Needles and a Pen » Knitting, Sewing, and Nursing School

Another of my favorite Will words is “back.”  He uses it totally inappropriately.  It means “put” to Will, because he has heard me say (so many many times) “put that back.”  Nic has been working with Will on this (“see?  Daddy puts the ball IN the box.  IN the box.”)  Me?  I just think it’s cute.

Will lost his left ring finger fingertip on Tuesday.  He was next door being watched by the neighbor while I was at a shoot in Denver, and Nic was at work.  Our neighbor’s two and a half year old daughter closed the sliding glass door, not knowing that Will’s finger was on the doorway, and it sliced the tip of his finger off.  Nic was on his way home, and was able to take him to the hospital.  Meanwhile, I was an hour and a half away, totally oblivious.  I called Nic after my session ended to check in and say hello, and Nic played things very cool.  He said that Will had cut his finger and they were going to the hospital just to be on the safe side, but it wasn’t anything to worry about.

He is a good liar.  There was no “just to be on the safe side” about it–his fingertip was in a baggie on ice!

Will was a trooper.  Our neighbor said he was so brave.  And when I got to the hospital, he wasn’t even crying, just sitting on the cot watching tv.  When I got to the ER (after sprinting to the door from the parking lot [thank God the speed limit on I-25 is 75 mph]) I asked the nurses at the front desk where I could find my Willie,  The nurse said “oh–he is such a doll!” and I knew she knew who I was talking about!  She gushed over how adorable he is and said it broke her heart when he looked at her, held up his hand, and said “ouch.”

He only cried when they touched it.  But when they touched it, oh how he cried!  It broke my heart into a hundred thousand pieces to see him hurt like that (and then of course there was all the guilt of not being there to prevent it).  He would cry “done!  done!  done!” or “home!” or just scream “mom-mom” or “da” or in one particularly heartbreaking moment (trying to get him to put his hand down on the table so he could have it x-rayed) he had exhausted his mom-mom and dad-dad pleas and called for E!  (If he had known that Uncle E was in Australia, he probably would have asked him to bring along The Wiggles with him to save his finger!)

We were in the ER for a LONG time.  Nic and Will got there around 5:30, and we weren’t discharged until after 10.  I felt horrible for Will–I knew he was starving, and it was past his bedtime, and so at 9:00, after asking the nurse to make sure the doctor wouldn’t be coming any time soon, I went to get dinner.  (We decided that it was best for me to go, because on the off-chance that the doctor DID come, I’m not able to hold Will still as well as Nic.)

I went to get my boys dinner from the nearby Qudoba, but missed the doctor, of course.  I got back just as the doctor was leaving the room, the tears still fresh on Will’s cheeks.  Nic said it was for the best that I wasn’t there, though, and I’m inclined to agree.  Daddies are just better at that stuff than Mommies.

Will fell asleep on the way home, and we stopped to get his prescriptions (an antibiotic to prevent infection, and hydro-codone for the pain).  Of course, the codone is a both a blessing and a curse.  It doesn’t make him sleepy–it makes him crazy!  Jumping off furniture, making bad decisions crazy.  Not what you need with part of your finger missing!

They weren’t able to do anything for him other than clean it and bandage it–they think it will grow back better if it isn’t stitched up.  But that part is horrible.  At least with stitches you feel like your child is “fixed.”  But instead of being all sealed up, he is walking around with an open finger!

He is so brave. SO BRAVE.  He hasn’t cried about it at all today.  His bandage has a tendency to slip down, so when I have to redress it it certainly provides an opportunity to cry or fuss, but he doesn’t.  He lets me look at it, goop it up with tons of neosporin (directions from the nurse) re-dress it, and wrap it back up.  Of course, it helps that the first time I did it (and this morning [as well as last night] he didn’t want anyone looking or touching it) I gave him the Costco tup of Jelly Bellys to distract him. 

We had his specialist appointment yesterday and everything went very well.  She thinks it will grow back just fine (maybe with a little help at the end to give it some more skin at the top) as long as we are patient.  Our follow-up is in three weeks, and she thinks it will take a couple of months for it to be healed.  Which is a bummer, because March-May are really the prime “playing outside” times–the summer is so hot!  But he would most likely be 100% healed for our if-traci-books-three-more-weddings (and she has three brides she thinks will book) -we-get-to-go-to-disneyland-in-may trip.

She gave us a splint to keep it from getting banged up, which has made me feel so much better.  It was awful to feel like he just had this little amputate finger hanging out there to get damaged.  We did pause our My Gym membership for the time being, though, which breaks my heart for Will!

He didn’t cry at all at the specialist visit–in fact, there have been zero tears since the doctor cleaned and bandaged it at the hospital.  (well, at least hand related tears–we still have tantrum tears!)  The most he does is show us his hand and say “ouch.”

For the first two days (this is day three) he had a little story he would tell us.  Every once in a while he would come over and show us his hand and say “ouch.”  “dogs.”  “jump.”  The first time he said it I thought “dogs” might have been “door” but when I said “door?  you finger got shut in the door, huh?”  He looked at me like I was simple and kept saying “dogs” until I said “dogs–it happened at the house where there are dogs” and then he was satisfied.  I’m not sure whether he is saying that the dogs (two little dogs, one goldendoodle puppy) were jumping on him, or whether he is saying that it happened at the house where there are dogs, and he had either been jumping, thinking about jumping, was about to jump, or had been jumping at the time.  No one will ever know, but if you want to know Will’s story of how it happened, here it is:  ouch.  dogs.  jump.

He is off the codone as of this morning (thank god) and just on motrin and tylenol.  Honestly, I doubt he even needs that–the finger doesn’t slow him down at all, and he seems to be only bothered by the fact that his arm is in a splint!  He sleeps very well (we’ve spoiled him the last couple of nights and had him sleep with Nic in our bed).  The first night he just woke up once, but I was very easily able to get him back to sleep (in under a minute–just had to lay him back down and tell him we love him).  The second night was a little crazy-the codene made him wired during the day, so he didn’t fall asleep for a nap until 4pm!  We didn’t want to wake him (he’s trying to grow a finger) so when he woke up at 9pm, we gave him dinner and let him play until he was ready for bed (at 3am–yikes).  But last night he went to bed at a less insane 10pm and slept through until 6:30.  He had a regular nap today, so I’m hoping we might even manage to get sort of back on track!  We are spoiling him, though, and let him fall asleep on the sofa with one of us.  Neither of us has the heart to make an amputee cry.

We are in awe of how brave he is.  You can bet there would be a lot of bitchin’ and moanin’ if I was in his shoes.  The hardest part is trying to keep him resting.  We have used plenty of Disney movies in the last couple of days, but with the splint now, I feel like he’s probably ready for more regular action.  I think we’ll take him to the zoo tomorrow and hopefully he’ll enjoy his time playing with the other kids in the church nursery on Sunday–I think he’s ready.

He doesn’t seem to be holding anyone responsible for his injury.  Casey (our neighbor), Ems (the “amputater”), and Jameson (a witness) came over yesterday with “get well soon” balloons.  Will was shy at first, but that could have easily been that he had just woken up.  When Casey mentioned that I should bring him over to her house soon to get back on the horse, he ran for the door!  We took him next door and he was totally fine (happy to see the dogs–which is why I think the “dogs” part of his story is more a location description than a blame-placer) and happy to run around.  So while he might be literally scarred for life, he doesn’t appear to be so figuratively!

One of my favorite Will words is “yuck.”  It’s cute to see what he thinks is yuck.  Like this morning he kissed Mitzy and then said “yuck.”

The full story on Will’s missing finger tip is coming–I’m working on typing it right now.  He’s doing really well, though–aside from the gauze and splint, you wouldn’t know the kid had a serious injury from the way he acts!

 The big two for Will today!  He woke up so cranky I was sure he was sick, but since we absolutely HAD to run errands, I got him ready and took him out.  It is not just Will’s birthday…Costco opened up here!  A mere 20 minutes away.  Heaven.

We arrived an hour after the grand opening, and the place was packed.  We waited in line for at least 30 minutes to get a membership, and I was beginning to feel a little guilty about doing this to Will on his birthday…that is, until the samples started flowing.

Of COURSE Costco is an awesome place to take Will!  Nothing makes him quite as happy as trying new things…and there were new tastes on every corner!  And the giant jar of Jelly Bellys we took home didn’t hurt things, either.

It’s a good thing Willie and I had so much fun, because there is a good chance we won’t be allowed back without adult (ie–Nicolas) supervision.  No one should be allowed to spend that much money on groceries and paper products at one store in one day.

Tonight after Bed Time, Will had an accident (I think he is getting that stomach bug that everyone else has).  Since we have impressed upon him how much poopy accidents make us sad, he tried to clean it up himself.

It was bad.  It was in his hair.  On his blanket.  On his bed.  Into the carpet.

And that is the story of how Will almost didn’t make it to his second birthday.  Nic’s head just about exploded.

But I felt really badly for Will (I’m a sucker for clean-up attempts) so we went to the bathtub and had a nice bath followed by a nice cuddle time with a story while Nic cleaned up the mess.  Not exactly a Consequence for a poopy bedroom…but I am 99.5% positive that no consequence was needed–he knew and was sorry.

