My Oh My! Will is 1/2 a year old!!

On Friday, our sweet Will turned 6 months old!!!! We celebrated by taking him to see Dr. Dodd for his 6 month check-up and giving him his third round of shots. Yeah, I don't think we will do his 1 year check-up on his actual birthday. Giving him those shots was torture. And I think it wasn't fun for him either :-).

To make matters worse, we decided (ahem, Sara decided) that chaperoning the high school dance on Friday was a GREAT idea. Clay disagreed. Nevertheless, we found ourselves suddenly in the role of welcoming a high school babysitter into our home for the night. WHEN DID I BECOME THIS ADULT?? I remember BEING the babysitter, especially for my favorite family the Williamsons, and thinking that the parents I babysat for (who were and still are awesome) had it all together and were such cool parents and had a house and two cars and KIDS...Wow. I am not nearly as together as they are, and our house may not be as cute or fun, but there I was, walking our sweet babysitter (one of my students) through the paces and buying junk food I thought she might like and laying out Will's pajamas and bottle for bedtime.

I am no longer the babysitter. I now hire babysitters. This is CRAZY!

Crazy amazing is what it is. Will is 6 months old. 6 months ago Friday Will came into our lives and immediately stole our hearts and hasn't looked back since. I continue to say it, especially now that the holidays are upon us: he is my Christmas every day. I don't need anything else in my life ever. All I want for Christmas is my family and Will and Will's 2 front teeth--which are coming in!! His two bottom teeth are now unmistakably visible, and he is eager to chew on everything in sight:

Mom, this sign tastes so much better than it looks.

Chewing requires focus.

But here he is at 6 months! He still looks just like Clay--and I love it. The families on campus have started calling him "Clay, Jr."

Dr. Dodd said he looked super healthy. His height is 28.25" (90% percentile), his weight is 19 lbs, 4 ozs. (75%), and his head circumference is 17.75 (80%). Looking good, my man!

Thank you for the Christmas outfit, Grandma and Grandaddy! And we continue to LOVE the Christmas pillow you made us, Gege! BEAUTIFUL!!!

Here he is after bath time last night :-)

I love this one. He looks so mysterious.

He loves Ashley! And so do I. Thank God for best friends. Ashley has been the best running and walking partner in the worlddddddddd.

This series was intended to be a little good luck message to Aunt Brittany this week as she tackled business school exams...but Will saw it as yet another opportunity to eat paper.

Look at that face! My love!

This week has been all about Christmas shopping (work? what?). SO FUN. But I was also keeping my eye out for a winter hat for Will. He really needed one, and I really wanted to get him one with ear flaps. I snagged this one at Greenlife. I think he likes it.

Now he just looks like he has dreads.

Will is THE happiest little guy. He loves smiling and laughing.

Someone stopped me the other day when Will, Cam, and I were going for a walk. He is a colleague of Clay's, and after cooing with Will and petting Cam, he looked at me and said, "Clay is just different this year. He is so...happy." And I totally got it.

LOVE.

I mean, look at that SMILE! How can we not be insanely in love with this guy?

Here we are at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, where we thought we might get Will's picture taken with Santa. When we found out the minimum package was $50 (WHAT??), we decided to get our own pictures outside near the trains.

This is Will giving you all a kiss.

This week is an exciting one for us. Not only is it exam week (which means break starts Friday!!), but John comes in town from Azerbaijan!!! Will hasn't met his uncle yet, so we are pretty excited to have two of our favorite guys hanging out together.

And as I write this, it is flurrying outside.

It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Will's first. We can't wait.