Will at 16 and a stroll down memory lane...

I know I write the least about Will on my blog.  There are a few reasons for that. One is that Will is the most private of my kids. He also looks at my blog from time to time and he gets a little mad at me if I write too much about him. He is a teen and I respect that.  But this is my journal as his Mom.  It is something I want to leave as a legacy to my kids. So sometimes, I just have to write about him and hope for the best.



Will is a great kid. He really is.  I am so happy with the young man he is becoming. He works hard and is really the type of teenager every Mom would hope for.  He has made some mistakes for sure.  We had a minor rough patch this first year of high school with planning, studying and organization and some important life lessons were learned (I hope!). I think as hard as things were for a few months, it actually made us closer. It really is the tough times in life when we grow the most.  The thing I appreciate most is that when Will makes some typical minor teenage mistakes, we talk through them and discuss the life lessons that go hand in hand with the mistakes. He talks to us and listens to our perspectives. A lot of teens don't. When it comes to all the important things, he is really getting it.

He worked so hard during the school year that I was hoping he would have a fun and relaxing summer.  But it is not turning out that way so far.  Will has water polo practice most mornings for 2-3 hours.  That is very strenuous. Then he comes home (exhausted), eats lunch and goes to work.  He works most days from 3-9 or 10 p.m. lifeguarding at the pool. Add in a bit if a social life and he is going all of the time. I truly treasure the little bits and pieces of time I get with him.

Next week, he will take his driver's license test (fingers crossed).  And I know once he is driving, we will see even less of him.  And in just a few short years, he will be off to college (sniff, sniff).  I truly cannot believe that. It seems like just yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital.

In fact, last week I had a doctor appointment in the hospital where Will was born.  I rode the elevator with a young couple and their brand new baby boy. The newborn baby was darling.  The parents were young and adorable.  I wanted to stop them and tell them to savor every single moment.   I wanted to tell them that the exhaustion and the colic will pass quickly even though it feels like forever.  {Will had the worst colic and I wanted to shoot myself!}  I wanted to tell them that the first smiles and laughs and steps are so special. I wanted to tell them that it felt like just yesterday we were coming home from the hospital with our son and now he is taking ACT tests and driving and dating.  I wanted to tell them that it really does go by in the blink of an eye.  And that while the days seem long (and they did), the years are short, very short.

I did not tell them any of that and they probably would have thought I was crazy if I did.  But it is so true. I was laying in bed this morning thinking about Kate when she will be my age.  I wondered if I would still be here in 38 or 40 years.  I got so sad that I might not be alive when Kate is in her 40's to share things with her.  But it made me grateful too.  The dog days of summer with all the kids home sometimes wear on me.  But thinking that my time with my children is not infinite here on earth made me resolve to really soak it all in.  They are such a gift from God and I feel so very blessed with all 3 of my children.

When Will was a baby, I did not blog so although I have lots of photo albums and a few scrapbooks I don't have a lot about his childhood here on 3 peanuts. Will was the coolest little kid. Like most boys, he loved trains and construction vehicles.  But he also had a crazy genius level of knowledge about certain things that we had never taught him. I am not even kidding.  He knew about pre-historic mammals like the indricotherium and the ambulocetus.  He just knew this stuff even though we had never exposed it to him as a toddler.  He also knew all the geologic time periods (Cambrian, Devonian, Permian, etc) and Eras (Mesozoic, Cenozoic).  And yes, Dave is a geologist but I swear he never taught this stuff to Will. He just started spouting it out at about 2 or 3 years old.  People were always amazed at his encyclopedic knowledge of certain topics. He was a sponge.

Will LOVED museums and the zoo so we had memberships and spent a lot of time there.  And as you can imagine his knowledge of science just grew and grew.

Will was also very social and he was a GREAT napper.  I had that boy on a very precise schedule and he slept the best out of all my kids.  He napped every day from 1-4 or 5 p.m. in the afternoon and he slept from 8 pm to about 7 am at night during the toddler years. Every afternoon when Will woke up, he wanted to go outside.  We would walk up and down the street and Will would want to visit all of our neighbors.  He loved collecting "junk" or as he pronounced it "zshjunk."  His collections included rocks, "yucky money" (green aged pennies--he loved those!), broken bike reflectors (we found outside of a bike shop).  I never knew what I would find in his pockets.

We also spent tons of time at the park.  With Will being my oldest and an only child for 3 and 1/2 years, he got the most time doing parks and museums and story time and such.  It was so easy with just one.  They were very special times.  Yesterday, I spent some time looking at old scrapbooks and photo albums remembering those special times when I just had Will.  I took pictures of some of the old photos {I was too lazy to scan them}.  These are not necessarily "good photos" of either of us but they remind me of that special time in my life with Will.

{At one of our favorite parks in West U.  We spent tons of time there/ Will's first swim lesson.  He was exactly 1.  This is the pool he currently works at as a lifeguard:)/ Will and I in the front yard.  He was always on the go.  You can see he is trying to get away here}

{He used to climb into his toy cabinet and play in there/ One of our afternoon strolls.  He had an "imaginary baby" in that stroller./ At a b-day party.}

{Will and me in our house.  His nose was orange from eating carrots:)/ We used to got to this park all the time.  I always had to hold onto Will or he would race off.  He was so "busy."/ On our front porch one afternoon...see he is trying to move away here too.}

Excuse my hair and fashion...this was 13-15 years ago y'all.

Will was SO cute as a toddler.  This is one of my favorite photos of him back then...

And I took all these other photos of him last week when he was turning 16...

He is such a smart kid with strong values and morals.  And he is a good brother too.







Harry was not around for this photo shoot.
I was photographing Kate and Will since they both have June birthdays.  Kate was so sweaty in the last one and she had just been doing a bunch of gymnastics in the park (those photos coming soon).

I love you Will!!!