3 Months

Will is now going into his 3rd month. We are so blessed to have this little boy in our lives. He brings so much joy into our home and we just love him to pieces. I feel like he is growing so fast and getting so big. Sometimes I just stare at him, determined to keep him small. While I often look forward to the day that he is a bit more independent and doesn't rely on us so much, I know that I will miss these days as well. I am trying to cherish every moment and do everything I can to make his live as good as I can.

Will has grown significantly in the past month. Maybe not so much in his size, but definitely in his abilities and personality. Though he is growing physically as well. He is, overall, a very happy baby. He is content to just lay on the floor or sit in his chair, especially if being talked to. While he does well on his own, he thrives with attention. He will be sitting there doing his own thing, but once someone starts talking to him or just smiles at him, he gets the biggest grin in his face and gets so excited.

Within the past few weeks, he has definitely become a little jabber box. He'll just talk and talk and talk. His talk and his cry are sometimes very similar, so it can be hard to tell if he is just talking to himself or upset.  Here is a video of him singing along to some Taylor Swift.

Will loves to stand when you hold him. His legs are really strong and he can support his own weight for an impressive amount of time. He gets so excited when he stands and just loves to look around.

He can now recognize Lance and I. If someone else is holding him and we walk by, his eyes will follow us across the room.

I feel like I am getting to know my son so much better, as I should feel. I am getting much better at recognizing what is wrong and getting him calmed down. There are still times where he may be upset and I'm not sure what the deal is, but those times are reducing. He can be a pretty sensitive kid. When he wakes up in the night/morning, the routine is to change him, swaddle him, then feed him. He calms instantly when he is initially picked up. Then when I put him down on the changing table to change his diaper, it's like his feelings get hurt and he cries that much harder.

Will has gone to the pool at least 6-10 times this summer. He will sit in his little tube forever! He is so content to just chill in the water with me. Most of the time it is me that gets sick of it and wants to get out. He loves bath time at home also. He will kick and flail his arms and gets so excited.

He has also started to laugh a lot more. His giggle is SO DANG CUTE! I live for those moments each day. He is very ticklish...at the right times. When he is in his happy state, he is typically pretty ticklish and I can get a good laugh out of him. Two nights ago, I had him standing on my lap and I was holding his arms. I grabbed his hands and clapped them against my cheeks. He laughed so hard it had me laughing. And he kept laughing and laughing. Finally after a few minutes, I had Lance grab the camera to video it...and of course that is when he decided he was through. One day I will get a good video of him laughing.

There was a period where his bowel movements suddenly stopped and became less and less frequent. He went from a messy diaper several times a day, to one every few days, then suddenly they seemed to stop altogether. It made me really worried, so I called the doctor to talk about it. They said that with breastfed babies, sometimes the baby just absorbs all of the nutrients and there is no waste left. They said that it wasn't a problem unless he didn't poop for over 7 days. I waited and waited, and still nothing came. After 7 days had passed, I called the doctor again. They said again that it was ok unless he was fussier than normal and pulling his legs to his chest. He was still as happy as normal, so I continued waiting. So for any mothers out there who may be experiencing something similar, don't panic. It's ok.

When Will is being fed, he almost always holds onto my hand. He especially likes to grab my thumb that is holding the bottle. Sometimes, he will just grab the bottle instead. He probably could hold his own bottle, he just doesn't really want to yet.

Chillin in the grass at softbal

He is starting to grab at things now. We have a floor mat with dangling toys and he is starting to grab the toys and play with them.

Will's sleeping habits are improving greatly. We finally have a routine established. He usually gets tired and goes to bed between 10pm-10:30pm. Then he will wake up anytime between 5-7:30am. There was about 4 days straight where he was sleeping about 8 hours through the night. But then he would be awake for the day around 7am, which was slightly early for me. Now, he is getting up a little earlier, but then going back to sleep for a few more hours. 

Taken at 6am when I first walked into his room.

Poor Will inherited my sweat genes. It has been a super hot summer and more humid than usual thanks to the wet winter. This is not good news for our swamp cooler. Needless to say, there is a reason we are at the pool so often and a reason I've downed about 500 otter pops so far. There are times Will's head is just completely soaked with sweat. Often times in the morning, the pillow will be soaked where his head was. We try to keep him cooled as much as possible. He's handling it like a champ though.

Lance's dad has started referring to Will as "no neck" as most of the time it appears he doesn't have a neck. Part of that is due to the clothes he wears and the collars, and part of it is because he really has very little neck. It is really hard to clean and get all of the spit out of his little rolls.

