Calm After the Storm

After a fun filled week of 1 year celebrations, it's back to normal life for the Martin family!

These two pictures were taken from my phone, so not great clarity, but priceless! Will sat in our living room floor for a good 5 minutes last night pinching his belly and legs and baby boobies. Then he'd get into the crawling position look down at his belly and flop back down and start again. I think the cutest part were his chubby cheeks and the determined look of "What is this" on his face.

This was taken a couple of weeks ago, but thought I'd share. Will loves to read, at home he'll go into the corner at the end of the couch and play with his books. He's not a huge fan of you reading to him, he'd rather do it himself at this point, but this entertains him for (in a babies world) a very long time.

And here's a picture from the weekend, riding the john deer tractor. As stated above, life is back to normal in our world, a little calm is what the doctor ordered!

1st Birthday Dinner

Though Will is now a cake eating pro, this child has had enough cake for the year! Between school, his weekend party at the lake, then his actual birthday; he's definitely on a sugar high!

Look at the cake cramming skill he's aquired! Yum!

He opened a few more presents after dinner and cake (and no cake wasn't dinner!) But, the box was all he wanted to play w/.

Here is Will and Grammy playing "Where's Will or Grammy" (not sure which one they were looking for) Will got a new tricycle bike that is called "The Frogger". (you can see it in the above picture) Anyway, the seat has a bouncing feature making this thing a rocking good time. or bouncing good time rather! Uncle Corry really wanted to give it a test drive, but the weight limit was 45lbs. so he had to can that idea, but if any of you need great birthday gift ideas for kids "Under" 45lbs, they sell these at Learning Tree off Western in Nichols Hills.


Today Will went in for his 1 year check up. He's weighing in at 26lbs. and 31in. tall and his ears are clear though the right tube is coming out; hopefully we won't have to put it back in. They drew blood for anemia which he does not have. He liked playing w/ the bandaid on his finger after she pricked it. His shots were another story! He was such a big boy though he did cry really really hard. Thank goodness they get that done quick, moms arms are the only place he wanted to be after that.

BIRTHDAY BOY!!!!

I'm 1 today!!!!

I'd like to say I'm blowing kisses, but I don't know how to do that, so just pretend...mkay!
Mom, Dad, Austin (my cousin) and I had soooo much fun last night. I'd take breaks from playing every once in awhile to cozy up to mom and dad.

Yup, I'm a big man now, 1 and lovin it!

I L-O-V-E dad's boots, so Austin thought I should try them on. My legs aren't long enough....DUHHHH! I kept trying to tell them by pulling them off or whining, but they insisted on making me look silly!

Okay, so here's the story of the evening. Dad was building a lego castle w/ MY new lego blocks that Nana got me. I was determined to knock them over, but he kept getting in my way.

Then finally, I slipped under the radar and WHAMMO down came the castle!!!

Dad was sad, so I gave him a little love "Bear style" before he got back to building his castle.

Then dad finally completed his castle...because I moved on to something else. **Don't tell dad, but I demolished the castle this morning!!

Me and my remote! Love the remote!

Then Austin got on the couch to play...but I didn't want to give up the remote.

So, mom and dad said today's my birthday. I'm not sure what all the commotion is about, but I get lots of cake. Cupcakes at school, cake for dinner or after dinner I guess! Anything with cake and icing is good for me, so bring on this birthday nonsense!

This morning mom and dad had to take a picture of me as an official 1 year old. Again, why....I don't know, but here I am.....1 Year Old!!!

Mom, Austin and I were supposed to go to the zoo this morning before I went to school but mom said Mother Nature had other plans. Who's Mother Nature? I thought I only had 1 mom....

1st Year of Blogging

A lot of people have gotten into blogging over the past couple of years, it's been a wonderful tool to keep family and friends in touch w/ our life and what Will is up too. I know from my experience w/ friends kids, we go and go and look up and the babies are born, 6 months, 10 months, a year, then 2 and so on and getting together as frequently as we'd like seems harder and harder w/ naps, work, school, etc. Having the blog to keep everyone up to date w/ our child has been an amazing adventure and I cherish getting to see my friends kids grow thru pictures when I can't see them as often as I'd like.

Next month will mark a year since I started blogging Will's life. Each week I've been able to post fun pictures, silly comments and amazing milestones he's gone thru w/out realizing (at first) that I'm documenting his life not just for family and friends to see, but for him to look back on and have great memories thru his parents eyes.

I want to thank everyone for getting on Will's blog each week to see his latest discovery. This has been the greatest year of our life and it warms my heart to know he'll have pages and pages online to look back on whenever he wants and not only look at pictures, but read (extremely goofy) captions of what he was up to at that point. I look forward to next year and sharing more of his adventures as he grows.

Thanks for being a part of his life.

Love,

Angela & Michael

1st Birthday Party

Will's 1st Birthday Party...

The Party Hat (thank you Aunt Traci)

OMG....this kid got some toys! And of course we had to have a Bear cake!

1st bite of cake...

After a few bites, he decided the balloon strings were more interesting. But not before he took both arms thru the icing. YUM!

