So far 2010 has brought us many exciting things...a child who walks, a child who eats almost all table food AND (drum roll) feeds himself and most exciting a child who knows how to shake his head NO. Oh yes, for those of you that have had children you are probably laughing remembering this fun time. He shakes his head NO when he is done with dinner, he shakes his head NO at just about every question you ask and even when he means YES. Case in point - he LOVES peaches. If you ask him if wants a peach he will shake his head NO and continue to do so even after he has opened his mouth to accept the peach and even after he is chewing the peach and has peach juice running down his chin (or spaghetti sauce like in this picture - mind you this was after one of the first nights of him 'feeding himself', we are not always this messy after dinner...well most nights we are not).
Realizing that we haven't posted in quite some time...lets see if we can get caught up on the past month or so....December brought Will's first steps - just in time for Mommy's birthday and what a wonderful present that was. Mommy and Daddy were just so excited and Will just sat there grinning - not sure what he did but knowing that whatever it was it made everyone around him clap and cheer. He continued to practice walking with his walker wagon like he has been now for months then on Wednesday, January 13th he proceeded to walk right across the kitchen - arms out in front of him and gasping for breath like he had just sprinted a mile. SO EXCITING! I didn't think that the night could get any better but then all of a sudden our child who could successfully pick small pieces of food up but could not figure out how to cram them in his mouth - picked up a piece of banana and not only got it in his mouth, but managed to get the following, oh, thirty pieces or so and fed himself the entire banana. He again just sat their grinning, so proud of himself. I think he had been taking notes from the other kids in his class at school as there a few that seem like using a fork and knife are just days away. All us parents have been feverishly comparing notes for weeks now - who is walking, who is feeding themselves, who is eating what, who is down to one nap a day - what we have come up with is that besides the fact each child is truly on his/her own schedule, it is amazing how much difference just a few weeks makes. What Will has not mastered this week is old news by the end of the next week.
Will's first Christmas was great - he seemed amazed by the presents under the tree - including his first car. Well not really a car obviously but a car that he can ride in while being pushed. He has loved his 'rides' thus far and has mastered honking the horn (hopefully we have not trained him to be an aggressive driver at the age of 1!). Uncle Josh spent Christmas with us and we had fun with our first "Santa experience".
We had visitors on Christmas Eve who Will had fun seeing and besides the "workbench" that Mary Beth, Mark and Ryan gave him for Christmas (very cool sound effects by the way) he loved the glitter snowman and it became a staple item on the counter for each meal - it will be fun to get it out next year for Christmas and see if he remembers it.
New Year's found the Stanley household all in bed at normal times - Will religiously hits the sack every night at about 7:30...Chris and I follow about two hours later. Sometime right around New Year's Will decided that he was ready to explore the bathtub during bath time and discontinue his nightly "lounging" in the baby chair we have used since he came home. He loves trying to dunk his face and play with all his toys. As soon as the drain is pulled he goes crazy trying to scoop them all - like he is trying to save them from the pull of the drain. Needless to say, this has made bath time quite fun...he has always loved the bath but seems to more so than ever now.
With Will's new found freedom comes baby proofing. Most of this started a few months ago when he really started to be mobile and crawl, but a lot of things we decided to leave open to see if 1) we really needed to close it off and 2) if he really cared about it enough to have us drill. The pantry for example - we decided to just get the rubber stoppers that make it so he can't slam or pinch his fingers but other than moving ALL plastic items to the bottom two shelves we have done nothing else. This area we have found will entertain him for at least 30 minutes - great for when we are preparing dinner. He LOVES Tupperware and amazes us with how he can have fun with his empty sippy cups and my running belt water bottles. In the mornings when we are getting ready for work/school he will sometimes play in our bedroom/bathroom. One thing that I have yet to see a "baby proofing/safety item" for is water faucets. He loves turning things so of course he immediately figured out how to turn the water on and off. I tried covering up the handles with clothes - nope he just pushed those into the tub then turned the water, on top of them - not a good way to start a morning! Then one day as I was wrapping a gift my eyes fell on all the ribbon (especially the pink!) from baby gifts that I had yet to put up - VOILA! see picture below - enough said on this subject.
We have thankfully almost completely graduated to all table food - most of which he feeds to himself - so even though this makes it easy because he can share what we are having for dinner - we have now become experts on trying to figure out ways to clean up every small little area that food manages to get into on the highchair. This we have quickly learned is a battle that can not be won and - it's now a common experience to go to move his highchair out and find a small spot that his little bitty fingers managed to smear something like banana on the night before - oh yummy! Here he is pretending his spoon is cigar...this night was especially comical -
Whew! I think I might be almost caught up to present day....last week was a bit of a rough week for Mr Will - he came down with his third DOUBLE ear infection. What is so bad is that he has a high pain tolerance so after about a week of him just "not being himself" and us chalking up his inconsistent behavior to teething, we finally broke down and brought him to the doctor because he was sent home from school with "intestional bug" that was going around - at this point the doctor discovered his not so good looking inner ears. Poor boy!
This weekend he has his healthy appetite back - example: dinner last night consisted of meatballs, spaghetti, 1/2 Kiwi, peaches, cereal, apples/plums and then a banana muffin. I'm full just thinking about all that food! At school he has done great and we have discovered he likes things like Fig Newtons, Veggie Burgers, Ritz Crackers...the list goes on and on. Chris loves watching him feed himself - it amazes both of us to think that last year at this time we were just preparing for his arrival - now "preparation for him" is an hourly occurance! We have gotten it down to a science though - preparing on Sunday for the week - listing out what needs to go to school each day, what our dinners are - we are a well oiled machine and at the center - is Will who does his part and every day seems to find a new part of his personality. He loves to babble on and on and make vroom, vroom noises with his wooden cars....lately since he now knows how to go up and down the stairs his game is to run to the stairs to see how many he can climb before mommy or daddy comes and swooops him up and gives him lots of kisses which lands him in a fit of giggles.
Gram and Gramps came to visit just as Will began walking and he had a blast with them - he became a bit of a show off that weekend as if to say "of course I can walk!"
Right now we are snowed, well iced in, everything is white and yesterday we went outside to see how Will liked the snow...besides it being SO bright, the cold breeze brought tears to his eyes so ended up spending the rest of the day indoors where it was nice and warm.
He's had a bunch of new experiences the past couple weeks - he went to sleeping on a cot (instead of his crib) at school and is doing great and transitioning to one nap a day - this is harder on mom and dad then him! This week we are going to be introducing him to whole milk. Although he is weaned for all feedings except his bedtime one (having mastered the sippy cup he is now also almost considered an expert with his toddler cups), he has only ever been on breastmilk so this should be interesting...considering we have enough frozen to last us about three months we should be able to make a somewhat slow transistion...when he moves to his new room in about three weeks he'll only be able to have milk at school though. We are thinking that because he loves cheese and loves yogurt the milk transition should be an easy one - fingers crossed!
Most days this is the smiling face we wake up to - he loves to read books with daddy and play with pots and pans in the kitchen with mommy...stay tuned to hear the adventures of his last few weeks as someone who is in the "under 1" category.
