So much fun!

Last Wednesday night Ben was sooooo much fun! Tim came down to pick him up from daycare because I was at a meeting. I met them in the library parking lot and from 30 feet away he yelled "Mommy!!" and ran to me with his arms outstretched. Then he gave me the best hug. Diane came out of the library and Ben told her something really exciting about the snow. Then he led us into the library and played screaming peekaboo with Mary and Daddy. Then he went running and screaming out of the staff room into the library and told Reese something really exciting about the stuffed dog in the Children's room. Then we went out to eat and he was pretty well-behaved though loud. He said "Yummy!" and gobbled his macaroni and cheese. it was our usual salad/buffet restaurant and every time Tim and I went to get something else, he greeted us so sweetly when we came back to the table. "Mommy!!" "Dad-dee!!" He babbled all the way home and had a blast at home running the halls with Daddy, laughing hysterically when he ran his pushtoy into Daddy's heels.
I really love how outgoing he is and how brave. I know I was a child who hid behind my mother's knees. I think Ben is probably having a lot more fun interacting with people than I did when I was young because I was afraid of people. I love how he looks someone in the eye and tells them something, and they way he charges ahead without checking with us. I know we need to teach him about "stranger danger" and we have to watch him carefully in public places. He can be gone in a second!

He will now basically repeat almost anything you ask him to say, so his language is building daily. I've probably said already that one of the cutest things he does is walk away from you and say "mon!" (Come on!) and make a "come here" motion with his hand. We got some healthy cookies and shared some with him and he unfortunately wants them with every meal now. He says "cook - ee" and kind of jumps off the k if you know what I mean. At least he still wants a "hopple" (apple) every day too.

Christmas shopping hasn't been quite as easy this year as it was last year. Last year he was "contained" in the shopping carts and this year he wants to get down and run around or push the carts or play in the toy aisle forever. "Down!" "Down!" But he has been a real trooper again.

We have tons of fun new videos we need to get on the blog, but we might need to wait until we get better internet access in a couple of weeks.

We can't wait to see everyone soon!
If you haven't seen Tim's blog, here are some photos of the house we're hoping to buy next week (closing on Dec 19)
http://listings.listhub.net/pages/IRESCO/576071/?channel=cyberhomes

Benny on his way to work..

Time to learn names

Since he is picking up words so fast, we will work on teaching him "Aunt Wende," "Grammy Pat," "Grandma Donna" or "Oma Donna," etc and see what happens before Christmas.

Snow was predicted this morning, but I don't know how Ben knew that. When we got up this morning, he pointed outside and said "no?" There was indeed a dusting of snow!

When Ben asked for graham bunnies ("money") this morning, I said "let me get a bowl to put them in." He said "bowl?"

Ben accompanied me to a staff meeting yesterday morning. It was just a few minutes of updates/meeting and then we decorated the library. He was so well-behaved and I was proud of him. It's nice to have a little buddy with me.

A sick week

Poor Benny has been sick for almost a week. He started having stomach problems (both directions) Thursday night and then got a horrible cough and runny nose. I don't think he ever had a fever, so I don't think it was the flu. He seems to be a little better now, but still lots of messy diaper changes and kleenex. We had a couple of low-key days, staying inside in our PJs and watching a Thomas the Train video over and over and over.

Lots more words (I should probably stop counting and reporting soon):
- more (pronounced perfectly)
- cook (always whispered)
- help ("hop")
- stir ("grr") (he learned stir and cook when he was helping me on Thanksgiving)
- Ben ("Bean") - he responds when you ask him what his name is!
- orange ("oin" - sounds just like corn and oink)
- snow ("no" but it sounds different from "No!")

More later!

Thanksgiving week

I'm so thankful for my sweet, sweet Benny!!

Ben and I were playing ball indoors when he saw a piece of trash on the floor. He said "Eee" (which means Eww), picked it up, and walked over to put it in the trash can!

- One day on the way to work, Ben looked over at some railroad tracks that had a train stopped on them. He pointed and said "doo doo!!" (choo choo) That was before it changed to doo-dee.

If he gets up with Daddy before me and they come to wake me up, Ben commands me "down" out of bed over and over (he doesn't like to cuddle in bed anymore, but perhaps it is because it is 29 degrees in our bedroom). I will have to teach him that we say "get up" when we get out of bed instead of "get down."

He seems to understand the meaning of small ("ma") and medium ("me-ea") now. He'll point to things and say "ma" or "me-ea."

When we get home from work/daycare, I get him out of the car and tell him to walk toward the door, knock, and yell Daddy! He walked right to the door and was knocking when I got there with the bags of groceries.

More and more words:
- hot
- hat ("hot")
- gum (he reached into my purse, pulled out my chewing gum, held it out to me and said "Gum?" I have no idea where he learned that.)

- banana ("nani")

- chair (I forget how he said it - "churr" maybe?)

He still isn't sleeping well, and I just don't understand. He was fully weaned a week after we started, so nursing is out of the equation. Now he wants one of us to sit with him while he goes to sleep, and he wakes up between 0 and 6 times a night. He stands up and whines and says Mommy or Dad-dee. We walk in the room, tell him to lay down and go back to sleep, and he immediately lays down and goes back to sleep. He isn't getting much reward for waking up, but maybe he just needs to be reassured we are there.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Adventurous Eater Ben

We went to a Tibetan restaurant last night and they brought some Tibetan "chips" and four kinds of Tibetan "salsa" immediately to our table. One sauce was green, one was red, one was brown and one was white. After we finished the chips, Ben lined up the little dishes of sauce and used a spoon to sample each one again and again. The waitress was very impressed.

His favorite foods this week are apples ("hopples") and tangerines. He asks for hopples all day long.

More words:
- Door ("dooer")
- Dorie from Nemo ("dewey")
- Tractor ("rodder")
- he seems to call Joseph Tractor, unless he is pronouncing Joseph and tractor the same
- He also called the Tibetan snow lion figure on the mantle at the restaurant last night a tractor
- Bear ("burr")
- Baby
- Meow
- Come on ("mon")
- Thomas the choo choo train has become "Doo-dee" instead of "doo doo." I wonder if it is because it is similar to Dad-dee
- Don't know if I said before that when he sees letters, he says "A" "B" "E" and "R." He seems to say Rs ok, but has never said S at all.
- Last night his diaper came undone, so he wet the bed and when he started crying, I came in and he told me he pee-peed ("bee bee") . He also has a book about potty training, and he picks up the book and say bee bee!

His favorite game in the bathtub is to close the shower doors ("dooer") except for cracks at the two ends, hand me a toy out of the one of the cracks, and then scoot to the other end of the tub to wait for me to hand him the toy back through the other crack. Over and over.

Every night for bedtime stories, we go through his pile of books and he either accepts or rejects each one. He has definite preferences that change over the week.

Whenever either Tim or I appear after being gone for a while, Ben yells "Mommy!" or "Dad-dee!" and runs to give us a hug. That's got to be one of the best parts of parenthood.

Vocabulary!

Benny's vocabulary is taking off, as everyone told us it would. New words this week:
- apple (pronounced "hopple")
- down (he knows to say it when he wants to get out of the high chair, but he also orders us "down!" when he wants us to get down and play on the floor)
- choo choo (his name for Thomas, pronounced "doo doo")
- up
- hole
- in
- meow
- bye!
- kitty
- happy
- pony (not sure he knows what happy or pony mean, but he will repeat them)
- And his use of the word "no!" is being perfected every day! He has learned to yell "no!" at the cats whenever he sees them. I say "no" to them only when they scratch the carpet, so I'm not sure how he learned that. From Tim?

More later!

Highlights of the week

Ben's favorite activity this week: Sitting under a blanket with a flashlight with both Mom-mee and Dad-dee. If one of us is missing, he calls for us and pats the floor until we come sit next to him and get under the blanket with him. He likes it dark and likes to try to feel our faces, but he also likes to play with the flashlight in the dark of the blanket.


New words this week (these are all just repeated, I don't think he understands them):
- happy (sounds like abby)
- pee pee (he might know what this means because he pointed to his diaper when he said it once)
- poop
- gone


I don't know why things like this make me so proud: Ben and I were out running errands and stopped at Subway for lunch. He sat in the booth across from me and ate his turkey, cheese, lettuce, and tomato sandwich all by himself and "chatted" with me. Such a big boy thing to do!

