Walking boy!

Here is a quick clip of Will! This is about the normal length of his current jaunts across the room.

Book List: Through August

I've read some great books lately! Here are a few of my favorites...

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery: The first book in a series about an 11-year-old chemist (who specializes in poisons) and helps the police solve mysteries in her small English town after World War II. These books are hilarious and great mysteries! I've also read the second book, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, and I am currently reading the third, A Red Herring Without Mustard.

I really liked Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, a book about a Chinese-American with a Japanese-American best friend during WWII in Seattle. The book started a little slow, but I fell in love with it a few chapters in.

A re-read from last year that I just finished was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I love this book! Its written completely as letters, which is really different than most books. This is another post-WWII book (apparently I read a lot from that time period!).

Non-fiction favorites over the last few months are Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches, and Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches. Adopted for Life is a wonderful book about the spiritual and theological meaning of adoption as well as practical and physical adoption here on earth. Loving the Little Years is the most practical book about parenting small children that I have ever read! It is 20 short chapters, perfect for reading when you only have 5 minutes at a time. I've read it twice in 2 months and it has changed how I think about and prepare for our day-to-day life.

That's all for now! I love getting new book recommendations, and I can't plug Goodreads enough. Its totally free and a great way to see what your friends are reading and get recommendations for new books.

"More"

Will is now a signing champ! It took him until he was 10 months (Emma started signing more at 8 1/2 months), but that is still fairly early I think. He is so excited that he can sign now! 

 He gives us this huge cheesy grin when he puts his hands together. Actually this picture is rather restrained. He totally loves signing.

The first few days of signing he responded much better when Emma encouraged him to sign more. She loves helping him learn to sign!

In the week or so since he started signing more, Will learned how to clap and will sometimes wave now! He is getting to be such a big boy!

Emma and the Ball Machine

Its always great to get toys that grow with kids instead of the kids outgrowing them in a few months. Emma loved the ball machine for a while, but we put it away a few months ago as part of our toy rotation. It has recently come "out of retirement" and is a hit with both Will and Emma. Although Emma sometimes plays with it differently than Will. For example:

And just in case the photos are unclear, here she is in action:

Gotta love it!

Baby Steps

About a week and a half ago Will starting his next great adventure...steps! Not stairs steps, but baby steps. He's taken three or four in a row now, but usually his steps are one and a half and then a face plant. It's been a challenge to get a picture of him actually walking, but here are a few (blurry) shots.

Start off standing (item in mouth is optional, of course!)

There's a step! And probably a face plant afterwards.

A face-plant like this one, most likely. Although he is pretty well set up to catch himself with his hands I suppose.

I think I'll walk over to Emma...

 Will loves to stand. He has pretty good balance and will stand and play with a number of toys now. He is really loving this ball popper!

Will also does a great job picking things up while he's standing by himself. 

Look what I found!

Such a big boy! We'll work on getting a video of him soon!

Baseball!

We recently went to a Wilmington Blue Rocks game with several friends from church. The Blue Rocks are the local minor league team in the Kansas City farm system and the same league as the Frederick Keys.

We sported our Orioles gear, naturally.

Emma gave the Blue Rocks' mascot a high five!

And she loved getting to bring her glove along to the stadium. That glove has been to a ton of ball games in its lifetime; it was my first glove too!

Will and Daddy...same smile? I think so!

Looking forward to many more ball games as a family!

Happy Birthday, Joshua!

On Saturday we celebrated the first birthday of our Godson, Joshua! The party was on the actual day, so while Joshua turned a year old, Emma turned 31 months old and Will turned 10 months old. God knew we needed to simply dates apparently!

Joshua was thrilled about his hat.

But everything was all better once he eyed up that cake!

 And dug in, of course!

 Yum Yum

Joshua and Will went for a quick dip in the pool afterwards, just before the rain started.

 Will and Uncle Kevin

Emma really enjoyed her special watermelon soda!

 Cheese!

