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.