My little chatterbox

I have a lot of catching up to do on here. We will see how much I can do before the baby starts screaming again. Sawyer (and Will and I) have had a cold for the last 5 days...I'm hoping that is the reason that Sawyer has turned into monster baby because otherwise I have no idea what happened to my calm, sweet baby. Sawyer hasn't napped in days, wakes up multiple times at night and just screams, and won't let me put him down at any point during the day. I think he just isn't feeling well and feels worse if I lay him down to sleep because he gets all stuffed up and can't breathe through his nose. Poor little guy. I hope he gets over it soon because I don't think he or I can take much longer! I finally got him to sleep about 15 minutes ago and since he has been up since 8 a.m. you would think he would conk out until tomorrow morning, but based on his record from the last few nights he will probably be awake and screaming again shortly.

As you can read and see on my friend Joanna's blog, www.joanddoug.blogspot.com, I took Will to Chuck E. Cheese's last Friday. For about 2 months before the Bar Exam I kept bribing Will by saying things like "If you let Mommy study I will take you to Chuck E. Cheese after the Bar Exam in [x] weeks." It got to the point where Will kept saying "In 3 weeks Mommy will take the Bar Exam and then I will go to Chuck E. Cheese's! Where it's cool to be a kid!" Then about 3 weeks before the Exam Will started talking about Sophie all the time. He would be upstairs and I would say "Will, what are you doing?" and he'd say "I'm playing with Sophie!" or he'd get up in the morning and say "Where's Sophie" and I'd say "At her house" and he'd say "No, she's hiding in my house. Let's find her!" and then he would go from room to room looking for her. After several days of this Will ran his toy lawn mower into Sawyer and made him cry. I said, "Will, did you hurt Sawyer?" and Will said "No, Sophie did!" Clearly, Sophie (who is in fact a real little girl) had been elevated to imaginary friend status. I told Will that he could take Sophie on his trip to Chuck E. Cheese...so that he could remember that he used to have real friends in the days before Mommy started studying for the Bar Exam. As Jo mentioned in her post, Sophie was not a huge fan of Chuck E. Cheese. I felt kind of bad because the poor girl was totally freaked out, which was not a possibility I had considered since Will thinks it is heaven on earth (despite the smell). Will really liked this little ride where he sat on a stationary bicycle and then the entire ride rotated in a circle. He rode that one about 40 times. After over 3 hours at Chuck E. Cheese I asked him if we wanted a drink of milk and he went and got in the stroller without any complaints. I stopped in at the Roberts next door and they had a wooden easel/chalkboard/dry-erase board for $15 that Will spotted and wanted and since it was a good deal I bought it. I haven't let him loose with dry-erase markers yet, but he has been drawing with chalk everyday since. He always makes me draw with what he informs me is my favorite color - yellow - and he always draws with his "favorite color" - orange. Will drew his first recognizable picture about a month ago...a smiley face. It is the only thing he draws...big lopsided ovals with 2 dots for eyes and a huge grin. Sometimes he adds circles for ears and once he scribbled above the smile and said "He has fuzz and he is a boy"--- apparently it was a mustache. Every time he draws one he makes the same comment - he draws it and then says "He is not sad!" It cracks me up to find these goofy smiley faces all over Will's magnadoodle and chalkboard and any piece of paper he got his hands on.

A few weeks ago when I was trying to study for the Bar, Will was sitting on the floor playing with his cars. He picked one of them up and gave it the following lecture: "What are you doing? I asked you not to do that, okay? Listen to me when I'm talking to you. I asked you not to do that. If you do that you will have a big time-out. Okay?" It went on like that for a while.

Will is starting to understand the concept of "favorite" so we like to ask him what his favorites are. According to him, his favorite food is "croutons" or sometimes "Caesar salad" (as if he's ever taken a bite). His favorite show is "Super Readers" (also interesting because lately he only wants to watch Dora). His favorite color is orange. His favorite music is "Linkin Park like Daddy" (way to kiss up to Dad). I asked him a couple days ago what his favorite thing he ever did in his whole life was and he said "Hmmmm hmmmmm hmmmmm...ummmm chicken salad." I'm not sure he understood that question.

Will was demanding Dr. Pepper the other day and I kept telling him that he couldn't have it because it wasn't good for him and it would give his teeth owies. Bryce, however, gave in and poured him a little of his soda. Will took a big gulp and glared at me and declared "Ah! My mouth is happy!"

I was sitting on the couch with Sawyer this morning when Will woke up and came downstairs. He came over to me and said "Mommy! I'm so glad to see you! Is your throat hurting?" and I said "Yeah, it's kind of scratchy." He replied, "Did you have something to eat?" and I said "No" and he said "Do you want some peach juice to make it feel better?" (He calls this flavored water stuff we buy at Wal-mart "peach juice") and I said "No thanks," but he went and got it out of the kitchen anyways and gave it to me saying "Here you go sweet stuff!"

