Merry Christmas!

Will's second Christmas was very busy...and tiring for a little guy! Thankfully he slept until almost 7:00 on Christmas morning (a present for Mommy and Daddy), and then we all trooped out to the living room for presents, Act 1. We were on a bit of a timetable for Act 1, as we needed to get all 3 of us ready and out the door for a full day in Wallingford with Dave's family (Act 2 and Act 3!). Anyway, Mr. Will pretty much inspected every present he got, and appropriately threw puzzle parts, Fisher Price Little People, books, tissue paper, bows and wrapping paper all over the place. By the time we got to the end of Round 1, he looked a bit overwhelmed by all the new toys, books and puzzles, so it was probably good that we packed up, bailed out and headed up to Wallingford. Let's call the car trip "intermission 1", complete with power nap.

Act 2 - Aunt Melissa, Uncle Lenny, Abby, Aaron, Auntie Jenny, Uncle Bobby, Oma and Gumpa all together for lovely breakfast and presents (thanks for cooking Uncle Lenny!!). This time we had fewer presents for Will (thank goodness), and he got the opportunity to see his cousins in present-opening action. This was Christmas morning at its finest - paper tearing, squeals of delight and everyone talking at once. Will spent most of the morning in my lap, either sharing my breakfast, or "helping" us open presents. Intermission 2 - Mommy and Daddy made a Starbucks trip on the way to Oma and Gumpa's house for the big finale - Act 3 (includes 40 people...). Intermission 2 includes a power nap.

Act 3 - We arrived at Oma and Gumpa's with a sleeping Will - I carried him in the house and up the stairs, praying he'd go back to sleep for awhile in the guest room - quick, while it was actually quiet. But no. Will saw the ceiling fan in the guest room and was WAY too excited to sleep (never mind that it wasn't even ON). Anyway...that meant that we went downstairs for exploring. Will inspected the set up of each and every room downstairs, talked to Oma and Gumpa for a bit, and said hello to both the cats. Mean Mommy made him get dressed in his nice clothes (getting dressed is always a wrestling match when there are better things to do). And then...everyone started to arrive. And Will did a GREAT job - there was no screaming, no freak out - and he got kissed and hugged and had about 30 strange faces to greet! It was a lovely afternoon/evening. At about 3:00 Will was starting to melt, just a little bit...and I was hoping he'd just last through dinner - to be served at about 3:30. He finally looked up at me and started saying "all done", over and over again. And finally, I got it (duh!) - I said "are you all done being awake?! OK, let's go upstairs and see about a nap". Mind you - there were 40 people in the house - so I fully expected NO SLEEPING. He was out like a light. Slept for 2 hours - thank goodness Oma was upstairs when he woke up (strange place, by himself!)....

So a very lovely Christmas was had by all - we had a quiet day today, and should have a nice quiet weekend (woohoo!). I spent a good portion of today trying to figure out where to put all the new toys/books/puzzles - I'm not done...it might actually require a shopping trip to get some bins....

Laps

Will's new favorite toys (in addition to the piano/xylophone of course) are things he can push. We spend a lot of time helping Will do laps across the basement or the living room these days, walking behind something - first a push toy that our friends Joy and Ken gave us, and now behind his very own wagon. Horton and the teddy bears are currently riding back and forth across the basement in the wagon. A couple of notes on the complilation below (I just can't seem to post video without notes...):
1. Uncle Doug is helping Will walk at Nonni and Poppa's house at Thanksgiving in clip #1. He was just starting to get the hang of 1 foot in front of the other at this point.
2. The rest of the clips are the progression that has taken place over the last couple of weeks.
3. To get the last 2 clips I had to get Will set up at one end of the basement (one end of the route) and then RUN to the other end and quickly start the camera, as Will starts as soon as I start moving. You can see how we might manage 20-30 laps in an evening...

At some point I suppose he's going to get up the nerve to stand without holding on to something, and then we'll probably have about a week before he's running based on the current pace...

In the clear...and a little music

We stopped in for a scheduled "ear check-up" this morning at the doctor, and it seems that this go-around, the antibiotics did the trick. We have clear ears, a little bit of a cough and some left over congestion, but the doctor was actually quite nonchalant about all of it. So we're in the clear for now, but the doctor did mention that we can expect an average of 8-12 colds over this cold season, which would be about 1 every 2 weeks (awesome?!), so we're armed with a bit more information/instructions for the next cold so that we can hopefully avoid the antibiotics.

After the doctor Will got to take a trip to Toys R Us for Christmas shopping for him and for all the nieces and nephews (we'll add one more in January, but we don't know which flavor yet...). Anyway - this will for obvious reasons probably be the one and only trip that Will gets to make to Toys R Us to pick out his own Christmas presents. :) It was a pretty short trip, Will was quite cooperative in the cart (it was busy, so I was half expecting him to be insistent about being up with Mommy). And most importantly, he is now the proud owner of his very own piano/xylophone. The toy was with him in the front of the cart and he was playing away as we hurried out to the car. Imagine my surprise when I pulled him out of the cart to get in the car - and I got back-arching screams (even parked in the cold, the inside of the car was at least 30 degrees warmer than the outside air!). Seriously?! So I strapped him in quickly (a small amount of negotiation required) and grabbed the piano/xylophone....yup - HUGE grin, and he started banging away again. So I got to listen to the musical "stylings" of 1 William Bostrom all the way home. Lucky me. The funny thing is that he's started to sing too. Well at least I think he's trying to sing anyway. He's terrible! But it is quite cute to hear him chime in from the backseat when he likes a Christmas carol. And tonight, he was in his crib listening to a CD (goes to sleep with some sort of music every night) - and sure enough, on the monitor, we got to listen to Will, singing away, until he fell asleep. Love that kid!!