Today at the Vitamin Cottage (where they no longer have any plastic bags, and I forgot my bag), Ben helped me unload the grocery cart again and arrange the "separate my purchase from your purchase" sticks just so. Then after we paid I asked him to help me carry the stuff out. Standing in the shopping cart, he took a burrito in each hand and said, "Go!"

At the farm, there are seven newborn goats that are as cute as they can be. Ben and I got too close to the most possessive mama goat and she nipped Ben's ear!

Last night at bedtime, after he made sure Joseph (my 32-year-old teddy bear) was covered up with the blanket and warm and cozy, he read him a book! He opened the book, babbled, and then showed the pictures to Joseph. How sweet!

We still watch some of Finding Nemo at least once a day.

Updates

Benny sprained his ankle last Thursday at daycare. Nobody is sure how exactly he did it, and he refused to walk until today (Tuesday). We took him to the doctor on Friday and had x-rays to make sure it wasn't a broken bone. The doctor did not see a broken bone, so she said we had to assume it was a sprain and to come back if he still wasn't walking a week later. He is walking gingerly today and limping a little. Odd to see such a little person limping. He's been pretty grumpy because of the pain and because of having to crawl or ask us to pick him up. We've been pretty grumpy about carrying a 27-lb toddler around.

Tim bought Ben a Thomas the Train toy and a little train track yesterday and when it was bath time last night we tried to convince him that Thomas had to go to bed too. I made a little bed for Thomas and got him a blanket. That didn't work too well and he wailed at the top of him lungs for a long, long time. Poor thing. :-( He played with Thomas for 3 hours nonstop this morning.

New words lately:
- "ma" for small and "me-e-a" for medium, though I don't think he knows what they mean
- "Bia" for his friend Olivia - so sweet to hear him say that
- "Bob-bee" for his fellow daycare attendee Bobby
- "nee" means snake or worm
- "eee" means "euww" or what Mommy says when something is yucky. If he has something yucky on his hands, he'll say "eee" and he'll point to dirt on the floor and say "eee"
- If we had to vote on his favorite word, it would be "no," which I think is typical of toddlers. It gives them so much control! He likes to yell it in response to every question you ask when he is in a certain mood. Do you want to go take your bath? NO! Do you want some milk? NO! Do you want to take a walk? NO!

We started night-weaning last Monday and it is going ok. He goes to bed ok without nursing, but he still wakes too much for my taste. We think his ankle pain kept him awake a lot on Thursday and Friday night, but still the last two nights he has been up too much and he shouldn't be in pain anymore.

Sometimes he does well on shopping trips and sometimes he doesn't. This weekend we went to the grocery store and he asked to sit in the bottom of the shopping cart. After we put several canned goods in there with him, he stacked them up like blocks and entertained himself. And then when we got to the register, he handed them to us one at a time. What a good little helper!

He has fallen in love with my 32-year-old, ratty teddy bear, Joseph, and one weekend morning we brought them to our bedroom to snuggle and he tried to pull a pillow under Joseph's head and then pulled the blanket up to Joseph's chin. How sweet!

Can't remember what else. I'll try to post again soon!

More updates

I'm not sure who taught him, but Benny picks dandelion puffs and blows on them.

We don't have TV in the basement, so we've been doing lots of movies. Ben is obsessed with Finding Nemo and we've watched it at least 20 times in the last two weeks. He says "Nee Mo! Nee Mo!"

Other new words this week:
- "peep bo" for peek-a-boo
- When he saw the rabbits at the farm, he said "money! money!"
- "Go," clear as day, meaning let's go!
- He says one word all the time and we have no idea what it means. It's similar to the Amy mystery. It varies: "mynow" or "mynum" or "mynat" and he says it in lots of different contexts. It doesn't seem to mean "this is mine" though, so we're perplexed.

We just went to the farm manager's 60th birthday party (how nice to be included in this new "family" here at the farm). His 7-year-old daughter and Ben played and played and played.

That's all for now!

More photos

Here is the nice lawn outside the kitchen door. Ben loves running around. Behind it are the grapevines, the greenhouse, and the vegetable garden. All the animals are on the other side of the house.
Tim took Ben to a farm and Ben had a blast playing with the animals. He fed the sheep hay.
And then laughed at something...
And then he loved the haybale maze!

Photos finally!

Here is a photo of the kitchen of our luxury basementAnd the living room.
And the kitchen door, which we can leave open for Ben to come and go safely.
Ben is a great helper, and here he is trying to unscrew the fridge door.
And here is our stuff stored in another room. This is less than a third of our stuff, and there is more there than appears in the photo. I wonder if we have a normal amount of stuff, or if we're abnormal. It sure seemed like an absurd amount of stuff when we moved it.

Life on the farm

Ben loves the farm! Tim's clients, Liz and David, are letting us live in their basement while we try to sell our condo. It's an old farm house with 200 acres and goats, cats, dogs, ostriches, sheep, horses and maybe llamas. The kitchen door opens to a big lawn and it has been SOOOOO nice to let him wander right out the door and not have to worry about him so much (and avoid the tantrums that came every night when he was dying to go for a "walk" and it was too late). I will upload photos tonight. Last night Liz and David took Ben and me to a community BBQ at a nearby organic farm. I didn't quite understand why these people were making food for hundreds of people, but it had something to do with thanking everyone for their business. I think they might be a CSA (you buy a weekly basket of farm products, or help work the farm). Anyway, the food was delicious and Ben had a blast running around. I'm glad he is so social. There was a big pen of chickens and ducks and almost all the kids were in there chasing the birds around. Ben loved being in there and it was hard to get him to leave. Then he wanted to sit on all the tractors and lawnmowers, and then he wanted to play soccer with the big kids.

Inside the house, he loves to run down the long hall and when he gets "lost" you can hear him yelling "Mom!" and "Dad-dee!"

For about a half a day, he seemed to think Tim's name was "Dad-dee-mom" and we kept telling him it was only Daddy and he finally got it.

New words this week: Yat means out (go outside), and Money means bunny (bunny crackers)

It's freezing in the basement and there is no heat, so I'm very glad Ben has taken a liking to the down blanket. He is so sweet curled up in his crib with the blanket.

More later!

What's new this week

Ben's favorites this week:
- tomato juice!
- anything Grammy Pat cooks!
- blankets, blankets, blankets
- the huge Tonka truck Grammy brought him
- sleeping with the huge Tonka truck
- putting lotion on himself and everyone else

Ben's pet peeves this week:
- taking baths (uh oh!), but more specifically, not being allowed to take the down throw into the bath with him (TANTRUM!)
- having to take off his favorite shoes

New words this week:
- Dad-deee! (finally!)
- Uh oh
- Knee (he was accidentally saying knee and I told him what it meant, so now he knows a random word. It is a helpful word when he is distributing lotion, though!)

New talents this week:
- he can pick out a B from the alphabet or a page of letters

Sweet, sweet little boy!

Who is Amy?

One of Ben's favorite words seems to be Amy. I don't think he knows anyone named Amy and I don't think he really intends to say Amy, but it seems to be his distress call. When he is a little upset, he says "Aymay, aymay, aymay!" over and over.

Here is the transcript of a typical conversation between Ben and me each day:
Ben: Mom?
Jo: Yes, Dear?
Ben: Mom?
Jo: Yes?
Ben: Mom?
Jo: Ben?
Ben: Mom?
Jo: Yes?
Ben: Mama?
Jo: Benny?
Ben: Mama?
Jo: Hmmm?
Ben: MAMAAA!
Jo: Ben, Dear, I'm right here. What do you need?
I guess you can't really call it a conversation. It's more that he just likes repeating the word that he knows gets my attention. It's funny, though. And he likes calling Tim "Mom" too, though we know he knows he is Daddy.

He still isn't quite running, but he really enjoys his fast walking. Last night he "ran" up and down the hall at least 20 times, each time looking very proud of himself.

