new york holidays

new york puts on a good show during the holidays. lots to do and lots of pretty lights. 

some highlights include seeing the displays in the fancy store windows on 5th avenue,

the rockefeller tree,

two times on santa's lap,

 train show at grand central station,

 and a date night to carnegie hall to see the messiah.

1st birthday celebration

for his 1st birthday william got to eat chocolate cake naked. lucky boy. i thought for sure he'd love it. to start he stepped in the cake, which upset him quite a bit. 

so mom and dad had to start eating the cake to show william how delicious it was. he tentatively took some bites. then mom decided to put his birthday hat on which again upset him.

 finally we just left him alone and he got in the spirit of his birthday and cake.

in the end i think he really really liked it.

after getting cleaned up and being on a sugar high he opened a few presents. he loves hangers, thank you grandma forrest!

because it was a late night we opened more presents the next day. his other favorite toy are boxes - grandma shafer sent the perfect gift! he has the best grandmas.

happy birthday to baby william! we hope we didn't traumatize you!

12 months

happy birthday to william!! my baby made it to 1 year.

my favorite accomplishment of this past month is william calling me mama when i ask him who i am. melts my heart every time.

in addition to mama, bye-bye, and hello he also knows the animal sounds to a cow, snake, duck, and his favorite lion. he learned to clap and 'reach for the sky'.

he's mastered the army crawl and loves chasing his balls and cars around the apartment. he can also pull up on things and loves to walk whenever possible. he's holding steady at five teeth.

he enjoys reading and his favorite are lift-the-flap books. he likes putting things in and out of buckets and boxes. he's also fascinated with putting caps on and off and can stack a good block tower.

and his most favorite thing is his zebra.

william we love you more and more every day. we can't wait to see what the next year brings!

a california thanksgiving

we had a great thanksgiving at grandma and grandpa shafers home. all the cousins were there which meant lots of learning to play together.

william loved the thanksgiving meal (as did uncle christian, now elder shafer). he didn't love sitting still for pictures.

we honored our christmas traditions and went bowling and walked around the lafayette reservoir. 

 william experienced his first bike ride

and first haircut.

ben and i got away and went to the stanford v. notre dame football game. ben's first stanford game.

 other highlights included daily swings in the backyard

 and seeing the ducks!

thanks family for a great vacation. elder christian we will miss you while you are in brazil.

11 months

11 months! 1 month from a year and no more monthly updates! i may say this every time, but this has been my favorite month in the life of william.

he's so much fun to play with. his favorite activities are reading flap books, stacking blocks, pushing anything that has wheels, balls, tickles from dad, if he's lucky an elmo clip, and food.

this month he also had 3 top teeth come in. and the biggest accomplishment - crawling! he's slowly mastering the army crawl and can get himself around quite well, i'm sure hands and knees aren't too far behind.

 and my favorite are his 'bye-bye's'. he also says 'hello' by sticking out this tongue. he's also a champion sleeper. 12 hours at night and 2 solid naps of 1-2 hours each. of course zebra must be present at all 'night-nights', but when it's not sleeping time he gets thrown to the floor.

we love you william!

happy halloween

william has absolutely no concept of what halloween is - but that doesn't stop me from dressing him up!

he is either a dragon or a dinosaur depending on who you ask.

we spent the evening answering the door for tricker treaters. william liked picking up the candy and dropping it on the floor, of course.


for me it was a new experience seeing how halloween works in new york. if you wanted tricker treaters you put a sign on your door and all the buildings in our neighborhood sent out a list of the apartments participating.

we ran out of candy so i'd say it was a successful night! happy halloween!