The other day we went to dinner at Chili's with my mom and brother and sister before my mom went home. On the way there Will kept saying that we were going to the cold restaurant. It took us a while to figure out that we were going to the "cold restaurant" because we were going to "Chillys".

Will has added "Oh come on" to his vocabulary. For instance, this morning he wanted me to play blocks with him and I told him that I wouldn't play with him until he got his diaper changed. He turns around and says "Oh come on Mom! Just play with me! Don't be scared!"

A few weekends ago we were returning something to Target and Will saw some hotwheels cars that he has been obsessed with ever since. I told him that we weren't going to buy them because cars cost money and we don't have enough money to buy cars every time we go to the store (thinking it would be better to explain than to just say no). After Target we stopped at Sears to return something else and the kids and I were waiting in the car. Will asked where Bryce was and I said that he had to "give something back to Sears and get some money." Will immediately perked up and said "If Daddy gets money we can go get the Hotwheels!" I guess he has that all figured out. I told him that we still weren't getting Hotwheels which set off another twenty minutes of crying. So on pretty much a daily basis since then Will will bring me some of his toys and say things like "I don't want these. Let's take them back to Target. And then I will get Hotwheels" and he always uses this particular tone of voice that is like "I'm making a huge sacrifice here but I'll do this if I have to." The other morning he was driving me nuts because for about 2 hours all I heard was "I don't like my Valentine's toys. I don't like my Christmas toys. I will take them back to Target and get some Hotwheels." Finally I said "Ok Will, if you don't want your toys I will take them and give them to some other little boy because I'm sure there are lots of boys who would like to have such nice toys." Will said "Ok, we will give them to someone else. I don't want them" so I said "Ok, bring all the toys you don't want in the kitchen and I will give them away and you won't play with them anymore." Of course, I was thinking that if he saw me acting like I was actually going to take his toys away he would flip out and suddenly be overcome with a desire to play happily with his toys. Instead, Will went and got his new Disney cars that I spent $20 on for Valentine's because he had been wanting them for months and put them in the kitchen saying "I don't want these Valentine's cars. We will give them away." Then he went and got his car garage from Christmas, his race car, his Lightning McQueen car and his truck with the other Disney cars inside and put them in the kitchen as well saying "I don't like these Christmas toys." Then he hauled in his basketball hoop and added "I don't like my basketball." I found this kind of hilarious and kind of infuriating at the same time. I picked everything up and took it out in the garage and put it in the back of Bryce's truck thinking surely he would want it back after 30 seconds...but nope, I eventually took it back out of the truck the next day when Bryce had to go somewhere. I was telling Bryce about it when he got home from work and Bryce (always wanting to think the best of his son) asked Will, "Will, why did you want to give away your toys? Did you just want to share them with other kids?" and Will replied "No, I don't like them. I will give them away and then get some Hotwheels." Nice try kid.

The other day Will kept telling me that he wanted "'Baby Bach on." We don't have anything that fits that description so I said "What is Baby Bach? Is it a show" and he turned around and looked at me and said "No, it's a commercial honey!"

Apparently, Sawyer really enjoys watching our Baby Beethoven dvd lately...at least according to Will he does. About once a day Will tells me that "Sawyer wants to watch Baby Beethoven" and then makes me put it on. I'm pretty sure it isn't Sawyer who wants to watch it though.

Will has also added the phrase "or something" to his repertoire. So a normal request from him these days goes like this "Mom! You want to play baseball or something?" or "I want to have some fruit snacks or something." We went on a walk today and we saw a house for sale and he told me "Some people will move in there maybe or something"...I thought "Wow, you sound about as decisive as your mother!"

Yesterday it was about noon when I told Will that it was time to get dressed and got some clothes out for him. He looked at the clothes and said "Who's coming to see me?" I guess he's figured that we pretty much only bother to get dressed if someone is coming over!

Sawyer rolls around like crazy these days, but doesn't do much in the way of crawling. He has started to communicate by making these little "uh uh" noises. If he wants me to pick him up he looks at me and says "uh uh!" or if Will has something he wants he will stare at it and say "uh!"
That's about all he is up to these days...oh, and eating. He has suddenly decided to be a little chow hound. He goes through 6-8 jars of baby food a day and still nurses 4 times a day. He is a little sweetheart and already has such a different personality from Will. He seems to be a lot more sensitive about things in general. He will only sleep in his own bed. If Will gets too crazy and shrieks or yells too close to Sawyer he will burst out in tears. He doesn't laugh spontaneously very often, but he cracks up when Will talks silly to him. He tends to get a little hyper when he is tired and will kick his legs and pump his arms up and down crazily.

I will have to get the camera out and add some pictures to this the next time both my boys are asleep while I'm still awake....that could be a while! Update: there I added some pics that don't have anything to do with this post, but are at least fairly recent.

Will modeling a majority of the clothes I bought him for next fall at the same time.