It was exactly two years ago to the hour that I went into labor with Will.  If we’d known how many poopy bedroom incidents there would be, we might have told him to stay in there. 

After all those hours of editing and mashing together and adding a soundtrack it turns out I missed an entire tape of raw video!

I could punch myself in the face right now.

I realized after talking to Kelly last night that I somehow missed a huge chunk of videos in our 2007 home videos dvd.  Which means they either got taped over or are missing somehow.  Looks like I know how I’ll be spending naptime today!  ARGH!

We’ve been cleaning today–going through toys in anticipation of Will’s birthday this week.  Man that kid has a ton of toys!  But the thing is, he plays with all of them!

He didn’t take a nap yesterday (although he tried to crash at 5:30 and I had to wake him up by making popcorn and hot chocolate) so this morning he slept in…until 9:30!!!!!!!  It was heaven!  Not worth the no-nap crazies, but nice for a one time deal!  I even squeezed twelve hours of sleep out of it!

It turns out that the number of “ut”s in “ut-oh” is directly related to how bad of an “ut-oh” Will perceives it to be.  The big car crash scene in Cars, for example, gets FOUR “ut”s.  Spilling watter on the floor, though, just gets two.

We are very excited about Will’s new potty independence.  The thing about potty training a child under the age of two is that they might not be able to do the potty trip by themself.  That was totally fine with me–I was much more happy to hear “heee!” (will’s word for pee) and run off with him to the potty than deal with diapers.  But in the last week, he has been taking matters into his own hands.

We have had a little potty since the beginning, but he preferred the big potty…and within a week or so, he had ditched the little boy adapter for using the big potty just as it is and holding on to the seat to balance.  In the last week, we have seen renewed interest in the little potty–he would go and pee in it and then try to take the bowl to the toilet himself (not my favorite trick).  This week, though, he learned how to climb up onto the potty himself!  I was amazed to see him sitting on the potty upstairs peeing yesterday.  Nic and I were doing our own thing, and the next thing I knew, he was sitting on the big potty peeing!  (No stool, nothing!  You should see him climb onto the potty–he does it like a spider monkey.)

With poop, he has been semi potty trained for the last couple of weeks.  He wears unders or goes commando for the day, but would bring me a diaper when he wanted to poop, I’d slap on the diaper, he’d go somewhere private, do his business, and come back for a change.  I wasn’t going to push it, because I have read too many horror stories of boys and poop.  He would poop on the potty occassionally, and I figured it would come eventually.

Last night he went into our bathroom and closed the door.  I followed him in (assuming he was up to either playing with the plunger or eating tampons) and he bitched me out and slammed the door in my face.

I lay down on my belly to watch him under the door…saw him climb up onto the potty, and then heard some grunting.  I peeked in just in time to see that he had pooped and was about to flush it down himself!  Gross blog talk, yes, but so exciting for us!  It was a potty trip he initiated and executed all by himself!  I was thrilled.

It’s awesome to have him be more independent in his potty trips.  He is ready for that second birthday next week!  Weaned, potty trained, sleeping in a big boy bed, using two word phrases, and letting us sleep through the night (right now, he has been sneaking into our bed some time during the night, but since he isn’t waking either of us, we figure we’ll let it go until it does wake us up or he turns three–whatever comes first).   That sounds like a boy who is ready to be two to me!

At the moment, Will’s favorite toys are a little screwdriver and Nic’s two godzilla dolls (there is a big-un and a little-un).  He spends a lot of time doing ill-advised dental work on them.

Will is very into teeth.  He is always saying “teeth!” which is his way of asking for his toothbrush.  Nic always gives it to him and praises him “thank you for choosing to make dental hygiene a priority in your life” he says…but I mainly roll my eyes as Will stands there sucking the training-toothpaste out of the toothbrush bristles.

Will and I left the house early this morning (as in 9am) to go to the zoo.  I decided to run some errands on the way, since I figured Will would fall asleep on the way home.  Except that when we got to the stores…THEY WERE CLOSED.  It turns out there is a reason why I don’t leave the house until 11:00, and it isn’t (as I had previously thought) because I am lazy.  Apparently there are plenty of establishments that also believe that it is ungodly to operate before 10am.

Will fell asleep four minutes before we arrived at the zoo.  He was impossible to wake.  He goes into these stages of sleep where he literally cannot be woken.  You stand him up, he crumples.  You blow raspberries on his belly, he laughs in his sleep.  IMPOSSIBLE.  So I popped him in his stroller and got myself some $0.75 hot chocolate (we bought a souvenir cup so now every time we go to the zoo we get the most delicious hot chocolate for just 75 cents) and waited twenty minutes before pushing Will over to the giraffes, and then working very hard to wake him (mostly by shouting “LOOK!  GIRAFFES!  CRACKERS!” 3mm from his ear).  He was a little bit picky today about which giraffes were allowed to eat his crackers.  I have no idea what his criteria was.

He was excited about the boars today (usually not his thing) and said “piggies” for the first time.  He also had a lightbult moment in the monkey house when the monkeys went ape-crazy and started hollaring at each other.  Will’s face lit up and he said “ooh-ooh-ooh”–for the first time HEARING the monkey sounds that he had been using!  It was very exciting for him.

Will’s birthday is just over a week away (EEEK!) and we’re going to have his party the week after next.  I only had to print out four invitations–it makes me so sad that we don’t need to print out more!

It is going to be a safari themed party, since Will loves giraffes more than anything in the whole world.  I am making him a giraffe cake and am going to try to get safari hats for me and Nic to wear as the party tour guides.

I’m hoping everyone can make it–we’ve invited Will’s neighborhood friends, his friend Mason (whose mommy is my photographer friend), and Oscar the dog and his mommy Laura (who was at Will’s very first birthday party, too).

Things are chuggin’ along here.  I’ve booked another wedding, and would have hoped to book a second this weekend, but the bride and groom got rear-ended on their way to the meeting and their car was totalled.  I hope they reschedule…but brides are fickle creatures and I’m worried she’ll take it as a bad sign.  I have another meeting on Tuesday, so I’m hoping we’ll be at five weddings by the end of the week!  If we make it to eight before the end of March, there’s a special family prize planned. 

(Joan–you shouldn’t read this post–it will just make you think I’m serious.   )

Nicolas and I have long planned for Second Baby in February of 2009.  Three year gap between babies.  I just read on CNN, however, that that would be the Worst Plan EVER.

Having a baby in 2009 is the worst economic decision a family can make.  Wanna know why?  Because a baby born on 30 December 2008 is worth $300 more than a baby born on 1 January 2009.

Here–educate yourself:   http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/08/pf/taxes/rebates_what_you_need_to_know/index.htm?eref=rss_topstories

Nic and I have been all about brainstorming ways to make more money–after all, we have no idea what job Nic will have in May.  So I called him up a minute ago and said “OMG–wanna know how we can make an easy $300?”

And he said “have a baby?”

It’s fate.  Sometimes the Pope tells you to stop using your condoms and IUDs and you say “forget that, Mr Silly Hat.”  But then President Bush says “I’ll give you $300 for every child you have before the end of 2008” and you say “light the candles, babes…we’re gettin’ it on.”

The Pope is so going about it the wrong way.

To be fair, this really isn’t much of a confession, since if you spend any time at all at our house, you can observe this on your own.

I’m not really into clothing Will.  It started in the days of diapers and hot humid Virginia summers.  It didn’t make sense to wear clothes in that kind of heat, and it certainly didn’t make sense to put pants on a kid if you were just going to be taking them off every hour.  Plus, who wants to cover up those cute cloth diapers and chunky little legs?  As the temperatures dropped, I just cranked up the heat.  No pants, no problem in this house.

Enter potty training.  For the first few days, we took the “no underwear at all” approach.  Those few days of freedom were all Will needed to determine that the way to live is sans underwear.  Keeping unders on the kid is virtually impossible, and since he FREAKS OUT every time you go to put pants/unders on him (shouting “heee! heeee! heee!” and insisting on 100 trips to the bathroom) it’s easier to let both Willies run free.

It is not uncommon to hear Nic say “could you try to keep some unders on that kid today?” as he walks out the door sure that his wife has lost all standards and attempts at discipline (this is not totally untrue).  And so Will spends most of his day naked from the waist down (and often from the waist up, too).

In fact, because of this complete fear of peeing in his pants, we have discovered that the key to a much easier bedtime routine is to let him fall asleep naked.  Then we sneak in after he’s asleep and slap a diaper on him.  We repeat the process after his midnight trip to the potty.  Except that sometimes I forget or fall asleep too soon and the kid wakes up naked.

Nic talks wistfully about families where children wear clothing and he asks occassionally if I would like to join the ranks of those families.  Sadly for him, it’s just not up there on my wish list.

He is getting to be such a big boy.  It’s kind of ridiculous.  Today I told him to go get in his chair for lunch and I heard him say “ut-ut-oh” and then he came running into the kitchen, opened up the cupboard, grabbed a towel, then ran back to his high chair.  His chair had breakfast crumbs in it, so he had grabbed a towel and wiped it clean.  Then he got into his chair and waited for me to come buckle him in.

How cute is he?!

…we now have five brides who have requested information/meetings with us! 

