*sigh* Mostly because I'm not exactly sure where to begin. I am sitting in the living room, Will is asleep, Dave is downstairs, the cats are curled up on the sofa. Things have been absolutely downright bananas around here for weeks and weeks and weeks, and I don't think it is going to get much better this fall. On the contrary, it is likely going to get worse. So...here are a couple of highlights of the last almost 2 months (yikes!), and I'm going to see what I can do about getting myself some technology so that I can write shorter updates much much more often.

Our little Will is a fountain of words...we lost count a long long time ago on the number of words he knows, and now that he's stringing multiple words together to make an actual sentence, we know we're well on our way. Mr. Chatterbox has a running commentary on just about everything. A few favorites...
When he hears any sort of siren outside: "ambulance went bye bye to help somebody"
When he got out of the car after daycare the other day: "oh my goodness lots lots birds"
When he's stalling on going to bed: "animal book one time", "George one time", "hippos berzuck one time" (insert any number of favorite books here...we are raising a kid who LOVES to read).
When he's stalling on going to bed: "Mama sit rocking chair snuggle Will"
When Dave says good night: "Night night Dada, I love you"

There are lots of times when he pops up with a word that I didn't know he knew...we're still very short on "connector words", and verbs are not always his strong suit, but given that he's almost 2, I'm thanking my lucky stars he's doing as well as he is. I think it goes a long way to helping us help him as we approach the potential challenges of being 2 and 3 (I've seen glimpses...going to be interesting!).

Eating is well...like feeding a picky toddler. Anything that looks or smells like it might be good for him is out - I put fruits and veggies in front of this kid at just about every meal...and they mostly go uneaten. *sigh* Depending on his mood/hunger level, he will eat veggies and fruit at daycare, so hopefully it will translate to home at some point. We're approaching this in a very non-confrontational way. I figure it is one of the very few places that Will has complete control - it is pretty much impossible to force a toddler to eat something he doesn't want to - so we let him have the control (and he loves that). Proof he's happy about it - the other night at dinner he started asking himself if he wanted things and saying "nooooo", all with a huge grin on his face. It went something like...."do you want apples? Noooooo! Do you want...cheese? Nooooo! Do you want....crackers? Noooo!" He was very obviously not interested in eating, so we bailed on dinner and he headed for a bubble bath.

We spent a spectacular Labor Day weekend in Georgia with my family - Nonni & Poppa, Aunt Lindsay, Uncle Doug, Ella, Amelia, Uncle Trevor, JEM and Lily, all together for a long weekend. The guys got to play golf, we went to the pool at least once every day, and Will tried desperately to keep up with 3-year-old Ella - which meant he was absolutely exhausted when we came home. I'll add just a few pictures when I can.

In other family notes...Dave is having shoulder surgery to fix some damage done when he dislocated it in January. Surgery is toward the end of October, so he's trying to get a bunch of stuff done around the house before then. Work is pretty crazy for both of us, so that's making everything else harder (not fun!).

And tonight...is Will's first night in the toddler bed. We decided to give it a shot...he went to bed without a fuss, I have no idea what will happen if he wakes up in the middle of the night...I don't think he's actually figured out he can climb out yet - so I'll take it!