Casual Fridays

Every few weeks, we get behind in the laundry so that the only clean pants Will has on a Friday are his khaki dress pants. Luckily he has a lot of polo shirts, so he dresses business casual for daycare. :-)

And, of course, who doesn't like to play some hoops to work off the steam of a busy day at the office?

Or, heck, even go down the slide! We're really enjoying the play room. I expect it will be the background for many pictures in the next few months as it gets colder and we stay inside more and more.

I don't think Jason reads the blog, so I'll post that Will and I had a fun time on Saturday doing some coloring to make Jason's birthday card. And we also used stickers for the first time at home. It was really fun to see which stickers he picked and where he put them!

Weekend Update

What a wonderful weekend we had - hanging out as a family both days plus an adult dinner date out on Saturday night!

We were also happy to have Ryan join us on Sunday for collecting leaves, eating pancakes and swimming. And we love the K-State jersey that Ryan brought Will!

The big excitement was that Will got his first "haircut." The rat tail was getting out of control, so Jason made one snip with the kitchen scissors on Sunday evening. I'll be curious to see if the back grows back before he needs a real haircut!

Ask And You Shall Receive

[Editor's note: this is the only semi-recent picture that I do not appear to have posted yet; it doesn't really relate to the story. :-)]

Now that Will has started saying more words, we feel we need to reward him and let him know we understand what he's saying. So, he's eating a lot more things of his choosing because he's asking for them. First he was just saying (and signing) "More. . .more" so we'd keep refilling his plate/hands.

Last night while I was carrying him around the kitchen and preparing his dinner, he spotted the bananas on the counter and let me know he wanted one:

Will: "Ma. . .ma.? Ma. . ma? Na. .na?"

Me: "Will, do you want a banana?"

Will: (shaking head and pointing) "Na. .na."

Me: (walking over to that part of the counter) "Can you show me the banana?"

Me: (talking over Will to Jason) "He's saying banana. Can you hear; it's banana!"

Will: (pointing and flicking his tongue which was his early sign for "I want to eat that") "Na na. . . a. . nana."

And so we retrieved the banana for his appetizer. Everyone was happy! On a side note, he also had a few bite size prunes last night, which apparently he thought were delicious because he gobbled them down.

He Likes It!

Will was very excited to see all of the new toys awaiting him this morning (a morning which, I am happy to report, was not affected by daylight savings time). The basketball goal was actually his biggest thrill. He kept wanting to play - even after I started trying to get him changed so we could go to the grocery store. (He likes shoes and socks a lot, so he was willing to put those on - all the while refusing to stop for the pants or shirt.)

Proving it's not only round balls that he can dunk!An action shot! It's blurry but thought Will fans would enjoy a glimpse of the joyful running we see most days. I can't remember what he's racing to or from, but it rarely matters. There is usually peals of laughter and the knowledge that he's eluding something he doesn't want to do (i.e. getting dressed).

A quieter time of day: reading a book in his pajamas before bed.

A great use of the new table: puzzle time! He's very good at matching the pieces up in his puzzles.

Today was a beautiful day, so we walked to the grocery store for a few items after lunch and enjoyed the sunshine. In the morning we went to Target for a variety of items and I got Will a vanilla milk box. He hasn't had much practice with straws, so it was a mess. After he chewed up the straw to the point it could not be used, I had to buy a new sippy cup for him to drink the other 95% of the milk. We also made it back to the health club swimming pool before dinner. It was our first time in over a month since we've been on sick leave.

Merry Christmas William!

With tonight's addition of the Buy Buy Baby table, Will's Christmas present from Mommy and Daddy is complete! When he wakes up in the morning, he'll get to celebrate his first Christmas morning of 2010. :-)

We've got the new table so he can do his art projects at his own pace (and without worry about protecting the dining room table). The mat was a great find at Sam's Club a few weeks ago.
Wow! We've collected a lot of kid gear in the past year! One of the pieces of adult furniture in the room - the bookshelf - was edited last weekend so he couldn't reach our books which are all now crammed on the top two shelves. (Note, the pocket doors to the family room are usually open, but I didn't want Jason watching the KSU-Texas game in my background!)

