Drum Roll Please

Today Will crawled into the kitchen, stood up without holding on to anything, took 3 steps as if he's been walking for years and then apparently decided it was much too slow and went back to crawling. Won't be long now folks!
{Picture is from last weekend's camping trip}

Sugar Fiend

Today Will got into the candy jar. This is not unusual. In fact he does it multiple time every day. Usually he is mostly interested in the lid to the jar which he carries off somewhere whenever he gets the chance. Sometimes he empties out the contents of stale candy and throws them around the living room. Today, however, he discovered that the contents of the candy jar are (at least to some degree) edible. I was loading the dishwasher when I heard him pull the lid off of the jar in the other room. Then all was quiet for a minute or two. I went to see what he was up to and discovered him happily chewing on the end of a sour gummy worm. When I tried to take it away he turned into devil child - screaming with huge eyes and his mouth wide open and both arms thrown up in the air. So I let him have it for a while longer while I got the camera. (Yes, I know I'm setting an excellent precedent here.) Thus, today's pics are of Will emptying the candy jar...and even standing up by himself in one. {PS: He's not wearing clothes because I had just finished giving him a bath....ok he doesn't wear clothes all the time anyways, but that was the reason for this particular moment} I was rather impressed with the progress he made on the gummy worm-- I wouldn't have thought it was possible to eat one just by sucking on it.

I turned on some music this morning and Will did his little dance routine where he sits on his knees and then kind of bops up and down with his arms up. He only does it to the first song on my mix CD which is odd because it is "Angels Among Us"...not exactly a get up and move kind of song. He sometimes does it to the music on commercials too. I tried to get some video of it, but by the time I got the camcorder out he had moved on to ripping pages out of a Reader's Digest.

Today all Will would eat was graham crackers. Apple sauce? No. Bread with cheese melted on it? No. Drink of water? No. Everything else I tried? No. Only graham crackers. He acted so disgusted everytime I tried to give him something else. He would stick out his tongue, clench his mouth shut, close his eyes, and shake his head violently back and forth while hitting at me with both arms. He acts like I'm trying to poison him with apple sauce...which he usually loves.

I've been trying to get him to drink out of a sippy cup, but he shows no interest. I have purchased 2 different kinds of sippy cups and they are the only things I have ever come across that he won't put in his mouth. Bryce's cousin's stepbrother's wife (got that?) recommended taking off the no-spill valve until Will figures out that the liquid comes out and then learns to suck on it so I've tried that the last 2 days. He still has no interest in drinking out of the cup, but does highly enjoy dumping out all the water on his highchair tray.

Yesterday night we took Will to an Orem Owlz baseball game with the neighbors. I don't think he noticed there was a baseball game going on. We sat on the grass hill by third base and he spent the whole evening crawling up and down the hill. Dad let him have some popcorn which he enjoyed. All in all it was much better than the last (and only other) Owlz game we went to when we had free "premium seat" tickets from Bryce's work and spent the whole game trying to keep a hold of Will.

Camping and other firsts

We took Will on his first camping trip this weekend. I enjoyed actually being able to sit in the passenger seat instead of in the back now that Will can face forward. Will enjoyed wearing my sunglasses (see pic). We drove up into the Uintas and finally found a place off in the woods because all of the "improved" camping facilities were full. It was a nice spot except for the mosquitoes and drunkards who pulled in next to us and blasted their music all night while becoming progressively more drunk and more loud and obnoxious. Will didn't seem to mind, however, he went right to sleep and was the last one up in the morning (I'm not sure that has ever happened before). He seemed to particularly enjoy staring at the campfire, but was frustrated that I wouldn't let him get down and crawl around in the dirt. He liked playing in the tent (see pic)...until he realized I wasn't in there with him (see other pic!). I think he will turn out to be a little outdoorsman because he was fascinated by everything he saw and didn't even mind the cold weather at night.

On Saturday we took Will to the city pool for his first swimming trip. We didn't bring the camera since we wouldn't have anywhere to put it, but I wish I had some pictures because he loved it. They had a kids' area which gradually sloped downward to a maximum depth of about 2 feet and had fountains and slides and things. Will kept crawling straight into the deeper water until it was over his mouth at which point I would pluck him out and he would scream in frustration because he wanted down. The whole not being able to breath part didn't seem to bother him. He was also busy making friends and would head straight for the nearest kid or grown-up and give his usual greeting: an ear-piercing shriek that scares other small children. After a while in the kid pool we took him over to the big pool. We would pass him back and forth between us so that he could "swim" and he loved it. As soon as one of us grabbed him he would turn around and stretch out the other direction ready to go again. If we tried to just hold him he would kick and push to get away. When I held him up by his belly he would move his arms and legs like he was trying to crawl and seemed frustrated that he wasn't going anywhere. He seemed to think we were spoiling all the fun by not letting go of him. He is definitely not a shy child!

