20 Months - Benjamin

The last several weeks with Ben have been a little challenging for me. Where do I start.  If I'm honest, it's not much fun hanging out with him lately. I come home after work and for the entire evening, practically all I hear from him is "no mama", little tantrums and begging to watch Hot Dog Mouse or Choo Choo Train. I feel like in return, I'm saying "no" to him all evening long! No, don't hit...No, we can't watch TV...No, you can't eat Graham Crackers for dinner....No, you can't climb the 20 foot ladder all the way to the top...and every time we say no, he throws a little fit.  If I try to help him or play with him, he almost always says "no mama".. Generally, he doesn't want me to play games with him, look at him, kiss him, put him to bed, make his food...nothing. He wants Joel to do it all....And it starts to hurt my feelings after a while! We have our moments where he'll let me read, but it feels like the majority of the time, he resists me and just wants dad to do everything. His sweet self is still totally there as long as no one (especially me) is interfering with his "flow".
I know all of this is actually good...strong willed people are a good thing! He has such strong ideas of how things should happen or what things are (If he decides something is green, he cannot be argued with ...even if it's really red). He is so so so strongly independent and wants to do everything himself. So, we just let him know that if he needs help, he just needs to ask. If he asks for help, he's totally cooperative, but if we try to "help" before he wants it, we have a total meltdown. I'm glad though...I don't want to be the type of parent to do everything for my kid, so he helps me realize that he's capable of more than I think...and even when he's not fully capable, the best thing for him is to give it a try.

To add to the fun last week, we had about a week of REALLY rough bedtimes. It was taking an hour or more of SCREAMING and hysterical crying before he would go to sleep for nap and bedtime. We finally figured out that he didn't want a sheet on his bed?? As soon as we took the sheet off, he went to bed immediately and has gone to bed perfectly fine since. After he went to sleep, I snuck in and put a blanket under him. Nope, he wasn't having it. He woke up at midnight and said "no banket!" and dumped it over the side of his crib! I wish I knew what he was thinking (other than the obvious: I don't want a sheet on my bed!)

Now, all that being said, I do want to write down a few of his sweet things. He's been getting good at saying "thank you" and "no thank you". Over Christmas break, we really worked on those, as well as "please". So, whenever we give him food or anything, really, he sweetly says "dane dou, mom". We started teaching "no thank you" so that he would have something else to say other than "NO!!!!!*Screaming, stomping and throwing self on floor*"....so that's helping a little. He's also started the classic toddler habit of wanting things repeated over and over and over (he says "'gain").

Here are a few more things I want to remember:

• Row Row Your Boat - he loves to scream during the "If you see a Crocodile" part. This is how he sings it: Woah, Woah, Boat...steam..Woah Woah Boat...cocdile......Aaaaah!!!
• My favorite game is when I'm sitting on the floor and he runs at me from across the house and tackles me and we rock back together. We do this over and over. It's the closest thing i'm getting to a hug lately :)
• He still REALLY Loves going for walks. We go for a walk every afternoon, even in the rain. He knows he has to wear his hat and mittens. On weekends, we usually go for two walks per day. He likes to run while holding Emma's leash. 
• We have little conversations with him. We'll say "guess what" and he says "what" in response. Or, we'll be talking to him or asking him questions and he says "yup" or "yeaaa" in a very conversational sort of tone. Yesterday, Joel gave Ben the phone and we chatted while I was on my way home from work. He told me about watching Daniel Tiger and how DT was scared of a shadow...then he told me it was raining...I asked how his day was and he said "dood (good)". I said I'd see him in a few minutes and he said "bye bye mama"....just little exchanges like that...
• "Uh oh, Happen?" Whenever anything happens...whether he drops something, or falls or something isn't working the way he thinks it should, he says "uh oh, happen?" in the sweetest voice. 
• Ben's song. This one is a mystery. He tells us he wants to sing "Ben's Song". We try to sing various songs, but they're all wrong, so he sings and lists out the family members. I'm not sure if he's making a song up or if they sing a song at Karen's about family members. 
• He weighs 31 pounds right now, for the record.  

One last thing that I want to mention, although I probably don't have the words to describe it...and that is the relationship between Joel and Ben. First off, Joel's patience with Ben is literally endless. Joel spends more time with Ben than I do. He wakes Ben up and gets him ready and takes him to daycare...and picks him up from daycare (until sports start again at the end of January). Joel never seems to tire or run out of energy for playing with Ben. He is always "on" around Ben and fully connects with Ben. Even though it's hard that Ben is kind of Anti-Mom lately, it makes me happy to see those two connecting and playing and loving each other so much. Joel and I met 10 years ago this week....It makes me laugh out loud to think about the Joel I knew then (uh, TOTALLY different)...Never in a million years would I have imagined him to be such a good dad! 

He's trying to put pants on...When I tried to tell him it was a shirt, he wouldn't hear it.

He loves to play in the sink while Joel does dishes. 

Reading. Always Reading.

You can tell from his stance that he just discovered that warm water feels good down there :)