Happy New Year!

Happy new year to all my readers (if there are any left since I never post :) Maybe my New Year's resolution should be to post more regularly.

This has been a busy holiday season for us this year. We had a Thanksgiving celebration at Brad and Becky Pluth's again this year with lots of family and yummy food. The weekend after Thanksgiving my parent came up to Minnesota and we celebrated at our house along with my parents and Ben. This year we opted to buy our meal pre-cooked from Byerly's since there were only 5 of us, and I am glad we did. It was really good, and we still had a ton of leftovers.

During the month of December Rob kept busy continuing to study and test for his Project Manager Professional certification as well as several Microsoft certifications. By December 23, he had passed all his exams and now has 9 certifications! We're praying this will have a noticable impact on his job search.

Will has had a rough couple of months health wise. He came down with a bad cold and double ear infection on Halloween, and ever since then has been on a cycle of sick, get antibiotics, finish antibiotics, wait 5 days, has double ear infection. The poor little guy has been on five rounds of meds since then, and we are taking him in again today. We are not sure if he is getting reocurring ear infections, or if it is the same one that just never completely goes away. The doctors have been talking about tubes, but we are still hoping to avoid that if possible.

Christmas this year ended up being a little different than we anticipated. The original plan was to spend Christmas Eve home as a family, Christmas day afternoon with the Pike clan and then drive down to my parents on the day after Christmas. The Sunday before Christmas, though, we received a phone call that my dad had had a major heart attack and was in the hospital. He had two coronary arteries that were completely blocked. He is okay now, but will have to be on a special diet. It was very scary, and Rob and I decided that it would be best to go to Iowa early. So we drove down on Thursday and stayed until Wednesday. We had a really nice time and were able to visit both of my grandmas and just hang out with the family.

We didn't do anything this year too crazy on New Year's Eve, we just went over to Steve and Sara Davis' for a movie and hang out time. Now it is back to work and our regular routines!

Catch Up Part I

Wow! I's has been a long time since I have posted! A lot has happened in our lives since February, so I will just quick give a quick recap. Tax season is obviously over now, and it went as well as could be expected. Afterward we went to Iowa a couple of times to visit my family which is always fun, but a long drive.

At the beginning of May we went on Vacation with Steve, Sara, and Ethan Davis to Cancun, Mexico. Will was Mr. Popularity everywhere we went, and that came in handy when we requested an extra seat for him in the airport at the gate. Of our four flights, he only had to be on my lap for one! It was good to get away and just hang out at the pool and beach.

In June Rob and I had our 6th anniversary, and we celebrated by staying the weekend at the hotel at Mystic Lake (thanks Barb!). We stayed with Will one night and left him at home with Cassie the other. He and I both did fine for our first night apart - he slept the whole time we were gone, but not before pooping in the tub for Aunt Cassie! My parents came up for the weekend before Will's birthday and we had a small party and cake for him. The day before his birthday, Will starting walking and I don't think he has slowed down yet! Before that he had been taking maybe four or five steps at a time, but after that day he pretty much never crawled again.

Going Places

Time has gone quickly since Christmas, and now I am in the midst of tax busy season again at work. Since I am part time this year, I am not working quite so many hours as I have in the past, but I am still working around 50 hours a week, which has been a bit of an adjustment for our family. Rob is able to watch Will 1 to 2 days a week and Cassie watches him the rest of the time along with the Pluth kids. Starting next week Rob will be watching Will full time since Cassie got a new job.

Lately we have been experimenting with different eating and sleeping schedules to try to find one that will allow Will to get enough sleep, enough solids, and enough milk at the right times throughout the day and hopefully help in also getting him to sleep through the night. He still wakes up in the night once or twice, and doesn't necessarily need to eat but usually needs some help settling back down to sleep. The last few weeks have been a flurry of firsts for Will. He will now crawl fully up on his hands and knees for about 6-7 steps at a time, but then moves back down to his stomach, especially if he is in a hurry to get wherever he is going. His favorite places to get to fast are the dog bowls to play in the water and the computer and tv cords because I guess they just look like fun. We have been busy baby proofing, but it is still a work in process.

