Haaaallelujah

I actually woke up before William this morning! I woke up naturally (after a bizarre dream in which all of my friends with babies went back to college and we were looking for a dorm to rent) and got to brush my teeth and I stick my contacts in without juggling William! It was amazing. This is a great start to what will hopefully be a great weekend. I'm all packed and ready to go to Balticon this weekend! I'll keep you posted on masquerade results (even if you don't care. Haha) and William's reaction to the pool! He loathes bathtime, but maybe swimming will be better.

Grandpa(s)!

So I've been pretty worn out this past week, which is why I haven't posted about Dad's visit and William's blessing earlier. But here goes! Dad's visit was short, but awesome. Wililam, normally a very serious and thoughtful looking kid was all grins as soon as he saw his Grandpa! I don't think Dad quite quite believed me about how serious he normally is he was grinning so much (except when I got the camera out, of course)

We hung out Friday with just us and Dad, and then went over to the Rockville for dinner at Gordon Biersche. It's a micro brewery/American cuisine place and it was really really good. They even have their own house brew of root beer. William was pretty chill going out to eat, even though the restaurant was pretty loud. The place was packed to the gills, apparently the Rockville town center has an outdoor concert series on Friday evenings during the summer so there were a lot of people there for that. Seth and I are definitely going to have to go again and there were plenty of restaurants around that area too that I'd love to try. On Saturday Dad got to sleep in. I'm pretty sure it was his first time getting to sleep in in years. He came over late morning, and we put together the charcoal grill I got Seth for Christmas this past year. And by we I mean Dad did most of the work and he occasionally let me put a screw in. :) William sat outside with us in his bouncer having a ball and probably swallowing the bugs. Protein, right? Seth got the lawn mowed and did a bit of grocery shopping for our barbecue extravaganza! Our lawn grows like a weed and coincidentally so do our weeds so it was looking pretty raggy in spite of Seth having already mowed less than a week ago. Anyways, we got the grill together, going, and the cast iron grills seasoned with plenty of time to spare before my inlaws got there. Jody (Seth's sister), Alex, Elsa and Lucy came for the blessing, and we were thrilled to see them. Lucy isn't much older than William is, and they got along just fine!

Seth's Dad arrived a bit later. He'd spent most of the day building a new roof for a member of his branch, but we were glad he could make it! William was thrilled to have both Grandpas there too! At one point Dad was holding him and he looked over at Grandpa Pease and gave him a big smile and then looked over at Grandpa Moore and smiled, happy as a clam.

He still wouldn't let me catch him smiling on camera though. I did get this one the morning Dad arrived though. I came across Seth's maternal Grandfather's things, including his Marines hat. It just matched William's outfit so well...

Grandpa Dulany was a pretty amazing man. He served on the Idaho during WWII, was a very successful lawyer, and liked to take Seth and I to the race track to watch his horses compete. In spite of not being a member of the church he helped pay for Seth's mission and some of Seth's undergrad too. I wish he could have survived to meet William, but he passed away a few years ago. Seth's inheritance from him made it possible for us to put the 20% down payment on the house. Sunday! Mother's Day and William's Blessing Day! I hadn't intentionally planned it like that, but it was pretty special. Dad, Seth's Dad, Alex, Bishop Willis, and our close friend Jake (He, Earta, and their kids came down for the blessing :) ) stood in the circle. I tried to take some notes as soon after the blessing was over to make sure I remembered what was said, but I'm sure I missed a lot of it. William was blessed to know that we love him, and to be able to feel the spirit. He was also blessed to have many choices an to know which choice he should make. Most of all he was blessed to have a special sensitivity to those who came before him, particularly those who share his name. Hearing Seth say that confirmed the feeling I'd been given before he was born that his name should be William and that genealogy and his ancestors with his name would be important to him. I'm so grateful that we were blessed with him, and that Dad and everyone could be here with us for this. We're really looking forward to coming out this July! It's going to be so much fun!

That Sneaky Smile

William is a serious little guy. He's got a fantastic scowl he likes to show off, and his smile is pretty elusive. Today he grinned at me around his bottle while he was having lunch, :) I caught him the other night though while he was having fun with Daddy.

That smile just looks like we're in for mischief when he's older...

Little Boys' Dreams

I don't know about Jack and Aiden, but William has dreams all the time. They're mostly about eating, apparently, but as I've mentioned before, he'll also have these horrible nightmares and freak out in his sleep. Tonight though, we got the flip side of the coin. I wish I knew what he was dreaming about, but as I was holding him after he'd eaten and passed right out, he giggled in his sleep and then smiled for a good 2-3 minutes. He's such a sweetheart. I much prefer seeing him have sweet dreams rather than nightmares. :) now if I can only get him to smile that much continuously while he's awake!

Well the past couple of days have been pretty nice. Especially last night. William slept really well. He went to sleep at 11 and slept a solid 7 hours! Woohoo! Then he got up, ate, and went back to sleep for another three. I am feeling great. William is two months old now and had his checkup and shots yesterday too, which he handled like a champ. He cried for a few seconds and then got over it very quickly. The nurse was impressed. After his shots yesterday he slept for several hours too, and I got a lot of work done. All the boning channels are sewn in the corset now, and I'll finish trimming the bones and start the binding around the edges today. With any luck I'll have it finished by early next week and be able to start on the dress itself. Anyways. William weighted in at a chunky 13 pounds, which puts him in the 90th% for weight, and at 23 3/4" he's the 75th% for height.

Shoes!

So William, Mr. Parrot, and I have been busy the past few days. The leather paint and things arrived for my shoes! So we've spent the past couple days working on them and I'm really happy with how they turned out.



First I had to strip the finish off the leather. It smelled like nail polish and William wasn't thrilled that he had to sit in the other room while I worked. Happily with a window open, the fumes weren't bad at all and the smell cleared up within 5 minutes or so of finishing.



Then came the painting!



It took 5 or 6 layers to really make it a nice solid color without any visible streaks or paintbrushes, and waiting for the layers to dry was really what took the most time.



But we let the last layer dry overnight and put the matte gloss finish over top it this morning! TaDa! A beautiful, bold, blueberry blue. :) The fabric they're sitting on is going to be the main fabric of the dress.



And I aaaalmost caught William grinning! The camera just wasn't fast enough on the shutter to catch it!

Sometimes I feel like an idiot...

So last summer our AC wasn't working and we got a little unit instead of trying to fix or replace our current system since we didn't have the money to do anything like that. Well it just couldn't keep up with a horrendous heatwave and up and died on the hottest day of the summer. We spent the rest of the summer living in the basement and sleeping in the guest room, abandoning the sweltering upstairs of the house to the heat.

Well this year we started looking at what we were going to do about the heat. With William we can't really afford to just suffer with fans and I haven't been too enthusiastic about dropping hundreds of dollars on a new window unit that won't be able to cool the entire house anyways and would probably die on the hottest day again. So I started calling around to AC repair places to see if someone couldn't come out and give us an estimate to fix it. Well apparently no one does free estimates. The cheapest I found to get someone out to the house- not even to do anything!- was $75. Ouch. Especially if they just went and told us it was completely shot and then tried to push us to spend thousands on a new system. I just didn't want to risk wasting the money.

So going to the font of all wisdom and knowledge (Google) to see if I couldn't at least narrow down the problem or figure out of there was some complicated way to switch from the gas heating to the AC I found... all I had to do was flick a switch on the thermostat from Heat to Cool. *facepalm*

In my defense, the thermostat does have a cover over all the buttons except the temperature controls and it doesn't really look like it should come off. I had to pry it off to get to the switch. But still... I could have been comfortable last summer, dangit!