six months two years and a desert that is good enough to die for

First of all, William is six months old!!! He is such a good baby! Here are his stats from his appt.:

Weight: 16 lbs 3 oz (26th percentile)

Length: 27 inches (71 percentile)

He's still our tall skinny boy! Here are some things he likes to do:

It's been so fun to watch him figure out how to work the toys on his excersaucer(or whatever it's called)! This toy always makes him SO mad because he can't fit it into his mouth... but he'll sit and spin that thing over and over and over....

I love walking in to check on him during his naps and find him like this. He has a couple of stuffed animals that he loves to cuddle with while he sleeps! Overall he is usually a realllly good sleeper. He has his off days, but on average goes to bed around 8, wakes up between 5 and 6 to eat and goes back to sleep until about 7. Now if only I went to bed around 8...We finally got him his own chair. He LOVES to eat. He is his mother's child...And of course.... he loves the water! We don't have any pictures yet, but we've loved the pool in our building. His arms move non-stop splashing around. Water in his face doesn't phase him at all. Here are some tub pictures.
He always wants to sit up (with help) in the tub now...
Going for walks. We've discovered all kinds of things downtown already. Walking down Main Street is pretty cool with all the construction and the bridget they are putting in. I think it'll be pretty neat when it's all done! We walked up to the capital yesterday (that is a big hill...). We also discovered that the Gallivan Center is a big hole right now. They are completely re-doing it!

It's also super fun to be right by temple square. We are pretty lucky!
We've starting to watch Baby Signing Time with him (and doing the signs to him), too. My sister-in-law Andrea was nice enough to let us borrow hers. It'll be fun to see what he picks up. There was one night where he woke up in the middle of the night and NOTHING we did calmed him down. We went outside (which usually works), he wouldn't nurse, didn't take juice, the sink didn't calm him down, so I finally put this on and cuddled up with him and he calmed RIGHT down, watched for a minute and went to bed. Not that we want to use TV to calm him down, and this is the only thing he's really watched (and will watch for a while probably). But it sure saved us!
We also gave him his first hair cut and trimmed about 2 inches off of his long patch on the crown of his head. It was getting a little out of control.

He's such a good kid! I love getting to stay home and be his mom.

So... it was also our anniversary! Woo hoo. It was Danny's firm party at Lagoon, so William spent the afternoon with Grandma while we went. Here we are soaked from the Rattle Snake Rapid ride...And on the Ferris Wheel. Next time we'll have to take William. Neither one of us are huge into the big new crazy rides. I can't handle them like I used to. But it was a fun day.It's been a great 2 years. Danny works so hard and makes life so fun. And on top of that he's a great Dad. He helps out so much. William and I are both so lucky to have him!

Anniversaries have themes and the second is cotton. So Danny got me yummy cotton candy (compliments of Aunt Anita). This is the other part of my gift:

Peach season here I come!

Oh yeah, for dinner we had a gift card to Flemmings Stake House. It was probably the most we've ever spent on dinner, but it was worth it. Everything was DELICIOUS. Especially the Chocolate Lava Cake. Seriously. I just about died right there at the restaurant. We might not go there much for dinner, but we are definitely going back just for that Lava Cake!

One of the great things about living downtown...

These are a few of my favorite things....

So... it has been a crazy couple of weeks! We love our apartment (even though I know we'll love it more when we get the rest of our stuff put away and our piano moved in!), and we have loved living downtown. Some highlights:

-swimming in the pool... we had it all to ourselves and William was in heaven.

-sitting on our balcony, or under a tree right on South Temple watching the cars go by. Once again, William was in heaven!

-Took trax to Gateway and visited the planetarium and the fountain. Heaven.

-Danny can come home for lunch somedays. Heaven.

-Going for walks around Temple Square and the construction. Heaven.

There is so much to do with this little guy. He loves all the noises and things to see. He is mesmerized by traffic, flowers, big trucks, the ceiling of the planetarium, and who knows what else. He is such a good kid!

However, this good kid is battling a cold, so he's had a harder time being pleased. But he is being so great with all the change around him as we unpack.

So...enough of the update. On to the point of the blog. With occassional exceptions, William is a pretty good sleeper. A lot of the time we'll lay him down for the night or for a nap and he'll either 1- roll onto his side holding his blanket between his hands and zonk out like so:

or 2- He'll play quietly for 5 minutes and drift off. Of course this isn't always the case, but it's sure nice when it is!

So William really loves soft things as he's going to bed. Two of the most common are his soft blankie and his elephant. They really help soothe him to sleep!

The other night I went in and he had his arm around the elephants leg and another hand on the blanket. I ran to get the camera, and when I got back he was relaxed. So it wasn't as good of a picture as it could have been, but close enough.
I don't know what just happened, because I can't get it to stop being underlined. So I apologize. But I also love his hair in the picture. Half the time it seems like no matter how much we wet it down in the back, it sticks right back up! So funny.

Okay! Underlining gone. So the soft things are Williams favorite things, and this is one of mine: The parade! We took him to see the twenty fourth of July parade. There were some great floats. He especially loved watching the marching bands. Like so:
We lucked out and kind of eased our way under someone's tent top thing. They didn't mind one bit, which was lucky for us. It was HOT.