It's very odd that he suddenly loves blankets. After living his whole life hating to be covered up in bed, he suddenly demands to be covered up. Well, he doesn't really care if his legs are covered, but he likes the blanket to be near his face, I guess so he feels tucked in. We can lie down in his reading nest and read a book until he is properly covered by a blanket. Also, he often carries a blanket through the house with him, like Linus(?).

Sweet, sweet Benny!

This week's updates

I apologize if I repeat myself!

Did I already say that Ben learned to plug his ears with his fingers to make noises sound different?

This morning he also learned to stick his finger in his nostril. Lovely. His mother is extra proud of this accomplishment.

He has learned more animal sounds. In addition to monkey and cow, he also says "on on" for pig, "roar" for tigers and lions (and almost anything else). I think he knows another one, but I can't remember.

He learned to "break dance" - basically roll around on the floor a little.

He still LOVES taking walks and he likes to walk really fast. He is almost running but not quite. His left arm pumps along with him while his right arm stays pretty still.

Tim said he could pick out the letter A from the fridge magnets, and twice when I was playing with him with a certain toy that had numbers on it, he pointed to the 8 and said "B!"

We've finally incorporated reading into his bedtime routine and I'm so happy about that. He often points to his reading nest during the day and asks to be read to. I hope we teach him to be a reader.

Last night he was lounging on the couch with me and he asked to nurse (by pulling at my shirt). I explained to him that we could only nurse at bedtime and he would have to go get ready for bed before he could nurse. He got up off the couch, took my hand, led me into OUR bedroom, asked to get up on our bed, and "told" me to get up there too and then reached for my shirt again. He heard the word "bed" and went to the bed! His crib isn't called a bed, and I guess we say "go to sleep" more than "go to bed" usually.

Sweet, sweet smart Benny!

News this week

Benny's favorites this week:
- Grammy Pat's meatloaf
- Easter egg hunts (Tim took him to a driving range and let him pick up golf balls for an hour. He had a blast!)
- Sitting and eating a whole apple (well, I take the core out since he would eat it too)

Benny's least favorite things this week:
- The street sweeper we saw on Wednesday

Ben grew an inch over the last month (if our measuring attempts are correct). We put all his shoes in the giveaway bag because they were all suddenly too small. Since it has gotten a little colder, we've gotten out his long pants and they are looser around the waist than in the spring. He's in a tall and lean phase.

Grammy Pat came to stay for several days and Ben was so happy to see her. Every morning he would show off for her and laugh with her.

More later about sweet, sweet Benny!

Growing and growing!

I have so much trouble finding time to blog. Very sorry!

Benny is growing and growing. We put four pairs of shoes in the giveaway bag this week and we need to go buy some more. He is definitely a little boy now and no longer a baby. I almost don't want him to grow up.

His favorite things this week are
- milk, milk, milk (he asks for "more milk" all day and we try to trick him into drinking water, but he sometimes won't have it)
- lemon-lime Gatorade (my least favorite flavor). He can spot the neon yellow concoction in a glass or water bottle from a distance (in the kitchen or on my bike) and begs for it.
- taking long, meandering walks in the open space behind our condo. On one walk, he tried to push me into the ditch several times, kept pointing to it and saying Ba. I finally realized that Tim must have found some golf balls in the ditch on one of their walks and Ben wanted me to find some more. His memory is amazing.

His least favorite things this week are loudly flushing toilets in public restrooms, and lawn mowers.

He has joined the American consumer culture: He has fallen in love with Thomas the Tank Engine and holds onto his little Thomas 24 hours a day (yes, he sleeps with a little hard, plastic toy), and begs to be read his three Thomas books over and over.

He is already watching too much TV and we need to work harder at limiting him. He begs for it, though, and will bring the remote to us in the kitchen or bathroom to indicate he wants it turned on. He will also ask us to change the channel if it isn't on a cartoon channel. The show Wipe Out has huge balls that people try to jump across and of course Benny likes to watch that.

He jabbers nonstop, and quite loudly sometimes. When he sees the alphabet or numbers on a page of a book, he imitates my reciting of the alphabet by pointing to them and saying "E, E, E, E, E..." He can now say Go, but I'm not sure he knows what it means, he can almost say Cat, and he has full use of the words Mom and Mama now, and definitely knows what it means. He can still say Da for daddy when I ask him, but doesn't call out to Tim like he does to me.

He uses his special hand signal for "I love you" (fingers crossed) and will now do it spontaneously without our doing it first, which is just so sweet. He did it to Rebecca yesterday! He has personalized the All Done sign into the cutest funky chicken movement - we'll have to get video of it.

When he sees a monkey of any kind (photograph or cartoonish), he says "ooh ooh ooh" and he will sometimes say "moo" when he sees a cow.

He loves to push his stroller and grocery carts and gets so furious if we try to help (steer). He screams "No!" at us and waves us away.

I never imagined a little boy could be so sweet and entertaining and fun!!

I love this age!

I've always loved 18-month-olds and of course I love Benny most of all! A million times a day I say "You are so sweet!" "You are so smart!"

On Sunday I was doing something in the kitchen and he opened the dishwasher and unloaded every piece of silverware and put it in the silverware drawer! I guess he has seen us do that, but I didn't ask him to do it or instruct him. He also picks up any piece of clothing, etc. he sees around the house and takes it to the dirty laundry basket.

This morning Tim said he was going to go to the model train store to get something to make his childhood train set work. I said something like "Oh boy!" and Ben looked back and forth between us with such a delighted, excited expression on his face. It seemed like he understood what we were saying and was super excited about building a train set.

This weekend Ben looked out the living room window and saw that Flynn was on top of the fence, ready to jump. Ben yelled to him "Woo dah bah bwah na!" or something similar and he meant "Flynn! No jumping! Get back in the yard!"

Benny is still waking up one or two times a night most nights. He usually wakes up at 5:00 or 6:00 am and stays awake for an hour but but lounges in bed with me while I doze. If he goes back to sleep after that hour, he has actually started to sleep late. On Tuesday morning, we slept until 9:45!! Unfortunately, when I got home from work at 9:45 pm, he was still up.

He's learning other ways to tell us he wants us to play with him, read to him, and come with him. Besides patting the surface next to him, he pulls and pushes at us and moves his hand to say "come this way."

I almost wish he would stay at this age. He's soooooooooooooooooo sweet!

More catching up

I'm so sorry to be neglecting Ben's blog! More little things to report:

- Ben wouldn't really let the audiologist finish her tests because he didn't want things stuck in his ears. But she said he seemed fine from what she did accomplish.

- If I ask Ben if he can say Mommy, he says Mum, and if I ask him if he can say Daddy he says Da. Of course he'll also say Ba and Ga (ball and car), and I asked him to say A and B and he did pretty well. He won't say C yet. I think if I spent more time with him and if we worked more with him, he'd know more words. He has to be in the right mood, of course.

- I taught him to nod to say yes one night and the next morning I asked him if he wanted cereal for breakfast and he nodded!

- He can pick up and carry two small balls in one hand. That seems like a difficult task to me.

- Ben was very excited to see a fruit bouquet in Kansas City. Joyce and Marybelle brought it and it was yummy. The bouquet stayed upstairs on a low table where Ben could almost reach, and he must have made 12 trips from the kitchen with a piece of fruit, down the stairs and into the living room to enjoy the fruit with the people sitting down there, and then back up to get another piece. It's so cute the way he turns around to go down the stairs several feet before the start of the stairs.

- When he saw Grammy Pat in Kansas City, he acted a little shy and then started showing off for her, walking funny and looking at her through his legs.

- I take Ben out of the car in the mornings at Rebecca's house and we walk hand-in-hand up the driveway while he carries his lunchbox. When I go pick him up, he carries his lunchbox to the car. Such a sweet, big boy sight!

- If I ask him to turn, he turns around, and if I ask him to squat, he squats and if I ask him if he can jump, he squats again (the first part of jumping). If he's in the mood and I ask for a hug or a kiss, he'll come over and give me some. If we ask him to go water the garden, he goes outside and picks up the hose. Unfortunately, he's come to enjoy watering the concrete much more than the plants.

- He learned to pat the chair or floor next to him to mean "come sit here next to me." He sits down with a book and pats the floor to indicate he wants me to sit and read it to him. I'm delighted to see him ask to be read to. We went to visit my coworker's new baby and Ben "said" he wanted the baby to come sit next to him. How sweet!