At church today he was wild as always. Bryce brought him to me in the nursery for the last hour where he terrorized the three year-olds by snatching their snacks whenever I put him down and stuffing them in his mouth until one little boy screamed "Get that baby away from me!"

Instant Replay

So I somehow managed to NOT take any pictures of Will eating his birthday cake. I'd been taking pictures all day and at cake time Bryce had the video camera out and for some reason it didn't occur to me that he wasn't taking pictures with the video camera. So we had no other option than to let him re-do the whole birthday cake thing yesterday night (he didn't seem to mind). The second time looked pretty much identical to the first, although he seemed sort of overwhelmed with the idea of stuffing his face with cake two nights in a row (see pic). Cleanup required TWO tubs of water because there was chocolate everywhere, including up his nose and in his ears. Yum.

--> Will: lover of the written word....it's delicious.


--> Who could resist that?! Will at the submarine base wrapped up in Mollie's sweatshirt because it was freezing.



Will is currently passed out on the carpet with a bottle in the family room. This is his version of a nap- we take what we can get with him. Napping is not his strong point. Too much to do!

I had Will upstairs today while I talked on the phone and he discovered that there was air coming up out of the floor vents. He kept opening his mouth wide and then lowering his head over the vent and smacking his lips like he was eating the cold air. He also spent quite a bit of time today trying to eat my toes. I was barefoot and he kept trying to suck on my toes and when I moved them away he would laugh hysterically and come crawling over and do it again. Repeated about 500 times. He certainly has a weird sense of humor.

One Year New!

Yesterday was Will's first birthday! Since I never got around to writing down all the adventures of his first year in an actual baby book I've decided to keep track of things here. Maybe I'll catch up on the last year at some point, but for now I better just start with today.

Will's first birthday was a momentous occasion for several reasons...one being that we finally turned his carseat around from rear-facing to front-facing. Will seemed to enjoy the new view on the way to Wal-Mart. Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Mollie and Aunt Meg sent him a card which he highly enjoyed...he spent the ride to Wal-Mart picking off pieces of the card and eating them. At the store we picked up some stuff for Will's birthday cake and then headed over to the toy aisle to pick out something with the money Grandma sent him. We eventually decided upon a metal dump truck and a little keyboard. {I almost tripped some annoying kids that were riding the display bicycles up and down the aisle while screaming "move it" to me, but refrained mostly because I was afraid druggy mom might come around the corner and see me.} When we got up to the register I discovered a plastic dinosaur in the cart under Will which apparently he wanted so he got that too. (It was only 88 cents and it was his birthday after all!)

Some of the neighbors, Uncle Kyle, and Doug, Jo, and Sophia came over for cake and ice cream in the evening. Will wasn't sure what to do with his cupcake at first and tentatively picked off a piece of frosting to test things out. He must have decided he liked it though because his next move was to stuff the whole thing in his mouth. We opened presents after Will got a bath. Grandma said to buy Will a truck or something "meant to be pushed around on the floor" which is what he does with everything so I complied and bought him the aforementioned metal dump truck. Will did indeed push it around the floor...however, he didn't see any need for it to be taken out of the box first. Once I took it out of the box he was thrilled to find that it made a loud noise every time he rammed it into the glass sliding doors in the family room. Will ended the evening conked out on the family room floor with a bottle.

Today Will had his one year check-up at the doctor's office. His usual doctor didn't have any available appointments this month so he was seen by a physician's assistant. I was standing up and holding Will and trying to keep Will calm while the P.A. talked to me and asked me questions to make sure Will was normal. Will was playing with a plastic straw that he's been carrying around for days. Somehow while the P.A. was talking to me Will managed to poke himself in the eye with the straw and make his eyeball bleed (didn't know this was possible). Will screamed bloody murder for the next 15 minutes and the P.A. had to come over and check out his eye with his little light. I was rather embarrassed. Will had to get 3 shots so he didn't particularly enjoy his visit either.

Here are Will's stats from today's visit:
Weight: 21 lb 2 oz
Height: 31.1 inch
Head circumference: 47.2 cm

Will isn't walking yet, but he stands on his own whenever he wants to see something. Sometimes if there is music on he stands up and stretches his arms up and closes his eyes and bends his knees and does this funny dance kind of thing. He looks like a tv evangelist. Will is desperate to get at the keyboard so here is a message from him:
[p TYVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV T