Life of Wilder: Week Thirty-Four

 The weekly picture-taking situation

has gotten dire, folks, but I'm too tired

to come up with a new format so I guess

we'll just keep going on this way until

my letters/numbers get smashed to 

oblivion like his mandarin oranges.

Ever since he started being able to move himself, Mr. Man here has gotten too big for his britches. This week has been spent picking up stuff Wilder has pulled out, taking stuff away or pulling him away from stuff that is dirty, sharp, heavy, or otherwise inadvisable to touch or be put in one's mouth, trying not to drop him when he lunges at things at random as I walk around the house, and trying to prevent him from rolling off the changing table or smashing his poopy diaper with his kicking legs when I'm changing him. People, the boy is wearing me out... but at the same time, he is just so fun and makes me so happy and I don't know what I'd ever do without him. I love to watch him explore and discover new things. He makes me smile countless times a day. His babbling is the sweetest thing I've ever heard and it's so fun to see his personality coming out, even if it does include some bullheadedness. 

Some new things about Wilder lately...

He is determined to pick up, touch, or put in his mouth anything he so chooses and, Lord help you, if you stand in his way or take it from him. If you're holding something, he wants to be holding it too. He loves anything on hinges and will open and close these things over and over and over.

He's started this new game where he will start at one end of his room and scoot his way across the floor picking up, inspecting, and tossing aside each and every toy in his path until he gets to the other side and then it's time to move on to the curtains or something. He is B-U-S-Y. He loves exploring all over the house and is always finding new interesting things to play with.

He loves peeking around or through stuff at us in a little peekaboo game. 

Every naptime now he knows that after I close the door it's time for him to turn off the light and he reaches over without me telling him and flips the switch. When we're in his room playing and I say "ball" to him he looks up at the globes hanging over his bed. He has really been practicing saying the word, too, and has gotten as far as "ba". Oh, and he dances. Oh my goodness, he starts doing this little head-bob/leg-kick thing when he hears music now and it totally cracks me up. 

He is so enjoying having Paul home more this summer. He absolutely adores his daddy and would ride around on his shoulders all day if he could. He never stops smiling when he's up there or really when Paul is around in general.

Watching the Women's World Cup with Daddy 

Trying to teach him to throw and roll the ball

 Watching the news in the morning

He loves going to the dog park and gets so excited watching the dogs run around. He knows which ones are our dogs and always keeps an eye on them. He is getting sooo heavy to carry in the Baby Bjorn though. The Grape Street Dog Park is five acres and I like to walk circles around it to get some exercise instead of just sitting on one of the benches or standing around. Wilder weighs 20 lbs though now so our park trips have turned into a complete resistance training workout. The Bjorn goes up to 25 lbs but I just can't imagine adding 5 more pounds to what I'm already doing. The other day I tried carrying him in one of our other carriers that you can wear on your back thinking that would make it easier, but it definitely did not, especially since he kept shifting his weight from one side to the other trying to see around me. I kept feeling like he was about to take me to the ground. It looked pretty cute though, kind of like a little baby backpack.

Wilder insists on carrying the thrower for me.

Needless to say, not a whole lot of ball-throwing 

occurs at the park unless I can trade him a poop

bag for it... no, not one with poop in it!

Oh, and speaking of being taken down to the ground, funny story... Posey is the laziest, most docile dog you will ever meet. She does nothing all day except sleep and eat and I am not exaggerating in the least. As you can see from this video, she could even be described as lethargic or sloth-like...

When we go to the dog park, she spends her time wandering around smelling things, creepily lurking around other dogs and then darting away when they try to sniff her butt, rolling in God-knows-what, and chewing on sticks. She really couldn't care less about chasing balls probably because Rider has that market totally cornered. But we can occasionally get her excited about fetching if we wave a stick or frisbee in front of her and toss it for her, at which time she goes absolutely berserk -- running crazily at it, running past it in her flurry of excitement, coming back and snatching it up, and then sprinting with it back toward us with a sudden delirious exhilaration. This is what occurred the other day at the park. 

Paul and I were walking with me carrying Wilder in the Bjorn and we happened upon an abandoned frisbee, which we threw for Posey. The maniacal chasing of the frisbee ensued and then she was headed back toward us faster than a speeding bullet so proud of her successful fetch and simultaneously blinded by said frisbee blowing up in her face in the wake of her frenzied speed. I saw her coming straight at me. Now, normally a person might step out of the way of a 100-lb dog bolting at them. But Posey is not a normal dog and, in my decision to stay where I was, I drew on past experiences which dictated that when she is heading straight for you 99.99% of the time she will veer off at the last second and fly past either in front of or behind you. Therefore, if you step either forward or backward to avoid her, you have a 50% chance of stepping directly into her path. This has happened to me too many times and I finally just learned to stand my ground and let her go around me. 

However, this time as she happened, like I said, to be blinded by the frisbee, she did not know when to veer. At the last second, when I realized that no veering was going to occur on her part, I tried to step forward and managed to get the first leg out of her way before she plowed into my other leg, at which time I fell flat on my butt with Wilder on top of me still in the carrier. We were both fine, only a couple of people saw what happened and they neither ran over to help nor laughed at us which would have been equally embarrassing, but it took us 10 minutes to find my flip-flop, which had flown 25 feet away. Needless to say, Posey will not be encouraged to fetch things anymore. She seems perfectly content smelling, lurking, rolling, and chewing so we will be leaving well enough alone from now on. So yeah, that was the big excitement this week... obviously it's been a slow week. 

In food news, Wilder has become much more capable of getting food into his mouth on his own. He gobbles up some puffs and is still loving his Baby Mum-Mums. We're still working on pieces of fruit seeing as how they tend to be very slippery and easily squashed. I started mixing oatmeal in with his breakfast purees and he's not totally sold on it yet but he eats it. I also mashed up some cooked cauliflower for him the other day and he thought it was pretty interesting if not totally delectable. Things have gotten pretty messy around here to say the least. Here he is trying to look all innocent after sneezing pureed chicken all over me. Fun times.

Wilder can also now stand holding onto furniture and has started trying to pull himself up. He's been getting baths in the big tub ever since our San Francisco trip and he is LOVING it. He loves to splash and hold stuff under the running water. He is also almost impossible to change on the changing table because he will not stay on his back. I've tried changing him on the floor but that's almost worse because there is more space for him to roll away from me. So if in the coming weeks you notice more pictures of the little stinker in nothing but a diaper, you'll know I just gave up after fighting to get that much on him. Not much else has been going on here this week so I guess that's it. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!