Will at 2 months

My William, you are growing so fast it is making your Mommy's head spin. It seems like it was just a few days ago that we met:

I promise, those are happy tears! (I'm not one of those girls who are pretty when they cry!)

Could I have another tube or wire in my hand, please? I don't think I had enough there.

Then we took you home and started our family adventure. I love this picture, even though it's blurry. Look at that pink, precious baby!

Now at 2 months, my William, you:

• are 13 pounds, 5 ounces, and 23 1/4 inches long. That's between 75-90th percentile in weight (big boy!) and 50th percentile in height. You are a very healthy baby!
• are immunized against diptheria, tetanus & pertussis (DTAP), polio, and Hib (an influenza). You received Pentacel at your 8 weeks appointment, which is a combination vaccine -- only 1 shot! The doctors wanted to give you more immunizations, but your parents prefer to spread them out a bit, so we're going back in 2 weeks for the rest of your 2 months' vaccinations. The doctors weren't happy with Mommy and Daddy, but oh well. You're OUR child and we felt strongly against loading you up with too much vaccine, too early in your life. Anyway, you lived up to your name of Champion in taking that shot -- you made a complaint sound but you didn't even cry! Mommy was all prepared to nurse you for comfort but you didn't even need it. You felt better as soon as the nurse handed you back to Daddy, then you began looking around the room again with your usual curiosity! Daddy and I giggled in awe of our tough little dude.
• have quite the collection of nicknames. Mommy likes to call you Will-Baby, Doodle, Bubba, Bubby, and Little Dude. Daddy calls you Babies and Champ/Champy. We both call you Puppy and Punkin. Most of the time in conversation with other adults, though, we'll call you William or Will.
• are wearing some 3-6 months clothes, especially t-shirt onesies and sleepers. You are also wearing size 2 Pampers, although your parents are going to try to squeeze you into the remaining size 1's we have about the house, because we're frugal that way. Bad Mommy and Daddy.
• have the most startling blue-gray eyes:
• have a best friend. His name is "Paci." When we first brought you home, you were all about the Soothies, but once introduced to this particular pacifier, you won't take anything else now. In fact, you spit out every other type of pacifier as though they offend you! Mommy can't find a duplicate of Paci anywhere, so if Paci should be lost to us, Mommy and Daddy will be, quite simply, up a creek!!!
• have a pro for a Daddy. This is Mommy's new favorite picture (and yes, that's Paci in Daddy's mouth, being gripped by Paci's handle, of course):
• are a seasoned traveler. We took you to Lake Michigan at St. Joseph, where Nana and Pa-Pa always took Mommy and her sisters when they were growing up. This was a very special occasion for your Mommy, who used to walk along this beach and dream of one day having a little baby!
• have attended your first birthday party, your cousin Elijah's 3rd birthday (dinosaur-themed). You are fascinated by your cousins and fought sleep in order to keep watching them. You weren't too fond of the party hat that Mommy forced on you, though:
• have watched your first regular season NFL game with Daddy. This was a big deal for Daddy, who put you in your Saints jersey for the first time! (Don't tell Daddy, but I think you're secretly a bigger Colts fan.)
• have had your first non-milk food item -- pear juice! You've been going a long time in-between poopies (you'll hate me one day for telling other people this), so Dr. Terry recommended we give you some pear juice to encourage things along. You had 3 ounces of juice -- which you really liked -- and just a couple hours later, SUCCESS!
• are getting almost 5 hours of sleep at your longest stretch during the nights. I can't even tell you how pleased this makes Mommy!!! We're getting there, and pretty soon, you'll get 6-7 hours at a time and your parents will remember what it's like to get a full night's sleep.
• are "talking" all the time. You love to coo and gurgle at us, and when I get you out of your cradle in the mornings, you now break into a grin so wide you have to move your head to get out all that happiness. It absolutely melts your Mommy's heart that you're so happy to see me.

I love you, my Will-Baby!

Announcing...

Hello everyone!

My mommy and daddy are ecstatic to announce that I'm a BOY!!!

Yes, I sure fooled my mommy. She was so shocked to hear the news and see the visual proof that she told Daddy, "the universe just shifted!" She was really expecting me to be a girl, but Mommy has already told me a dozen times today that she's so proud of her little man and couldn't be happier about my coming arrival into the world. (By the way, Mommy has a picture of the proof but can't seem to bring herself to post pictures of my privates on the Internet, so y'all will just have to believe us!)