- His favorite thing at the playground is letting his cars drive down the slides. I think it is pretty fun too. This weekend at the playground we met a 2-yr-old boy named Karsten (a name I really considered for Ben), and tonight we met a 2-yr-old boy named Soren. A Scandinavian theme this week!

- Since Flynn can't get any attention from us, he's settled for attention from Ben. Every morning when Flynn is extra desperate, he and Ben have a wrestling match on the bed, Ben trying to give him full-body hugs and Flynn simultaneously enjoying it and trying to get away from him.

- We went to a BBQ with some moms from one of my old moms groups, and there were about 7 kids Benny's age. They don't necessarily play together, but they do seem to enjoy each other's company and it is so neat to see them all together.

I'm sure there is more, but I can't think of it now and need to head to bed. I can't wait to see sweet, sweet Benny in the morning!

Old news - catching up

Life has been a little too busy lately! Our Montana vacation was wonderful, but life gets so hectic before and after a vacation. Old things, little things I've been meaning to report (and I'm sorry if I repeat myself):

- Ben loves corn on the cob and eats a whole cob by himself!

- Ben loves ketchup and after giving him some dinner with fries and ketchup, we noticed he was dipping his matchbox car in the ketchup and licking it. We had to laugh!

- He understands more each day, and it's amazing to watch. We tell him to go sit in Daddy's chair and he heads right over. We tell him to lay down and go to sleep and he gets down and puts his head down.

- He started to enjoy inventorying his "boo boos" about once a day and one day, he included my boo boos in the inventory. Stress had given me two huge pimples on my face and he pointed to both of them proudly!

- At his 18-month Dr appointment, he barely cried when he got two shots. It bothered Daddy/Tim more than Ben. The developmental test we took also indicated he could be behind verbally, so we have an appointment to see an audiologist to make sure he can hear accurately. We know he can hear and we aren't really worried. If we had taken the developmental test a couple of months earlier, he would have failed almost all of it. He's made huge leaps in the last two months - learning to walk, starting to understand what we're saying, gaining lots of hand control, demonstrating logic, etc.

More later!!

Benny in the morning..

Culture, right?

Tim and I are obsessed with the summer reality TV show So You Think You Can Dance, and unfortunately, it starts before Ben's bedtime. During the winter, most TV shows start after his bedtime, so he isn't exposed to that much adult TV. But during the summer, he sees his parents glued to the TV every Wednesday and Thursday night. He watches with interest sometimes, and we justify it by telling ourselves that there is no violence, and that it is exposing him to culture and peforming arts, right??

Bleck!

Ben says, "Um, zrrbrrts don't work very well on kitties. They don't make any sound and you get a mouthful of fur. :-("

More sign language, etc.

It's so cute when Ben puts down whatever is in his hands to do his "more" sign. Tim also started doing an "I love you" sign (see picture), and Ben would put his hand up like he was saying "stop" but I guess he doesn't have the coordination to get his middle two fingers to bend down. A few times later, he seemed to make up his own sign in reply to Tim's sign. One time he crossed his index and middle finger and the next time he crossed his pinky and ring finger! That seems pretty coordinated. He seems so pleased with himself when he does them. He knows the sign for "milk" and "all done" now.

He skinned his knee again and this time he got a bandaid. His first bandaid!

Last week he threw something really hard and hit me on the forehead. It really hurt and we've been trying to figure out how to explain the difference between throwing balls and throwing other things, as well as throwing things at people. So I made a sad face and tried to explain that he gave me a boo-boo. He was smiling and laughing at first, but then seemed to get that he hurt me and stood up to come hug me. I thought I read that toddlers cannot feel empathy yet, but is sure seemed like he understood that he hurt me and he was sorry.

He babbles nonstop and of course some things will come out sounding like words. Tim said he said "I eat cats" this week. Ha!

He's been so happy and so easy-going, so a tantrum seems strange these days. When we got home yesterday, I guess I inadvertently teased him about going to the playground and he melted down. He pointed to the stroller so I put him in it and strolled up and down the sidewalks, but I didn't realize that being in the stroller meant going to the playground because that's what he and Tim did the day before. He cried woefully for a good 20 minutes, but since I didn't realize what he wanted until he'd been crying for a while, I didn't want to reward the crying by going to the playground at that point (plus it was dinnertime). Poor thing. :-(

Now I remember...

...what the last thing was:
Ben skinned his knee at a garage sale in Almena, don't ask me how, and so he had his first real "boo boo." I taught him that it was called a boo boo and now if you ask him how his boo boo is, he leans down and checks his knee. He was real interested in the scab for a few days. Now it is healed and he understands that other scrapes are boo boos too!
I guess most posts from now on will be "Now Ben understands this" and "Now Ben understands that" and in several months it will be a daily record of the cute things he says.
I can't believe how sweet and fun he is!!

updates

We've never tried hard enough to teach Ben sign language, but now that he is increasingly frustrated with not being able to communicate, I think we're more motivated to teach him. We managed to teach him the sign for "more" in a very short time, so we'll work on teaching him more. It's so neat to see how he learned it. We used it first with food, so I thought it was possible that he thought it just meant "give me more food" but then we taught him to use it when he wanted us to throw the ball with him more, and he used it then, so it seems he understands what it means. How cool!

We spent a wonderful weekend last weekend in Almena at a family gathering welcoming Michael home from Afghanistan. Ben had a wonderful time playing with everyone in the family. Grammy Pat made two huge dishes of fruit and Ben of course ate most of it. Due to his consumption of unbelievable amounts of watermelon, he overflowed his diapers several times. After about 4 hours of our 5-hour drive home, I discovered that he was very wet and wondered how he'd spilled water on himself and realized that his diaper had leaked. He was wet from his chest to his knees and the car seat was soaked! Watermelon boy! Hydrated boy!

Ben loves to help me water the garden with the hose - have I reported that already? He drowns a couple of potted plants, but does a great job with the rest of the garden. He concentrates and listens to what I ask him to do and is the best little helper.

I think there was another bit of news I wanted to tell, but I can't remember it right now. I'll post again when I remember it.

Zrrrbrrts!

Ben has learned how to give zrrbrrts (the Cosby Show word for making a sound with your mouth on someone else's skin) and he relishes his new skill. I think we got one on video, so we'll post it soon. If I pull up my shirt and show him my belly button, he'll come over and do the loudest, longest zrrtbrrt and then laugh. He'll also do it to the back of my legs when we're standing up.

Hmmm, what else is new in Benny's life? He's very social, and happy when other people are around. Chuckie V came back into town, so we had a little dinner party and Ben just walked around yelling at everyone and sat on everyone's lap. A Comcast salesman came to our door and Ben pushed open the door and walked out to greet him, and then wanted to follow him home. He likes to make faces at strangers.

Now that he is more confident with walking, he's a little less clingy with me. It's great to see him become a little more independent (though a bit sad, too).

He's still the sweetest little boy I've ever known!

More later!

Videos of the new walker, with some "talking" included! Funny how he goes in circles in the first one.

More camping!

One of my old moms groups had a camping trip planned forever and I had been looking forward to it. I was disappointed when we were all sick the week before the trip. Tim thinks he got salmonella from the tainted tomatoes and was really sick for a week and decided not to go. Ben and I just had colds and were getting over them, so we headed out on our own to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. There were three other babies there: a girl 3 months younger than Ben, a girl one month older, and a boy 3 days older than Ben. They are all walking, of course, and talking some. It was so neat to watch all these little people. The weekend was very nice. Ben seemed supremely happy and nobody could believe that he whines so much at home. He did great on the drive and we had a fun time together.

I like walking holding his hand. Like moving from breast milk to baby food and then being so excited that Ben can eat whatever we eat for dinner, it seems like such a big step for Ben to hold my hand and walk places instead being carried (and there is a big difference between holding both of his hands like we've done for months, and walking alongside him holding only one hand.)

More later!

New words

Benny has a new word: Car, pronounced "Ga." He points to real cars and toy cars and says "Ga" and it took me a while to figure out he was saying "car." He might also be saying "please" but we'll have to listen a little more to make sure of that. Cars are his new favorite toy. How boyish - balls and cars!