I’ve been sick all week, so wouldn’t it figure that just as I am starting to feel better, Will comes down with it. 

We had a sore throat party at midnight last night–watched a movie and drank juicy water while Will told me about his “ouch.”

(Needless to say, I plugged the tv back in when I got really sick.  When we’re well, it will be off limits again.)

If you know Will, you know that he loves to play the “one, two, three, WAKE UP MOMMA!” game.  But he does NOT like it played on him when he is trying to fall asleep at an inopportune time.  If you say “one, two, three, WAKE UP WILL!!” he opens his eyes and looks at you and then says “SLEEEE[p]!” and closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

Nic taught him to hide under a blanket and say “oh no!”

My favorite, though, is his version of ut-oh.  He says “ut-ut oh.”  Every time with the extra “ut.”  It makes it really cute and sing-songy, even if he just dropped a spoonful of oatmeal on my favorite shirt.

I have my first meeting with a bride on Saturday.  I am very excited.  My new sample album arrived just in time.  It is gorgeous, sturdy, and HUGE.  11×14 is really big in an album!  The album is shockingly heavy–it has to weigh 20 pounds. I’ll post a few pictures later–I’m avoiding posting it on the photography blog because the last time I posted a fun new product, zillions of photographers emailed me to know where I got it.  And if everyone has them, they won’t be nearly as cool!

I put an advertisement in a local wedding site because it was cheap ($30) and you don’t have to sign a contract–it is just month to month.  Sounded like a good gamble.  And it is paying off!  The ad was up for only two days before I had an email from a bride saying that she already had a photographer, but now she regretted it.  She gushed over our style and cheap prices (we underpriced ourselves by about $1000), then posted about me on The Knot (which is HUGE in the world of brides and weddings–it is the 2peas of weddings) and because of her post, a bride found my website and contacted me about setting up a meeting!  Wish me luck for Saturday!

Today is a banner day for Will.  I am declaring him Potty Trained!!!

(Watch the Gods be totally pissed off by this, and tomorrow we’ll have to stick him in diapers.)

Thursday as Will and I were coming home from My Gym we pulled into the garage and discovered Nic’s car–he was already home!  I said “Oh good!  Daddy is home!” and from the back seat I heard “Da, home?!”

A cute Will story to share:  I gave him a snack of goldfish crackers in his Finding Nemo cup this afternoon.  He dropped all of the fish on the floor, filled the cup with water, and then put them back.  I did not teach him that!  I couldn’t believe it!

He was very content,dipping them into the water and pulling them back out, until they started to dissolve.  Then he got upset and when his fingers got gunky he would run to me and say “hands!” and I wiped his hands and then he ran back and we repeated the process.  Will doesn’t like messy hands for too long.  He likes to use a napkin at dinner–it is very cute!

 I figured out why the Brio trains say three and up.  Because the engines don’t have magnets on the front of them.  And so you can’t connect them to other engines.  Which will make a 23 month old LOSE HIS MIND

In other news, we unplugged the tv.  No tv for Will.  None at all.

Will watches (or I should say WATCHED) too much tv.  Nic knew it, I knew it…the cable company knew it.  But because he can turn on the tv, turn on the dvd player, go get a dvd case from the closet (where we had hidden them in an attempt to cut down on the watching), open it up, get the dvd, put it into the dvd player, and change the input on the tv…it wasn’t a matter of Will coming to us and asking us to watch TV and us saying “no” it was a matter of us physically restraining him.  Besides…it’s easy to fall back on the tv when things are busy.  And things always seem to be busy!

Every night for the last week I’ve gone to bed thinking “we need to watch less tv–tomorrow I’m going to sneak downstairs before Will and unplug it” only to wake up and think “tomorrow–we’ll quit tomorrow.”

Yesterday I was at a friend’s house bemoaning my crappy parenting and saying that I really need to just suck it up and unplug the tv.  Last night, after dinner, as Will declared his intent to watch Mo-Mo, Nic looked at me and asked “Do you think he watches too much tv?”  I said “yes.”  He said “do you think we should unplug it?”

It was very weird, because we hadn’t talked about it lately at all…and suddenly on the same day I talked to a friend about it, Nic suggested it, too.  So I got Will’s attention and Nic Pulled the Plug.

It’s gone well.  We finished Day One and it was easier than I thought.

“done” is probably the absolute cutest, but “gone” is adorable, too.  he’s also added “phone” to the list

Lots of stuff going on around here this past three day weekend!  Potty training, trying to get Will to go to bed like a champ, getting two of our pictures picked up for a travel photography article, the most beautiful snowy day ever, finally getting my website fixed from Blu (in the end, I did so much of the work myself, that all they needed to do [other than slap my hand for violating the terms of use and trying to fix it myself] was reset the password)…and yesterday Nic got requested for an interview on Wednesday!

He is now one-for-one when it comes to applying for jobs and getting an interview!  Yippee for Nic!  His interview will be Wednesday afternoon, so please pray hard for us!  I have total faith in Nic, but landing a job this early in the game would certainly be a nice relief!!

He sent in his resume/cover letter for one job in particular, but he will be interviewing for several that he qualifies for, which is nice, I think!  The company is Booz Allen, which is a consulting firm.  This means that it is very hard for me to understand what they do…but on the flip side, it does mean that he wouldn’t have to “sell anything bought or processed, buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold or bought, or repair anything sold, bought or processed.”  Which, as we all know, is the dream.

It would be a good job for him, and he’d probably work at Schriever or their offices in town–neither of which would increase his commute.  With the current economy, and Nic’s particular experience/skills, we’ll be best off staying here for another year or two, so cross your fingers for us–we definitely want this interview to go well!

Yesterday afternoon when Nic saw the email, he was suitless.  Not a suit to his name that wasn’t navy blue with ribbons on it.  (Barney from How I Met Your Mother would be so pissed off at him.)  So…we crossed our fingers that we’d find either (a) a perfect suit or (b) a remarkably fast tailor, and dashed off to Banana Republic.  Nic wanted to ditch me and Willie B, but I insisted on coming along.  This was my first opportunity to purchase a shirt/tie combo with Nic, and I wasn’t about to miss it.

We got very lucky.  Banana Republic (where I’d encouraged people to buy Nic gift certificates for his birthday, since I knew he would be needing a suit soon and it seems to match his style) sells their suits meant to be worn off the hangar.  Lucky!  They had the sizes he needed (which was even more lucky), and we’ll take the jacket in for a minor alteration once we know it’s safe to do so, but it looks great now.  And best of all, Nic got a COLORED shirt.  (When we’d discussed this beforehand, he was leaning toward white.  WHITE!  Why not just paint “blah” on your chest and have done with it?!)  And two awesome ties (cause we couldn’t decide, and both were awesome).  It looks really sharp, and I can’t wait to see him all fancy tomorrow for his interview!

Will came along for the shopping experience, which was a bit of a risk…but he ate one apple and one tube of Cotton Candy Flavored LipSmackers chapstick, and that kept him content until right up at the end while we were checking out.  Then we just had to keep him trucking while we grabbed a shirt from a different store.

After the shopping, we took him to Panera for his favorite thing–broccoli cheddar soup.  When I told him we were going to get soup, he perked right up and started making slurping sounds.  He was such a doll at Panera–he did his best job ever with the soup spoon (holding it over the bowl until it dripped, dumping some off the spoon if he thought there was too much and he might spill it, leaning toward the bowl, etc) and kept eating long after Nic and I had finished.

It was a great night, and it has the possibility to get even better–the sales guy at Banana Republic was saying that the tie that was my favorite (and one of the ones we got) was the tie he had picked to wear at his wedding in June.  He didn’t have a photographer yet, so we gave him my card.  It could be fate!

I also have good stories to share from our Sunday trip to the zoo.  It was pretty much bitterly cold (below freezing for sure), and we were one of four or five families visiting the zoo.  (Nic thought it was funny that all the people there were pushing strollers.  In freezing cold weather, the parents of toddlers are STILL desperate to get out of the house!)  We toured the whole thing, which we haven’t done in a long time, and Will walked (ran) for most of it.

They had the giraffes inside, and what would have been the highlight of the trip actually was scary for Will.  Usually when you feed them, you are up on a high platform, so they don’t seem so tall.  Indoors, though, they were much taller, and it took Will a long time to work up the courage to give them a cracker.  But he did, so I was proud of him!

The real highlight of the trip was the linx.  As I walked up to her cage I saw her watching Will.  She hunkered down (just like Will the cat does before he pounces) and stalked Will!  He ran up to the cage and she pounced!  She swatted at the glass, and he patted back.  They played together for a while, and it was the funniest thing!  Nic and I are positive that it was play for her as opposed to aggression–it was just so funny.  And of course, THIS was the zoo trip that I made a decision not to bring the still or video camera!  When we left, Will blew her kisses, and then held out his arms for a hug!  It was very cute–because linx-toddler interaction is ALWAYS cute when there’s a layer of nice thick glass between them! 

You can add “child-proof door handles” to the list of “child-proof” items that Will can outsmart.  For those keeping track, they include medicine bottle caps and cabinet locks.

This afternoon, he learned how to operate our child-proof door handles.  He is not yet two.

So tonight we struggled even more with bedtime, which we had seemed to have a handle on in the last few nights.

