Snow much fun.

I know it's no 34 inches, but we like snow around here, even if it's just 4 or 5 inches, and especially if it comes as a surprise!

This morning at 5:45am the Shelby County School system automated phone service called my cell phone to tell me that school was cancelled for hazardous conditions. Awesome, since I don't live in the county and am 5 years away from even having a kid in school...thanks for waking me up. So I got up and looked out the window to see a beautiful blanket of snow on my backyard. I took Will out after breakfast and we ended up having a great time playing with our neighbors and walking in our monkey boots. He spent about an hour out there total with one break for some warm chocolate milk when he was starting to look a little hypothermic. Here are some pictures!

Sorry.

I'm going to try to make up for this lack of posting with a lot of cute pictures. Maybe that will help? Things really aren't all that busy around here, but just the usual routine of life that I have created to keep Will occupied during the day has left little time for blogging. In case you haven't noticed our ticker or been around here in awhile, we are expecting another baby July 9! We go to the doctor next Tuesday to hopefully find out the sex of the baby.

This past month has been the coldest for sure, and involved a lot of indoor play. Will (who turns 17 months this week) is talking so much, basically all the time, and loves to tell me "Done" and "No", even if it doesn't mean anything, just to say it. He got a big haircut (his 7th) with Dad; this is the only time he gets suckers so it's always a big occasion. We got to spend a day last weekend hanging out with baby KK, which gave Will a great chance to "rock" the "baby" and practice saying it a lot. We had a snow/ice storm over the weekend, which is always good for a little cabin fever, and luckily his Mother's Day Out day didn't fall on one of the days school was out.

We have big plans for the spring--besides thinking about getting ready for the baby, Ben (and sometimes I) will be traveling frequently all over the southeast interviewing for his fellowship. His first interview is next Thursday, at Wash U, in St. Louis. All cities have been approved by me :) as decent places to raise our kids and live for a couple of years. Notice there will be no interviews in MS (been there done that) and certainly not Arkansas (wouldn't want to get too close to those Duggars or heaven forbid the Clintons). I managed to talk him out of applying in Pittsburgh, saying my mental health hinged on not staying inside with my kids 9 months of the year and shoveling snow off the driveway daily. We will see where all of this takes us...of course, the chance always remains that it won't take us anywhere, since he is also interviewing here at UT. But we are excited anyway.

Pictures!

So sad...so we went ahead and turned his seat around so he can ride like the big boys:

Working on hand eye coordination:

Going out to eat is always fun...did you know IHOP puts all the families with small kids in one corner of the restaurant?

We got a couple of warmish days to try out our new (Craigslist) car

Haircut!

Friends:

The beginning of our ice/snow storm. Thankfully I had 2 trusty co-pilots.

Snow day! His favorite book is still the Gingerbread Man (thanks Dolly!)

I don't want to get bundled up to play!

Trying out some lunchmeat, it went over pretty well:

I am 16 months!

Will turned 16 months yesterday. His vocabulary has really taken off and he has learned and started using several new words in the past week or so.

-Up

-Down

-Hot (followed by blowing on whatever he thinks is hot)

-Sit

-Eat (he points to the dog bowl and tells Silas "EAT!")

This brings his total word + sentence count up to about 20 or so.

He eats 3 good meals per day and snacks, drinks about 28 oz of whole milk, and usually one or two cups of extremely diluted juice. He naps from about 12:30 to about 2:30. He loves to climb on Silas's back and ride him like he rides his rocking horse. Silas usually just rolls his eyes and lays there. He still loves clocks and cars and all his new Christmas toys. We got a video monitor from my parents for Christmas, and its absolutely hilarious to watch him go through his little routine before falling asleep. I didn't realize that he had to sort his blankets and stuffed animals out so precisely.

Here are some pictures! His cute puppy sweater was a gift from Aunt Sandy and Uncle Scott for Christmas.

For Real Christmas Post with Pictures

Christmas was a blast! We love to travel and get out of our house and into another environment for a few days. Ben was off the whole week of Christmas. We spent the 22nd-25th at his parents house in Nashville.

We ate lots of good food:

Played with new toys:

Read the Christmas story:

Opened presents from Grandma, Grandpa, Amy, Chris, and Beth:

And woke up silly on Christmas morning:

Christmas morning we travelled to my parent's house. We spent the rest of the day with them, my grandma, and my aunt. The next day, we went back over and had Christmas with my mom, dad, grandma, aunt, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew.

Will discovered that he can climb up in this chair:

So, its a good thing he got one of his own!

He also got a tractor to keep at Grandma and Grandpa's house and to share with Cousin when he is in town:

We played outside:

And, in the new playhouse from Great-Grandma!

Whew! That was a long one. Hope you holiday was great like ours!

Christmas

Hope yours was great like ours! Pictures coming soon!

mother/son/clock

I put this on my facebook page already, so you may have seen it. My mom found this picture of me from when I was about 3, and I think I look a lot like Will at the age he is now. What do you think?

Also, when he sees the clock (or any clock) he says tick, tock (and sometimes he says "ding"). He likes to lay upside down in from of our clock sometimes and watch it. I'm going to share this video with the caveat that my voice sounds creepy and I am holding him upside down and he doesn't have a shirt on.

catching up--15 months

Just wanted to pop in and update. Will is now 15 months old! That sounds old to me. We went to his doctor's appointment last Friday, and he weighs about 20 pounds and is about 30.5 inches tall. Mainly, I want to record some of the things he is saying right now, for my memory. I had written them all down for the doctor since she always asks how many words he has. Here is a complete list:

-momma

-dadda

-brother

-bye, bye-bye

-uh oh

-light

-tick tock (when he sees a clock)

-vroom vroom (car)

-that (to everything)

-ball

-stick

-done/all done/all done momma (after finishing milk or food)

-bye bye brother

-bye momma

I think that's it. Also, he likes to count to "one" after the clock chimes. We are working on him to be able to count to 5 before he is 18 months. Think he can do it?

Here's another fave from good ole APP: