The Great Pumpkin

I can't believe my week off went by so fast! I think the week off from school makes the rest of the semester harder than if we just kept going and got out a week earlier. It is hard to get back in the routine.

A couple weekends ago we took Will to the Rowley Farm in Santaquin to visit the Pumpkin Patch. We took a hayride out to the Pumpkin Patch which Will loved. Of course, he loves any time he is in a moving vehicle without being strapped into his carseat. Will had fun rolling a little pumpkin around the field and trying to pick it up. Between the rows and vines in the field Will had trouble standing up for longer than a second at a time. Mollie and Bryce thought I was having more fun than Will though---which is quite possible! They had the cutest little mini-pumpkins for a quarter each so I had fun picking out a bunch for our house.

Will's Halloween costume came in the mail the other day. He is going to be a little monkey...because he already is so it seemed fitting. He hasn't worn the whole thing yet, but I've put the hood on him a couple times which has big monkey ears and it is just too cute. Really what else could a little boy who climbs on everything and whose first word is "banana" be for Halloween?

Will has his 15-month doctor's appointment today. His doctor changed to a different office so he will be seeing a new doctor. I am curious to see how much he weighs...which I don't think has changed much since 12 months and how tall he is. He was playing with a little boy his age at church last weekend and I noticed that he was a good 2 or 3 inches taller than the other boy.

Will's latest tricks:
- saying "bat"....I hung some rubber Halloween bats in the front window and Will is slightly obsessed with them. He points at them and says "BAT!" and wants you to pick him up so he can see them better. Most of the time he reaches out his hand like he wants to touch them, but if you move him closer he gets scared and tries to claw over your shoulder away from them. Last night he seemed to get over his fear and kept hitting the bats and making them swing and then laughing hysterically.
- the other day I left Will downstairs and ran upstairs to use the bathroom. On my way up Will sees me and says "Uh oh! Mama!" and came crawling up the stairs after me.
- Will got a haircut much to my dismay. I left him home with his Dad on Saturday while I went to a training and when I got home all his blonde baby locks were gone! (Well, not all but a substantial amount) It made me sad because now he just looks like a boy and not a baby.
- Will was looking at his truck book the other day and when Dad pointed to the tractor and said "Tractor" Will repeated it right back..."Tractor!" It is funny to hear him say things because they all require so much effort...he purses his little lips and then starts trying to make the sound until it just bursts out all the sudden....."BAT!"

Our quest to get Will to sleep in his own bed has taken a downhill turn. As usual just when we started making progress Will got sick and couldn't breath at night and kept coughing, and coughing, and coughing...so I kept him in bed with us several nights in a row and now he refuses to even start the night in his crib. He clearly thinks that our bed is his bed. He will go right to sleep on our bed, but if I try to get him to fall asleep in his room he screams and screams and screams. In the mornings he wakes up and just grins like he knows he won the battle for another night. He is a loving little guy. His Dad and I were watching a tv show last night and sitting on the couch and Will just had to be up there with us crawling back and forth between us both. He likes to be the center of everything.

Thanks to a very generous donor Will now has a broom of his own. Here he is doing his chores and sweeping up all the food he threw underneath his highchair. Okay, maybe it is more accurate to say here he is having a great time using his broom to push around the food he threw underneath his chair.

I wrote all of the above the other day, but didn't post it until today when I added the picture. Will's check-up was actually last Tuesday. He weighs about 23 pounds. This appointment was the first time that they tried to weigh him on a regular scale, but Will wouldn't stand on it for longer than half a second so the weight is kind of a guesstimate. He had to get 3 shots and will have to go back in a couple weeks for a flu shot because they were all out at the time of his appointment.

I took Will to the law school Halloween party on Thursday. He wore his monkey suit and about 50% of people thought he was a monkey and 49% thought he was a mouse and 1 lady thought he was a buffalo. Go figure. He trick-or-treated and got 4 whole pieces of candy which was all he could carry in his little fists. He loved wandering in and out of all the aisles in the library.

Yesterday night was our ward (Church) Halloween party. Will got to fish a little jar of play-do out of a bucket of water. As soon as Dad put him down he ran right back over to the bucket and tripped and ended up a wet monkey. I think we are going to take him trick-or-treating to a few houses on Tuesday and I will have to take lots of pictures then because I haven't gotten any of him in his costume yet.

Will has learned to pull the kitchen chairs out from under the table and then climb up on the chairs and then climb up on the table. He does it about a thousand times a day and is very proud of himself every time.