Spring is here

The days have been good lately. The weather over Memorial Day weekend could not have been nicer. We spent most of the three days outside. Then Helen, Chris, and Catherine came to visit on Tuesday and stayed until early this afternoon. We enjoyed having them here, ate ice cream sundaes both night they were here, and Will and Catherine had a great time playing together and running each other ragged.

And Will continues to be very cuddly, as shown above. He's almost always up for a good hug or kiss, unless he's focusing on Elmo or something else equally as important. Also, he can count to ten. He doesn't do it right all the time, and he seems to like the number six a lot (1, 2, 6 is a common recitation), but I don't blame him because six is also my favorite number.

Finally, it happened

The other day a stranger touched my belly. I know this is something that happens relatively often to pregnant women, and I know that a lot of people really don't like it, but I always assumed that I wouldn't mind. And now I know for sure--I don't! I suppose it could get annoying if you couldn't walk down the street for all the people touching your belly, but this woman just seemed excited and I didn't mind a bit.

I am also ecstatic to report that my sciatic nerve pain has all but disappeared. Three weeks ago I desperately wanted this baby out, but now I'm content to wait for as long as it takes and enjoy the remaining days that we have as a family of three. A family of three who all sleep through the night, I might add.

I believe that at twenty months of age, Will has officially entered the "Terrible Twos." His newest charm is that he absolutely must dress himself, despite his complete lack of coordination and apparent understanding of the distinction between sleeves and legs in his sleepers. So getting him ready for bed takes a very, very long time. He also insists on wearing his Mickey Mouse sleeper every night, even though it's getting too small, is way too warm for the weather we've been having recently, and is dirty at least every other night. We finally figured out that although it is not at all OK for Mommy or Daddy to help him get dressed, Bananas the Bear may be permitted to lend a hand. He also refuses to eat lunch most days. Sometimes it's my fault because I wait too long and he is tired, but a lot of the days he's just being a pain in the butt and doesn't want to sit in his booster seat. Today I finally got him to eat by putting his Elmo doll in another booster seat and providing him with a plate of egg salad and a cup of water. Will thought it was pretty awesome to eat lunch with Elmo. We then, of course, had to change Elmo's diaper, read books with Elmo, and lay Elmo down with a blanket for a nap in order to get Will to do the same things.

Will's most-used phrase is "I help." You'd think this would be cute and nice, but what it really means is, "No, you cannot have this time to yourself. I must participate in every activity that goes on in this household, no matter how inappropriate or dangerous it would be for me to help, or how much longer it will take than if you just did it by yourself." For example, a conversation might go like this:

Me: Will, I'll be right back. I have to go to the bathroom.
Will: I help!

Here is a picture of Will helping me make macaroni salad. I actually didn't mind him helping with this task because it was something to do and he had a great time and was very proud of himself.



Also, Will is about as cuddly these days as he's ever been in his life. He wants to give hugs and kisses all the time and he's taken to calling me and Matt "Mommy" and "Daddy" instead of "Mama" and "Dada." It's really very cute. He's also putting sentences together, which is so cool. The other day he said, "The fork--I dropped it." And yesterday he said, "The shoes--I wear them." I think he doesn't understand the sentence structure of "I dropped the fork," but he sure is making his points.

An Outstanding Weekend

This past weekend Julie, Tobias, Oliver, Jess, Robbie, and Henry visited. We stayed up way too late every night and had a great time. I don't even know what we did, but it was fun. I guess we mostly hung out and ate cookies. Not bad. And on Saturday my sister Meagan hosted a baby non-shower barbecue, which turned out really nicely despite the morning's gloomy weather. By mid-afternoon it was sunny and beautiful outside and people mingled and ate lunch and a ton of babies (Will, Oliver, Henry, Dylan, Avery, Xander, Layla, Samantha...am I missing anyone?) played outside and we opened presents even though it was a non-shower. Will got an extremely awesome water table from Megan's mom and a little basketball hoop from my sister Emily. These are wonderful presents for him, but also for me because he plays with them happily while I sit nearby resting my disgusting swollen feet. I hope his interest in them doesn't fade as summer nears, because I have big plans to sit under an umbrella holding his little brother, who will be too young to wear sunscreen, while Will plays and plays. We'll see about that.

In other news, I am getting kicked out of physical therapy. I am glad to have improved as much as I have over the last couple of weeks, but it frankly still hurts a lot of the time and I wish it would go away completely. But the therapist is terrified that my water is going to break while she's massaging my butt, and she's pretty sure that we've done as much good as we can before the little guy is born. It's disappointing because I still have a few weeks to go and I feel incapable of doing much of anything more ambitious than watching Elmo on TV with Will. So we watch the same episode of Sesame Street (On Demand) every day. And on sunny days we go outside and he plays with the water table until he decides to break out of the backyard and explore the neighborhood, at which point we go inside and watch more Sesame Street.