So we are now in the deep freeze - post snowstorms - and I for one would like it to warm up by about 15-20 degrees. Less ice that way. And I seriously had forgotten how bad parking lots can be when there are big piles of snow - what a pain!

The tree is up!

So yes, the tree is up, and decorated. No pictures yet...but I DO have pictures of Will in the snow to make up for it...my guess is that you'd rather see Will in the snow anyway!! :-) We are at home this weekend, Will is recovering from a double ear infection, Dave has a bit of a sore throat, and we're featuring not one, but two snowstorms. We were planning on going to DC to attend Doug's graduation - we're very excited - his PhD!!!! But between the snow and my 2 slightly under the weather boys, we decided it would be better for us to stay home. The drive was potentially going to take on nightmare proportions and that's no way to start a vacation. Or attend a graduation. So....we're home, and enjoying the snow instead. We spent just about 10 minutes out in the snow this afternoon - enough time for Will to take in the fact that 1. it is cold, and 2. someday, it might be fun to play in. He did manage to keep his hat and his mittens on for 10 minutes...not sure we'll be so lucky next time!! All the pictures from today are in the 14 month album.

We had the best of intentions...but the Christmas tree is still naked. Tomorrow - with pictures!

It is only Thursday?!

We thought that this week would fly by. And I can say "we" with authority, because Dave has said it out loud as well - we thought this week would fly by, but it is dragging. And we're tired! Or at least I'm tired anyway. Dave has been at training in the city all week, and instead of staying, he's been commuting. I don't think the commuting has been so bad, or the training has been so bad, and the great circle route wasn't so bad for a couple of days. It has just made for very long, very busy days. Alarm going off at 5:30 every morning, the house empty except for 2 cats, 1 fish and an undecorated Christmas tree by 7:00 every morning (Dave has been leaving at 6), and no humans returning until 6:00pm. That's a long day. We have had some interesting highlights though...
1. I managed to completely freak Will out with the shower the other night. Oooops! He got sweet potato in his hair, so he definitely needed it washed...and the fastest way to get the soap out was to turn on the shower...and he screamed, at the top of his lungs, until I had finished rinsing his head, turned off all the water, wrapped him up in a towel, and got him most of the way in his pj's. We won't repeat that for awhile if I can help it.
2. Will can now sit in a chair at a table and eat an entire meal. Of course it is a little tiny table and a little tiny chair, and I have to say it is remarkably cute to see him sit there and grab french toast and melon out of a little bowl and chomp away on it while sitting up very straight in his little chair. We have daycare to thank for that little feat.
3. Will hasn't learned to say "Christmas tree" yet, but I keep trying. In the meantime...Nonni and Poppa got us a great very kiddo friendly Advent calendar last year for Christmas, and we got to put it up this year. I found the perfect spot for it - out of reach of the 4 footed monsters, and at the perfect height for me to hold Will and let him help. The calendar is a Christmas tree, with velcro and a whole bunch of ornaments (one for each day), so Will has been putting an ornament on the tree every night before bed. He's figured out that magnets will stick to the fridge, and his foam letters will stick to the side of the tub, so velcro ornaments on the Advent calendar are just about perfect for this year!
Tomorrow night we'll be decorating the Christmas tree, so I will try to post pictures over the weekend.

"In" experiment, William style...

I will admit that I turned my back for just a moment, so it is totally my own fault...when I turned back, Will had put his bottle IN Dave's water glass that was sitting on the coffee table, and tipped it over, water everywhere!!! He was so pleased that he'd figured out that the bottle would fit in the water glass that he was bouncing up and down and squealing with delight. Whoops!

I'm not exactly sure where to start, and I'm sure I'll miss things that have happened in the last couple of weeks, so please bear with me! Will is quite the charmer these days, though we seem to be careening toward walking and talking at the same time, and that's created some interesting situations for us. The latest developments....

We had a bit of a word "expansion" over the last 2 weeks - all done, uh oh, again, get down, and cheese have been added to Will's vocabulary. He figured out how to "use" all done in multiple situations while we were in Atlanta for Thanksgiving - sometimes entertaining, sometimes not. Entertaining when he would finish his bath and would say all done as the water finished draining out of the tub. Not so entertaining when he was sitting up in the bed at 4:30 in the morning trying to say "all done sleeping". In that situation he did say all done while grinning at me with that cute little dimple so I had to bite my tongue so I wouldn't laugh...He's now progressed to telling us when he's all done in the car seat, the stroller, eating, sleeping, or snuggling. "Uh oh" was used correctly for about 48 hours before Will started saying uh-oh for absolutely everything - everything that has dropped (whether he's thrown it or not!), when he bumps into something, when he sits down...etc. etc.

And now for walking....Will figured out that he could push the high chair all over the place while we were visiting my parents in Atlanta. Thank goodness Nonni and Poppa didn't mind! It was his absolute favorite activity....he started the visit by pushing the chair on his knees...by day 2 he'd gotten brave enough to stand up, and push whille walking.

Up to now we'd had spaghetti legs - why learn to walk when you can crawl everywhere with great speed?! Well, he finally got some interest in walking while holding someone's hands. Thanks for your help Uncle Doug!!We had a lovely visit with Nonni, Poppa, Aunt Lindsay, Uncle Doug and Ella in Atlanta. It was actually pretty quiet - a very nice respite for us from the craziness that is our usual day-to-day. We're hopefully off to get our Christmas tree this afternoon, take it a bit easy for the rest of the weekend, and launch into our work week. Pictures from Thanksgiving posted!!