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We went out to eat pizza with some friends on Sunday night. We put William and Leland in high chairs at the end of the table so they could entertain each other. And boy, oh boy, was that a good decision! The highlight of the night was when one of them started madly shaking his/her head from side to side until the other one started doing it. Then they both shook their heads back and forth, with huge grins splitting their faces, until all four parents were laughing, too. (Okay, so it was funnier in person. But trust me. It was hilarious.)
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William hugged country music singer Martina McBride on Wednesday. She brings her youngest daughter to the same Gymboree class that we attend each week. William is not big on the parachute time that ends each class, so it usually involves major wrangling on my part to get him to come sit in the circle around the parachute and sing songs. (I can't convince him to go underneath the parachute itself when we billow the 'chute up and down.) But he loves it when the teacher blows bubbles all over the place. So he joyfully flung himself into the fray of kids all grabbing at the bubbles drifting down over their heads, and in his joy, he dashed back to me and hugged me, then a few seconds later, he hugged the adult next to me, who happened to be McBride. And then he jumped up and ran back toward the bubbles again.
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William uttered an interesting sentence the other day while he was sitting in his high chair. Here is his profound declaration, word for word: "Stinky baby! I pooped!" And when I checked his diaper ten minutes later or so, sure enough....
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We are getting lots of new words and word combinations these days. They seem to be coming faster than I can count them. William's now regularly using phrases like "Read, please" and "Puffs, please." He is saying words like "snowman" and "fireplace" and "baseball" and "horse." For a long time, he couldn't really imitate the words that we'd speak to him. Now he manages to do a pretty good job of mimicry. And about a month ago, he started putting more consonants on the ends of the words that he already spoke. So now we really do hear "bus" and "duck" more often than "buh" or "duh." It's just so amazing to me that this little person is really starting to speak and say things. He still throws tantrums when we don't understand what he's saying, but he's getting a lot more understandable.
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Last night, I was making cookies for Christmas gifts for some of David's coworkers and for William's teachers at school. I had figured that four batches of galaxy cookies (recipe courtesy of my old roomie, Charlene) would make enough cookies for all of them, and with any luck, we'd have a few left over. But I wanted to package them all up for gifts before I let any go for general consumption. My son, however, had other ideas. When I wasn't looking, he stood on his tiptoes and spirited a cookie off the cooling rack on the kitchen table. A minute or so later, his father saw him meandering into the family room and said, "William, what's that in your hand?" I had my back to them, as I was fixing up another batch to put into the oven. And then I heard David say, "Is that a cookie? Where did you get a cookie? How did you get a cookie? Jennifer, did you give him a cookie?" He's never even had these cookies before! How did he know he would like them? But the crumbs on my carpet tell the truth...
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I'm always all nervous that the people who take care of William won't find him as funny or charming or sweet as I do. I mean, clearly I love the little guy, but you know, the other people don't have to like him. But William's teachers seem to really enjoy him, or at least they kindly tell me so. One of them told me today, as we were leaving, "He's the kind of child you want to have at home." Awwwww. And he always hugs his teachers and the nursery ladies at church on Mondays. Awwww.
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William loves Christmas decorations, as I have documented here. He absolutely adores putting a new ornament on the Advent calendar tree each day, and he never tires of looking at all the Christmas lights up in our neighborhood. The people who own the house directly across the street just put up Christmas lights a few nights ago. And guess what they included? A snowman! William was nearly beside himself with delight. I took him over to the yard today to check it out up close.
William reading "Hippos Go Berserk." He likes the "berserk" part.
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