My favorite things...

I thought about naming this post another "don't forget", but this title felt more fitting for these memories...although I certainly don't want to forget about these things! These are just a few of my absolute favorite things right now. We watched a movie the other day and one of the dads said that he loved his kid so much that he was scared he would eat the kid....that's how I feel about the following things....I can't get enough and could just gobble him up!

1) Ben barks. Yes, he barks like a dog. It's hilarious. He mostly does it when he hears Emma bark, but he also does it when he's crawling after her or when he hears the neighbor dogs barking. He's definitely mimicking Emma. It's a distinct, high pitched "ar ar" sound that he doesn't make any other time. It's so playful. Oh man, I can't get enough of it. No luck getting it on video yet. Hard to get Emma to bark on cue...

2) we've started letting him try a few finger foods. He likes the sweet potato puffs and I feel comfortable giving them to him because they dissolve super fast. Anyways, I'm in love with the way he clumsily grabs the piece and tries to get it in his mouth. They end up sticking to his face and hands and he is so curious and eager to get them into his mouth. I love watching him focus on this one little treat and trying so hard to get it in his mouth. Once it's there, it's fun to watch him mash it and experience the new texture.

3) I can't get enough of his rolling around in his crib at night. He's all over the place! Thank goodness for sleep sacks, because its useless to try to cover him. On his tummy, on his back, on his side, bottom
Up in the air, head wedged in the corner, etc...and somehow he motates all around the crib in his sleep. I remember just a few months ago, I couldn't imagine a time when he would be able to move around in his sleep. Before, he would wake himself up at the slightest movement. It was so frustrating! I sure love having the video monitor. Watching our sleeping boy is the best. (Have I mentioned before the way he bangs/bounces his head on the mattress every time he's falling asleep? Sooo precious!)

Geez. So many details to love and adore! I don't know what will happen if we have other kids! Really? Is it really possible to love a second baby this much?!? I know lots of moms feel this way when they start thinking about baby #2 and now I know what they mean!! It seems impossible. Are they all just telling a little lie and they really just love their first babies more??

Seven Months

Well, technically, today is seven months and one week. He's about 21.5 pounds. I don't have many updates, but today we noticed that his first tooth has broken through!! I can feel the actual tooth with my finger. I haven't noticed anything until today. I can't wait to see what he looks like with teeth, although that means no more gummy grin!

Other than that, he's just been improving on his skills! He sprint-crawls around the house and disappears in no time! That boy is speedy! He's also mastered pulling himself up on anything and everything, including my pant leg (and thus, my pants come down....). Sleeping is still pretty good. Most nights, he sleeps from 6:00-4:30 (maybe one wake up around 3:30, but I turn the monitor off and he puts himself back to sleep). At 4:30, I feed him and sometimes he goes back to bed...sometimes he doesn't. As long as I went to bed early enough the night before, I actually like my early mornings with him! I get to spend some sweet time with him before I go to work AND I usually end up getting to work early. It's win-win....although I reaaaalllly don't want 4:30 to be his regular wake up time!!

One funny thing he does alllll the time is carry things around in his mouth. Washcloths, scraps of fabric, toys (his or Emma's...), bath toys, etc. He'll stick it in his mouth and crawl around or do whatever it is he's interested in, all the while with this random object just hanging out of his mouth (there are a few pics at the end of the post of him doing this. The kong in the picture is clean, I promise! I clean all of Emma's toys regularly now that Ben is interested in them...)

He's making more sounds lately and he loves to imitate Joel! Joel is good at making strang noises and Ben loves to play with him and copy him. It's fun to see them so engaged with each other. Ben looks so intently at Joel and looks like he's having so much fun! Right now he says, emma, mama, papa, baba, and occasionally dada and all kinds of variations of those syllables. He doesn't really know what any of those sounds mean, but I have a feeling that "Emma" is going to be the first word that he really uses in the right way.

