Meeting of the minds

Last night was the first time Ben met Avery. Of course Avery was as charming as can be, but when Bekah held her up for Ben to see he took a look at her and said, "Go outside!" Apparently he wasn't impressed.

A little later I held him while my dad held Avery and he was a bit more interested. He touched her tiny toes and he kept saying, "Baby!" He can also say, "Avy," because we've been working on it for months.

Right before we left I held Avery. When Ben stopped chasing the dog and noticed he freaked out a little. He said, "Milk! Milk! Go outside! Home! Home!" I'll say anything to get you to pay attention to me! So, overall it went pretty much as I expected.

The other exciting event of the evening was that Ben finally said, "Uncle Ian." He's been saying "Aunt B" for months, but we couldn't get him to say Ian, which naturally frustrated Ian a bit. But at dinner we were treated to a chorus of "Uncle Ian, Uncle Ian, Uncle Ian."

The kicker is that when Ian said, "Can you say Uncle Nick?" Ben said it right away.

I knew I was blogging this the second it happened!

Last night we were at Ian and Bekah's celebrating the end of Ian's 27th year of life. Bekah's starting to show her pregnancy, so I thought it would be cute if we could get Ben to point at her stomach and say, "Baby." We were all sitting around the table and Ben wandered between Bekah's and my chair, so I pointed at her stomach and said, "Ben, look! Baby!" And instead of imitating me and pointing to Bekah's stomach he went around the table, pointed at Ian's stomach and said, "Baby!"

Whether he was commenting on Ian's physique or maturity level we'll never know.

A mother's confession

When my brothers and I were kids our mom went on a trip to Korea with a church group. She was gone for several weeks and when her arrival was imminent my brother Nick and I decided to make "Welcome home!" signs to take to the airport. My other brother Ian was completely mortified by the prospect of carrying SIGNS through the AIRPORT. What kind of a person carries SIGNS through the AIRPORT?! It was obviously a ridiculous folly on our part and therefore Ian was required BY DIGNITY to walk 10 feet behind us the entire time, lest other people think he would participate in carrying SIGNS through the AIRPORT!

I was reminded of that incident the other day in the car. We were at a red light so I turned around and started singing to Ben. I also added a goofy little dance, hoping to get a giggle out of him. Instead what I received was a Look, like he was 14 years old and I was trying to drop him off at the mall wearing a flowered mumu, bunny slippers and curlers in my hair.

I gotta admit, IT WAS AWESOME. Some parents may not want to seem uncool to their kids, but I can't wait. I've been uncool to most people for my entire life, so being uncool to someone who has to deal with it and can't harass me after gym class is going to be fun. I'm not going to go out of my way to actively embarrass him (unless he deserves it), but if in the normal course of life I do something that makes him roll his eyes and go, "Moooooom," I'm going to drink it in and enjoy it.

2010 grab bag

So far 2010 has been a good year in our house. Several Wonderful Things are happening.

Wonderful Thing #1 is that Ben is going to have a cousin! Ian and Bekah are having a baby! They found out on Jan. 1 that Bekah's pregnant. The funny thing is that two years ago we found out on Jan. 2 that I was pregnant. So Ben and his cousin will have close birthdays and possibly even the same birthday. I'm so excited! Our family is expanding and I'll get to hold a newborn again without having to go through all the pregnancy and labor crap. Uh, I mean, all the pregnancy and labor awesomeness. It wasn't the most painful experience of my life. Not at all. It was... great.

