Wednesday, May 26, 2010

An explanation

Posting has been light the past few weeks because I was in the midst of Health Drama. I had a polyp in my bladder, which was removed on Friday. I'm overjoyed to report the tests came back negative, meaning there were no cancer cells. Which you better believe I made the nurse tell me explicitly. I don't want any of that sitcom confusion in which "negative" really means, "Oh, isn't it negative how you have cancer?" But, I'm positive she said negative, so it's all good. :)

Obviously I had some recovery time, so Heath was on full-time Ben duty all weekend. Then my dad came over on Monday to wrangle the boy. So I really didn't see much of him for three days. It's amazing that even though he's almost two, Ben's still changing everyday. I don't always notice it since I'm with him so much, but this weekend it was really magnified.

He's starting to speak in sentences. His main sentence is, "I see (whatever)." It's going to be totally bizarre when he can have actual conversations. And apparently over the weekend he learned how to go down the porch steps all by himself, without even holding on to anything!

My recovery is going smoothly. I'm still taking it easy this week, which means Ben's been forced to walk a lot more (evil mommy!), but that's definitely for the best. I work out, but the kid is getting heavy to lug around. Hopefully soon I'll be back to normal and this will all just be a memory.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Happiness is...

Taking your son to the zoo and watching him laugh at the penguins with pure, unadulterated joy.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Wow

Though Ben's birthday isn't for a few months I think we just experienced our first terrible two tantrum. It originated because he wanted to play an iPod game and I asked him to say, "Please." Most of his cohorts in playgroup say please and thank you (in some form or another), so it's past time for us to start teaching Ben. However, when I didn't immediately give him the iPod he flipped out. At first I tried getting him to just say please, but he wouldn't stop crying.

Then I went into ignoring mode. I tidied the kitchen and re-stocked his diaper bag all to the tune of screaming. When he started throwing magnets from the refrigerator I intervened, but I ignored him for a good 10 minutes. To no avail. So I tried to calm him down with hugs and singing and soft talking. Also to no avail. Obviously at some point he forgot what the tantrum was originally about and switched to insisting on having his binky. Well, that wasn't happening while he threw a fit so I tried various tactics to get him to calm down. Eventually after about 45 minutes of this he calmed down enough to read The A Book and now he's taking a nap.

Holy crap, people. I'm not even sure what to say. I'm proud that I didn't lose my cool, because I felt like I could've several times during that tirade. Now I just have a headache.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

The bye-bye effect

Ben's newest thing is to say "bye" to everything. He says bye to people, to animals, to food when I put it away in the refrigerator, to the TV when we turn it off, to toys, etc.

The ultimate, however, was when I was changing his diaper this week and he said, "Bye-bye, poop!"

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Ben's safari

Elephant!
Chimps!
Penguins!
Hippo!
Snake! (not real)
Being attacked by Feeding goats!
 Heath has really let himself go. :)

Monday, May 3, 2010

Oh, those fatherly pearls of wisdom

Yesterday morning Heath made pancakes for the second week in a row! While doing so, he jauntily said, "Ben, do you know what we say when we flip pancakes?" Now, according to Heath what he was going to say was, "Batter's up!" (Because, yes, he's that father.) However, in the process of flipping the pancake his hand brushed the very hot pan and instead what he said was, "Ow! Mother f-er!" Except he filled in that entire last word.

Now, of course I was concerned with his hand, but I have to admit that my first reaction was to LAUGH MY ASS OFF. Seriously, I had to grasp the sink to hold myself up. That was a classic Borders Family Moment.