Little Fishie

We've been watching for good floaties for William for a while now. We've tried a couple, but they just haven't done the trick. I'd seen this one before, but was a little skeptical, until our friends got a similar one. We were out at BuyBuy Baby, and saw one like this and decided to give it a try. I think it's one of the best purchases we have ever made!! It says 30 to 50 lbs, and he is almost 30. We cinch it up as tight as it goes and it works perfectly.

 William LOVES the freedom, and can easily swim all over the place by himself (he does appreciate a little push every once in a while to get him going!). I love being able to have free arms in the pool, too! We go down to our pool about twice as much now.

This is about as close as it gets to Heaven for William!

William the 2 year old

As William walked into nursery on Sunday, I watched him run to his favorite toys and I couldn't help but think about how big he is. Not just physically, but everything about him. There are so many things about him I wish I could just freeze and hold on to forever!

One thing that has really amazed me about William is how fast he learns, and how easy it comes to him. He knows his letters (and can finally say all of them... "w" is a tricky one!), a lot of his shapes, a few numbers, and a few colors. Not only does he know that, but he can pick a jeep out a mile away. Whenever I drive around without him, I still find myself spotting all the jeeps, trucks, diggers, etc. to point out to him.
 He has an amazing memory, and maneuvers his way through the iPad as well as anyone. I can't figure out how they figure those things out so fast!

Uncle Leo taught William about planking one night and he's been practicing ever since!

 William LOVES all things Toy Story and Lightning McQueen. He also loves airplanes and trains (and most other things with wheels), and he loves looking at books. Sometimes he'll read to Buzz, holding Buzz up to the page so he can see the pictures. Lately some of his favorite books are his Richard Scarry books, and Busy Timmy and Baby Dear from the Eloise Wilkins collection of Little Golden Books.

He loves hugs and kisses, and often runs up, throws his arms around my neck and pats my back and says "I you!" (I love you). He gives the animals in his books hugs all the time, too.

 He loves singing. His top requests as we drive around are the Woody Song (I should get this one on film... he knows a ton of the words), the Utah Song (Where does he get it?! I'm kicking myself for not knowing all the words), Follow the Prophet, and the Wise man and the Foolish Man. He gets really into singing time at Nursery. At night he always wants us to sing to him, and most of the time gets pretty mad if we don't sing "My Heavenly Father Loves me."  William has also been helping to say prayers a lot lately. So cute.

 He is about as goofy as they come, always doing silly dances, pretending to give me hugs just so he can blow raspberries on my cheek, and giving me the cheesiest grins I've ever seen.
He could spend all day outside or in the pool (or shower or tub). It doesn't matter how cold it is outside, or how long we've all ready been out there, it's never long enough. Nice that it seems like Spring is already here!

He's such a fun boy and we have absolutely loved watching him grow. I can't imagine a better way to spend my time. 

A Party in Pictures

I wish I could take credit for all those great pictures! Those were all taken by my dad. He always takes such good pictures, and I am so glad he shared them with us! We had a great time at the party, and loved being able to have our families there. William LOVES seeing all of them whenever he can. Here is the one picture I took at the party:

 William and Grandpa Tyler hanging out on the couch with their balloons. After the party a few of us were able to go swimming. William's cute little friend from our building was able to come, too. He could spend all day at the pool, and absolutely loves jumping in and going under! He's an adventurous boy!

Who is 2?!?!

 I'm only a week late posting this, but I still can't believe my little man is 2 years old! What a stud. He amazes me everyday with how much he says and how fast he learns.