Wonderful Thing #2 is that Ben's starting to sleep better. Several times this week he's almost slept through the night, with only a couple quick wake ups. Heath and I have actually gotten to sleep in our bed together the entire night for two or three days now. It's a novel concept. I hope this means his ear infections are dissipating or gone. He's been on medication for almost three weeks now. This also coincides with our official switch to one nap a day. I've been fighting it for a while and since he's been sick it was derailed a bit, but Ben's a one nap kid now. He's been sleeping  for two hours around lunch time like clockwork. I'll admit it's nice to have a reliable two hour break and it does allow us to be out and about longer during the afternoon, but it's hard to go down to only one break a day. Especially since I'd rather have it late in the afternoon. Around 4:00pm I'm just done, but I guess I'll get used to it. I suppose the only thing harder than this will be when he gives up napping altogether. Hopefully by then he'll be in preschool. Of course, by then we'll probably have another kid and I'll have to do this whole horrible thing over again. Uh, I mean, this WONDERFUL thing. It's the best time of your life. Really... Sleep deprivation isn't like torture at all. It's fun to hallucinate in the middle of the day. It's like a free movie.

[Ed. Note: Since writing this a few days ago Ben has gone back to sleeping like crap at night. *sigh*]

I want a hippopatomus for Christmas

I love holidays in our family. Everyone gets along and there's relatively little drama. Thus, we spent Christmas eating, drinking, opening presents, watching A Christmas Story as many times as possible, playing games and enjoying being together. While it makes for a wonderful weekend, it doesn't necessarily make for an exciting blog post. Here are a few tid bits, anyway.

We spent Christmas day with Heath's family. Ben was more into ripping open presents than even three months ago on his birthday. That was fun to watch. Obviously he doesn't "get" the idea of Christmas yet, but he loved playing with all his new toys. I thought we could get him to play elf and hand everyone their presents, but that wasn't happening. Maybe next year. He also really warmed up to his Uncle Chad. Chad lives in Colorado, so Ben's only seen him a few times. However, Chad really made it his mission to get on Ben's good list, dishing out as much tickling, rough-housing and as many silly faces as Ben could handle. By the end of the day they were buddies. My brothers and I don't have much extended family we're close to, so I don't know what it's like to grow up with uncles, aunts and cousins around. It really means a lot to me that Chad took the time to get to know Ben while he had the chance. I'm excited for Ben to grow up in a close-knit family.

On December 26, my parents, brother and sister-in-law came to our house for Christmas. It was our first time hosting a major holiday. Nothing was burned and nobody suffered food poisoning so I considered it a success. I also got to pull a classic childhood prank on Ian. For various reasons, this year we decided not to exchange presents with my side of the family. Ian was sort of the impetus for that, so we got a big box and wrapped up some raisins for him. At least this time I didn't trick him into buying me a real present. And the raisins were chocolate covered.

So our Christmas was everything a great Christmas should be: delicious, warm and filled with laughter. I always forget to take pictures while we're in the middle of things, but Heath got me a sweet new digital camera, so hopefully that will change.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Babbling Ben

Ben's been practicing his babbling lately and it's becoming a little more sophisticated. Now instead of only seemingly random strings of vowel sounds, occasionally he adds in seemingly random strings of consonant-vowel sounds, i.e. ga-ga, da-da. It's mostly "ga" and "da" right now. I think those are the easiest letters to pronounce.

Do you think baby babbling has any correlation with how much a person talks later in life? If so, we're going to have a talkative little kid on our hands. Saturday night at Ian's surprise party* it seemed like he was babbling the entire time. He does do it more around other people, I've noticed. Maybe I'm not getting another one for my team. *sigh*


*It was a rousing success! He was completely surprised and his face turned bright red when they walked in. It was great.

Teething sucks

The subject says it all. It's been a tough week in our house. Ben got his two bottom teeth a week ago. I don't know if his top two are coming in now or what, but he's been sleeping badly and yelping in his sleep and the crabbiness has increased significantly. I have no idea why the top two would be so much worse, because the bottom two weren't that bad.

Poor Uncle Ian and Aunt Bekah had to bear the brunt of it last night. They baby-sat while we went to trivia and apparently Ben was screaming a good deal of the night. Even while eating, which is unusual.

Of course, the great fear is that it's not related to teething and it's something else entirely. I feel so bad that he's in pain and can't tell me what's wrong. I might have to make a worried new mother call to the doctor tomorrow.