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

molar skating

well, the molars i've been wishing and hoping for are finally pushing their way out into this side of the world, and it's making william miserable. we are just past 24 hours of a fever and grumbliness. he's making his first forays into the land of liquid tylenol and though it is purple and flavored like the grapes of popsicles and lolipops, he despises it. also, he has lost his appetite, and for those of you who have seen william eat, this is like royalty suddenly going bankrupt.

this picture was taken pre-molaritis, but i think it conveys to the reader what a more somber william is all about...

in reality, he was just tired in the above shot. this was taken last weekend when he and greg went to blue mounds state park while i went to work. this weekend it will be greg who works while william and i face the consequences of being able to grind up ones food.


hopefully by tomorrow, or at least sunday, he will look and be cheerful... like this...

life of a one year old...

uploading pictures from the cameras, i realize just how long it's been since i've updated. william has been busy. we have been busy. and we've had grandparents passing through with more on the way tonight.

here is just a sampling of the trouble william has been getting himself into...

most of these (as you can see) will be self-explainable...

happy sunday!

i will update this blog soon. but for now, a picture from christmastime when the little man was but 9 months old.

waiting for rain

well, at least he was a few days ago...
the other day we were out getting a gift for one of william's friends and i couldn't help but buy him a pair of cute rain boots. it is a good buy because the last time it rained, his tennis shoes sat drying on the porch for three days. the yellow ball with orange polka dots that you see in the photo was a purchase against my better judgment. for one thing, william needs more toys like he needs a pair of wet tennis shoes. for another, it was sort of pricey for a bouncy ball... something on the order of 6 dollars. for another, at any given moment there is something like three baseballs, two basketballs, one nerf ball, one bouncy ball, and three wiffle balls outside our door in the courtyard, so it's not as though he was lacking in that area of recreational instruments. but... i gave in because i am not yet to the chapter in the William Book of Parenting where i've learned how to say, 'no, put that back. i told you, we're here for a loaf of bread and THAT'S IT.' but was that really the issue? when he insisted on playing with the ball in the store, pushing it along the dusty floor, what went through my head was, "sheesh, maybe it's getting a little dirty... is it impolite to put a toy back once your kid has gotten it dirty? crud, i don't know the answer to that... just put it on the counter with the rest of the stuff and don't think about the fact that you're buying it for all of the wrong reasons, that he's not really even asking to keep it, just avoid a potentially awkward conversation where you try to put a dusty toy back on the shelf and ignore the fact that he's putting each rubber duckie from that bin on the bottom shelf in his mouth. you're the only one who can see that*, and there is no way you're buying him 13 little rubber duckies*, even if together they do cost less than that ball." stage two of parenting is really sneaking up on me. stage two being the stage where they destroy things but are too young to take responsibility for it. stage three (i'm assuming) is the stage where they are old enough to take responsibilty for it, but don't whenever they can get away with it.

*oh my gosh... i am apparently stuck in stage three.

in other news, william got to have a great visit with his grumpa this past week. it didn't hurt that he brought him his very own ukulele. it has been a big hit. i think grumpa really earned william's respect after that.

see:

william putting some serious thought into the conversation...

"yes grandfather. i can see your point."

but of course the conversations aren't always serious:

"two atoms walking down the street... lost an electron... i'm positive... oh that's funny!"

in other news:
we have been eating lots of asparagus from our garden! hard to believe, but it's true. we have waited three long years for this year. or has it been two? or have we waited 28 and 27 and 1 year for this year (respectively)? i'm not sure the answer to that one, but in any case, the year is here. asparagus time is now.

in other news:
william has another new (2nd) cousin! this time a girl! yea! and a big 'good-luck-you-can-do-it' for the parents who are taking on the (daunting? yes.) task of caring for a young youngin and a 14 month old youngin.

well, that's about if for now. happy may.

update on naps

we decided that william was not going to nap if we stayed home, so we put him in the car and drove about 20 miles south to lake kegonsa state park (we recently got an annual state parks pass). he slept for most of the ride there. we went on a 1.2 mile walk through the woods. he was fussy (for him) during much of it and at one point had his mouth open wide enough in a wail for me to see tooth #7 making its way into this world. i think that is the source of his angst. poor william. i don't remember what that feels like.


he did perk up later in the evening though. here he is being happy...

a man on a mission: trying to get to the camera to help put the lens cap back on... he reminded me of the process server in 'the jerk'... does anyone remember that part? and don't tell me you've never seen that movie!

extremely happy!

'wrastlin' around with dad...

our neighbor, jake, made this adorable little hefalump for william's very first birthday! how creatively thoughtful! he's stuffed with black beans.

have a good week!