Joshua did a pretty good job opening packages too. He and Will are checking out a new truck.

The kiddos all got dressed up for the occasion. Joshua went as Charlie Brown, and Emma and Will were Leia and Luke. They were all so adorable in their outfits, but after the fact we had very few pictures of them in the costumes!

Here is the best full length view of Emma and Will

Karene made Joshua's Charlie Brown shirt, Emma is wearing my angel costume from 25 or so years ago, and Will is looking super thrilled in his moisture farmer duds.

It was a wonderful day with family and friends celebrating Joshua's first year!

Mommy Date Day

Monday morning I took Emma and Will out for a special date day! We had been home most of the weekend and I at least was getting a little cabin fever. Its so hot that we haven't been playing outside much, so we headed to the mall (and the A/C).

A blurry shot of us before we headed out the door!

(Incidentally, I realized after the fact that most of the pictures from the day were slightly blurry. Mall lighting is not the greatest.)

First stop: Barnes & Noble!

Will sat in the stroller and Emma sat next to him while I read books to them.

Emma loved counting the animals in this book...each animal had a dot on it that you pushed down and it made a popping sound...like the tops of fountain soda lids.

Will thought he was one of the big kids playing at the train set!

We packed lunch and ate in the food court. Emma was really excited for her PB&J.

And Will loves bananas!

After lunch we stopped for a bathroom break. We were waiting at the family restroom because they are the only ones with changing tables. Both of the family restroom doors were locked. A man and his son came out of the men's room and told us that they had waited for a long time and then realized that no one from the mall had unlocked the doors in the morning....so no change table! Thankfully, our Phil & Teds stroller was up to the challenge. We parked it in a large stall and laid the main seat all the way down so that I could change Will. TA-DA!

Next we walked around looking in a few stores, but mostly just Emma and Will riding and us talking about the different things we saw. We stopped for a sample of tea too, which Emma loved!

The fountain is always a favorite spot to stop. Since we are usually just walking by quickly, stopping to get out and sit on the steps is a real treat.

Will took the opportunity to chew on his cup a little.

We found this cool mirror and took a picture!

The new-ish play area in the mall is right by the fountain. Emma had a blast going down the slide and climbing on the different objects. The floor is nice and squishy, so Will was able to crawl around also.

Both of them are sitting in this racecar. Will was probably trying to escape out the back. This was the best picture I got of him because a little boy who was probably about 2 thought Will was his new best friend and followed him around everywhere, crawling alongside and on top of Will. Will didn't skip a beat because that's what Emma does to him half the time, but this kid was not nearly as used to little ones as Emma.

We finished things up with a quick trip through Target. I had a few grocery items to get and I tortured Emma and Will a little bit by looking at the clearance racks until they started getting fussy. We made it out to the car where Emma was super excited to get to sit in the front seat while I fed Will. Both of them fell asleep on the way home...plum tuckered out!

It was so much fun to get out without having a real agenda. I am really looking forward to some cooler weather so that we can do more trips outside again. Just for fun, take a look at this post about a date with Emma last year about this time!

Reflux at Nine Months

This week, we went back to the Children's Hospital for Will's 9-month check up with the Gastroenterologist. They don't check him with any tests since he is doing so well on the medication, but the determination was to keep him on Prevacid and check him again after he is one.

Nearly all of the time it is impossible to tell that anything is going on with him. He's the most happy and pleasant kid to be around. He spits up so much less now, though even this past week he still had a few projectile ones - yuck!

A week or so ago we forgot to give him his medication one morning and he was super cranky...fussy, no nap, not happy playing...once he got his meds he was fine the rest of the day. Poor kid. But at least we know there is still something going on and that the Prevacid really, really works!

Will weighed 18 pounds 13 ounces at his check-up this week. Back at his regular 9-month visit he was still 15th percentile for weight. He jumped up to about 30th percentile for height, and his head towers above everything else at the 75th percentile!

So cute!