The kid takes after so many people in our family.  But at bedtime, he reminds me so much of his Aunt Kelly.  In fact, Kelly will probably be disappointed to hear that at only two, he as already de-throned her of her title as The Stall Master.

Kelly’s skills were legendary, but even she would be impressed by what Willie B has to throw at us.  He starts off with the usual–the requests for water, for one more story…and like Kelly, he learned quickly to Just Be Cute.  Cuteness will always get you an extra minute.  Requests for another hug are like a golden ticket.  Moms just can’t resist that.  An adorable kiss blow to you on your way out the door.

He, as you all know, is not above using poop as a stall tactic.  And tonight, he used pee.  “Ka!” he shouts, and we take him to the potty.  He squeezes out some pee, goes back to bed, and repeats the process.

Tonight he tried something new.  “Ka!” he shouted from his doorway, holding Paul (the potty training doll), who was naked from the waist down with his legs spread.  I thought I knew where he was going with this, but since potty training is our number one priority right now, I figured I had to give him the benefit of the doubt.

My instincts, though, were dead on.  He ran to the potty, held Paul over it, and made grunting noises.  Then he flushed for Paul.

And then I marched him back to bed.

Tonight, as soon as he discovered that he could come out of his room, he added a new trick:  opening the door and then crawling along the floor with his hands covering his eyes so that surely we couldn’t see him.  (video posted.)

Nic and I could hardly keep straight faces.  In fact, Nic couldn’t–I had to be the one to send him packing.

After a few rounds of this, and some stern words, he got the idea that this was not okay behavior (which was really hard to tell him, because it was so cute and funny).

I left the door open as I left his room, hoping that if *I* left the door open, opening it would no longer be a game.

Nic and I retreated to the office, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Paul go flying into the hall.  And then I heard the chorus of “wah wah wah wah wah” begin (video posted–go check them out).

Because everyone knows that no mommy can resist a crying baby, Will had sent Baby Paul out into the hallway as his ambassador.

It is incredibly hard to discipline a child that is that creative and cute.  It involves sharing a quick giggle with Nic, and then putting on a mean game face.

It’s a good thing we have all that military training.

Willie is fancy.  And he likes to wipe himself.  Today he combined those two traits in what will become a legen…wait for it…dary mess in this house.

Today, Willie pooped in his underwear.  (This is not news-worthy.)  But while I was cleaning up his poopy underwear, I left him sitting on the potty alone.  He likes to wipe himself, and normally this is not a problem (I always do a proper job of it before letting him attack the region).  He also likes to flush the toilet.  Normally, this is also not a problem.  But when combined in the ratio in which he chose to combine them…it became a huge problem.

There I was, dealing with poopy underwear, listening to Will flush the toilet and sing his happy little “I’m sitting on the potty” songs…when I heard a splash and a gush.  My eyes went wide.  I tossed the poopy underwear into the washing machine and ran into the bathroom.

Willie was sitting on his baby-potty-seat-on-top-of-big-potty-seat attachment, happily flushing away as his butt was cleansed by the gallons of water gushing underneath him.

I may have screamed a little.

I threw a rag at the lake that was our powder room, picked Will up under one arm (wet butt raised to the sky), grabbed some dirty towels to throw at the floor, and ran Will up to the bath.

We knew Will was fancy.  But I never knew he was fancy enough to require a bidet.

I thought I should write specifics about Will’s potty training progress today, since when I’m going through this again in three years, I may well have forgotten the frustration and what counts as progress.

What progress isn’t, is making it through the day in one pair of underwear.  What progress IS, is just peeing a drop or two before running to the potty.  Heck, even I pee my pants a little bit sometimes. 

He had one giant accident first thing this morning, looked shocked and very sad, and has contained it to minor accidents ever since.  He’s even up for going to the potty with Tori here (which is exactly the sort of distraction that could keep him from going to the potty).  If he has to go, and I lead him to the potty, he goes, sits, and pees.  If he doesn’t have to go, he screams bloody murder as I stear him toward the bathroom…and I let him go back to playing.

This “pee just a tiny bit and shout “KA!” and then run to the bathroom with mommy” business is okay by me.  I am very proud of my little potty trainer!  We’ve come a long way since his screaming-tantruming-“get-me-off-this-porcelain-death-trap” ways of this weekend.

Potty training has been kicking my butt the last five days.  Not fun stuff.  But today, I’m finally seeing some awesome progress.  Maybe we’ll actually be able to leave the house next week!

I just keep repeating my mantra: if you can train a puppy, you can train a Will.

Last night Will asked for another hug as we were leaving his room.  It was very sweet.  And, it also happens to be a useful word!

Last night he was quite the pill at dinner time–really just freaking out on us.  SCREAMED when we put him in his high chair, and then he threw spaghetti at me when I put his tray down.  So I took away the tray and let him scream at us for a minute or two (I refused to clean the spaghetti off his hand and leg until he calmed down, which really pissed him off).  Got him cleaned up, and then he cried again. I unbuckled him so he could get down while Nic and I had dinner, but he climbed right back up and tried to buckle himself up–crying the whole time.  He reached for his tray, so I gave him his tray.  He cried, so I took it away.  He cried when I took it away. And so on and so forth–the child was just losing it.

We didn’t know whether or not to take this screaming basket-case to My Gym as planned, so Nic simply asked “Will, do you want to go to My Gym?” and suddenly, for the first time in ten minutes, there was silence.  “Gym?  Jump?”  he asked, and wiggled out of the chair.  “Zoom?”

We told him that yes, we would “go bye-bye in the zoom to My Gym.”  He got very excited and did his monkey noise/signs (because the My Gym logo is a monkey, and he always tells me about it when we pull into the parking lot).

We got him dressed, packed him into the car, and off we drove to My Gym.  Except he fell asleep after all of five minutes in the car.  We decided to take him anyway, because a 5:45 bedtime is a recipe for trouble.

We woke Will up once we got there, and he was very excited to see that we were at his favorite place.  He played hard the whole time…but of course failed to fall asleep on the way home.  Oh well.  We let him play around for a little bit when we got home and then we had a nice easy bedtime routine.

Potty training is going okay.  It is exhausting and frustrating, because all of the progress we made in December was totally wasted.  In fact, it seems as if we’re WORSE off than we were when we started in December, because now he knows that he doesn’t want to be potty trained and would much rather continue his lifestyle of peeing and crapping when and where he wants.  Hopefully today will be a good potty training day–I could use some success around here.

The last two nights I’ve had dreams about going back to England that have made me mopey, and then I realized why–yesterday and the day before that were the 11 year anniversary of the day(s) we moved to England (we left on the 13th, arrived the 14th).  Funny that my dreams knew that, even if I didn’t!

It’s not a new word, but I have a feeling I haven’t mentioned it….or the game that accompanies it.  The “jew..jew…dree–UP DA (or MA or Nair or Jeff)” game that Will made up from The Wiggles.  And then he insists that you go back to “sleeeeeeeeep” and that your hand is positioned in exactly the right spot on your face.

A new word this past week, though, is blanket: “balin.”  And “din” definitely means “thank you.”

We’re back to potty training today.  We’re commitmented to potty training this kid this weekend.  Last night he took a poo, took of his diaper, and then sat down–grinding it into the carpet.  However big of a pain in the butt that potty training him is, it’s a lot less bad than the alternative…which seems to be a never-ending trail of poopy nights.

I’m trying not to be upset that Will’s current favorite book is actually MY book.   Heather and Erik got me On This Earth for Christmas, and that little stinker Willie B will not take his grubby hands off it!

Of course, it makes sense–he knows all the words in the book.  Elephant, giraffe, monkey, water, tree, hippo and lion.  The only pictures n the book are all of things that Will knows, loves, and can talk about!

How if only we could get them to come out with a board book version…

Will discovered my back pockets this afternoon.  He has spent a good thirty minutes collecting things to put in there.  My butt is twice its normal size.

Will added a useful word to his vocabulary last week: “help.”  (Uncle Erik often expresses concern that Will’s vocabulary covers things like “giraffe” but not “dinner.”)  “Teeth” is also heard a lot as well as another new one that I’ve forgotten.  Hopefully it will come to me soon.

I am slowly losing my mind about my website situation.  I’m ready to scream about that fact that I can’t get help with either my broken site (wrote to them over a week ago) or get access to the site I ordered almost two weeks ago.  Luckily they are located in Colorado, so if all else fails I might just bring Will over to their offices and sit there for as many hours as it takes to get some customer service.

Over Christmas I heard a lot of complaints about the lack of new videos.  So today I uploaded the ones I have–we’ve not used the video camera as much these days (probably had something to do with the arrival of our new 5d camera body), but I posted what we’ve got!

Will has spent the last ten minutes in the laundry room crying about Nan Nan, E, Nair, and Da.  Usually telling him that they went “bye-bye in the zoom” is enough…but it hasn’t been today.  He was playing nicely (stacking cans of tuna and then knocking them down again) and then he asked about Nic.  I told him that Nic was a work, and he started sobbing, ran into the laundry room, slammed the door in my face, and just started saying “Nan-Nan? E? Nair?” over and over and over again.  He’s sitting on my lap now and helping me type what I told him was a message to Nan-Nan, E, and Nair.  We’ll have to call them tonight so Will can say hello.

