Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Our Little One Year Old


William is one years old today!! I was going to write a blog before and catch you up on all of his exploits before this, but since I didn't get around to it, I will do so now. We are having a little party for him on Friday so I'll post pictures of cake and stuff then. Since he is now 12 months old, I will tell 12 things about him, and put some random cute pictures intermittently.

1-As you see in some of the pictures, William likes to stick his tongue out ALL THE TIME! He started doing this when he was getting in his bottom two teeth and hasn't stopped. My favorite thing is when he does this little babbly language of his with his tongue out the whole time.

2-For some reason William is mystically drawn to the hymnbook. We have a bookcase in our living area and William can pull himself up and get anything on the bottom two shelves. For some reason, no matter where it is, he will always go straight for the hymnbook every time. He loves to pull it off the shelf and then sit down and look through it. (Below-Aren't his crossed feet the cutest things? He does this a lot)



3-William really loves dancing to music. One of his favorite things is when we turn on something upbeat and we have a dance party. He loves being twirled around in circles, and laughs and laughs and laughs when we dance with him. He especially loves it when his daddy dances with him.

4-Lately William has been wanting his dad a lot. It used to be that he always just wanted me, but then a couple of weeks ago Chris went on a 3 day fishing trip and when he got back William practically jumped out of my arms into his. Ever since then I can tell that he misses his daddy when Chris is gone all day. He absolutely loves the evening time when they chase each other (crawling, of course) all around the apartment laughing hysterically.

5-William still doesn't regularly sleep through the night, although he has gotten much better lately at letting me just put him in his crib and going to sleep by himself. He is also getting better at going to sleep again quickly after he wakes up at night. Maybe someday he will actually stop waking up, but I'm taking what I can get right now. :)



6-William likes to talk in this little language of his that is very cute and funny. (If you want a vague idea of what it's like -stick your tongue out of your mouth and say "giggle" over and over while varying the intonation and inflection.) Sometime he will randomly hold his arm high up in the air and stare up at his hand while he talks very quickly and dramatically. It's hilarious to see.

7-William loves to watch the "signing time" movies. I don't like to let him watch movies very often, and he really isn't interested in watching most movies, but he really likes signing time, and it's nice to be able to let him watch them every once in a while so I can clean something up without him making another mess. He still doesn't really sign himself though, even though we've been doing signs for months. Every once in a while one will slip out, but not very often. I'm sure he'll do it eventually though.

8-William always wants to feed himself. Lately he has only been letting me feed him a few bites and then will refuse to eat anymore until I let him do it himself. The problem is that he really hasn't mastered the art of using his spoon yet, so he will try that for a while and then resort to digging his hands into it and trying to lick out of his bowl. I don't really mind cleaning up the mess most of the time, but sometimes it's pretty disastrous. IN the picture below he figured how to dump his bowl on the top of his head. It was incredibly funny when he did it, and then even funnier because the rice just stayed there.



9-Lot's of times when William wakes up in the morning we will just lie in my bed for a while and I will nurse him, and then I will try to catch a little more sleep while he plays (wishful thinking, I know!). It's funny though, because lots of times he will play for a minute and then lay his head down on my pillow with me, then bounce up and play, then lay his head on my stomach, then bounce up again and then lie on Chris's pillow, over and over. It's actually really cute to see, and I love it when he comes and just lies down right next to me. Granted, he often smacks his head on mine when he is trying this, but it's worth it for the snuggle time.

10-On Sunday we learned that William is able to crawl up stairs very easily. I had been asked to play the organ so we were sitting on the stand. Chris had taken William out for a minute, and then come back and sat on the front row. He put William down and he crawled straight for the stairs to the stand and went straight up them and back to me. It was pretty cute. It was funny because before he could crawl he couldn't get around at all-he never even rolled onto his tummy. But as soon as he decided to crawl (10 months) he suddenly could do anything he wanted and get anywhere and walk along furniture and everything, so I really shouldn't have been surprised when he did this too.

11-William is pretty much in constant motion. It is pretty much impossible to get him to sit still long enough to clip his fingernail. He always tries to grab the clippers, and hates having his hand held still. We've even tried to do it while he is asleep, but even then he will jerk his hand away. It has also become quite the ordeal to change his diaper and he continually tries to crawl away while you are doing it. Even when he sleeps it's as if he is just hovering there waiting to get up and play. I can go into his room when he is sleeping and say "William" very very softly, and he will shoot straight up on his hands and knees, look at me, then stand up and reach for me to get him out to go play. It's pretty amazing.

12-We have this little bike toy (this isn't ours, but it's one like this)

and the last couple of days William has spent tons of time, energy and attention trying to get up on it. He loves it when we push him around the house on it and it's just been really cute to see him focus so much on trying to get on it himself. He has come really close, but can't quite get up far enough. It's funny when you say that little kids don't have very long attention spans because he spent at least 10 minutes completely focused on it the other night.

So there it is-a very long update on William. It is so amazing to me that he is one years old. In some ways it seems like he can't have grown up that fast, and in some ways it seems as if he has been with us forever. He brings us so much joy! I never knew how much you could love until I got married and then having William just added so much more. He lights up our lives every day!

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Tag

It seems like whenever I have quite a few ideas for blog updates that's when I get the most overwhelmed with blogging. I have this problem with lots of things-projects, cooking, etc. Anything where I feel like I have more ideas than I have time. But I decided that one blog post I definitely could do right now was this one.