My mom is taking care of Ben four days a week and it is sooo wonderful. She is so observant of every little thing he does and picks up on his smallest cues, changes, patterns, etc. She pays lots of attention to his teeny little developments that I honestly wouldn't even notice half the time. I love how much she appreciates him. I feel fortunate that Ben has her to foster his growth and development in his first year. If he was at Cheri's all week, no one would really be noticing all these tiny details. Some days at work, I feel panicky that I'm not home more with Ben. I panic that I'm not going to be around for him as he grows up. I know lots and lots of people grow up with both parents working, but I'm not quite sure what that looks like since my mom was always home for us when we were growing up.

Even though Joel and I don't get many hours of time with Ben during the day, we make the most of the time we do have. I love our family time in the evenings. From the time we walk in the door, it's all about Ben. We put our phones away and just play with Ben as a family. My favorite is when we sing songs together and dance around. Cheesy? Maybe. But I love it! At bath time, we put him in our big tub and Joel and I both sit on the side of the tub. It's fun to chat with Joel and play with Ben. This is one of Ben's favorite times to imitate Joel's funny noises. :) Weekends are also very sweet. We usually stay home, although Ben loves going on outings! I sometimes feel like he needs to get out more. He just seems to need more and more stimulation! Today, our outings included a little bit of shopping and playing outside. We put his rain suit on and went and crawled in the wet grass and explored the leaves and twigs and rocks....until I found a pile of dog poop with my shoe.....oops....

For Christmas, we're just getting Ben a "lovie". I've looked far and wide for the perfect stuffed animal/lovie/blankie. I didn't know exactly what I was looking for, but I finallyyyyy found it. Not sure why it's so hard to find a cute, high quality lovie! We're not getting him any other gifts...I thought I would just wrap up some stuff that he needs (new spoons, etc).

One more thing...last night we had our friendsgiving/friendsmas with the Bailey's, Smith's and Dahlhauser's. I was thinking about how much has changed since last year's friendsgiving!! First of all, last year there was only one kiddo. This year, there was lots and lots of noise and commotion and some tears from the little ones. Also, last year, I remember that I was in the thick of my horrible anxiety and emotional mess! I'm so glad that's over! Hope to never experience that again, pregnant or not!

So, apparently I had more updates than I realized! Here are a ton of pics (including one of sweet Eli). I'm able to kinda control myself and not post a gazillion pics on facebook, but I can't control myself here!

 

 

Faith

This past week, I learned that one of Brenna's friend's daughter had aspirated a kidney bean. After several days of tense waiting, the 18 month old is now on life support to maintain her organs for donating. When I first heard about the accident, I was filled with horror and sadness. As the days went on, the mom, Sarah made a few blog and Facebook posts that were incredibly inspiring. Her faith is amazing

I often contemplate what it would look like to have faith during incredibly trying times like that. It never made sense to me to have faith that God would heal or fix whatever is wrong, because obviously bad things happen to even the most faithful. So what does it mean to have faith during challenging times? Well, I wish I had an easy answer to that. I know it involves having faith in God's greater plan...but I don't fully know what that means or feels like. But, I do know that I saw it in Sarah over the past few days. She had faith in Gods greater plan and is at peace knowing that her sweet baby girl is now in the arms of God. She is in a perfect place and doesn't have to experience this imperfect world.

There are a few people who I've encountered who truly let Gods light shine through them and who have helped solidify certain "lessons" in my mind and change the way I look at things (one of them was Joel's grandma who had so much faith and was celebrating the fact that her time on earth was almost up. She was so excited to go meet Jesus!). Even though I've only met Sarah once, she has taught me a lesson that has tweaked the way I think about faith and has gotten me one more step closer to understanding what it means to have faith in life's darkest moments.

So, I'm hugging Ben extra close and thanking God for every minute of joy he brings to Joel and I. I pray that Sarah and Darren continue to have peace and strength for the long road of healing ahead of them. God is good.

Six months

Six months ago at this time, Joel, Ben and I were just getting to our recovery room at the hospital. It's so amazing to think of how much has changed in those six months and how little we knew the little guy. I have loved getting to know him and seeing his chill, happy personality develop.

Lots has developed in recent weeks. The biggest change is that he is crawling. His favorite things to crawl to are Emma's toys and our phones. He gets good practice when he crawls after Emma's toys because she takes then away from him as soon as he gets there, so he has to turn around and head back across the room to where she takes them next.