It breaks my heart that I can’t tell him they will be back this evening!  Of course…maybe it is a good thing that we live so far away, otherwise Will would have me visiting everyone every single day!  I guess he could hang out with the 2nd and 3rd graders that Joan teaches, and MAYBE he could dress up like a sheep and go to work with Erik disguised as medical research, but I’m thinking no one would be fooled at Heather’s med school if we tried to pass him off as a second year medical student!  I mean, the kid can’t even say “liver,” let alone tell you what medication will fix one!

Ahhhh…night four.  You’d think after three great nights in a row, we could rest easy.  Well, you’d be wrong.

Will’s late afternoon nap was probably to blame.  I woke him up from his usual mid-day nap to take him to My Gym.  I figured I could get him dressed and slip him into the car and he’d finish his nap there.  It almost worked–I got him dressed, carried him downstairs–and he was still asleep.  But I’d forgotten that the car seat wasn’t in the car, so in setting Will down to install the car seat, he woke up and got VERY ANGRY.  He didn’t go back to sleep in the car (preferring to chew me out for waking him up) and didn’t enjoy his time at My Gym as much as usual.  When we got home he fell asleep (as did I) and we didn’t wake up until Nic came home.

We did what we could–a longer than usual bath time, a nice long story time…and Will was yawning and looking tired and they were all good signs.  We tucked him in and turned out the light and left…but we did not get the wave.

So we weren’t surprised when we heard him get out of bed, turn on the light, and start playing.  We went into the other room and listened for a while, and then I went downstairs to do dishes.  When Will started shouting to be let out and kicking at the door, Nic went in to check on him.  And then shouted “Ut-oh, Traci.”

“Poop?”  I shouted back.

“Yeah.”  Nic sounded crushed.

“Did he get it everywhere?”

“Yep.”

“Is it bad?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it ground into the carpet?”

“Yep–and his lambskin.”

Nic took Will into the bathtub (and had a long talk with him about whose job it is to change diapers) and I finished the dishes and grabbed the cleaning supplies.  I took my time (and some deep breaths) getting up there, as I knew what I would find.  He had taken off his diaper, dropped a couple of poop logs onto the carpet and his lambskin, then stepped in it and ground it around the carpet before kicking the door with his poopy foot.

As Heather said while we chatted last night–we might as well have a dog if we’re going to be cleaning shit off the carpet.

The carpet, door, and Will all got cleaned up, we tucked Will in again with a few more kisses and one more story, turned off the light, and got the wave.  We didn’t hear another peep out of him…not even when the dog catchers came and took him away. 

We got ready for bed, got started on stories…and then Will got out of bed.  So we left.  He played for a few minutes and then knocked on his door.  We went back in and read stories, gave kisses, got the wave…and there you have three out of three great nights in the new big boy bed!  As Nic and I were telling Heather and Erik last night–we don’t care if he goes to sleep at 7:30, he just can’t hang out with us.  I just never expected that we’d be able to have that policy when he was two!

“You don’t have to go to bed, but you can’t stay here.” 

My sprained ankle kept me from working on Will with potty training last month…but I’m thinking that once we knock our errands out of the way tomorrow we’ll be working on Big Boy Goal #2: Operation Underpants.

It’s the day after Christmas, so it’s time to write down a few memories from Will’s second Christmas before they slip through my fingers…

Will’s two (literally) big presents this year were a trampoline and a tricycle.  I wasn’t sure if he’d get really excited when he saw them, but I couldn’t have been more wrong!  We woke up Christmas morning (and “jew…jew…jree–wake up jeff”ed everyone else) and went downstairs.  Willie ran straight to the trampoline, and was so excited as he bounced a couple of times.  Then he spotted the tricycle in the corner by the tree and in his rush to get over to it, he fell flat on his face.  He couldn’t wait until he could ride that bike and wear his helmet!

I think he was a tiny bit overwhelmed by all the presents, but he certainly loved them!  He and Nic played with the race car track from Koko and I think Erik and Nic were hoping Will would take a nap so they could play without him!

We went to Mass after opening presents and having breakfast (Erik made bread from scratch and I made Nana’s elegant eggs).  Will fell asleep on the way to Mass and slept through most of it.  When he woke up he snuggled for a while and then right as Mass was ending he said “zoom zoom” and looked to the door–his way of saying “time to go by-by in the car.”  Which was lucky, because it was almost time to go home!

We played with our Christmas presents in the afternoon and then had fondue for dinner.  After putting Will to sleep, we set about decorating the gingerbread house…and Heather and I had what I’m sure will be a legend-wait for it-dary game of dare.  She had to put a giant handful of red hots in her mouth and I had to put the remaining candy in my mouth (to get out of using it to build a fence).  Since I ended up gagging, I think it’s safe to say she won. 

We went out for breakfast this morning at The Egg and I–our favorite place for breakfast here.  Then Heather and I went out to score some Christmas decorating bargains…and we did.  The best part of our shopping was at Pottery Barn kids, where we kept scoring The Last [insert awesome item here], much to the chagrin of other shoppers!  Heather grabbed the most gorgeous tree skirt for $30, and we literally had women following us around the store hoping she would put it down!  And then after we got home, she found one online she liked even better, so we got to buy it off her!  We stuck it under the tree after she and Erik left for skiing tonight…and it looks so pretty I’m scared she’s going to change her mind when they come back for New Year’s Eve!  We got a ton of awesome ornaments and I can’t wait for next year!

I have been gimping my way through the week, and since I still can’t move my foot up toward my calf, I decided that last night might be a good time to go to the doctor.  We gave Will a bath, put him in jammies, and then stuck him in the car and headed off to the Academy.  Will fell asleep in the car (as expected) and Nic then sat in the car playing his Nintendo with Sleeping Will while I went inside.

That was the way to do it!!  The timing was great–I walked in, handed them my ID card, and they sent me to get X-Rays immediately before even seeing a doctor (beauty of digital, I guess–no worries about cost).  Then I walked back to the ER, was given a room, had my vitals checked, and the tech said that the doctor would have been in to see me, but while I was getting X-Rays, someone came in with chest pains.  Even then, the doctor was in to see me in about five minutes, checked me out, told me nothing was broken and that it was just sprained, gave me Giant Motrin, and sent me on my way.  I was back at the car in…thirty minutes!!!  It was the fastest ER trip ever!

We drove home, put sleeping Will into his crib, and went to bed.  It was the fatest, easiest, least stressful ER trip I’ve ever had.  I’m rethinking my policy on military hospitals.  Maybe it’s not that they suck…maybe you just have to show up at 8pm on a Thursday!

Sometimes I wonder when I will stop recording Will’s words.  I thought it would just happen naturally when he had so many that it was no longer interesting…but then sometimes I think I will ALWAYS be interested.

Will said “snow” today for the first time…and for the last week or more he’s been saying “more” instead of signing it.  Except it comes out like a southerner would say it: “mo…(re)”

The night before last, we were reading Chugga-chugga Choo Choo as usual.  Will was pointing out the dog and the horse and the rabbit and the light and the train and then he pointed at the princess and said “Mom-mom.”

I looked at Nic and almost cried.  My baby thinks I’m a beautiful princess!

Last night he did the same thing–pointed at the princess and said “Mom-Mom.”

He’s allowed to do pretty much whatever he wants from now on.  ;P

(PS–new words this morning: cane and banana)

A few words that might have gone under-reported:

“truck”

“books”

“blocks”

“Shrek”

“Mo-mo” (Nemo)

“juice”

“jet”

“owl”

One of my favorite Will words is “houch” for ouch.  I have cause to say it today.

This morning I was completely determined to get the first batch of Christmas cards in the mail.  Heather and Erik are leaving for Germany on Friday, and if it doesn’t arrive by then (and even mailing it today makes a Friday arrival a long-shot) they won’t see it until 2008.  I figured I had until 11am to get the letters to the mailbox.  But the mailman arrived at 8:30–just as Will and I were getting out of the shower.  I didn’t have time to put on clothes, because I had to get a diaper on Will so he didn’t poop on the floor when I stepped out the door (can’t trust Will in the morning before his ritual poop).  So I threw on a robe, slapped a diaper on that baby butt, and rushed out the door to give my letters to the mailman.

“Caught you a bit early this morning, huh?” he said, chuckling at me in my bathrobe (gotta remember that it was actually 16 degrees out [seriously–that’s the real temp] with two inches of snow covering everything).  I explained that I had a letter that had to go out today, and then turned around to rush back inside.

Except I sort of forgot that the two inches of snow might just be covering a decent sheet of ice.  So I fell.  Hard.

I should add that, because Will pulls the belts out of my robes and hides them like a ferret, I had been holding my robe shut.  When I fell, I let go.

I was a naked girl laying in the snow.

This all would have been very embarrassing had I not been in a substancial amount of agony.  For a minute I thought I might not actually be able to stand up.  And then I would have to ask the mailman to come pick me up.  Since he didn’t seem to be saying anything, I assumed he hadn’t seen…so, fighting the urge to cry out in pain, I pulled myself up and limped like a pirate back to the house.