Just wanted to let you all know what keeps me busy during the day. Yes, I've begun kicking my mommy in earnest now and sometimes she even feels me do my barrel-rolls!

I also like to suck my thumb...

...and ponder on the meaning of life...

...when I'm not practicing my football kick!

Oh, silly me! I forgot to introduce myself! My name is...

~William Champion Conway~

Mommy and Daddy are going to call me "Will" when Daddy is not calling me "Champ." William is one of mommy's favorite names of all time -- very British, she says -- and Champion is my great-grandma's maiden name. My daddy dearly loved his Grandma Lucic and wants to honor her in this way.

One other thing; my daddy took this picture of my mommy this morning before they went to the doctor's office and I rocked their world! See how big I'm getting in there?

As soon as Mommy is off work today, she and Daddy are going to go shopping for me. They've waited this long and Mommy says she just can't wait anymore!

p.s. My Mommy profusely apologizes for referring to me as "she" before now. She'll amend this.

thoughts on parenting

As my belly gets bigger and the countdown tally of days gets smaller, my thoughts are turning more and more often to parenting. Probably a good thing, right? I find that I'm very interested in how others choose to parent their children, but I also find myself feeling more and more critical of the choices that some people make for their children (observations from blogs, TV, real-life, etc.). My critical thoughts are seeming to boil down to one issue: how much control parents exert on their children.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about discipline here -- Marty and I already have pretty solid ideas on discipline and those are basically a merging of how he and I were disciplined as children by our parents. For example, my parents chose different methods of discipline for each child; spankings didn't really work on me, but sticking me in a corner for 10 minutes of absolute silence was pure torture for me and the lesson came through loud and clear each time I was disciplined this way. But I digress. What I'm talking about it is more along the line of personal, private time and the ability to make personal, private choices. For example, my sisters and I were taken to the library about once a week or every other week, but my parents never screened or censored the books we checked out. They let us explore our own interests and didn't obsess over illustrations, word choice, content, etc. Of course, an attempt to check out a dirty novel would have been immediately halted, but that never happened and that's not really my point here. I guess it just irks me deep inside knowing that some parents feel the need to screen and censor every little image or sound or word or thought or feeling that occurs in their children! Not to mention the need that I see some parents displaying to control every moment of their children's lives. Some of my most cherished time as a teenager was spent in my own room in privacy, listening to music I chose, reading books I chose, talking on the phone with friends I chose, and dreaming dreams that were all my own. This is where a person finds her own identity! I see the job of parents to guide their children toward good and beautiful things. I remember being encouraged to go read a book under a tree in the summer. I remember books being read to us; my mom read us Little Women after dinner and my dad read me Cinderella before bed (he does a great Fairy Godmother voice, by the way..."bippity-boppity-boo!"). Plus all those library trips! So is it any wonder that I and my sisters grew up to be voracious readers? But here's the real beauty of it...my sister Sarah reads science fiction (Michael Crichton) and disaster books (Isaac's Storm and The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald). My sister Katie devours history books (biographies of presidents, the Civil War) and can't get enough of art and art history books. Of course, I read lots of fiction and anything I can get my hands on relating to British history. Sarah has a degree in Biology, Katie in Art History, and I have my degree in English. We are such different people with very different interests, but I have to thank my parents again and again for letting us choose who we wanted to be, not some cookie-cutter version of themselves or what they thought the model child should look like.

I should also make it clear that my parents were very discerning about what children they let me play with, but they were also very generous once they made those decisions. I went to countless slumber parties as a child and had many of my own. I was also not allowed to date until I was 17, but my parents didn't balk (although my dad might have had a small heart attack) when I brought home the boy with an earring and a definite smell of cigarette smoke on his clothes. (I made increasingly better and better choices from then on...)

I guess my point is this, I think parents should provide all kinds of direction and guidance, but at the end of the day, let their children be who they are. Let them make their own choices, even if those choices are mistakes. Supervise, but don't control! If my life is any indication, this method has the best results. My sisters and I are extremely close to our parents and we all thoroughly enjoy the adult friendships that we now share with them.

Of course, I wonder how I'll feel when I have my own child? I already think I might not let her out the door for kindergarten... :)