Will also had his first hair cut within the past few weeks. The top of his head was getting pretty long and had some stragglers. So I just trimmed the few little hairs. It was such a little amount, I didn't think anyone would notice. So I was extra surprised when Lance said something about it. His hair on the sides and the front is finally starting to grow in so I am hoping to eventually even it all out.

I'm excited to see what the next month will bring. 

4th of July Weekend

Lance was fortunate to be able to get Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off for the weekend. He worked a few hours on the fourth, but we didn't mind as it was later in the evening after all of the family activities, plus holiday pay is always good.

Cindy and my mom came down on Friday afternoon to spend the weekend with us. We went to a park and hung out there for a few hours so that Cindy's boys could run around and play after sitting in the car for so long. They had fun pretending to be transformers with Lance. That night, they went down to Bountiful to spend the night at Jimmy's.

Logan city did their big firework show on Friday night. We were planning on watching them with Lance's family, but neither of us ended up going because we didn't want to get eaten alive by bugs. Plus we didn't want to keep Will out too late because he typically goes to bed sometime around 10pm. On our way home, we could see the fireworks going off. We ended up parking on the side of the road and watching the show. It actually worked out pretty good. We had the radio going along with it, we were protected from the bugs, we avoided traffic, plus we had a pretty good view of it.

On Saturday morning, we went and rode go-karts with Lance's family. I was in first for a majority of the race until Julie caused me to crash. Her car was much faster so I wasn't able to catch up and get revenge.

The first group that went out.

Me trying to catch back up

After we were done with the go-karts, I went to the pool with my mom and Cindy while Lance went to the new Transformers movie with his family. I've taken Will to the pool before, but it was his first time actually getting in the water. His little swim outfit, though 12 months, fit him quite well and was really cute. I bought a little tube for him to sit it, and while he was a bit small for it, we made it work. He was pretty exhausted when we got there, so he didn't enjoy the water as much as I expected. He didn't necessarily dislike it, he was just falling asleep in his tube. After he got out, he took a nap under an umbrella while the rest of us laid out. We were all a bit red by the time we left.

Will in his cute little swim outfit.

Then we went back to the hotel they were staying at to cool of relax for a bit. After dinner we headed over to Lance's parents house to frosting the cookies for the blessing dinner. It took us forever to get there because many of the streets were blocked or super packed due to the Cruise-In happening on Main Street.

We blessed Will on Sunday. I did a post about it, so if you missed it, go back 2-4 posts and you can read all about it. It was a great day and we were surrounded by a lot of family and friends.

On Monday, we took part of NLPPDL (North Logan Ping Pong Development League--I think). It is a ping-pong tournament that Lance's family started several years back and has become tradition for the 4th of July. This year we randomly drew names out of a hat to determine the brackets.

Neither Lance or I did as well as we would have hoped. Brian ended up winning the tournament. We barbecued some burgers for lunch and spent the day hanging out. Lance worked that evening, so I just went home.

Lance was so close!

It was a weekend surrounded by family and filled with a lot of activities and we sure enjoyed it! 

Happy 4th of July!

Random

I still have a post or two that I need to catch up on from the 4th of July, but I'll have to get to that another time. I just wanted to get this quick post in before I forgot about it. Will had two funny moments yesterday that I wanted to get documented, so here goes.

First of all, he did not have the best day. I'm never could really figure out what was wrong, but he was a bit cranky, which is very unusual for him. He would cry if I tried feeding him, holding him, setting him down, etc. Pretty much nothing was working. I was getting hungry and frustrated so I decided that if he was going to cry whether I held him or put him down, then I was going to put him down and get me something to eat. I turned a World Cup soccer game on so I could finish watching it while I ate. The second I turned it on, he stopped crying and sat there content watching soccer. Yes, you'll probably say that he can't even see that far, that he doesn't know what was on the tv. That it was probably just the sound or movement that captured his attention. Say what you will, but I think my boy is a soccer fan.

Then later last night, Will was crying and it seemed everything Lance tried would fail. So Lance tried things that normally make him smile. Lance grabbed both of his hands and started clapping them together really fast. Will suddenly busted up laughing. Then when Lance stopped, that laugh would instantly turn into a cry. Lance would clap is hands again, and he'd start laughing....then it would turn back into a cry. It was hilarious to watch . It was like he suddenly remembered he was upset and start crying again.

