William at 29 Months

As of this morning, William now weighs 28 lbs, has a head circumference of 19 3/4" and is 36.5" tall. 

Will likes to watch a cartoon called Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. It is a cartoon spin-off of Mister Roger's Neighborhood and has all kinds of lessons on good values and behavior. Its a pretty wholesome show and Will really loves it and actually learns a lot from it. One of the more recent lessons hes picked up on, is about sharing. They sing this song called, "You can take a turn, and then I'll get it back" and its all about sharing and taking turns. Lately Will has taken to going up to Nora, handing her a toy and saying, "a turn, a back!" proudly. It is SO cute!

His other favorite phrase is, "a self!" As in 'I did it myself.' It can also mean he wants to do it himself. The other day he proudly told me "a stairs, a self!" when he started to climb a flight of stairs without my help, or the help of a rail to hold onto. He is constantly asking to do it, "a self!" His other favorite new thing to do by himself, is to clip the chest clip on his car seat together. He is obsessed with this and gets very irate when you do it for him. Unfortunately it takes him like two minutes to do it (his fine motor coordination is still not the best), so when I am in a rush, I don't have time to wait for him to do it. He does not like that one bit!

He loves it when I call him "stinker" and will do things that he knows will elicit that response from me. For example, he will remove his socks from his feet from inside his sleep sack, when he is supposed to be napping. When I get him up from nap and discover that his socks are off, I proclaim, "stinker!" and he giggles and repeats it after me excitedly. Its a little game we play throughout the day. I thinks its so funny that he likes being called that!

We have started teaching him to pray with us at the dinner table. It didnt take him long and he caught right on. He says "amen" very solemnly at the end. Its now gotten to the point where he asks to say the prayer if we haven't done it yet. How adorable! So far he hasn't said his own prayer yet, but I expect that its only a matter of time. He will also say "bless you" after one of us sneezes. It is the cutest thing.The other cute thing he does at the dinner table, is any time you tell him to chew his food, he pretends to sneeze "a-choo, a-choo" into his elbow. It makes Michael and I smile every time. Wrong kind of 'choo/chew' there kid! 

 Michael and I love Amazon.com. We are Amazon Prime members and order stuff from them at least once a week. There is something so thrilling about seeing that brown box with the smile on it, sitting on your front stoop. What adds to the excitement, is that we order so much stuff there, that I usually have totally forgotten what is supposed to be in each box as they come. So its always a surprise. William has caught onto the excitement of opening each box and as soon as he sees one, he exclaims, "open it!" repeatedly, until we do. He has also learned to love popping the air sacs they put into each box to protect the contents. I just think its so cute to see him gasp and exclaim, "Ooooh!," every time we open one of those boxes. Its like a little bit of Christmas every week.

Will is usually a very well behaved kid, but every now and then he gets into mischief. Fortunately nothing too major as of yet though. A few days ago I left a box of Chex out on the kitchen table, and then left Will to watch cartoons while I put Nora down for a nap. I came back 5 minutes later to this. He proudly proclaimed that he had a "Wot chex! Wot chex Mom!"

He still is obsessed with smelling the feet of his fleece pajamas for comfort, and carrying them around everywhere he goes, in addition to sleeping with them. In fact, there have been a few times where I put the footie pajamas in the wash, neglecting to give them to him before bed. He woke up at 3am both times, sobbing that he didnt have his precious pjs! After that happened a couple of times, I never forgot to give him his pjs again!

He has this soft bodied baby doll that he has taken to "caring" for. He puts it in the swing, in the bumbo seat, in the vibrating seat, he gives it stroller rides and tries to give it water. Its adorable to see him mimicking me taking care of Nora, with his baby doll. He is such a good little 'daddy' and big brother.

He loves the game of chase, especially when we chase him, but his favorite is playing it with other kids. He will seek them out at the playground, make eye contact, and then run away in hopes they run after him. Sometimes hes successful at getting them to play chase and other times not. The times he is not he looks so sad! Speaking of running, he is starting to play pretend, and his favorite pretend game to to be a "little plane" and run around "flying fast!" Its really cute. He also pretends to have a tow truck by putting one matchbox car, backwards, partially on top of another matchbox car, so it looks like the first car is towing the second. He will also stack blocks or food, or whatever inanimate object he can get his hands on, and make "houses" out of them. I love to see his imagination at work!

Oddly enough, Will loves soy milk and requests it daily (I never give him more than a half cup of it). He cant say 'soy' though and instead pronounces it "schwing" milk. Below is a list of other cute word pronunciations he is saying right now:
yellow: ye-yo
helicopter: hewa-doctor
ambulence: ambu-wence
excavator: trac-a-dater 
pizza: pito
pooped: poot
a lot: wot
stinker: dinker
Pineapple (cut into triangle shapes): triapple
By himself: a self
Tractor Trailer: a twac-ter a tway-were
Goofy: goosey
Christmas lights: camis wites
Two: Tao
Mail Truck: Man truck

This is a cute age. He is so busy all the time and always coming up with new games and behaviors. He is also very challenging right now. He is very emotionally unstable (as the best toddlers are) and it often feels like he spends the better part of each day either crying, or having yet another tantrum. And its always over baffling things, like, he dropped a goldfish cracker on the ground, or I asked him if he wanted to go play outside, or I gave him the exact lunch he asked for. Surely that warrants 30 minutes of screaming right!? All I can say is that he is lucky he is so damn cute because otherwise I would want to sell him to the circus! He has the energy for it!