Headline: Benny sleeps through the night!

Let it go on the history books:
On June 13, 2008, at the age of 17 months and 6 days, Benjamin Luc Waggoner slept through the night. He slept from 9:00 pm until 7:00 without waking (or at least we didn't hear him).

Is this the start of something good, or just a fluke??

Fridge Art

Our first artwork from Benny, made at Rebecca's house (daycare).

Awesome camping weekend

We went camping this weekend outside Fort Collins and had such a nice time. While we were packing, Ben was whining and whining, I suppose because he wasn't getting any attention, or perhaps he didn't feel good. Anyway, once we got going and he had a nap in the car, he was so happy to be out in nature. He loves playing with sticks and pinecones and rocks, and driving his matchbox cars over logs and big rocks. I actually love it when he gets really dirty too. Of course, nature dirt is very different to me than Walmart floor dirt, and much "cleaner." I found a book here at the library called "Grub, The Bush Baby," about Jane Goodall's son when he was under two and they were in Africa. Imagine a boy growing up in Africa - no plastic toys, no video games - total nature boy. So that's what Ben was to us this weekend - he was "Grub." We camped near a trail and Ben wanted to visit with all the dogs and horses that went by on the trail. He's super cute when he points and exclaims in his gibberish about something, and turns to tell you about it.
How nice to have a sweet little companion to camp with us!

First haircut!

I cut Benny's hair last week and it looks so sweet. I just cut the straggling hairs over his ears and on his neck. I kept a lock.

Catching up!!

I've been horrible about my goal of three posts per week, haven't I?

Updates:
- I finally saw Ben walk on Saturday, May 17 and he continues to walk a little more each day. He didn't take off like we really thought he would, and he still really prefers to hold my hands when I'm around.
- Somehow Ben learned to turn around and go feet first when he gets off of things (chairs, beds, etc). When he ends up in bed with us in the morning, he wakes up, smiles at me, crawls to the foot of the bed, turns around and slowly slides down to the floor, then walks to the door. Our bed is pretty high, so I'm proud of his accomplishment.
- He learned how to tickle from Tim and it is the sweetest thing! He comes up to you and makes a tickling motion with his fingers and laughs. It's unfortunately a little painful if he does it on bare skin, since his nails are so long and sharp and he won't let me cut them.
- All the sleep books I read in the past said that big milestones disturb sleep patterns, and I guess that is what we are currently seeing. At least four nights in the past week or so, after following our usual bedtime routine, Ben pushes away from me while nursing, climbs to the floor and crawls to the bedroom door to be let out. He continues to play (actually not too tired-acting or whiny) from his official bedtime (7:45) until 9:00 or 10:00! The other nights he reverts back to his normal routine. Tim and I didn't realize how much we depended on the 8:00 - 10:00 time period for rejuvenating, but we sure miss it. Not that we don't love being with Benny! But I guess learning to walk has gotten Ben's body all excited and he doesn't want to sleep. :-(

More later!

Fun little guy!

Ben's been so much fun lately! He's been in such a good mood and doing silly, sweet things and babbling and yelling. Last night he was still pretty hyper at bedtime and I thought he wouldn't settle down at all. But after he nursed for a few minutes, I put him in the crib and he pointed at one of the teddy bears above him. I got it for him and he gave it a big hug and smiled and closed his eyes! What a sweetie!

Unfortunately, I think I will be the last person on earth to see him walk - when he sees me, he regresses and demands to hold my hands. :-(
Rebecca (daycare) said he walked across the room at her house this week and kept standing up and walking a few steps while he thought nobody was walking.

He is still pretty obsessed with balls, and can play catch for hours. He loves "kickball" too, or "throwball" - both of those games involve kicking or throwing a ball and then walking/running (with Mommy's hands) to get it and do it again. He loves his sandbox and is liking books a little more.

He has started lying down in the bathtub and putting his face in the water, and of course he loves to drink bathwater (yuck!!) out of his little cups (no matter how many times Mommy says no!)

There is a hot air balloon festival in Erie tomorrow, so we're excited about going to see all the colored balls in the sky! We think Ben will be excited to see them too.

Whenever we go to playgrounds, all Ben wants to do is walk towards the other kids and watch them and play with them.

More walking... and some silly fun near the end of the first video

Fun with Daddy

Ben's first steps!!!

A weekend without Ben

This weekend, Tim took Ben on a boys' camping trip to Fruita with Robbie Johnson and his fiance. They left on Friday morning and came back Sunday afternoon. My first 2 full nights' of sleep since he was born! I was off Friday and had to work Saturday and Sunday, so except for Friday afternoon and Saturday evening, life wasn't that different. I really felt like I was forgetting something and I missed them both, but it was a nice break and I got so much done! I cleaned the storage closet (5 years overdue), I re-caulked the bathtub, I cleaned the freezer, I weeded my closet, I made granola, I brushed the cats and petted them a little, I played a computer game for 1/2 hour, read for 1 1/2 hours, and took a bike ride without the trailer on it!

Tim said Ben slept ok the first night in the tent (his first two nights without nursing!) until 3:00 (the usual time he wakes to nurse) and was fussy and restless until 6:00 and then slept until 9:00. The second night, Ben woke up at 3:00, and then went back to sleep easily and slept until 6:00, woke for another minute and went back to sleep again. And he was fine in the car too - I was worried that Ben would be bored to death for the 4.5-hour drive, and I was worried that the nights would be horrible. All was well!

And Mommy got a little break and saw that life was really lonely with Benny and Tim!

The big decision

Well, Ben was a HUGE decision, and now we're facing a second big decision: whether to try to give him a sibling. At first I thought "Sure, we could do this again," and then I became pretty set on Ben being an only child, but now second thoughts are creeping again. I quiz every mom I can, and I even quiz kids when I can. "Hank - do you wish you had brothers and sisters?" In my usual fashion, I read as many books on the subject as I can find and scour the Internet. Various excerpts that have stuck with me as I've been reading:

"Visualize life with two. With one child you can hang on to your adult life. Two puts you firmly in the kiddie world. Expect dinners at the pizza restaurant, not the bistro. Prepare to double the sick days, but also double the fun, especially as your kids grow and play together." By Jennifer Bingham Hull, http://growingafamily.com/10tips.htm

"My parents had a similar realization, I think, when I left home to go to college, immediately got drunk, and fell down a tall staircase. "What if you had died?" my mother asked by phone when I explained why they would be getting an ambulance bill. They learned then, as I did later, that there is indeed a way for a triangle to suddenly collapse, and what is left when it does is nothing at all. My mother, contemplating this, wondered aloud, "Did we do something wrong?"
"No," I said, "You did everything right. I am sorry." I am sorry. I am sorry.
And so you see, I cannot take the risk. Like a farmer who needs children to till the soil and cannot risk having but one, so I need more than one child to lower my risk of absolute awful heartache.
To be honest, I do not know how this will work out. I, the only child, find it difficult to understand how love can be dispersed between two children. And there will be other shortages. There will be no perfect triangle. There will be alliances and counteralliances. There will be no short stories written near a fern. The stories that you write will be those you conspire out of nighttime conversation with Hodgmina. For, yes, you will live in an apartment, and you will have to share a room.
But you will be freer to fail, as your errors will be outshadowed by Hodgmina's and vice versa. And thus you will free yourselves of the unfair burden to avoid death at all costs. And maybe this is not entirely selfish. By having you, unnamed male child, I have chosen to give you both less so that at the end, as point by point of the shape of our family disappears, you will not have lost everything."
Hodgman, John. "A Letter to My Second Child." Only Child: Writer on the Singular Joys and Solitary Sorrows of Growing Up Solo. Ed. Siegel, Deborah and Uviller, Daphne. New York: Harmony Books, 2006. Pages 163-64.

