mouth and we can sneak some more food in. So he would usually be really fighting not to smile here, but the chicken made him pretty unhappy.



At the end of the day, Erin gave me a summer haircut with the clippers. Then I played with Will a bunch so he would get used to it and know that bald guy is still dad. Here we're singing some songs for mom at her request - "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" by the Beatles - it was a very nice Mother's Day song.