World Cup 2011

If you know me at all, you know that I love soccer. However, I've always been more interested in playing than watching. I don't follow MLS soccer, or the woman's league. And I don't follow and soccer in Europe or anywhere for that matter. Lance and I went to the MLS All-Stars game that was in Salt Lake last summer, but that's the only game we've been to since they built the Rio Tinto stadium. It's sad, really, that we have a professional team (and a good one at that) so close, yet we never go and support them.

Anyway, the purpose of that whole spiele was to say that I don't really follow soccer. A few weeks ago I heard that the woman's World Cup was about to start and there was a bit of hype going in about the US team. I decided I needed something else to occupy my time besides my many tv shows, so I set my DVR to record all of the games.

Now I am 100% hooked to this tournament and very emotionally invested in team USA. If you've watched the news at all in the past few days you'll likely have heard about our incredible comeback win against Brazil, who was one of the best in the tournament. The game started off amazing with Brazil scoring on themselves in the first two minutes. Then everything seemed to crumble and the United States could not catch a break. The refs would call it offsides when we were on. Then they would let Brazil play on when it should've been offsides. They called a foul in the box against a US defender, but it looked to me like Marta jumped to get the ball and just fell down herself. The defender got a red card and the US had to play down the rest of the game. Talk about exhausting! Then one on my new heroes, Hope Solo, makes an incredible save on the penalty kick just to have the ref take it back, give her a yellow card, and let them take the kick again.

The game went into extra time, where Marta scored in the first few minutes. It was absolutely heartbreaking. I was honestly trying hard not to break down and cry. Then Brazil spend the rest of the game trying to hold us off and wasting time. There was one player on Brazil who went down and was "injured" for quite some time. She ate up about four minutes of the clock. They carried her off the field in a stretcher. Once they were to the sideline, she gets off and is absolutely fine. The crowd went nuts and thought it was pretty low. But I guess we can thank her now because there was 3 minutes of added stoppage time. And Abby Wambach (who has been my favorite player for years) had an AMAZING goal 2 minutes into stoppage time. She scored when the clock was after the 122 minute.

This was incredible in so many ways. First of all, because it was a great pass and a great finish by Abby. Secondly because it was in stoppage time, of extra time. And third, because they had been playing a player down for a good chunk of time and they had to be exhausted. Absolutely insane. I completely lost it. I was in shock and almost couldn't believe it. Then Lance looks at me and asks if I was crying. And sure enough, there were tears starting to run down my face. I guess I should be a little embarrassed, but I'm not. I've become invested in this team and would like to see them win the whole tournament. We play France in the semi-finals tomorrow and I am anxiously waiting to see what happens. I am so proud of team USA and wish them the best of luck in the rest of the tournament.

That picture pretty much sums it up. Best game EVER! Now continue with this momentum and lets come out strong against France. USA! USA! USA!

Blessing Day

William Scott Hinton was blessed on July 3, 2011. We really appreciate all the support we received from family and friends. I know many were not able to make it, due to it being a holiday weekend, but we still had a very good turn out.

All of my siblings were there, and that is never an easy thing to accomplish. My sister Kim drove up from Cedar City late Saturday night and left shortly after the blessing. And my brother Tony, drove down from Boise Sunday morning and left soon after as well. I felt bad that they traveled so far for such a short visit, but I really appreciated it.

Lance also had all of his siblings there, except for his brother Garrett who is on his mission. That is also a big deal, as Melissa lives in Arizona and Julie lives in California. It was definitely an exciting weekend, surrounded my a lot of family.

Lance did a really good job on the blessing. I was so proud of him. There was a running joke about Lance changing the name to Sloshy Bartfarsters. Thank goodness Lance did the correct name. I gave a small sigh of relief after that part of the blessing. I had really wanted to get the blessing recorded somehow, but it just didn't happen. Here are a few of the things I remember though: Lance blessed Will with good health, a thirst for knowledge and understanding. He blessed him with a desire to help people. Will was blessed with a desire to go on a mission and afterwards be able to take a young woman to the temple and be sealed for time and all eternity. I can't remember the other things, but they were all along those lines.

After church, we all went over to Lance's parents house to mingle and have lunch. My mom had made delicious pulled-pork sandwiches. We also had a salad to go with it, apple slices, and tons of cookies for dessert. It was a lot of fun to have everyone gathered and have time to spend together. Several people had to leave shortly after, but many were able to stay and chat for a while. Lance even had the slack line set up outside and had all of my brothers and nieces and nephews trying it out.

Everything turned out so well, and I was very happy with how the day went. Will looked so handsome in his blessing outfit. I am so blessed to have such handsome boys in my life. I love both of them so much.