Alright Alright Alright!

I could explain my lack of writing with my schedule lately, or on the fact that we’ve had such nice weather, it’s hard to stay inside to update a blog, or that we live so close to family now, who needs a blog anyway? Right? Well, this has become like my pile of clean laundry, piled so high that, my god, who wants to actually fold all that now? The weeks have gone by with no update, but I don’t have a good excuse, really, just that two weeks went by, then three, and now Will’s two days away from turning one and I have no silly stories or anecdotes to look back on from the last weeks of his babyhood.

So here are the cliff notes:

Will’s most favorite things to do:

Unplug the lights on either side of the fireplace (before a parent-type person snatches the plug and hides it).

Turn off the TV while Emily is watching a movie.

Eat.

Look at books and / or tear pages from books.

“Help” grandpa and dad (we’ve been doing a lot of painting, well not we, they’ve been doing a lot of painting, I try to stay the heck out of the way).

Being outside.

Eating some more.

Playing in the dirt and / or water, and putting them together, mud.

Drinking out of his sippy cup.

Did I mention eating?

Will has yet to find a food he really dislikes. He’s even gobbled down pickles and will eat even tomatoes and anything meaty or starchy. I think his favorite food is bananas, which he eats for breakfast. And what I mean by that is he eats bananas, plural, for breakfast. He gobbles down one banana and will usually chase it down with half of another, followed by maybe some toast or a bagel and cream cheese and a few hearty swigs of milk from his cup.

But if you saw him, you’d understand that he burns all that off in probably a few hours. He’s incredibly busy these days, walking a few steps between cruising around the furniture, climbing, tearing things apart as fast as possible. Now that I’ve started working, Ian has come to understand on a very primal level that when you’re home with the kids, it’s near impossible to do anything else! Quick, go tell the other men. However on the positive side, Ian has also been successful in getting Will to nap during the day without me, which is quite a landmark. And I don’t want to jinx this, but lately, Will has been falling asleep at night without nursing. The last few months, as Will had shown no interest in weaning (Emily pretty much self weaned at 11 months and never looked back), I had begun to worry about nursing a toddler, something I don’t see anything wrong with, but personally couldn’t do (my god, at some point, you just want your body back)

Will’s also communicating like a real person now. Added to his repertoire of words: Uh-oh, ba-ba (bye-bye), and he also shakes his head no and yes, usually in response to something he knows he shouldn’t be doing, like yesterday he crawled over to the broom, which was leaned up against the wall, and shook his head no, telling me he knew he shouldn’t touch it. But then he went ahead and grabbed it anyway. Will also shows sympathy and affection by rocking and patting his baby doll, or patting Emily and his dad on the head. He will also, and this is just about the cutest thing ever, give “baby kisses” if you ask him. He’ll plant a big open mouth kiss right on your cheek. He also blows raspberries, especially on me. He brushes his hair with a hairbrush and just now I was outside cleaning (well, hosing) off his high chair and he was scrubbing the tray with a sponge. Such a big, big boy!

Part of me forgets how old he really is, I think in my mind he’s still between 6 and 9 months old, so some of this behavior really catches me off guard. But here we are, two days away from Will’s birthday. And wow, it seems like only yesterday I was in tears as Ian and I drove to Moscow to walk in the mall, I was exhausted from false labor, and stressed thinking this baby would never be born!

But he was, I went to the hospital on May 16th with the same irregular contractions that had been going on for weeks, but by golly I was having a baby that day, and no one was going to tell me otherwise. Will arrived (again arrived is a huge omission of details I won’t go into here, see the first post) later that night at 10:28pm. Today he’s no longer our little serious mister, or our little squeaker that he was in those first few days. But he’s become a tumbling, rascal of a little boy much, much too quickly. But at least I can look back and know that not a moment was wasted, I can read the early days of this journal and know that I savored this little guy and clung onto his babyhood with two hands. Now, it’s time to enjoy Will’s toddlerhood, and I will, and I promise to remain only the tiniest bit nostalgic for the little bundle we brought home a year ago.