This past weekend two more teeth popped through - the top middle teeth - and they have been giving Will some grief. Hopefully they will finishing cutting through in the next couple of days.

About 4 days ago Will learned how to pull himself up to standing all by himself, and now it seems like he can't get enough of it. He will hold on to what ever is convenient - the steps, coffee table, toys, bed comforter, toilet, or parent. It is amazing how long he will stand if he has something to hold on to. Sometimes his legs start to slide apart and he begins to do the splits, and this scares him and he cries, but won't sit down. Yesterday when I put him down for a nap and left the room I could hear him talking and whining a little, so I waited for him to settle down and fall asleep. After about 15 minutes I went in there to check on him since he was still awake, and he was just standing in his crib waiting for someone to play with him. I guess why lie down when you can stand up?

This past weekend was Valentine's Day, and we had a good time. We went out to eat at Bonfire's on Sunday night, and on Monday night Barb got a suite for us at Mystic Lake Hotel. That was a lot of fun; we took Will with us and went to the buffet and then took him to the pool. It was his first experience in a big pool. There wasn't really any shallow part for a baby, though, so we just held him on the steps for a while until we were all too cold. Even though this trip to the pool wasn't as fun as the tub, we got some pictures of it! The rest of the evening we spent watching the pairs figure skating finals which was a lot of fun, too.

Eating Baby Food and Christmas

Will turned six months old in December, so we decided it was time to start letting him try out other foods besides milk. For his first meal we gave him rice cereal, and except for his initial surprise at the different taste, he loved it. He did pretty well eating off the spoon, too. Since then we have tried some other foods like sweet potatoes, squash, bananas, apples, prunes, peas, peaches, and avocado. I think bananas are his favorite, but at this point it is hard to tell because he seems to just love food in general. It is fun to feed him, but mommy and daddy haven't been so excited about what all this new food does to Will's nice cloth diapers! Here are some still shots of the video we took of his first meal.

Christmas in our family was pretty busy this year. On Rob's side of the family, the Wheelers and Davis usually come into town several days before Christmas and then stay through New Year's Day, but this year the Wheelers weren't here quite as long since they were in the middle of moving to Minnesota and Dan was preparing to start his new position as pastor in January. Several days before Christmas we started hanging out with family in the evenings, sometimes for organized events and sometimes not. It is good to see everyone, but I usually prefer to spend time with people either one on one or just one or two couples at a time, so in Rob's family that means we need several social events to feel like we got to adequately connect with everyone.

Christmas Eve Rob, Will, and I went to the Christmas Eve service at our church and then drove around the city looking at Christmas lights with Andrew and Jessica. We saw some neat displays, but were a little late and some people had already turned off their lights for the night. On Christmas morning I made Frech Toast for breakfast and we opened gifts with Will. I was actually really surprised that he was able to open a couple of gifts without much help from us, but of course the focus was on the paper and bows, not the actual gift. I think Will played with the bow and cardboard backing to his pacifier package for most of the day, much to his delight. Since he is also beginning to scoot around the floor army crawl style, he loves going over by the Christmas tree. Here are some pictures of when I caught him pulling the ribbon off the tree.

In the afternoon we went over to Becky's new house and had the Pike Christmas. It was a good time with good food and tons of people. Funny how even in a bigger house it can still seem crowded with all the family. This year they split up the adults and children for the meal and for gift opening, which made it a little bit more managable.

On Sunday after Christmas we celebrated with my side of the family over at my brother Andy's house. My parents and other brother Ben drove up from Iowa, and it was good to see them. We had a good time with another great meal and watching the kids open gifts. Ava and Luke always love playing with Will, and it is so much fun to watch them interact together. Rob and I even played Settler of Catan with Sara, a game which we generally refuse to play, but it was really fun this time.

Well, that pretty much sums up our Christmas. We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas, too!