ridiculous

it's late. nevertheless, i should probably be working since the dishes are done, the toys are put away, the diapers have been descruffed, and the little man is asleep (and because i have some work to do), but i am ridiculously tired, so i think instead, i am just going to put up some ridiculously cute pictures of william taken recently... i suspect there will be no objection...

closeups...



at the lunch table...


in his soccer outfit that his grandparents got him from croatia last year... it is much closer to fitting now than it was last summer...

he looks like a little kid here... i guess that's what he is... not so much 'baby'...

after the game...


and, let's see... a quick update... we were back in teething land for awhile. all fevers are gone, and the appetite is slowly coming back. we'll see what sleeping is like tonight. he certainly hasn't been waiting for the sun to get him up the past few nights, which may account for my sleepiness. greg has been working like a mad scientist... something like a 17 hour day yesterday-- that is the extreme end, but i needed a good example. and me? well.... i guess i've just been steadily moving so as to not fall off this treadmill.

flip flop

well, it was talked about, so i guess it was jinxed. after the last blog post, calls started coming in: "is it true?" "yes, it's true. it's hard to believe. he did it again last night too... asleep until 5:30."

so now the last two nights he's gone no later than 3:30. three weeks ago, two 3:30 nights in a row would have been an exciting and promising step forward. now of course, it seems like a step back. not to mention that for the last few nights, it's taken an extraordinarily long amount of time to get him to fall asleep in the first place and it took two attempts to get him down for his morning nap today. he seems to be going through a rather wakeful period in his life, which is much nicer than an extra fussy period or some other undesirable stage. so, i guess i can't complain, or, if that's what i'm doing here, i will stop. he is a great kid, that is for sure.

here are a few pictures of him yesterday. he successfully put a sandal onto his foot and walked around with it. i have to say, and maybe this is just because i am his mother-- i was impressed.

eat chocolate

it has been 11 days since i've posted and i have very little to show for it... at least when it comes to pictures. what have we been doing in this blogless-abyss anyway? what accomplishments have we achieved? what setbacks are we rebounding from? what revelations have we come to? what sleep have we had?

well, i can answer the latter question easily: more than usual. yes, it's true... william has officially been sleeping longer stretches somewhat consistently. for example... the sun was coming up before he first awoke in days 1 and 2. then... in day 3, his mom was out of bed, sitting on the couch (completely confused as to how to spend my childless time after a full-night's sleep), waiting for him to wake up, which he did, finally, a little before 7. day four: one of those setbacks needing a rebound: he was up at 1 and etc. but day 5, if memory serves, was closer again to dawn. (these days do not correspond in number to days 1-11. when i say 'day 1' i really mean day 6 or so in the whole 'it's been 11 days' theme.)

there are a couple of conclusions which can be drawn from this turned corner. the first: that it actually is a turned corner... that william is finally learning or deciding that a full-night's sleep is nice. so nice, after a lifetime of wakefulness. it's possible. but i did leave out some information: one... he had (and still has) a cold which started on day 1. coincidence? or explanation? the only other time he ever slept an entire night without waking, he was sick. second... our schedules have been so non-routinized (now i don't know if that is a real phrase, but you can understand what i mean), that there have been a couple of days where he has only gotten one nap... a couple of nights where he wasn't in bed until 9... plus the teething... plus the cold... that he may just be extra tired. maybe when he catches up on all of his sleep, he'll be back to his old tricks.

i don't know... if that's what it seems to be, do we push him to be a one-nap kind of baby? what do you think? i tend to think no. i don't want to push him into being something he's not naturally inclined to be (at this point in his life anyway), just to give myself some extra sleep when a) i'm not making any major snafus because of it and b) i can't seem to fall asleep before 11 anyway, no matter how much sleep i seem to be lacking... so it's not like i'm doing myself any favors, meaning i shouldn't start demanding some from him.

anywho... that is sleep. i am optimistic, but waiting to see if all of the chickens have hatched.

speaking of animals... having a 1 year old really requires a parent to get good at making animal sounds. me? i am horrible at them. it took me weeks to perfect my "moo." that was months ago, but even to this day it occasionally comes out sounding like a male cow going through puberty. try it yourself. are you a natural mooer? greg is very good at making the elephant sound. try that one out! william is working hard on both of these noises. he'll also sometimes say the word "cheese."

what else? we went to illinois last weekend for a wedding. it was the first time anyone else has ever put william down to sleep. (that was one of the days he slept till dawn.) so, in that sense, it was a momentous "first." it was also great fun to spend time with my two best friends from high school... such a rare occurrence these days... and of course, to see my college friend get married. here are some photos from the weekend:

a catholic wedding--



the friends--

the parents--



and the way home. what turned out to be a minor accident involving one teenage boy and probably his parent's car, some loud music, fast food, and a cell phone, in the single express lane, had many of us blocked in and parked for about a half an hour.

well, it's nearly 11. i should end now as my bedtime is approaching. it probably doesn't help, as far as sleep goes, that greg made me a delicious chocolate fondueish sauce to assist me in finishing off today's batch of strawberries from the garden... and it was so good, and my willpower was so absent, that i drank it straight from the bowl after all of the strawberries were gone. you know... sometimes i do ridiculous things. i'm going to go brush my teeth.

feeling better

william is starting to feel better after his visit to teething land. he slept much better last night than he had for the past few nights and was more active today than the past few days. his appetite is slower to come back, but that is probably only because it was so enormous before, that normal-baby-finicky appears minuscule to us now.

anywho, here are a few of the things he's been up to in the past couple of days...

watering the tree... he loves using the hose...

cruising the courtyard...

catering to the individual needs of his two feet