Almost Crawling

Will has really been trying to crawl since last week! He will get up on his knees and he can even go forward a little bit. It is tricky to get good pictures of it, because he is easily distracted by the camera.

And he gives up! Relaxing is a little easier.

Carrots

We aren't really starting solids until Will is 6 months old in a couple of weeks, but he has started reaching for our food while we are eating, which is supposed to be a sign that babies are ready for solids. We were eating stew a few nights ago and Will started smacking his lips like he really wanted to try it. So I thought I could just mash up a carrot and try to give it to him. Chris and I were both curious to see what his reaction to real food would be. I checked the recipe to make sure I didn't put anything too crazy in the stew and then mashed away. This is what happened....



Actually, that isn't all that happened. Chris gave it a try after I had tried a few times and Will ended up gagging himself. Needless to say, we will be waiting a few more weeks to try anything else and it won't be carrots next time. Oh, and I also found out that his first solids should actually be liquid. Lesson learned. :)

Here is another video of Will playing with a new toy Christmas night. It cracks me up when he notices the video camera.

Road Trip

We took Will on his first road trip for Thanksgiving. We went to see my grandparents and the rest of my dad's side of the family in Denver. It's about an 8 hour car ride (it took us longer) and Will did great. I was pretty nervous about how he would do in the car for so long, but he did this most of the way...

We let him drive some of the way to keep him entertained. Don't worry, he could almost see over the steering wheel.

Will got to meet his great grandparents for the first time.

He also got to meet my cousins that are actually closer in age to him than me.

Laurel, Elizabeth, and Will

Alex, Amanda, and Will

Will and Micaela

Alex was so excited to have a boy cousin!

Here is Will's great great grandfather (yes, two greats) seeing Will for the first time. Will slept through the first meeting, but it was really neat!

All five generations. Will, me, my dad (Pop), my dad's dad (Grandpa), and my dad's dad's dad (Pop).

I love this picture of Pop holding Will.

Will with Uncle Kevin and Aunt Aimee (I guess that would be his great uncle and aunt).

Will also got to meet Uncle Brian, Aunt Kathy, and my cousin Jackie....but I did not get pictures of any of them! I think Brian and Kathy were busy chasing around Micaela and we only saw Jackie one night at dinner. My cousin Jessica is in the cousin picture below.

It snowed the first night we were there and this is what it looked like out of our bedroom window when we woke up the first morning.

Casa Bonita is a place that I loved going to when I was a kid, so I wanted to take Chris and Will there. The whole family went one night and we all had a blast (at least all of us kids did). They have a huge waterfall in the middle of the restaurant that divers dive off of and they have fun little skits that they do while you're eating dinner. There's also a scary cave that you can walk through. It still scared me, of course. Little kids kept jumping out at me. Chris thought it was pretty funny.

The tower at Casa Bonita.

Us with my cousins (minus Micaela) at Casa Bonita. The waterfall was in the background, but you can't see it. I'm bummed that this picture came out blurry.

Our little family standing in front of the waterfall at Casa Bonita.

This is my cousin, Amanda. She is 5 and has quite the personality. She looooves Will and Chris too, for that matter. I have a hilarious video of her singing a song about Chris that I will put on here, if I can ever figure that out. We have a lot of pictures of her because she just loved playing with "Baby Will"...she said so many funny things while we were there. She kept getting in Will's face to kiss, hug, and talk to him. At one point, she got right up to his face and very enthusiastically said, "Hi Baby Will! I'm your family!" One day, I was sitting in the room we were staying in, quietly feeding Will and she busts into the room and asks, "What are you doing?" I told her I was feeding Will and she said, "I can't believe it! I remember when my mom did that, and it was soooo disgusting!"

Will's first Thanksgiving.

We went up to the mountains one day to see Kevin and Aimee's house and Pop's new apartment that they added on to their house.

You can't really tell that we're in the mountains in this picture, but it was really cold and we didn't want to take Will too far away from the house.

Will was sleeping in the car when this picture was taken.

The last night we were there, we celebrated Pop's 94th birthday!

We also did lots of relaxing while were there....

Will got to lay around in bed with his daddy.

Chris even let Will borrow his Tempurpedic eye mask.

Will took a few naps on Pop.

All in all, I think Will had a pretty good time.

Busy Weekend

I just remembered that I need to blog about our busy weekend before we get to a new weekend. On Friday night, Chris and I chaperoned Will and Ellie's first date. It was pretty entertaining. Ellie had to show Will how to play with some of his toys.

Will dressed up for the date. I'm sure they will both hate me for this someday. But for the record, Chris was the one that put Will's arm around Ellie. Typical guy.

As a side note, Chris told me that him and Ben (Ellie's dad) were talking about pacifiers and potty training at lunch today. According to Chris, "Madelyn still likes diapers." Madelyn is Ellie's sister and she's only 2, but Chris still doesn't understand why Will would want to "poop all over himself." After Chris changed Will's first dirty diaper in the hospital, he said, "Dude, just tell me next time you want to do that and I'll hold you over the toilet." Anyway, I just thought it was funny - two daddies, sitting at lunch, talking about things mommies usually talk about. Stacee - Can you believe Chris actually told me what they talked about without me even asking?

