Ben update - November 2015

There have been a few things the last few weeks that I wanted to record about Ben. For starters, I'm LOVING the bond that is strengthening between us now that I'm home more. He has such a tender heart and he loves his mama's love. He tells me many times throughout the day that he loves me and I get lots of random hugs and kisses. The other night, I was putting Elaina to bed for the normal 2 hours and he was crying and crying because he missed me (he was over tired, but it was still sweet). For most of his life, Ben has kind of preferred Joel, so it's kiiiind of a nice treat to be the preferred parents for once!

I can't explain how much love and curiosity this boy has in his heart. On December 1, we started our advent calendar that takes us through the story of Jesus' birth. On the first night, we talked about the angel that told Mary that she would give birth to Jesus. We talked about how we don't get messages from angels, but that God sometimes talks to us in our hearts. Ben had so many questions. He wanted to know how God eats and poops. We said God doesn't have a body so he doesn't need to do those things....but then Ben wanted to know how God can do so much stuff if he doesn't have hands. He had other good questions, but I can't remember them all. Somehow we got to talking about being thankful and a few other things. At one point, Ben said he had happy tears of love. Over the last several weeks, Joel and Ben read a section each day out of Ben's Christmas Bible Stories book. He learned lessons about how God wants us to love everyone. On Thanksgiving day when everyone was here, I overheard Ben say a few times that he loves everyone in the world. GAH! And one more thing...the other day he randomly just folded his hands, closed his eyes, and said ""dear Jesus, please make more Dinos. Just small Dinos, not big Dinos" and then he went back to eating his cereal. 

Also lately, Ben has really been into "what if" scenarios. For example, Joel mentioned to him that he needs to leave his shoes on in the car, just in case we need to get out in a hurry. After that, Ben kept talking to me about "what if".
B- What if we need help?
J- Well, we'll use our phones to call someone to help us.
B- But what if our phones are dead?
J- We'll get out and go ask someone to help us.
B- What if we can't open our car doors?
J- We'll turn our emergency flashers on to let other cars know we need help
B- What if they can't open our doors either?
J - Well, the police have special tools that can cut our car open
It went on and on. He does this with other things too! We were at the sporting goods store and he saw a bunch of guns for sale, so he had a gazillion questions about how they sell guns and keep them away from the bad guys. I really hope this isn't the start of serious anxiety! Last night he was crying before bed because he was scared that the floor was going to open up and suck the house into a hole.....yikes. Poor kid.

The picture below is Ben writing his Christmas list :)

Sometimes Ben seems so, so, so grown up. For some reason, his head seems huge (not in a bad way...just in a grown up way) and that makes me feel like he's all grown up. But then when that sweet head is sleeping or crying or giving me sweet kisses, I see his sweet innocence. He is SUCH a good boy. Lately, he's been yelling at Emma in an angry voice that's not acceptable. The other day, I told him if he yelled like that again, he would get a time out. Well, a few days later, he yelled at her and then said "Mom, do I need to go to time out? You said I did".  Well, he was in the middle of doing a good job of eating dinner and I didn't want to interrupt that, so I didn't put him in time out. On the rare occasions that he gets a time out, he goes easily to timeout and sits quietly until the timer goes off. Even when the time is up, he usually chooses to sit longer. It's really hard to punish him! Anything punishment is happily accepted and he has a happy response to how he'll deal with the punishment.  If we try to take something away, he happily says that it's ok because he has other toys or that he'll get it back in "50 days" or whatever. He does get really sad if he clearly upsets me or someone else. He whacked my dad in the face on Thanksgiving so he got in a bit of trouble for that and he was clearly upset that my dad and Joel got a little stern with him.

He had something on his finger and was innocently trying to show us. Hahahahaha

When I tell him not to do something, he always wants a detailed explanation of why not. If I tell him it's because I don't want him to break something, he happily tries to figure out how we would fix it IF we broke it. ANYTHING I say not to do, we have a big conversation about it. It kind of drives me crazy. Sometimes I don't have a good reason for not wanting him to do something. Lots of times he asks how I would feel if something broke. He really doesn't like making me sad. He broke my nutcracker after I told him many many times to be gentle. When it broke, I instantly saw him searching my face for my emotion and anticipating my reaction. He's so fascinating to observe!!

Anyways, I'm sure loving all this extra time with him. He's only going to the Taylor's a few more times and then him and I will have even more time together! He's exhausting and sometimes my brain wants to shut down and not listen to anymore questions....but I sure do love him!!!