Done w/ the cake; playing w/ balloon strings.

Grandpa Mike & Baby Grace

Two wild and crazy babies!

Here is Mallory a.ka. Momo sporting all the party favors! Rubber Duck, Hawaiian Leis and the scary fish beach ball.

Mom, Dad & the Birthday Boy getting ready to dig into the presents.

AND Will's favorite cousin Austin relaxing Sunday morning after a wild and crazy party day.

Will had an amazing birthday and lots of family and friends around to celebrate his big day. I couldn't put all the pictures of his amazing weekend on here, but you can go to Will's Party to see the rest of his family and friends.

More from the weekend

As stated on the previous blog, last weekend was probably the best weekend we've had at the lake all summer. Not to say this coming weekend won't trump that, but we'll get to that in a minute. Here are a few more pictures from Will's adventures.

Bennett; Will's good pal next door brought Will an early birthday present. A Handy Manny cruiser. Will loves this thing, not riding it so much, but he's a huge fan of walking w/ it. Handy Manny is our (mine really) favorite cartoon, and Will does pay attention when we watch it, but his attention span for TV is pretty short which is fine w/ me!

You can see it's a little stressful, those wheels just take off so he's being extra cautious!

Now we are off for our boat ride, you know the one that put him to sleep behind the wheel? He's found his place in the mule, at least for now, next summer it's going to be on one of our laps behind the wheel, but for now, he's content holding on to Grammy.

Will's first trip to "The Cut", this place is a little nuts for my taste, especially on big weekends, so this isn't our usual hang out, but Will directed us here in his sleep, so he could meet some of Grammy and Grandpa' lake pals.

He became instant pals with Gina Gale a.k.a G.G. by her grandbaby, after Gina gave Will her Gatorade bottle.

And here he is sippy cup in hand playing in the boat.

"Here dad, hold the bottle, hats off!!!"

And the BIG NEWS from the weekend is Will's new swing was installed. Now, let's go over this scenario....Will got a swing a couple of weeks ago for the patio, and while purchasing the swing, myself and my mom (Grammy) got hooks to hang it. We THOUGHT we were buying the most sturdy hooks that wouldn't let the swing go anywhere, BUT oh were we wrong!

We took the swing hooks back and Grandpa started working on the swing brackets. He went to the swing set shop on NW Expressway to get thru bolted hooks (they have names, but I don't know them) and blocking (wood). Dad and Grandpa then cut the blocking to fit under the porch, painted it to match (because it has to look nice!!!), then drilled holes for the bolts. They mounted it Sunday morning. Not only does Will have a swing he can play on as a baby and child, but I'm very confident that as a 21 year old, if he gets the itch to swing, he can hook a big kid swing to that contraption and go to town. It's not going anywhere! Oh and he LOVES this new swing!!!

Now, as I said before, non of this will hold a candle to what's coming this weekend. Will gets to celebrate his 1ST BIRTHDAY with his family and friends which includes Aunts and Uncles, Cousins and his Nana Alice from Kansas City & Florida, his Nana, Grandpa Mike, Uncle Corry, Aunt Wendy & Baby Grace, Aunt Traci & Uncle Jason, Grammy & Grandpa, Mom & Dad....the list just keeps going. All of this at his favorite place....The Lake! We are sooooooo excited about this; of course we can't tell Will until we head down, because he'll drive us crazy with questions, but it's a big deal! So, Happy 1st Birthday Bear, we all can't wait to celebrate your big day.

Boat Ride

We had a GREAT weekend at the lake! Saturday we took Will for a boat ride. Actually, Will took us for a boat ride!

He's taking to the boating life rather quickly, already knowing what to do to get out of the dock. Here Will is, helping keep the boat away from the dock as we back out!

After he realized his arms aren't quite long enough to help, Will left it to his dad and took a seat to relax.

This is his new life jacket. It's quite big, the life jacket people should size these for babies a little different. There is a pretty big difference between a 30lb. baby and a 50lb. kid. BUT, they make 1 size for that range. Oh well, it will fit for awhile! At least he's not crabby in this one! AND, his head fits down into the jacket which covers his ears from the wind. He's not a fan of wind blowing in his ears.

So, here he is driving the boat. Quite a natural, hands a 10 and 2! He took us for a fun cruise around the lake; you notice grandpa isn't even holding the wheel....

BUT, shortly after he passed out behind the wheel. Guess you shouldn't leave the driving to an almost 1 year old.

He never stopped driving while he slept, his hand was on the wheel the entire time. Of course, Grandpa assisted a little more, with a sleeping baby behind the wheel, there was no telling where we might have ended up!

Playing Poolside

Do you ever notice how short kids attention spans are? It takes longer to set things up than the time they actually enjoy them! Michael spent oh....10 minutes blowing the pool up and putting water in it for Will to enjoy it for maybe 5 minutes! And I think 5 minutes may be pushing it!!!

Here he is already trying to make his escape.

Trying....trying to get out.

YEESSSS, freedom!

And he's off! Like I said, it takes longer to get stuff ready for him to play, than he actually plays with it!