Unfortunately, as the day has gone on, the pain hasn’t gotten any better.  And just maybe it has gotten a little bit worse.   I am desperately trying to avoid a trip to the doctor.  We’d have to go to the ER at the Academy, which sucks because (a) it’s across town and we have snow and ice on the roads and (b) I don’t feel like waiting forever in the waiting room and they won’t tell you how many other idiots are there for naked snow injuries.  But I’m starting to think a doctor’s visit might be inevitable because “HOUCH!!!!!!!” my ankle really hurts!

Our furnace is broken.  Which is a problem when you have high temps in the low 30s and lows in the single digits and teens.

As I was talking about our newly discovered problem with Nana last night, she mentioned our fireplace.  Smart lady.

I flicked the switch and it burned brightly all night.

When we came down this morning (and looked out the window at the pretty snow) I told Will not to touch the fireplace–that it was hot and dangerous.  I figured this would be enough–it usually is.

But then I heard the zap of a melting finger (or maybe it was just static discharge)–Will had reached out with one finger to test just how hot it really was.

I felt horribly about Will’s burned little finger, especially since he only let me run it under cold water for a minute and refused to let me ice it.  He was on to bigger and better things.

Nic pointed out that it’s not such a bad thing…now we can use the fire while Will is awake, because it been baby proofed, the old fashioned way.  He touched it, got burned, and now says “ouch” every time he looks at the fire.

This morning Nic called me a sissy, so I taught Will how to stick dried cereal down Nic’s shorts.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

I’m bummed out.  It’s snowing/icy/foggy in Colorado Springs, and I’m not a good snow driver, so I think I am not going to assist Laura at our last wedding tonight.   I called her to see about getting a replacement for me, because the roads up north are fine, it’s just the Colorado Springs to Castle Rock area that has ice…and it’s snowing right now and not supposed to get any warmer.  If I was the lead, I’d force myself to go (or Nic to drive me) but since I have the option, and since it’s an hour away and would be icy the whole time, I think it’s best for me to take a pass on this one.  Last night driving home from Denver the freeways were fine, but the side streets to our house all had icy patches and I was so nervous.  I can’t imagine doing that the whole way there!!

As you can tell, it’s been a big word week for Will.  He also has learned to say “bye!” (probably because every time we flush, we say “bye bye pee pee!”)

Instead of signing “all done” at the end of his bath, he shouted it.

I would run away from home, but all of my pants have been peed or spilled on.

Nic reported last night that on the previous night, Will told him “read book.”

This morning at breakfast, Nic was reading a pamphlet and I was going through my business credit card statement, making little notes.  Always the imitator, Will grabbed the latest issue of The Economist that happened to be sitting near his booster seat, pushed his waffles to the side, and plopped it down on his tray.  He began “reading” it, just like mommy and daddy were doing.

Joining “treat” and “book” this week is “track” (as in train track)

The case against Third and Fourth Baby struck another blow today.  Within twenty minutes, Will had both peed in my underwear drawer (which I will grant you was not in the dresser where it belonged, but on the floor where it didn’t belong) and climbed over the gate at the bottom of our stairs.

sigh.

“Waffles” are “flas” as of this morning’s breakfast between Nic and Will.  Nic says Will’s still working on “pancakes.”

Nic worked a 20 hour day yesterday (leaving the house at 2am), so he got to sleep in this morning.  Although I wouldn’t call it sleeping in, since I had a morning meeting and Nic got to watch Will during it.  I was meeting with a local chapter of BNI.  It seems like a great networking organization, but unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be able to join.  All of the chapters meet weekday mornings every week, and getting childcare for Will wouldn’t be so easy (or cheap).  Oh well, it’s something to keep in mind for when the kiddos are in school!

What a full holiday weekend!  Of course, it helps that for us, the holiday weekend was five days long.

On Thursday we drove up to Denver to have our Thanksgiving meal with Nic’s Aunt Terry and Uncle Dee.  After a delicious meal, it was off to the airport to pick up Joan and then back to Colorado Springs for our second take on Thanksgiving dinner–a little turkey roaster, some mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry relish.

On Friday, Nic and I shot our first wedding together while Joan stayed and watched Will (who was coming down with a cold).  It was a short morning wedding, so Nic and I were back in time for dinner.

By Saturday, Will’s cold was in full swing, so we decided to stay home for the day, but that didn’t keep us from tackling some pretty tough stuff!  I had planned on saving potty training for after Joan’s visit, but she thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea for us to try…and I was so glad for her help!  We introduced Will to the general idea and Will peed in the potty chair!  We will be doing some more potty training this week.

Sunday was Christmas Tree Day–we went to the same tree farm as last year and picked out our tree.  I was actually disappointed, as it was a very easy choice for us this year!  Since we had picked out our perfect tree so quickly, we let Will run around for a while before heading home.

Today was probably my most favorite day.  Will took the day off so we could spend some time playing in Denver before dropping Joan off at the airport for her night flight back to Seattle.  We started the day by visiting Santa.  I was pretty disappointed that Santa wasn’t like he was last year…but it was still a fun time, there was no line, and Will even smiled for a picture or two!  I couldn’t believe how happy he was to hang out on Santa’s lap, especially since we’d just woken him up from his nap in the car.  Then again, we spent the weekend prepping him for the visit by watching Santa movies and reading Santa books.  So maybe Will just knew that he was visiting a celebrity!

After our Santa Success, we had lunch with Terry before heading as a group over to the Aquarium.  I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was.  It has to be the best aquarium in the world.  So super -duper fancy.  Will had an orange balloon (he got it at lunch and didn’t let go of it until we pulled it from his fist on the way home at the end of the day) he was carrying, and the fish would follow it around!  It was so funny to see them be attracted to the balloon….and even funnier to see that Will was completely oblivious!

We still had some time to kill before Joan’s flight, so we hung out at an outdoor mall in Denver and had dinner before calling it a night.  The hero of the day?  Our family’s early Christmas present that I picked up at a crazy cheap pre-black-friday price last week.  I had planned on giving it to Nic for Christmas, but then gave away the secret as I also came to the realization that it was ever-so-slightly like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer gives Marge a bowling ball with his name engraved in it.  I had thought it would be a wonderful thing for the family to have, since we always seem to be getting lost.  What I didn’t really think through at the time was that the reason we are always getting lost is me.  So getting Nic a present that compensates for my own failings as a navigator didn’t really seem fair (as he was more than happy to point out to me).

We decided to keep the GPS as a Christmas present for the family, since it was intended to benefit our family adventures.  Well…any misgivings Nic might have had about the merits of the GPS quickly fell away as he saw it in action today.  I don’t even think I’d be overstating it if I said that, knowing what he knows now, he would have been happy to receive it as his Christmas present.  It rocked the day.  It allowed us to go here and there throughout the day without pre-planning.  We began the day with the Santa mall’s address, and then just worked from there.  Want to meet Aunt Terry for lunch at a restaurant on 120th and we’re at a mall in Denver in an area we’re not familiar with?  No problem–GPS Girl will tell us how to get there.  When it was time to head to the aquarium, we just typed in “aquarium” and off we went.  Next stop, the airport?  Sure thing!  Want to go check out that mall over there?  No problem–switch to the map view and we can scurry on over.  And so on, and so forth.  (And should we have felt the need to stop at a Starbucks, GPS Girl knows where the nearest one is.)

We marvelled at GPS Girl’s majesties all day.  Talked about this marvelous Information Age and all the ways that family outtings would forever be changed.  But a part of me is sad that our children might never be able to understand the stories that previous generations tell.  Stories about getting lost, about the dad freaking out, about the family getting into a giant fight and turning around before they ever reached their destination…all of that classic American family dream will be unknown to our babies who have GPS systems and iPhones keeping them from the misadventures of their forefathers.

Will likes spicy food, so when I served buffalo style chicken breast for dinner last night I didn’t worry.

Until, that is, we saw Will shove the pieces of chicken into his mouth, chew, swallow, and then grab the tablecloth and wipe his tongue with it frantically.  We handed him his milk and tried to teach him that milk makes your tongue not so hot.

Later at dinner Will seemed to be struggling with his mashed sweet potatoes.  He was holding the bowl up to his face and licking it.  I picked Will’s spoon up off the floor, piled it with a bunch of potatoes from my own plate, and tried to feed it to him.  He stuck his tongue out and closed his lips around it.  He wouldn’t let me put the food in his mouth.

That’s when Nic figured it out–he was trying to put the potatoes on his TONGUE.  Trying to put out the spice fire.  So I wiped the potatoes onto his tongue and he sat there will them. “Just coat potatoes on my tongue, please.  It’s on fire.”

It was one of the most adorable things he’s done all week.

To be fair, Will does put SOME energy into learning new words.  In the wake of Halloween, he has, in fact, learned “candy.”  Although it’s more like a panicked “NDEEE!  NDEEE!  NDEEE!” whenever he sees a wrapper or anything that looks suspiciously like candy.

Yesterday Will locked himself in the car.  The keys were inside.  My cell phone was inside.  I was outside.  And my sanity was rapidly disappearing.