"I've been thinking too much about this topic lately myself. I have one stunningly perfect child, age 2.5, and am idly waiting to get that "baby lust" feeling again. So far, despite the fact that almost everyone I know is pregnant again, no dice. I've always assumed that I would have a few children, but now I'm questioning the whole thing. There's so many things that come into play - my own memories of horrible sibling rivalry, financial questions, allocation of not just financial but emotional resources, etc. I just don't know. Greta is SO active and sensitive and high strung (a lot of things I'm reading on the X-treme Parenting thread are sounding distressingly familiar to me, and we are starting a round of developmental testing tomorrow) that I just don't know how I'd deal with another child. The mere thought of trying to nurse a tiny new baby for 45 minutes at a stretch while simultaneously trying to keep Greta from killing herself just boggles my mind. I know parents perform such feats all the time, and have for eons, but it scares me.
And in the meantime, while I'm spending months fretting about it, I'm getting older and older and my eggs are probably smelling sulfurous. Feh."
Erin -- Monday, September 02, 2002. http://www.theperfectworld.us/thread.php?id=341

I've been hearing alot of reassurance about the 2nd child on this network, and until now I haven't have the heart (or time) to inject my negativity, but I have to say I OFTEN regret having the second. She is sweet and easy and totally undeserving of an ambivalent mother, but I cannot help it. Two children are SO much more work. The 3 yr old wants to go outside when the 1 yr old needs a nap. When I nurse the 1 yr old, the 3 yr old leans out the window, or pours milk on the couch. They fight with each other constantly. The 1 yr old is always choking on the 3 yr old's small toys. But the real problem is that I get too depressed to even wake up in the morning. And this affects my relationship with my husband. If you are someone who needs solitude to replenish your energy, then at least wait until the first is 3 yrs before having the second. If your husband needs convincing, show him the very opinionated book by Burton White ("The First 3 Years") which almost says it is a mortal sin to space children closer than 3 yrs apart.
http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/parents/second.html

I am the 39-year-old mother of a 5-month-old baby, and my husband and I are torn about whether we should try to have a second child. (We are extremely happy with our delightful baby, and don't feel a compelling urge to have another one, but feel that in the long run it might be a good idea for all three of us -- and given my age, it's now or never.) There was a discussion here recently about what it was like to be an only child versus growing up with siblings -- but I'd be interested in hearing about the same issue from the *parents'* point of view (parents who had two children very close together, or parents who chose to have only a single child). Did promptly having a second baby convert your life from bliss to exhausted misery? How did you manage to take care of a newborn and a small toddler at the same time, and if you had the chance to do it again, would you? Did you hope you'd be giving your first child a lifelong companion, only to find they hated each other? Or did having the second child make everything even better? Or, if you had only a single child, do you feel life is better or worse for (a) yourself and (b) your child than if you'd had a second one? An odd topic on which to seek public advice, but . . . I'd love to hear about your experiences.
Responding to the 39 yo woman who was deciding about having another child. My answer is to say, you'll find out if it was the right thing to do years after the decision (whichever way you decide to go) is made. And whatever you decide, it will become the right decision.
http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/parents/second.html

I am 44, I have a 2 year old, she will be an only child, by choice. Both my husband and I come from 2 children families and we love our sibling to pieces but this is irrelevant as we must face reality. Our reality says that having a second child would completely destroy any semblance of sanity we have still managed to retain up to now; we cannot rationally "afford" to have a second child, and that decision is made for the good of all 3 of us. By having a second we would stretch ourselves way too thin mentally, emotionally, financially, physically and we know we would end up in pure misery. Annedoctal informations about how someone elses (?) childhood or adulthood turns out to be in absence of siblings, or the opposite, is not the base to make this decision or agonizing over it. Just be honest with yourself.
http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/parents/second.html

Perhaps I should not be the one to respond to this message, because I am the fourth of four children, and have three myself. BUT, I must say, I often look at only children and their parents with a sense of envy. My sister has an only child, and does so much with her! They read together all the time, go places together, and have a sort of closeness that I think is difficult to achieve when you are bathing one, dealing with another who has a cold, and trying to nurse the third! The other day, due to playdates and such, my husband and I found ourselves home with one child only, and both of us kept saying, "isn't this nice? Isn't this easy?" There is something wonderful about siblings, but there is also something wonderful about the quality and quantity of care that an only child receives. My sister has tried hard to create a close bond with her child and my eldest, since her daughter will never have siblings. This has worked very well. Their cousin-relationship is almost like a sibling one, and they will remain close as they grow older, just as siblings would. Also, as the fourth child, I can say from experience that no one ever helped me with my homework, enrolled me in extra activities (like they did for at least the first two), or seemed that involved with what I was doing or wanted to do. I don't feel any resentment, but I do joke with my eldest sister that I raised myself.
http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/parents/second.html

So I decided that my Old Man and I could choose not to have another child without harming our son, that having a sibling would offer him certain experiences and advantages, but that not having siblings would offer him other experiences and advantages, and neither would be inherently more valuable than the other. Still, that didn’t settle the question of whether I wanted another child. O. brings me great happiness and satisfaction, and so I have an impulse to have another child, who might bring me similar joys. But O. also demands a great deal of me, limits my freedom, requires a baseline non-negotiable investment of time, energy, and material resources. Despite my only-child status, I grew up in a large extended family; a houseful of people with shared connections and history seems like a wonderful thing to me. At the same time, I not only value but need a certain amount of time alone. One child makes that time hard to come by. I worry that two would make it nearly impossible.
http://oralhygienequeen.blogspot.com/2007/01/big-decision.html (I could have written this post! It was written in January 2007 and her blog now says she has an infant daughter.)

Comments are VERY WELCOME!!

Bizarre toddler behavior

Ben continues to melt into tears when you tell him "no" firmly, so his behavior was very odd at dinner last night. He started waving his fork around, acted like he was going to throw it on the floor, and gave me a "test mom's limits" look, kind of. I said "Please don't throw your fork, BenHoney," and two seconds later, he threw it on the floor. I said, not very harshly at all, "Ben, I asked you not to throw your fork!" and immediately his face fell and he wailed. Tim and I struggled not to laugh and tried not to pay attention to him. The really funny thing is that the whole identical scenario repeated five minutes later! When he starts crying (after you say no), it seems like he can't help it and it seems like genuine hurt, so I'm reluctant to think he is already doing the "I know that if I make a pitiful face mom and dad will be less mad at me" act yet. I know toddlers will test all their limits many, many times, but I thought they usually did it with a devilish look on their faces. This limit-testing ended in apparent misery for Ben himself, so I'm surprised that he repeated it.
Sweet, sensitive Benny!

Old news: March 26, 2008

Tim sent me this email on March 26, and I never posted it. Pretty amazing, considering the sleep problems Ben has always had:

"So I was doing laundry and Ben had been a little fussy so I was going to take him out in the baby jogger. He was quiet all of a sudden so I went and found him in his "nest" on the floor in the bedroom ASLEEP! He crawled in there and put himself to bed!"

Grammy visit, but no walking

We hoped Benny would take his first steps alone this weekend for Grammy Pat when she came to visit, but he didn't. He did seem to have horrible teething pain and a fever that came and went, and spent a lot of time being listless in Grammy's lap. He actually refused to nurse last night for the first time ever, which I guess could be because of teething pain. He pulled my shirt down(!) and went to sleep without an evening nursing session.

We went to garage sales (in the snow!) with Grammy and Ben got three new ball toys.

He loves Grammy Pat and is very happy when she is around. :-)

Kissing and laughing

Tantrums/clinginess

Tim says Ben acts completely different around me than around him, and I don't understand it. Today, Ben and Tim had a great day together and they were napping when I got home from work. Ben is "fragile" when he wakes up from a nap and probably wanted to nurse while he woke up fully. He has been fine with nursing only in the morning and at bedtime, so trying to be consistent with that emerging pattern, I resisted nursing. He cried full blast for a good 15 minutes, kicking and arching his back and pushing away from being held. We both tried several different distraction temptations and he pushed them all away. Then all of a sudden, he was fine. I don't get it. Other times, I need to stop playing with him or put him down to do something else (usually the trigger is that I'm tired of walking with him) and he acts like I'm abandoning him forever. Even if I get down on the floor and hug him and talk to him and explain what I'm doing, he still cries. He will stop crying only if I pick him up. I end up feeling that I'm horrible mother for needing to get dressed or clean the litter boxes, but then I think about families with 5 children or 8 children - how in the world do those mothers give their children enough attention??

