Benny's poor neglected blog!

Everyone who reads the blog was present at Christmas, so I haven't felt the need to blog. But I need to remember that this also serves as our scrapbook!

Random updates:

- Christmas was wonderful. I'm not quite sure if Ben understood Christmas, but he learned how to open presents and say "wow!" or "whoa!" He loved being with everyone and really thrives when he's with a large group of family. He learned Wende's name ("Winnie"), and said Karen's name ("KK") a couple of times. I don't think he ever got Grammy Pat (maybe it's too difficult), but he called Donna "Oma" and Albert "Opa" (Dutch for Grandmother and Grandfather). He would point to the right person many times when we asked him who was who. After Donna and Albert left, he walked around saying "Oma? Opa?" and that broke my heart. We got up really early to beat traffic on the trip home and a sleepy Ben cuddled with Aunt Wende until we tore him away.

- Grammy Pat made a wonderful Thomas the Train cake for Ben's birthday and Ben loved it. She and Grandpa Darrell came to spend his birthday weekend with us and Ben smiled big at her when he saw her. We had a housewarming party/birthday party and Ben played hard with two other toddlers, a young boy, and a preteen girl. He was really exhausted by the end of the night - having terrible tantrums when someone else played with his toys, and he slept until 9:00 the next morning!

- Ben and I took a walk through the neighborhood this weekend and a really sweet dog named Sunny joined us. She stayed with us for more than an hour, while we went to the playground at the elementary school, and came home with us too. I was worried that she was lost, but her tag said she was a pretty close neighbor. Ben called her "Nunny!" and thought it was so hilarious when she did her puppy-lunge thing with me and jumped on me. Ben and I sat on the swings for a while and Sunny went to explore. Ben asked "Puppy doing?" which of course means, "What is the doggy doing now? Where did she go?" When cars went by I called Sunny so I could hold her collar. Ben started pretending cars were everywhere and yelling "Car Nunny!" I tried to explain that cars can give really bad owies to dogs. Ben agreed, saying "Car puppy owie!"

- Ben has so many words now, I guess I'll start reporting the cute things he says instead of each new word he learns. Tim said he declared that I was not home one day by saying "Mommy no home." He put his half-eaten apple in the fridge one night, closed the door, and said "Bye apple!" His standard greeting to people is a lion roar. Adults think it is funny, but younger baby girls don't like that too much. Tim's name has changed from "Dad-dee" to "Daee" and I'm often "Mama" or even "Mom." He knows Pippi's name, but usually calls both cats "Meow" and forms sentences by saying, "Meow achy" which means "Let's cover the kitty up with my blankie." When he is frustrated, he gets prepositions mixed up, saying he wants his gloves "up" and his cup "off." He says "More mook" or "More wa-er" and more anything else with a certain cute inflection. If he's extra desperate, he'll get that mixed up too: "Wa-er more." He'll repeat almost any word we say, but we still can't get him to say Please or Thank You. I don't understand that. His S is improving a little too. He can say S at the end of some words, but not at the beginning of words.

- I had a small reunion with two of my library school classmates when one flew down for a conference and the other drove down from Wyoming. At the end of the night, Ben cuddled up with Anne on her hotel bed, covered her up with his blankie (which we had because it was freezing), and said "Bye bye Mom!" and gave me a smile that said he knew he was being silly.

- He still points out letters and pretends to read them. His collection of letters has grown from "e, e, e" to "b, o, r, m, a, e" and some others and he says them over and over.

- As soon as he turned 2, he gained some 2-year-old behaviors, unfortunately. He's definitely more frustrated and impatient with us and the world, as 2-yr-olds can be. I put a sock on his foot when he wanted to be barefoot on one foot and he cried pitifully for 15 straight minutes. Today I took his glove off so he could eat and he screamed and screamed, "Gov on! Gov on!" He doesn't have much patience for shopping or restaurants anymore either. He pushed a younger girl at a recent get-together and gets furious when other kids play with his toys. We are really unhappy with that behavior and will have to research how to deal with the pushing.

- One of his favorite "games" in our new house is to throw things over the balcony. The game is called "Down." I let him do it because he enjoys it so much (he'll actually listen most of the time when I tell him one thing CANNOT go down and another thing CAN), and I just spend lots of time bringing things back upstairs.

- He still loves to stand on a chair at the kitchen sink and play with water. He drags the chair across the kitchen himself, gets up by himself and calls it "Grr" (stir) or "hep me" (help me, or helping Mommy with dishes).

- His favorite movie this month is Lion King and he calls it "Roar kin." Get it? Just like Meow means Cat, Roar means Lion!

- Benny has developed what I hope is a short-lived aversion to the outdoors! He'll take walks with me in the stroller most of the time, but he sometimes refuses. I took him on a hike in the backpack during one of the gorgeous days last week and we stopped for a little picnic. He refused to leave my arms and was afraid of the flies. I hope he goes back to loving the outdoors real soon.

- We watched a movie last night and one of the kids had a hat like one of Ben's. I pointed it out to him and he walked over to the hat basket, pulled it out, put it on his head, pointed to the TV and to his head and said "Hat. Hat."

I promise to do better with updates!