We had showed up to our playdate at My Gym (remember the last time we visited and Will puked all over the place?) way early.  An hour early.  I thought our errands were going to take a lot longer than they did, and I didn’t want to drive all the way back home, so we were chillin’ in the parking lot playing.  We read books, ate a Starbucks pumpkin loaf, and then I let Will play in the drivers seat while I wiped the pumpkin loaf crumbs out of the back seat.  I finished brushing out his car seat and shut the door, ready to go around to the driver’s door, open it up, and play some more with Will.

Except that Will had locked all of the doors, and was now happily playing inside a locked car.

Sure, it is November and 40 degrees out so there wasn’t really any immediate danger, but there was panic in my heart nonetheless.  Babies and parked cars–not good.

My cell phone was inside.  I was going to have to leave Will and go inside one of the stores to call Nic, and even then it would be 40 minutes before he could come rescue us (I was also not looking forward to the eye rolling this would cause).

But then I remembered something.

That very morning I had been curling my hair when I watched Will outsmart the childproof locks on our bathroom cabinets.  (This cause a very similar “holy shit” feeling in my blood.)

As I sat there curling my hair, I watched my 21 month old pull out the cabinet door with one hand, and dress down on the white plastic with the other.  His eyes got big.  He closed the door to test and see if he could repeat the trick.  He could.  And then he giggled.  The giggle of power.

Now, not to go off on a tangent, but why did *I* have to get the criminal-in-training?  Other babies are working on learning, you know, WORDS.  Will is perfectly happy to go through the rest of his life with fifteen half-words, several dozen signs, and the mind of a criminal genius.  I guess I see his point–why bother with the intellectual stuff if you can just puzzle your way into any locked box and steal your way into making a living?

He figured out how to open up childproof medicine bottles MONTHS ago.  I still haven’t mastered that all the way.  And yet he can’t say “train.”

Standing there looking at Will inside my locked Civic, I remembered this.  The kid is a mechanical genius.  He can get himself out of a locked car!

I called him over to me and pointed at the lock button.  “Will–push up on the button!” I said.  So he pushed down.  Over and over and over again he pushed the button down, sure he was doing what I was asking.  And finally, all of 90 seconds later (a lifetime in my mind) he pushed up on the button.  I had my handle on the door, waiting for the second he unlocked it, because I knew as soon as that button went up, he was going to push it down again.  He unlocked the door, I opened it up lickity-split.  And cheered and clapped for my smart boy.

He thought he was pretty awesome…but he had no idea why.

Here’s the latest on Mr Will.

I’m pretty positive that he is, indeed, a leftie.

He calls popcorn “corn,” which is pretty good considering that “eggs” are still “quos”.

He spent the majority of our three day weekend with Nic, since I was at a wedding all day Saturday, and shooting in Denver for most of the day Monday.  Nic said they had a great weekend–Will played with the ferrets a lot.  Putting them in laundry baskets and pushing them around, picking them up and putting them down somewhere else, playing tug-o-war.

We went to Red Robin for dinner last night and when we pulled up Will started shouting his word for “balloon.”  That he remembers that Red Robin and balloons go together blows me away.  He held on to that balloon all through dinner, all the way home, while playing once we got home, and all through his bath.  It was really cute in the bath!!  We had to sneak it away from him before bed, and that was no easy feat!  I think he was reluctant to let go because the last time he brought home a balloon from Red Robin, it popped on some sharp point in the ceiling.  He talked about it every single morning for days.  So this time, he was determined not to “bro” it!

Nic wins the Husband of the Year award for folding out towering mountain of clean laundry while I was out on Monday.  My job today?  Tackling the hall closet.  It’s become a catch-all for my photography stuff, and a “hidden cave” for ferret treasures (“THAT’S where all the diapers went!”) so I have my work cut out for me.  Willie will be helping, of course. 

Will runs around half naked a lot of the time.  I just put pants and a shirt on him and he said “zoom,” signed “car,” and ran for the garage door.  It seems he associates clothing with leaving the house.  I had to tell him that we weren’t going anywhere, but he still was going to wear clothes.

(One of our friends from VA [a Texan] told us a story about how she went to a friend’s house one day and made a comment about the son’s stuffed animal [like, “what a nice stuffed animal you have!”] and the mother corrected her, saying “oh no.  X doesn’t have stuffed animals.  They’re plush action figures.”  Which is why Will’s doll that pees will forever be called a “potty training action figure”)

I wasn’t going to say anything about our upcoming potty training plans for a number of reasons.  (1) It might upset the potty training gods and (2) in today’s world potty training a 21 month old boy is crazy talk.  But Will has been driving us crazy lately with his diapers.  He removes his pants and the diaper the INSTANT he pees/poops and announces “Ka.”  He holds it in the tub and shouts “Ka!” to let us know that he needs to pee, so we better get him out of the tub and put a diaper on him fast.  And he’s displaying all other signs of readiness…so after much research/thought/advice from mommies and medical professionals, we decided that we would go for it.  And if it fails, oh well.  It it’s a success, wahoo!

This weekend I ordered a potty training doll action figure, and it arrived today.  I wasn’t sure what was in the box, so I opened it in front of Will.  It was love at first sight.  I couldn’t get the box opened fast enough, couldn’t cut all those stupid wires that hold the doll to the box fast enough.  Will loves Paul.  Immediately my plans to sell Paul on ebay once we were through with Will’s potty training were shelved.  Will grabbed Paul, then ripped the bottle out of the box (literally–it was taped in).  He started trying to feed Paul the bottle, all the while saying “wa-wa-wa” (Wil[speak for babies).  He carried him around.  He stroked his “hair” and gave him lots of little kisses on the cheek saying “mwah-mwah-mwah-mwah-mwah” (what I do to Will).  When I filled the bottle with water, the game got even better for Will–now he and Paul took TURNS drinking from the bottle!  Will showed me Paul’s toes, his hair, and nose, and eyes, and of course his weiner, too (and, as an added bonus, not only is Paul anatomically correct, he’s anatomically correct for Will–Paul is a European doll, so he’s uncircumcised).

I’m thinking I made a mistake showing Will the doll before potty training day (and he’s sick now, so I’m not about to move our plans forward), so I snuck Paul upstairs into a hiding place and distracted Will with my cell phone.  But I’m thrilled that Will is so loving and caring.  AND that he has an instant bond with the doll we’re going to use for potty training!

Will has added pumpkin to his vocabularly–it’s “pum”

He also is sure that every Spiderman is “Gee”–his buddy Jameson from next door.  There’s a big Spiderman display in the window at Blockbuster, and I could barely get Will to walk past it–he just wanted to stand and shout “Gee!”  We saw another little boy dressed as Spiderman while we were trick-or-treating tonight, and Will ran up to him shouting “Gee!  Gee!” but I think he scared the other spiderman!

We managed to run into Will’s Halloween twin, too–a boy younger than Will was trick-or-treating in the same costume. Our street gets buzzing on Halloween, because the rural kids from surrounding areas come in to do the easy candy grabbing.  It was too bad only a few houses were participating this year.

I took Will on errands today in his costume, since Papa Murpheys was giving free mini pizzas to kids in costume, and Willie loves pizza!  We went to the post office, the grocery store, picked up our pizza, and grabbed a movie.  EVERYONE loved seeing him in his costume!

It was Will’s first Real Halloween.  Last year it was too cold for a baby to go out (and Nic thought it was stupid to take a baby trick or treating), so we just answered the door.  This year, though, it was Willie’s turn!

We went to about six houses (the only ones on our street with their lights on) and Will’s friend Tori came with us, which made it a thousand times more fun for him.

Afterward we came back to our house and Willie helped us answer the door.  He loved it!  Toward the end, he was putting the candy in their bags.  Even though you could tell he was sort of tempted to keep it.

For some reason, though, he came to the conclusion that every time someone came to the door, HE should be able to trick-or-treat from our candy bucket, too.  And because I’m a bad mom, I let him.

I knew I’d be in for a sugar monster, but I figured it would be okay.  A little craziness, a little jumping on the sofa, a little staying-up-late once a year isn’t so bad.  And it wasn’t.  Until he threw up on me.

He was hugging me around my neck from behind and bouncing on the sofa.  He smashed his face into my neck and I said to Nic “look how much he loves me” and Nic said “yeah–maybe a little too much.”  Then I felt something warm and wet trickle down my neck.  And the rancid smell of vomit filled the air.

Ah crap.  I’m the worst mom ever.  My kid threw up on Halloween.

But he sure did have fun.

Next year, just three pieces of candy on Halloween.  Just three.

Nic’s birthday was on Saturday, so we had a special family weekend–no work!  We got Nic “Meet the Robinsons” on DVD and I guess who else loves it?  Willie B, of course!

I was a little bit surprised, but guess I probably shouldn’t have been.  He loves watching it so we’re thinking of taking him to Bee Movie next weekend.  It would be the first time Nic and I have been to the theater in at least a year!  We’ll see how it goes!

He’s really good at roaring like a dinosaur (his way of saying “I wanna watch Meet the Robinsons”)…but it all started with Nic’s party on Friday.  We invited our friends’ dog, too, and at one point in the evening he growled.  Next thing we knew, Will was growling, too!