I picked up my copy of "What to Expect, The Toddler Years" last night and started to get worried again. For 15 months, it says "Your toddler should be able to walk well, bend over and pick up an object, use at least 1 word; will probably be able to use 2 words, drink from a cup, scribble, point to a desired object; may possibly be able to point to 1 body part when asked, use a spoon/fork, build a tower of 2 cubes." For 14, 15, and 16 months, it says your toddler may even be able to run, walk up steps, use 6 words or more, follow a 2-step verbal command." So, I started worrying that Benny is delayed. It also says "See your doctor if your toddler ... is perpetually irritable, or demands constant attention." Then tonight, I read the book to Tim and we reassured ourselves that Ben is fine. We asked him "where is your nose?" and he immediately pointed to my nose and then Tim's nose! Then, we asked him where his shoe is and he pointed to his shoe! Then I asked him to give me a kiss and he leaned over to my face. He can definitely bend over to pick something up, stack blocks, point to desired objects, etc. So, he won't walk quite yet and he has only 1 word, but I think he's OK. He doesn't really demand constant attention and is quite happy much of the time. My new boss has a prodigy child (22 months old) and I need to remind myself to enjoy hearing about her, but refuse to compare her and Ben.

Other stuff:
Did I say already that one day when I went to pick Benny up from Rebecca's, he smiled at me, but refused to go to me? He kept turning to hug Rebecca again and again. I was mostly glad to see that he loves her. Bella and Bobby (Rebecca's daughter and another daycare child) come bounding to the door most mornings when we get there saying "Baby Ben is here! Baby Ben is here!" He smiles at them. Becca, Bella, Bobby, and Benny!

His new favorite activity is putting coins in his piggy bank. We also played with stickers a couple of weeks ago and I love to watch his little fingers struggle. His fine motor skills seem really good, though I don't know what to compare them to, I just think it is great that he can turn the coin in the direction to go in the piggy bank slot, etc.

He is talking so much and it is so cute and sweet, though it is still just gibberish. "Gello, gullo, whhay, bootch, hulla!" It seems like he is trying almost all the alphabet. We need to try to catch some on video so we can remember it.

I really don't worry as much as it sounds like I do. I concentrate on enjoying him and giving him love and attention. Tim and I say hundreds of times a day "He's so amazing! He's so sweet! He's such a good boy!"

Sweet, sweet, sweetie!

Other stuff

I need to figure out how to blog more often! I'm aiming to blog three times a week and upload photos once a week. We'll see how that goes!

I'm so proud of my good eater, Benny! If you put broccoli and other stuff on his plate, he eats the broccoli first, and he always chews with his mouth closed, even if he takes a huge bite. Lately he has eaten quesadillas, grilled cheese, scrambled eggs, tater tots, chicken strips, Chinese food, burritos, and other regular toddler stuff. If we get burritos from Chipotle, which some people complain are too big, Ben eats almost half of mine.

Just in the last couple of weeks he has insisted on feeding himself, though he would do it before if we asked him to. I've been delaying it because it is so messy and we don't have a dog to clean the floor. But now he takes the fork or spoon away from us and does it himself. It's so fun to watch how earnest and serious he is about it. I used to love it when I was babysitting and a toddler would pick up a piece of food, place it on the fork or spoon and then put the utensil in his/her mouth. Ben hasn't exactly done that yet - his aim and skill are pretty good.

Have I said before how sensitive he is? I don't know if all babies are like this at some point and then grow out of it, but if Tim or I say "No!" harshly to him, he looks shocked for a second and then wails like he is hurt. It's so heartbreaking!

We went swimming last week after a long time and he had a blast! He smiled the whole time, kicked and moved his arms, jumped (walked) off the side of the pool.

He's so sweet!

Nice long weekend - PHOTOS added!

We went to Fruita this weekend for camping and mountain biking and had a great time. The dirt was very fine, dry, and dusty and the wind was blowing like crazy the whole weekend, so Ben was one dirty little boy. He ate a ton of dirt and he doesn't seem sick so far, thank goodness. For breakfast, he would sit on the ground with his bowl of oatmeal, take a bite, put the spoon in the dirt, then eat a spoonful of oatmeal mixed with dirt, then stick his hand in the oatmeal, then rub his face, then turn into the dusty wind, and then be covered in oatmeal and dirt! It was easier to let it all dry and fall off than to try to wipe it off with wetwipes.

He gave a camp-neighbor doggy a couple of hugs, walked a ton (our aching backs!), played in the dirt, played with inchworms, rode in the bike trailer, waded in the Colorado river, and slept badly.

Ben has discovered the moon, which is a ball "ba!" in the sky, and we had a nice full moon this weekend. He also pointed out all the balls on the power lines along I-70.
How nice to have a little sweety along with us on our adventures!

Closer to walking!

Over the weekend, Pat, Wende, and Darrell managed to convince Ben he could walk holding only one hand, so now he will walk beside me holding my hand!

Other cutenesses:
- I forget if I said already that he says "hmmmm" to mean he is hungry. In the morning after he wakes up a little, he points to the kitchen and says "hmmmm!"
- It's so neat to watch him begin to express his wants and needs. He points and makes a little "huh?" sound to indicate things he wants. He points out the sliding glass door and out the front door to indicate he wants to go outside to play, and when we were driving to Almena this past weekend, the stroller and walker were in the backseat and he kept pointing to those indicating he wanted to go walking.
- I'm so proud that he eats vegetables! I know that might not last very long. Oddly enough, the only thing he consistently pushes away is pasta, which includes the child staple, macaroni and cheese!
- He loves to stand in the kitchen with us and "help" with dinner. He usually ends up soaking himself and the kitchen, but we appreciate his "help."
- He also loves to watch us take showers, and ends up soaking wet in that case too.
- We played a little Simon Says at dinner last night. Ben did what Simon said once or twice, but mostly he was Simon telling us what to do.
- In Almena, Alex and Gracie didn't appreciate his "hugs" much more than Scout and Flynn do!!
- He flirted with a baby girl across the restaurant the other night!

Ben's first email!

When Daddy was in California and Mommy was at work, Ben had a wonderful day with our great friend Paula. He "wrote" an email from Paula's house:

March 14
Hi Mommy and Daddy,

I am having a great day with Aunt Paula. She has this really cool toy that I love to push, the bears spin around and around! I got to eat a little bit of Aunt Paula's oatmeal, it was nummy. She is worried that I'm not supposed to have it. I think it is ok, no tummy ache or fussiness. We went to the rec center, I got to play with the kids while she worked hard. We also went to Mojo's, I ate my little circles and flowers snack while she had some hot chocolate. I fell asleep in the car afterwards, slept for an hour. She went through the drive through at starbucks for some tea then.

We are playing, soon we'll have lunch. She is going to fix some roasted chicken and peas, nummy. I hope you are having a good day, thanks for letting me stay at Aunt Paula's. She loves me, she gives me a kiss each time she puts me in my car seat. She is getting better at fastening my seat belts, it was hard for her at first. And, she doesn't talk on her cell phone while she is driving with me! Thank goodness.

I love you,

Ben

Kitty hugs caught on tape!

Benny standing on the patio!

Reunion!

Tim was gone for a week and every day I asked Benny if he remembered Daddy and if he missed him. He didn't seem to react at all. When Tim came in the door, Ben was so cute. He put his hands in the air and smiled the biggest smile. He gave Tim a hug and acted shy, and then sat in a chair and stared at Tim for a long time.

I was a single mom last week and BOY was it hard! It also happened to be one of the most stressful weeks at work I've had for a long time too. Tim had a great time in California at a triathlon camp, but I'm sure his heart hurt a ton to be away from Benny. Ben got to have fun with Irene and Paula, two wonderful babysitters who helped out immensely this week.