A view of the rest of his play room: his faves - the slide and the puppy push toy - were both garage sale finds in spring 2009 from Courtney's mom. The basketball goal cost me $5 at the neighborhood kids sale in September. It's been in the garage until tonight, and he hasn't seen it yet.

I'm sure glad we didn't have enough adult furniture to outfit a formal living room and could put together this cool kids room!

Noodles and Peaches

We had pasta on Thursday night and Will was quick to turn his rigatoni into a Chinese finger trap. Although we weren't thrilled that he was playing with his food, we laughed a lot at this one. Will has been eating a ton recently, which has been good for my kitchen floor since he hasn't been throwing his food! Rachel's been eating more kibble these past few weeks. On Monday when the guys picked me up from the train, I saw Will was wearing his "back-up" outfit from daycare. I knew he was probably needing a big poo that day due to lack of activity the day prior, so I figured he just had some mess from that. Nope, he dumped his cup of diced peaches on himself at breakfast. Never would have expected sweet smelling laundry coming home in a bag from daycare!

Miscellaneous

A dog is man's best friend, and Rachel is Will's best friend. (Will is not necessarily Rachel's best friend - except at meal time!) I can't remember what Will was doing to Rachel that caused me to get out the camera, but it looks like he's driving his car (and likely doing his "zoom zoom" sound) for her. On Saturday we did some late afternoon errands. Although I have intentionally gone to Sam's Club at lunch/early afternoon snack time multiple times, I was surprised there were still goodies out at 5 p.m. So, Will ended up having an early dinner of frozen pb& j sandwiches. He loved the first one so much that he signed and said, "more" and directed us back for a second one. We haven't taught Will sign language, but he has picked it up from his friend at school. "More" is actually one of the only signs that I know, so it's a good thing that's the one he uses!

Will has been enjoying lots of new foods recently. We've found he likes spicier foods. Below he's eating vegetarian sausage gravy with biscuits. Jason doused his in Tabasco and Will wanted some of his. That happy face is because he slept 14 hours overnight and then got up to eat a yummy brunch and watch sports. What a great way to start the weekend!

One of Will's other favorite foods is soup. I've already written about the Panera broccoli and cheese. On Sunday he had soup from our local Chinese restaurant. It's basically egg drop soup with corn and rice in it. He ate 3 bowls of it!

Happy Halloween!

We started out our Halloween by carving our pumpkins. I was fine with leaving them with the marker coloring but Jason was pretty excited to carve them. They actually turned out great (see below), so I'm glad he was leading the charge. Will was not interested in the insides. He touched a few seeds but never stuck his fingers in the gooey. Shortly after we started, he got sleepy, so he went down for a nap and I carved his and my pumpkin in the time it took Jason to do his. :-) Our little monkey ready to go trick-or-treating. The festivities started in our neighborhood around 3:30. We had him dressed up all afternoon, since it was the perfect weather to wear that costume outside while we were raking leaves. He was such a good sport about the costume; he never once pulled on it.

And he's off! First stop at our next door neighbor's. He was very shy. Sitting in our front yard enjoying the pretzels we were handing out.

Our pumpkins!

We were outside in the yard/neighborhood from 2 to 5 and had a steady stream of trick-or-treaters from 3:30-4:30. We just set out treats on the front porch so we could come and go as we wanted. We rang the doorbell at four immediate neighbors' houses. For part of the evening we stood in our neighbor's driveway since they were a designated "rest station" and had chili and beer. We ran out of our treats at 6 p.m. and had to turn the lights off and blow out the candles. Most of the traffic was done as of 5:30 though. We have lots of little kids and the neighborhood newsletter sugggested a pre-dinner trick-or-treating since it's a school night, so it worked out perfectly.

Halloween Preview

This morning we took Will to daycare in his Halloween costume: a monkey! I hope we get some better pictures this weekend, but these are a few of the better ones from this morning - the first time he'd donned the monkey suit. Except for the hand covers, he was pretty darn cooperative.

Rachel checking out the furry competition

Yes, that's a banana in his pocket!

Practicing monkey howls?
Something new to chew on.

When we dropped Will off this morning, he fit right into the jungle. There was already a giraffe, tiger and lion each there, as well as a puppy dog. The only non-animal was a little girl who was either Snow White or Little Red Riding Hood.