Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Once more, with feeling!

Ben's first word was "no." Oh, what a joy that was. It took a long time for him to say "yes" at all. However, in the end it was worth it. These days whenever I ask him if he wants to do X and he does, rather than simply saying, "Yes," he says, "Yea!" If I ask him if he wants to have juice or watch his favorite TV show not only does he say, "Yea!" but he also throws his arms up in victory.

Gotta love the enthusiasm.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Vacation!

Two weeks ago we went to the Lake of the Ozarks and stayed at a resort with my parents, brothers and sisters-in-law. Although the trip had its ups and downs, it was fun to all be together as a family. There was swimming, there was 500, there was a boat trip that turned people against each other and had Heath cackling like a deranged pirate.

The first night Ben woke up at midnight and wouldn't go back to sleep until 5am. That pretty much made the entire trip exhausting for me, but I suppose I should get used to that. I don't see a relaxing vacation in my future for a long, long time. At least I'll have my memories of Hawaii...

Here's photographic proof that we went:

Using iPods as a family

A nice relaxing boat ride...

Hmm... Those are some menacing clouds in the distance...

Lesson learned: Don't f*** with Mother Nature 
(especially when nobody really knows how to drive a boat).

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Ben the Nurturer

During a particularly nasty diaper change the other day, Ben started saying "Elmo, Elmo!" He never cared much about stuffed animals until about a month ago when he latched onto his baby Elmo doll and they've been buddies every since. After I was done with his diaper he grabbed baby Elmo and put him on the changing table.

"Does Elmo have a dirty diaper?"

"Poop! Poop!"

So I handed Ben a wet wipe, he cleaned off baby Elmo and threw the wipe in the trash. Then he tried to put a diaper on Elmo, without much success, but it was freaking adorable.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Ben the Manipulator

Scene: It's bedtime. Ben has his binky, we'd read numerous stories and he was clutching his baby Elmo doll to his chest, so I put him into his crib.

Normally he'd just lie down and go to sleep. He's pretty good about going to bed, at least initially. However, instead he said, "Poop! Poop! I poop!" I sniffed and didn't smell anything, but he was pretty insistent. So up on the changing table he went where I discovered that I was right. No poop. He was still saying "poop," though, so I thought maybe he meant he had to poop. He's getting better about recognizing that feeling. I read him another book, thinking maybe we could catch the poop before bed. I didn't want him to sleep in it all night, or worse, wake me up in the middle of the night to change him.

But the poop never appeared, so after his extra book I put him back in his crib. He started saying "poop" again, but I told him it was time to sleep and left the room. He cried for a moment, but then fell asleep.

In the morning I was a little afraid his butt would be screaming red after sleeping in poop all night. Quite the contrary. He was totally clean and it dawned on me. That was Ben's first attempt to manipulate his way out of bedtime.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Music and water

So, because of recent Life Events I've basically been ignoring this blog for a couple months. I kept thinking about posting, but then I'd think that my comeback post should be something really great, but that I didn't have the energy to write something really great, so I'd do it tomorrow. Well, we see how well that worked out, so I decided that I'm going to adopt the National Novel Writing Month philosophy: quantity over quality. I just need to write and hopefully it'll get better someday. With that in mind, I shall start by telling you about the fun day Ben and I had yesterday.

In the morning we went to a free children's concert called "Bring on the Drums." I wasn't sure how well Ben would sit for it, but I figured that if he was too antsy we could just escape to the nearby playground. He really surprised me. He sat on my lap almost the entire 45 minutes and was alternately dancing, clapping or swinging his feet with the music. It was really fun to see him enjoying it. My parents used to take me to the symphony and though I haven't been in a long time, I feel like it did help me gain an appreciation for the music. I hope I can instill the same in Ben.

It was a hot, sunny day, so after Ben's nap we headed to the pool. Our city has a wonderful pool facility. It was the first time we'd gone and it was awesome. There was a regular pool for older kids and adults and then they had three kid areas. One went to three feet deep and had some slides, one just had a bunch of sprinklers spraying water and the baby pool went to 18 inches deep and had a lot of toys. It was perfect for Ben. It came to about his waist and he could get around without me having to hold him the entire time. Plus, we saw several different friends who live in the area. I love the idea of just bumping into people you know around the neighborhood. The longer we live here the more I love it. Heath and I picked the perfect place to buy a house.

Just a typical day at the grocery store

I will admit, I initiated putting the bucket on his head, but he ran with it...



Saturday, June 5, 2010

It's all about perspective

This actually happened months ago, but I forgot to post about it until now.

We attended a playgroup birthday party. I don't know if you've ever been to a party with 8-10 toddlers present, but it's chaos. Not even controlled chaos. You were lucky if you didn't have a truck rammed into your ankles. At the party the following happened:

Alyssa, the birthday girl, had a toy which the kids could sit on and spin (called, amazingly enough, a Sit 'n Spin), but it wasn't obvious to them how to work it. Isaac was trying to use it but failing, so his mother grabbed a life size (to a toddler) Elmo doll to demonstrate how it worked. As an aside, Elmo is a beloved character for almost all the kids. Well, Isaac got mad because Elmo was using his toy, so he tackled Elmo and started choking him. Seriously. This caused Lily to start wailing because Isaac was attacking Elmo.

I'm sure it was traumatic for Lily, but to the adults watching it was quite funny.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

For Heath

One of Ben's favorite books is The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, so Heath couldn't resist taking this picture on Monday:



The instant I finished, I heard a ga-zump!
I looked, I saw something pop out of the stump
Of the tree I'd chopped down.  It was sort of a man.
Describe him? That's hard, I don't know if I can...