We went to the pumpkin patch yesterday (I’m uploading photos to Smugmug right now).  It took us two and a half hours to get there (we got a little lost a few times) and we looked out into an empty pumpkin patch field.  I was bummed, because I’d checked the website that morning to make sure everything was still good, and they failed to mention that the only pumpkins that were left were smashed and rotten.  An important detail when people are travelling from far away!  BUT we were determined to make the most of it, and we did!  We took Willie through the corn maze, and had him pick out a little pumpkin from the pile they had next to the cash register.  I didn’t really think he’d pick one out, but he did!  He looked at about three, then instantly bonded with one, and wanted to carry it around with him the rest of the time (though he got tired in the maze and had Nic and I carry it).

It only took us an hour to drive home.  Sure helps when you go the right way.

We’ll carve our pumpkins tonight.  There’s a pumpkin carving contest on a photography site and I want to win….I’m thinking our pumpkins this year might be photog themed. 

We had our first snow of the season yesterday.  About 2-3 inches.  It was preceeded by a SERIOUS wind storm that, if Colorado Springs had any trees, would have done some damage!  Instead, it just made me feel like one of the three little pigs as the big bad wolf stood outside trying to blow my house down.

We had a whole four months without snow–June, July, August and September.  I guess that’s all you can ask for at 7000ft!

Will is all better now.  He gets tired easily, but he just doesn’t know it.  His big two things right now are talking about “ka” (icky things) and “bro” (broken things).  He wants to know if everything is bro or ka.  Especially ka.  “Ka?” he’ll ask.  Nic and I have talked about it quite a bit–Willie knows that it’s bad to be “ka,” but he’s just not entirely sure yet what makes something ka.  He’s getting it down, though.  Poop, pee, food on the floor (at first he thought food on his tray might also be ka, but now he knows that it’s just the food on the floor that’s gross), dried oatmeal on your hands, clothes, or hair. and anything sticky.

And for some reason that I can’t for the life of me figure out, “quo” means eggs.  And he’s obsessed with them.

We didn’t make it out to the pumpkin patch (because of the snow) which is very disappointing to me–I’m worried it might have to wait until Sunday, which is the day after Nic’s birthday…so we’ll see.

Nic and I went to the Melting Pot on Saturday night (gotta mix it up–we wanted to test out The Mona Lisa’s competition).  It was great, but really set back my attempts to eat healthy food in small proportions.  But I’ve been really good about flossing, so maybe I’ll lose the five pounds in plaque.

Nic started selling his photos on stock websites this weekend and I can’t believe how fast it’s taken off!  He had 15 downloads in 48 hours with only 7 photos uploaded!  The pay isn’t good on each download, but if you upload a ton of photos and get a decent amount of downloads on each, that’s not bad fun money!  I had to jump on the bandwagon and upload some of my photos…we could probably make like $10 this week. 

We have some sad news, too–Fiona has cancer.  It’s creating a condition where she produces too much insulin, and it will unfortunately win in a few months.  We were able to get some medication to manage it in the mean time, though, and the medication is working great so far–we couldn’t believe that we were seeing our old hippity-hoppity Fiona of a few months ago!  She’s not in any pain, and will probably just slip into a coma eventually.  She’s very old for a US pet store ferret, so we’re just going to enjoy her last days and be thankful that of all the illnesses she could have gotten (and US ferrets always do) this one isn’t painful.

Yesterday I wasn’t feeling well.  I did everything I could to tell Mommy I wanted to hang low, but she just didn’t get it.

I told her I wanted to watch the Wiggles all day, but she called me a tv addict and turned it off.

I told her I didn’t want my lunch because I was feeling sick to my stomach, but she thought I was being cranky and packed up my lunch for later.

I told her I was feeling too sick to have my hair cut, but she thought I was scared of the scissors and told me to not be silly.

I told her I was all done with outtings, but she said she had a special surprise for me and dragged me to a playdate at My Gym, a tumble tots type place for toddlers.  She said I would love it.  And normally I would have.

I told her that even though the place looked very nice, I wanted to go home right away.  I signed all done, walked to the door, and said “zoom, zoom” so she would know to put me in the car and take me home.  She said not to be silly.

I played for a bit, but then I felt sick, so I cried and asked to go home.  Mommy held me and said it’s okay to be overwhelmed by new places.  She really didn’t get.

I played for a little bit more, but then I felt sick again, so I asked her again to go home.  She said that I would be sad to miss out on this play time, and showed me the balls.

I kept trying to tell her, but she kept telling me to play, so I played until I felt sick, would cry and hug her, and then I’d play again.

Then it got really bad.  I felt really really sick, and begged to go home, so Mommy picked me up and held me while she talked to the other mommies.

I tried to tell her, but she didn’t listen.

So when I threw up all over her, the carpet, and the play equipment, she really had no one to blame but herself.

I’ve seen Mommy look surprised, but never quite as surpised as she did that first time I threw up.  None of the other mommies even noticed and Mommy stood there stunned for a minute, holding me, covered in vomit.  She said “umm–I’m gonna need some paper towels” and then when all the other Mommies turned to look, I threw up again.  The other mommies called it projectile, which I think means it went everywhere.

I have seen Mommy look embarassed, but never quite as embarassed as she did while trying to explain to everyone that she had no idea that I was sick.  And this is true.  Even though I tried and tried to tell her, she’s a little bit dumb.  She didn’t know.  She didn’t know that she was going to be the crappy mother that takes a sick kid to a play date.  The reason all the other moms break out the Purell.  The name the other mommies curse as they stay up with their puking babies.

She stripped me down to my diaper and cleaned me up.  She tried to clean herself up, but she said she can’t walk around naked like I can, so she had to go home wearing vomit clothes and vomit in her hair.

She kept telling me she was sorry.  I was sorry, too.  I thought things would get better if we went home, but things didn’t get better.  I threw up in the car.  A lot.  It was coming out my nose.  It was on me, my car seat, and the car.  It was pretty “ka.”

We finally got home and Mommy and I took a shower.  Then we went downstairs and I threw up a lot more.  All night.  Mommy and Daddy took shifts.  Daddy bought Mommy Red Bull.  And I had a pretty good fever and just between you and me, the stinkiest farts in the whole world.  They almost made Daddy pass out.

I’m feeling much better today.  I can even keep down food and water!  It’s pretty awesome now, actually, because Mommy says I can watch all the Wiggles and Fraggle Rock DVDs I want today…which is a lot.

Mommy says next time she’ll listen to me better.  And that sounds good to me.  Because otherwise we’re going to get kicked out of all of our play groups.

“bro” for broken.  He brought me his battery operated train engine today with a pouty face and said “bro?!”  Then he took me to the kitchen and handed me a screwdriver from the junk drawer.  He wanted me to put in a new battery.  So I did.  And then sad pouty “bro” turned into happy squealing “choo!!!”

“quack, quack” and “juice” (Nic bought Will juice at the store for the first time this week–the kid is in love)

He continues his quest to save animals…although it was he that endangered them in the first place this time.

He pulled me into the scrapbook room, signed “ferret” frantically, and pointed at the open vent in the floor (he was the one who pulled out the vent leaving a gaping hole)…I checked and could hear little ferret scratches within the piping…so I called out for Mitzy, reached my arm down, and she crawled up so I could pull her out.

Will’s like Lassie…except he saves animals instead of people.

Will loves dogs.

Today he saved one that was stuck on a roof.

No joke.

Willie and I left the house this afternoon to run some errands (exchanging the cheap-ass iPod speakers we bought for the ones that cost $30 more and sound $400 better and mailing off photos). We pulled out of the driveway and started driving along our street when Willie started panting.  This is his sign for dogs.

Out of habit, I said “yeah buddy–a dog” and then looked around for a dog.  But I didn’t see one and the street was entirely empty.  Will is always right about these things, and when I’ve blown him off in the past, I’ll later see a hidden whatever-it-was-that-he-was-talking-about, so I always make a point to look for the object, because it’s fun to see what he’s talking about.  So I quickly scanned the street again.

And saw a dog on the roof of a house.

A white pit-bull from a house across the street from us was standing on the roof. It’s steep, and he didn’t look like he had any intent of moving.  I got out of the car, and as I approached the house he made whining noises and wagged his tail a lot.  This dog was scared, and I could just see that there was no way he was going to turn around and crawl back through the window he escaped out of.

I knocked on the door and rang the doorbell, but no one answered, so I took the problem to my neighbor.  She knew where the guy worked (he works for our neighborhood), called, and the guy came home and got his dog off the roof within 10 minutes.

Good work, Will!!!

My observant animal-obsessed little boy saved a dog today!

“Tree” and he’s working very hard on “giraffe”…it’s not really intelligable yet, but it’s getting there.

We had his 18 month appointment yesterday.  He is 34.5″ tall (95th percentile), 27.5lbs (75lb percentile), and has a 75th percentile head circumference.

He’d just had two shots the day before, so he freaked out a lot when we laid him down to get measured and weighed.  Then he warmed up to everyone…only to get his MMR shot at the end of the appointment.  It was sad for him.  He SCREAMED because he knew what was coming (at the appointment the day before he’d been very brave).   It was bad scheduling, but I had gone in for his shots…and then remembered that he needed his 18 month appointment, so after his shots went to schedule it…for the next day.  Shoot.

I asked them not to do a bandaid this time.  The day before, the bandaids seemed to make it so much worse.  He cried the whole way home–he kept pointing at the bandaids and signing pain, reliving it over and over again.