Other fun new stuff:
- Ben learned to hug teddy bears and it's so sweet!! He also hugs the cats a lot too, but instead of picking them up, he just puts his head down on them.
- He learned to share in the last couple of months too, and when he is eating something, he usually offers every few bites to me or Tim.
- He still isn't walking, and I will start worrying in a few weeks. He will stand by himself for longer and longer (up to 20 seconds).
- I got a Costco (bulk warehouse) card this year, thinking we'd get our money's worth from it, but every time I go in there I get disgusted. I am the first to admit that I shop a lot, and shopping ends up being my leisure activity of choice many days, but Costco is just too much for me. I've been in three different stores here in Colorado, and every one is packed to the gills with people, and the carts are extra, extra large, and it's like a consumer ant farm. Let's go around buying as much stuff as we can buy! Anyway, Ben must sense my anxiety, because he had two of the biggest meltdowns (toddler tantrum meltdowns) two days in a row at Costco. The first day, I left my cart and we went home for a nap. The second day, he was happy as can be for 15-20 minutes and then spent the next 20 minutes screaming and causing everyone to stare at us. Odd that he hasn't really done that in other stores, and we've shopped for a longer period of time many times.

I love my sweet baby boy Benny!

Amusing

Ben "brushes" his own teeth every night in the bathtub, and even reminds me when I forget. One night, we got in a little fight because he wanted to rinse the toothbrush in the bathwater and I didn't want him to and took the toothbrush away from him. He had a mini-tantrum, which often involves a really sad wail and putting his head down on the floor. Except this time, his head hit water instead of the floor. I saw that and thought "Oh, no, here comes a bigger tantrum because he scared himself!" But instead, he came up gurgling a little and started laughing. I laughed with him and he put his face down in the water at least five more times, gurgling, coughing, and laughing each time he came up for air. What a cutie!!

Warning: Benny nudity!! But look at that CUTE bum!

Here is Ben doing his Boomer bark

Benny updates

We had a wonderful trip to Austin, TX to visit Grand Aunt Marilyn and Aunt Karen and for Tim to do the Austin marathon. Aunt Wende came also and Mike came to do the race as well. Benny really loves all his aunts and we had a really nice visit.

Ben saw the Alamo and took a boat ride on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, and went to several famous Mexican restaurants, ate a lot of good food, learned to throw pennies in fountains, sat in Karen's comfy recliner and rearranged her drawers, and got pecked by one of Marilyn and Karen's chickens.

Marilyn was hoping Ben would take his first steps at their house. He's so close, but continues to panic if he isn't holding on to you with both hands. See the video of Marilyn convincing him to do it one-handed.

Boomer likes balls almost as much as Ben, and they were perfect playmates since Ben loves to throw balls and Boomer loves to fetch balls. They had a good time together even though Ben still doesn't like Boomer kisses. Ben even learned to bark! It took us a couple of times to realize the odd noise he was making was his imitation of Boomer's bark.

We met lots of babies in the airport/airplanes, at the playground, and various other places. Benny fell in love with Ashley, a blond-haired girl his age (walking) at the playground, he played ball with 2-yr-old Ashton, and he really liked Olive, a 10-month old girl who had been walking since 7.5 months! At REI in Austin, Ben was doing his usual stand-up-in-the-cart and yell routine and around the corner came another little boy doing the exact same thing. His dad and I were amused that they seemed so alike and after chatting a minute we discovered the other little boy was named Luke (Ben's middle name is Luc), and he was the exact same age as Ben. Two little boys born on the same day who like to stand in shopping carts and yell. What a fun coincidence!

Yesterday morning I was making breakfast and noticed that Ben was pointing out all the polka dots on my polka-dotted pajamas on my calf and calling them balls. Ball, ball, ball, ball, ball... ("ba, ba, ba, ba...")

He has a total of 10 teeth now - 4 on top, 4 on bottom and two huge molars on top.

The only bad news is that Ben has started having terrible tantrums. He arches his back and flings his head around and screams. Some of them come out of the blue and some are when he doesn't get his way, so we need to figure out what's what. Most of them happen when we lay him down for a diaper change, to get dressed, or to rinse his hair in the tub, so he really hates to lay on his back all of a sudden. He can be as happy as can be and then meltdown in a matter of seconds, and then return to being happy 10 minutes later. Perhaps that is normal toddler behavior, but he's been so sweet and even-tempered since 3 months, it has come as a surprise.

Almost walking!

Benny cutenesses this week

When I do Ring Around the Rosie with Ben, he anticipates falling, so he usually falls early on "Upstairs" and doesn't wait to fall with me on "We all fall down!"

He puts the phone to his ear, and sometimes puts the remote to his ear, and one time I was being silly and put a plastic fish in my ear and then his ear, so now he thinks plastic fish go in ears also.

After a couple of weeks of asking him to point out Daddy, Mommy and Benny in our photo on the wall, and then praising him when he pointed and said "Da da," I guess we inadvertently taught him that all pictures on the wall are called "da da." As far as I can tell, right now he thinks when he says "da da" it means pictures on the wall and when he says "ma ma" it means "I want to nurse."

His new ball trick this week is to throw a small ball from his right hand to the left of his body very forcefully and yell "Doo!" (and the same from left hand to right throw).

This morning he used his bath crayon to draw on the outside of the tub, on the toilet, and on the bathroom floor.

He's so sweet!!

Ben and his beloved balls

With his collection of balls, telling Daddy about one special ball, and playing ball with an orange (on a picnic in January! 65 degrees!)

New videos

Ben at twelve months

Ben at eleven months

Good news - sleep!

Benny's sleep has gotten slowly better since Christmas, and it is SUCH a relief to get a good night's sleep. After our very consistent bedtime routine, we can actually put him in the crib awake and drowsy and he will go to sleep by himself. He used to sleep on his side, but now he puts his hands behind his head - so cute. Or he rolls over and sticks his butt in the air.
He's been waking either once at 4:00 or twice at 4:00 and 6:00, then most of the time sleeps until 7:00. (Bedtime is 8:00.) I feed him at 4:00, and we know how to train him out of that if we feel it is necessary, but I don't mind getting up once. Plus, it is so dry here, he's probably thirsty. I drink a glass of water after I nurse him!
It seems like he just grew into sleeping, but I guess we'd have to say the Kaiser Permanente specialist helped when she told us we had to let him cry it out. We did have many miserable hours of heart-breaking crying, but it seems like it wasn't just what we did - he helped a lot just by being ready to sleep.
There are still bad nights and will be plenty to come. We think he is getting a huge molar, which must hurt and he has been up more this week.
Naps are still pretty impossible. I think we need a consistent routine, but that's hard when he splits his week between Daddy, daycare, and me.
Yippee - sleep!!

Cute things this week

Benny loves to eat, and his current favorite foods are bananas and oranges. Sometimes if you show him a banana or one of his bowls, he says "mmmmmm." I don't remember doing that, but he must be mocking us.

Last week I was pushing Benny in his stroller and someone said to me, "How cute! I love the gumming-the-banana trick!" I went to take the banana away from him and was shocked to see that he had bitten off the bottom of a banana and was devouring it! Ick! He ate banana peel!

He continues to be obsessed with balls and can play "catch" for hours. His obsession carries over to balloons and most other spherical objects. He's as happy playing with an orange as he is one of his bouncy balls. Shopping with him is really fun - he can point and tell you all about balloons that are completely across the store, and can look down an aisle and spot all the balls immediately and have a conversation with you about them. "Ba ba ba ba baba bababa ba!"

New videos finally..

Our old computer died on us and the laptop is very slow to download videos (about 45:00 per). I bought a new computer yesterday so we will try to get as many videos up as we can!
Here's a couple of the walkie-talkie Benny.

Talking!!

We thought my cousin, Will Chieves, was more than adorable when he talked in his own expressive language - nonsense words with adult gestures. I'd never really seen a child do that before. We're amused and delighted that Ben is starting to do the same thing. Most of his conversations consist of "ba ba ba ba," but his vocabulary is expanding a little, with some ma, me, gig, ja, da, dit thrown in. But what is so cute is that he looks like he's giving a lecture or telling a story with his body language. He'll hold something in one hand and point repeatedly to it with his pointer finger on the other hand and give us meaningful looks, all while "ba ba ba-ing" with different inflections and emphasis. When he wakes up, he starts babbling immediately, like he's trying to tell us what his dreams were about. Sometimes he laughs in the middle like he's telling a funny story. We'll try to get it on video to share, but so far we haven't caught a good "conversation" on camera yet.