We're back

Hello loyal readers. We are now on day 13 of our 3+ week vacation. We were away from a reliable internet connection and/or didn't have the time required to blog for awhile (hotels, Grandma and Grandpa Ferris' new lake cabin in northern Wisconsin, then occupied by preparing for and going to Laura's wedding, etc.). HOWEVER, the camera was put to good use, so look for several posts in the next week on the fun we've been having so far on our vacation!

As you can see, the winner of the favorite Will video poll goes to the 'Yes? No!' videos, with honorable mention going to the 'Pbbbtht!' videos. This video will be part of the profile on the left side of the page for awhile, until we come up with another idea. For the record, my personal favorite is 'Put Messy Will in the Sink'.

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.