I was tagged by Becca

The rules:
Link the person who tagged you
Mention rules on your blog
Tell about 6 quirks of yours
Tag 6 fellow bloggers
Leave a comment to let them know

I don't really think I'm a quirky person, but I'll do my best to come up with some.=)

1-I am a RECIPE FOLLOWER: This is Chris and my term for my obsession with following directions. It starts with recipes, where I like to read the whole thing and put in the exact amounts-etc. One struggle with this is I have trouble cooking without a recipe, but since Chris is the exact opposite, I am coming out of my shell slowly. More than just cooking though, this obsession extends to anything else where there are directions involved. I am the kind of person who likes to follow them to the T. Maybe this is why I was always able to do well in school :).

2-SMALL AMOUNTS: This quirk extends from #1 somewhat, and also has to do with my not liking to waste food. I have a tendency to put very small amounts of things back in the fridge when actually it would be fine to either use them in what I am cooking, or throw them away since they won't really do me any good for anything else. Chris never lets me hear the end of the time I put a very small amount of coconut back in the fridge because it was more than the amount called for in the cookie recipe. :) Silly, I know.

3-HISTORY BUFF: I guess this isn't a current quirk, but I'm struggling to come up with things so it will have to do. When I was younger I went through stages where I was obsessed with different aspects of history and would read everything I could find on the subject. For instance, I went through a Egypt and mummies phase, a Titanic phase, a King Arthur phase, a French Revolution phase, an Industrial Age America phase etc. I also had a 4th grade history textbook that was my favorite thing to read for quite a while. It's funny, my love for history hasn't dwindled, but I have to admit that reading college history texts isn't nearly as fun as reading stories about the French Revolution.

4-ONE SITTING: I guess this has to do with my preface to the post. I like to be able to complete things in one sitting. Hence the reason I easily get overwhelmed when there are things I really want to do, but are longer projects. I have trouble with the idea that I am going to have to interrupt what I am working on to take care of William, or that I am going to have to leave my project out (being messy)for a couple of days before I will be able to finish it. I really hate that I have this trait because lots of times it stops me from growing and developing and learning new things. Hence the reason that I am really trying and I think slowly overcoming it.

5-CLEAN HOUSE: I always feel like my house has to be completely clean before I can do anything else, such as visit with friends, go to the store, exercise, work on projects, cook a meal, or basically just anything. I know that this is completely irrational and impossible, considering the two boys I live with :) but it is part of me none the less.
Note: I have organized my house much better the last little while and it is now much easier for me to pick up the house in a short amount of time, thus leaving my conscience clear for whatever else I want to do.

6- DRIVING WITH CHRIS: This quirk actually stems from the fact that I have an OCD husband. I always go to pieces on the rare occasions when I am driving and he is the passenger. For some reason (actually-because he is a very critical OCD driver) he makes me extremely nervous when I am driving and I always do something stupid that I would never do when driving by myself. Then he makes me laugh like crazy about whatever it was and the situation gets worse and worse. Luckily he really doesn't mind letting me drive and I don't really mind driving with him, we just always have something to laugh over afterward. But usually, I am content to just let him drive.

I tag: Ashley, Kelsey, Haylee, Mara, Aubrey, Steve

Friday, September 12, 2008

Las Vegas Pics

Well, my dad emailed me the pictures from Las Vegas, which were many so I will only share a few. For some unfortunate reason (probably because my family has never been big picture takers so we don't think rationally sometimes) we didn't get any good ones with my grandparents. I am very sad over this because I don't know when the next time I will get to see them is. However, there are some very cute ones of William and Katie!

Here's William in his "Mexico outfit" with his grandma Hall. Chris and I went to Mexico with his family last summer when I was hugely pregnant and this is one thing we brought back with us for the baby.

My brother and his family-sorry for the cut off heads, I wasn't taking the picture and I have noticed that most of the pictures tend to make the children the focus. I guess I don't really have a problem with that though.


Adorable Katie


Katie and her Grandpa Hall

Swimming-My grandparents don't have a pool, but their next door neighbor was very very kind and told us to come over and swim whenever we wanted to. We definitely took advantage of that because it was SO hot!



William and his uncle Jesse

William playing patty-cake with grandma and laughing like crazy!

Just a crazy face-couldn't leave this one out!

And finally-my sister Mary and her braids that I spent hours putting in her hair!


Whew!! Sorry for all the pictures, but my computer was uploading them really fast this time so I just kept going. The trip was a lot of fun, and amazingly William did fairly well in the car. It was very nice to get home though and be back with Chris. It was fun because at first I wasn't going to be home till the day after him, but we hurried back from Las Vegas in one day so that I could surprise him at the airport. I think he was glad :)

Monday, September 8, 2008

Blogging again

I have decided that since today is the start of a new semester for Chris it's also a day/time for me to get a fresh start on some things that I've been slacking on. One of those things is blogging. So here goes- my once again battle to actually write consistently in this blog.

I thought I would just kind of give an overview of what our summer (which really is only 7 weeks long since Chris goes to school till middle July) was like, and some fun things that we did.

To start off our break we went on vacation--separately. :) Chris went to Alaska for a week of fishing adventure and William and I went to Las Vegas with my parents and sister to visit my grandparents. It was the longest we have ever been apart and it was kind of strange, but it sure did make it very fun to see eachother when we got back.

Here's Chris and Kurt with some big fish

And some beautiful Alaska scenery (I'm jealous)


Sadly I don't have any pictures from Las Vegas because they are on my parents camera, but we had a good time with my grandparents and visiting with my brother Jesse, his wife Heather and adorable daughter Katie.

We went on a couple of fishing trips-here are William and Chris

And me with my mad fly fishing skills :)


A fun camping trip



And much more...but I think I'm worn out with my blogging effort for the night (plus Chris needs to order some books). So hopefully you will get more soon with a full update on all of William's (the Destroying Angel) escapades. Just for the record our son is the cutest boy ever.