(Here's one of the pictures from my Dad)

We had a fun party for him on Saturday last week with his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Luckily my dad had his camera out, because I think I only took 2 pictures the whole time! William was spoiled by everyone, and scored some pretty sweet presents. He opened Leo and Adam's present first, a Lightning McQueen Pillow Pet, and I think he could've been happy with just that! Even after opening some of his other presents he'd go back to grab it and make sure it didn't get too far. He got some fun puzzles, books, airplanes, a Toy Story shirt, diggers, Mr. Potato Head, and a remote control bulldozer. Life doesn't get much better than that! His family knows him well. A few weeks ago I let him choose between a few cake pans: a firetruck, and airplane, and a dump truck. He didn't hesitate at all as he reached for the airplane. It was fun to make him a special cake, and I impressed myself with my frosting cursive! Danny picked up some balloons, even though William's been pretty afraid of them in the past, but they were a hit. He and his cousins LOVED running around with them. We are glad to be past that fear...
After the party his cousin Thomas, Uncle Spencer, and Grandpa Young stayed to swim. His cute little friend was able to come, too!

He has so many people who love him, and it was great to have them all together with us to celebrate our favorite little man! 

The next day, Sunday, and his actual birthday, we had a little table and chairs (thank you IKEA) that we got for him on a fun rug all set up for him with a couple of presents from us on it. We decided it would be fun for him to have his own little spot to sit and play. I think he loves that the chairs are just his height. He always pats the other one and says, "Mommy, sit!" Unfortunately they are not that strong. Especially in my enlarged state!

Here he is his birthday morning, playing with some of his new toys, and of course, Buzz and Woody!

35 Weeks

I realize that I haven't really documented anything about this pregnancy in any way. This blog is just about as close as I come to journaling most of the time. I think that the only pictures we've taken were on our California trip a month ago, and I think I've already posted these.

It hits me over and over again how close we are to having 2 kids! I'm definitely bigger this time around, which is nice to know baby girl is growing well, and that we don't have to deal with all the extra appointments and such that we had to towards the end with William. It was fun to have the extra ultrasounds, though! Our doctor did say she wants to do a quick ultrasound at the clinic at my next appointment to check fluids because they were the big problem at the end of pregnancy with William, but she's not worried. It'll be fun to see baby girl! We can't wait to meet her. She seems a lot calmer than William (I swear he poked and jabbed constantly), and it'll be fun to see how they are alike and different. William talks about babies more and more as we move furniture around in his room, and do more baby prep. He is still so sweet to our little nephew Dallin and has been playing with my old cabbage patch dolls a lot. He loves to rub my belly and say "baby!". 

Back pain and reflux have made more of a presence this time around than they did with William, and I can't wait to be able to roll over without waking myself up at night! I'm grateful for shoes that slip on and off so easily, and that William loves wearing his fireman rainboots, because he can put those on all by himself. Danny takes such good care of us. I definitely scored when I married him!

Our little stinkerbug turns 2 on Sunday. It blows me away to look at how far our family has come, and how much it'll change in a months time! 

a boy and his buzz

There are those people who can walk into D.I. and find the best deals every time. I've never been one of those people. Maybe it's because I don't have a good eye for it, or maybe it's because I'm just to impatient to look long enough. 

That being said, our California trip changed William's life. He has 2 new loves: airplanes, and Toy Story (particularly Buzz Lightyear). He still loves Lightning McQueen, trains, Thomas the Train, cars, trucks, and so on, but Buzz and airplane take up a lot of his time lately. 

Back to DI... I had to drop some stuff off while I was out running errands. I don't usually go in, but thought maybe I'd quickly scope things out. See if there were any good children's books or something. We walked towards the back and it was like he was there, waiting for us, and calling out to William as we walked by. Buzz Lightyear! A big one! And best of all, IT WORKS and it was only ONE DOLLAR! We grabbed it quick and William just about passed out from excitement. 

Buzz has come just about everywhere with us the last few days. William loves putting him his shopping cart and running up and down the hallways with him. We lucked out big time on that DI trip!

P.S. Buzz is not allowed in the crib at naptime/bedtime. One too many "too infinity and beyond!"s waking William up whenever he rolls over...

