Joel and Jaime: Ben - 2 yrs, 10 months

I've been jotting down little notes of things I want to write in the blog to remember about Ben. One thing that I've been observing more of lately is his introverted side. Many afternoons, he'll come home from the Taylor's and want to play all by himself. We know that he must have had a busy day at the Taylor's on those days. He's also been a little more of a homebody lately. He's perfectly content to stay home and play with Joel and I. He doesn't even want to leave the house to go for his usual runs very often lately. and side note... just because I observe him being a little more introverted than some other kids, I don't want to box him into whatever an introvert is "defined" as. Kind of like calling a kid shy their whole life...they could grow up thinking they really are shy rather than exploring for themselves whether they are or not, etc.

It's crazy to think that a year ago, we were dealing with epic tantrums and the whole daycare fiasco. Meanwhile this year we're dealing with the absolute sweetest, happiest boy on the planet (at least on our Planet Starr). For example the other night I pulled him close to me and gave him a sweet kiss on his cheek. He melted into me and when I let him go, he sweetly thanked me for the kiss. He loooves snuggles and hugs and kisses to and from his Mom and dad!! He's also so happy and enthusiastic about wanting to play with us "mommy, you wanna play tennis?!" He's not annoying about it. He's a total pal and just wants to play! Last night he did something rude to me when he was trying to interrupt while I was talking. So he got in trouble. He was trying not to cry and his sweet lip was trembling and had the sweetest pout. He was talking in a high-pitch, try-not-to-cry voice about why he was in trouble. All of a sudden he said "I'm happy!" while still trying to pretend like he wasn't sad. He's constantly telling Joel and I that he loves us in the sweetest, most tender voice. And when we snuggle at bed time, sometimes he asks that Joel and I get so close that we smash Ben between us and have our faces smashed up against his. So yeah, he's an introvert, but he certainly has a big ol' love tank that is constantly being filled and also filling our tanks!! Omg. He kills me. I wish my words could convey how sweet he is.....but it's impossible.

This is Joel and Ben snuggling watching TV. They both love their snuggles. They were made for each other.

Also, lately Ben has been wanting to climb our trees. The first time he did it was so funny. He thought for sure he wasn’t allowed to do something cool like that. I was weeding in the garden. Here’s our conversation:

Ben: Can I climb the tree?

Me: Sure!

Ben (hesitantly): I’m going to put my feet on the tree

Me: ok!

Ben (as if “are you suuure?”): I’m going to put both feet in the tree

Me: great!

Ben: I might fall

Me: Yup, you might!

The conversation continued in this way for a while. He was totally testing the waters and making suuuuure it was ok and he must have thought I misunderstood what he was asking to do! I got a kick out of it. Also, for some reason, Joel and I were talking about hard work the other day and talking about chopping wood. Every day lately, Ben has been asking if he can chop wood. When we do the yard work, he wants to help by chopping wood. Luckily, we did have to saw down a tree this weekend so he got to “help” with that.

He's also been more and more into "fighting bad guys". He talks about fighting bad guys all the time. If there's a bad guy in the movie, he talks again and again about how he'll FIGHT THE BAD GUY!! Today Mrs. Taylor sent me a picture with a blanket on as a cape and a sparkly mask on. She said that he was fighting bad guys and the mask helped him fight. Last night, he had a splinter, but the splinter helped him fight bad guys so he didn't want me to take the splinter out. I think he's a little afraid of "bad guys". He certainly doesn't like bad guys in movies. Not at all. He either won't watch a movie if it has a bad guy or he wants us to skip the bad guy parts. If he's playing by himself, he's usually doing something about fighting bad guys....for example, he was sitting in the back seat the other day and was pretending one foot was a bad guy and the other was a good guy, so his feet were fighting...or his cars are good guys/bad guys and they fight. If we talk about a storm coming up, he says he'll fight the storm with a sword. Somewhat related to that, He has these adorably optimistic views of how he'll face challenges. He's seen several car wrecks so he has it in his mind that if he's ever in a car wreck, he's going to "JUMP OUT DA CAH and be SAFE from the CASH!" (he says this with such enthusiasm, energy and confidence! ).

This weekend was daylight savings, and Joel's parents happened to be visiting so we took advantage of Bill's muscle power and switched Ben into the guest room and moved the crib/guest bed into the room closer to ours. So now Ben has a new room. He wants to paint the room orange (that's his favorite color). Um, no thanks! I told him maybe we could do an orange rug or orange carpets or something. Speaking of orange. Whenever we buy him something or he finds something or whatever...if it's orange, his whole face lights up and he holds the object up and excitedly observes that "This is owangE!!! Owange is my favowite colah!!" Have I mentioned his excitement and enthusiasim for things? I especially loves it when he clenches his fists and tucks his arms in tight and scrunches up his face and almost shakes with excitement about whatever! That reminds me...this weekend we went out to breakfast. Ben ordered chocolate chip pancakes. When they finally arrived, he was so excited he was shaking. He was shoving the pancake into his mouth as fast as he could with his shaking, quivering hands. His eyes were wide open with excitement. I tried to take a picture, but by the time I got my camera out, he had calmed down a little and was a little more relaxed about shoving entire pancakes into his mouth and smearing whipped cream all over his face.

When sleeping on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Mama?mama?its the weekend? Yup. Goes back to banging his head

We've been practicing some "homework" lately.

This was him watching Frozen. He had seen it before, but we've never watched it with him. He was leaning forward and oooohing and aaaaahing. At the end, he kept gasping and saying "oh! This is fun!". I've never seen him so into a movie.