Another noteable change is his sleeping!! Aaaaaaaaah! He's a great sleeper now! He goes down around 6:30, sleeps soundly until 4:00, at which point I bring him to bed with us and feed him and we snuggle till Joel and I get up at 5:30. I miss my snuggles, but I looooove my sleep!!

It's amazing to see his little personality shine through more and more. His personality has been evident for a long time, but I just love seeing it develop more and more and to see the funny little habits he develops...like bouncing his head on the bed as he's falling asleep...or playing with his hair gently when he's nursing or taking a bottle. I love watching him as he explores things and seeing his little mind work. He is so fascinating!

I couldn't be happier with my little family. Words can't express how thankful I am that Ben is a part of our family. It's mind boggling. The past six months have been the most love-filled, joyful months. Yeah, I guess it's hard sometimes, but the challenges are absolutely nothing compared to the happiness, love and joy that he brings!!

Below are some pics. I plan to update them with captions when I get to my computer...I'm just writing this on my iPhone for now.

Five months...

For the record, five month stats:
19 lbs, .5 oz
27.25 inches long
18.25 head circ

Don't Forget: 5 months (and lots of pictures)

Don't forget his adorable, shiny blonde hair. I was laying in bed with him this morning, marveling at how blonde it is! And, at the risk of making him sound like Edward from Twilight, his hair actually sparkles! He has a few long baby hair left on his crown, but the rest is new hair that has grown in.

Don't forget the sweet, graceful swoops of his features. The perfect way the bridge of his nose swoops down...the perfect, soft swoops of his lips and mouth...I don't know a better way to describe it other than "swoops".

Look, even his hair swoops!

Don't forget how happy and chatty he is in the mornings, especially. Even if I have to wake him up to take to daycare. I love my morning times with him!

Don't forget his determination. Where do babies get the drive to learn and try out all the things they need to do? He is so motivated to crawl! It seems like he's always trying, trying, trying. He hasn't succeeded, but he wont give up! I could learn something from him and his determination!

Don't forget how lovely it is to have his sweet, sleeping self snuggled next to me in bed. So warm and soft and relaxed. In his sleep sack, he looks like an angel laying between Joel and I.

Most of all, don't forget how much I love being Ben's mom. I don't know if it gets harder or if this feeling will change (I know it won't go away, but it could change), so I want to remember how much pure joy, peace and happiness this gives me. If someone asked me what I like to do with my spare time, the honest answer would be 'breast feed my baby and take naps with him'. I don't even mind pumping in the closet at work (I'm actually pumping while i type this!). I feel like I'm always going to want to have an infant! Babies -- they're like a drug!!

A few things to note:
For the record, he finally rolled from his tummy to his back last weekend. He's been rolling from back to tummy for the past two months, so I'm glad he finally figured out the other way!

His hands. The very first thing I noticed about Ben when i saw him for the first time was how big his hands were. I think I've written this before, but the only thing I could say was "his hands are huge!" over and over. Well, yesterday Cheri commented on how big his hands are. I wonder if kids are like puppies...if they have huge paws, they're likely to be big doggies. We'll see! I just wanted to jot it down for the record :) I sure do love his big paws!!

Heeeeey, Yeaaaa, I can stand!

 

And here we are exploring new textures with our mouth:

 

Cute Picture with mom...hehe...check out that mischevious grin:

 

Surprise!

 

Looking handsome in a nice, cozy fleece (thanks, Logan!)

 

Trying some rice cereal:

 

Loving the Exersaucer!

 

Reading with dad:

 

Just being cute:

 

Cute baby feet, photo thanks to K.Dahlhauser:

...

So, after my happy, lovey blog post this weekend, Ben and I had a rough night last night. One of those nights where I want to throw things. Plus, Joel was snoring so loud...he was "sawing logs" for sure. I made myself a double mug of coffee this morning.

In other news, check out these pics of the boys last night (Logan, Isaac and Ben). I wonder how Logan felt about his trucks getting chewed on :) I can't wait till they can play together! Hailey was snoozin, so she didn't get to show off her pretty dress in these pics.