On Saturday morning, we went to the Tech football game, which I already blogged about below. That afternoon, we took Will to his first costume party. I've been playing Pokeno with a group of girls this year and we had a Fall Festival with our families instead of playing Pokeno this month. It was a lot of fun! I wish I had gotten a picture of all the girls....I'll have to remember to do that next time.

As you can see, Will has learned to stick out his tongue. It really cracks me up. The first time he did it was at my mom's Bible study last week. He was looking at her while she was talking and he kept sticking his tongue out as far as he could. It was hilarious.

Sunday morning was Will's baby dedication at church. My mom bought him the cutest little outfit and he looked adorable.

Sunday afternoon, we went to Abi's birthday party and Will got to be a penguin again. He was a mad little penguin this time.

Apparently, being a penguin for a weekend is hard work.

One last picture of the most precious penguin ever!

Lil' Red Raider

We took Will to his first Texas Tech football game today. He had a lot of fun and did really good! Raider Red came down the stairs next to where we were sitting and literally picked Will up from out of the crowd. It was very exciting! Chris was holding him and wasn't sure if he should hand him over or not, so he looked at me and said, "What do I do?" I said, "GIVE HIM TO HIM!" I mean talk about the perfect photo opportunity for his first ever TTU football game! Yet another reason why I'm glad I keep a camera in the diaper bag.

His shirt says Lil' Red Raider.

We have had and are still having a very eventful weekend, so I'll have to blog about everything else later.

New Trick

Will's new trick at 3 months old is....standing!

I like to sit him up in the corner of the couch like this to take pictures of him...

Yesterday, he decided he would rather stand in the corner of the couch. Sitting is for babies. Here he is pushing himself up...

And he's standing at once...

Aren't these pictures hilarious, by the way?

Here are some other things I need to remember about him:

- He is smiling all the time now. It really doesn't take much to get him to smile when he's in the mood. We'll catch him smiling in his carseat at his toy that hangs from the bar.

- My mom and Chris have both gotten some pretty good laughs out of him this last week. Chris can really get him giggling and it is so cute. He's also laughed a few times when I'm laughing.

- He has rolled over a few times. I don't think he has ever done it intentionally, though. The first time was a few weeks ago. I put him on his tummy for tummy time and as soon as I put him down, he pushed up on his hands and rolled over. He's never done that again. Then he did it a couple of times in a row at my parent's house this week. I was changing his diaper on the couch and when I was finished, I just played with him there for a few minutes. He rolled over towards the back of the couch a few times, but I think he probably just did it because it was slanted that way a little and made it easier to rollover. I haven't seen him even attempt to try when he is playing in the floor.

- He follows me around the room with his eyes....especially if I'm talking. He's done this for awhile now.

- He has grown out of 2 of his 0-3 month pajamas, but he can still wear all of his other 0-3 month clothes. Hopefully he will fit into his 3-6 month clothes when it gets really cold.

- He still loves the bath. When he gets fussy right before bedtime, all we have to do is turn on the bath water and he instantly calms down. Even though he still loved it, he was getting too big for the hammock in his aquarium tub, so we took that part out. He doesn't seem as comfortable in the tub without the hammock, so we're in the market for a new one, but I haven't found anything I like. Any suggestions?

- He loves getting his diaper changed. Chris and I have pretty much decided that he loves anything that has to do with us "pampering" him. He's even started holding his legs up on his own.

- He sings along with me when I sing to him. Maybe he'll turn out to be a better singer than Chris and me. He may need some better influences though.

We have videos of a lot of these things. Maybe someday Chris will put them on the computer and I can share them here (hint, hint).

Lots of things happening...

First of all, Will has officially slept through the night! Not once….but twice! Yeah!! Last Thursday was the first night and it was pretty weird because I woke up at 4 waiting for him to wake up. The last time I remember looking at the clock it was 4:30 and then I guess I fell asleep and didn’t wake up again until 6. Then he finally woke up at 7 (we always put him in his crib around 11). I really don’t mind waking up once during the night, which is what he typically does…but it sure is nice to get a full night of sleep!

Will had his first babysitters on Friday night. Our moms came over and stayed with him while we went on a date for Chris’s birthday. We went to Outback and then to see Rush Hour 3. It was really hard to leave him but we had a good time and Will only cried for a few minutes.

Will met his great grandparents, Grampy and Joyce, for the first time last week. Joyce held him all afternoon one day and he loved that! I think his favorite thing might be sleeping while being held….it makes him smile and laugh a lot. Side note: Will actually has a great GREAT grandfather…my dad’s dad’s dad, Pop. We are planning to make a trip to Colorado soon so that Will can meet him!

Will had a friend over for the first time yesterday. Amanda brought Taylor, Averi, and Connor over to see Will. Connor is a big boy and he wasn’t too sure about little Will and I don’t think Will knew what was going on! Will and Connor’s grandmas (Dondi and ????) are best friends so I’m sure they will have lots of fun times together. Isn’t Connor the cutest thing? Well, besides Will of course!

Finally, Will enjoyed his first Nascar race in the comfort of his very own Bumbo (thanks Curri) that he learned to sit in last week.

Will was 7 weeks old yesterday! Wow! In some ways it is going by fast, but in some ways it feels like it was years ago that I gave birth to him. Either way, he has been so much fun and has brought so much joy to our family. We love him so much! Isn’t he precious??