Disneyland Day 2 and the end of our trip

I’m finally getting around to posting the rest of our trip. The power cord to our laptop was MIA, so it has taken me a while. We started out the last day of our trip at California Adventures, and boy am I glad we did! We lucked out and were the FIRST ones in line to see Lightning McQueen and Mater! Um, can we say William heaven? Luckily no one else was around right away, so he had a couple of minutes to scope them out. Turns out the photographer, noticing Danny’s Utah shirt, told us all about her cousins in Salt Lake, and how she hates driving in Salt Lake. The numbers all look the same. I laughed, telling her how different California driving was, and that I was looking forward to getting back to SLC driving… Thank goodness my mom let us borrow her GPS!

Chip and Dale were the only other characters we had our pictures taken with. It wasn’t worth the line most of the time (there wasn’t much of a line for these two). Later in the day we got to the Winnie the Pooh ride right as pictures were opening up with ALL the Winnie the Pooh characters so we jumped in line right towards the beginning, and looked down to see that William was dead asleep. So no pictures with them. But you can see how excited he was to meet Chip and Dale, even after spending so much time in their Toon Town Tree House the day before.

Next was the Bug’s Life area. William really liked the Catapiller ride and the Lady Bug ride. He was a little nervous at first on the Lady Bug ride (similar to the Tea Cups), because there was no lap riding, but he got over that pretty quick!

Unfortunately Cars Land doesn’t open until June. He would’ve loved it!

There wasn’t a whole lot for him to ride at California Adventures, but he loved seeing everything. He was so good at walking with us, holding on to the stroller. He wouldn’t do it if we told him he needed to, but if we asked him to help us push the stroller then he would gladly walk along with us. It made him easy to keep track of!

He loved the big bear, and couldn’t take his eyes off of the airplane. I think riding on a plane really made him excited about planes. He still talks about them all the time.

After he took a nap we headed back to Disneyland. One of William’s rides so far up to that point was the Buzz Lightyear ride. We let him pick out a pack of little figures, and he just about died when he saw the Toy Story pack. He couldn’t WAIT to hold that little Buzz. He didn’t pay much attention on It’s a Small World, because he was too busy having Buzz, Woody, and Jessie say hi to each other over and over. I don’t think he let go of Buzz and Woody the rest of the day. When we asked him if we could hold his hand while walking in a busy area, he’d hold out his wrist so he wouldn’t have to put Buzz down.

There were very few things at Disneyland that William wasn’t really impressed by. He really liked the Tarzan house, and ran back and forth across the bridge until we had to drag him on to the next spot. 

When we knew we were getting down to the last little bit, we took William back to some of his favorite rides, Buzz Lightyear being one of them. This is the first picture where he voluntarily smiled for the camera. He was SO excited to be in a picture with Buzz.

When we were leaving the park, we let him choose a stuffy. One thing Danny always remembered about Disneyland trips was that they got a stuffed animal. We showed him a couple and he chose Nemo. As we were packing up the car at the hotel, William walked over to the steps and sat down with his new little buddies. He was really sad to go. I think he knew it was the end of the trip.

William was really tired, but he was SO good on the flight home. He sat on Danny’s lap playing with his Toy Story guys and Nemo the whole way. He loved all the noises on the plane, and still, when you talk to him about planes he’ll tell you about the noise. It was nice to finally sit down, but I think being pregnant finally caught up to me.

William was wide awake as the plane landed. We got off and wrapped him in a blanket and put him in the stroller. He insisted that Nemo be able to see out…

William was out by the time we got off the ramp. My parents brought us our car and we headed home. It was such a fun trip. I never imagined that it would go as smoothly as it did. It was so nice to take everyday at William’s pace. It worked out so nicely with Danny’s business trip. William might be the only one of our kids to go to Disneyland like that! I loved being able to spend so much time with Danny. He works so hard for our little family, and does everything he can for us! He takes such good care of us.

Trips are always fun to look forward to. Once we got back we realized we had a couple of major things to get ready for! William turns 2 next week, and we are a month and a half from our baby girl!!!