The Little Events of Chris, Chrissy, Ben, and Eliza!

Eliza Cate Allen

2011-10-16T13:58:00.008-05:00

I'm trying to document on the events of Eliza's birth before I forget the little details. Luckily, most of the pregnancy was uneventful. I felt contractions more with Eliza (Braxton Hicks and real? ones) than I did with Ben, like everyone says, you feel things more intensely with your second child. My hips were very achy most of the pregnancy, but I didn't gain as much weight with her as I did with Ben (I gained 34lbs with Ben, 26lbs with Eliza) so I knew she'd be smaller than he was. Overall, it was an easy pregnancy!
When I was almost 38 weeks pregnant, I started having contractions that were very strong and 3-4 minutes apart. I had gotten home and laid on our bed because I thought it was just gas with Braxton Hicks on top of it. Chris came home around 6pm. He convinced me to call the on-call doctor and the doctor said I should go to the hospital just in case. So we dropped Ben off with Tiffany and showed up at labor and delivery at around 7:30pm. They gave put me on an IV and gave me three shots to stop contractions, and eventually my contractions stopped. We left the hospital at around midnight and I was too tired to go to work the next day. That was the most eventful thing that happened before Eliza was born.
I was scheduled for a C-section (due to the...damage? I sustained giving birth to Ben) on October 3rd at 11:30am. A few days before she was due, my mom came into town and stayed until the day after she was born. Ben loved spending time with his memaw. My last day of work was Friday September 31st and I left work right at 3pm because I had a sinus infection that I got put on antibiotics for because I couldn't breathe out of my nose (Chris said I snored) and was afraid that I wouldn't be able to breathe while getting my C-Section. I'm very glad I decided to go to the doctor because coughing after a C-section is miserable. And it really did suck. You have to hold a pillow to your stomach while coughing or else you feel like your stitches are going to open.
The morning of our C-section, we took our time getting ready. Tiffany had taken Ben over night and we had already packed most of our stuff. We got to the hospital about 45 minutes early just in case we got caught in traffic or something unexpected happened. We met up with Diane and she led us to labor and delivery, where I got into this sexy number (pic below) and set up in our room that would become our recovery room after surgery.

After the third IV was put in (the first one didn't take and the second one backed up), my epidural was put in. I HATE that feeling and still cringe when I think about it because it's such a distinct feeling it's hard to forget no matter how hard you try. Chris didn't almost pass out this time, but we had the same nurse (Charla-one of Diane's best friends) who was present in prepping me for Ben's birth, and she probably remembered how Chris almost passed out the first time and she made him sit down before they even started this time. I guess a needle going into your wife's back is pretty disturbing. We were informed around this time that our scheduled surgery time was bumped from 11:30am to noon due to an emergency C-section that needed to be done.
Noon came around and Dr. Simmons came in to talk with us before I was wheeled back to the operating room. I had so much anxiety (even while I type this I get anxiety just thinking about the whole situation) going into the room. Chris had to stay outside the operating room while I was being prepped. Diane was in there taking pictures. The little screen went up to block my view of my belly and the anesthesiologist administered stuff into my epidural. Then I could feel them poking my belly with tools, which made me cringe. I guess they saw my face and asked if I could feel that. I told them "yes" a little panicky. Then the anesthesiologist administered more stuff through my epidural. We waited about a minute and I could still feel them poking my belly with tools, which freaked me out. When I told them I could still feel it, the anesthesiologist said "Okay, Plan B" and leaned over my face to tell me that since Ben was a 'traumatic' birthing experience, we didn't want this one to be traumatic, so he was going to put me to sleep. I just shook my head okay and the little mask thing went over my nose and mouth. I wanted to ask about Chris (who was still out in the hallway), but I was asleep before I could say anything. I woke up as they were resetting up my stretcher in the recovery room. I remember I couldn't talk without sounding drugged, but I sure did try. I asked Chris if she was okay, and he told me she was, then he told me how much she weighed, how tall she was, she had dark hair, etc. Then he re-told me all of those things multiple times afterward because I'm sure I kept asking the same questions and not remembering the answers.

Eliza Cate Allen

7lbs 13oz

21" tall

Brown hair

Dr. Simmons agreed it was a good thing we performed a C-section. According to Diane, the cord was wrapped around her neck when she was born, which would have tightened during contractions if I'd had her the other way. She also had pooped while she was in me, which is very dangerous because if she had swallowed any of it (meconium aspiration syndrome), it could have caused mental retardation. They managed to suck the fluid out of her before she cried (don't want her to inhale) and it was clear, so we are VERY fortunate. Having taken many special education classes, I knew that there was a lot that could have gone wrong during birth, but the cord being wrapped around her neck and meconium aspiration syndrome were my biggest fears. Dr. Simmons also told me later that Eliza's head size would have caused problems again this time around. So a C-section was pretty much the best thing ever for me and my little girl.

Eliza and Ben newborn pictures Tiffany took

Tiffany brought Ben to the hospital at around 5pm where he got to meet his sister for the first time. This was his face. Actually, when he came into the hospital room, he yelled "No baby!" and literally ran out of the room. Pretty much what we expected would happen. :)
Ben has been doing much better with her. He kisses her and brings her blanket and bottle when it's not necessary. Yesterday she was crying so he went in her crib and found her dolly and brought it to her. So sweet! He has no agression toward her at all. He's been throwing more fits about random things, like nap-time and bed-time. He cries for a LONG time when he's put to bed. I hate it for him, but we can't let him stay up past midnight just because he's upset about going to bed. A lot of other things that he's done are hard to differentiate between the fact that he's a turdy 2 1/2 year old or if he's going through jealousy issues. But Ben is pretty easy and manageable, so even the worst of it isn't intollerable. It's just tiring. Luckily Tiffany and Diane help out a lot by watching Ben for us. It helps us keep our sanity.

This was our first family picture. Not the cutest picture of us, drrrrr. It's crazy to think we're a family of FOUR now! It's also weird to say 'kids' plural. I've never been happier!

More belly pictures

2011-10-16T13:49:00.004-05:00

I'm trying to catch up on everything leading up to Eliza's birth, so here are the rest of the belly pictures!

30 weeks 2 days

32 weeks 2 days

34 weeks 2 days

35 weeks 6 days

38 weeks 1 day

39 weeks 4 days (right before leaving to the hospital to have her!)

Excessive Heat and 3D pics

2011-08-06T21:18:00.009-05:00

This week has been very tiring. Normally I don't complain too much about how hot it is, but on Wednesday, the temperature was 109 degrees here. To make things worse, there was a fire at the electrical plant (or whatever you call it) that controls our electricity, so our power went out at about 4:30pm that day. People were predicting that the power wouldn't be on for another 24-48 hours, and since I'm big fat pregnant and we have a 2 year old with no concept of how to stay cool, we packed up and headed to my mother in law's house. We packed the most important freezer/fridge stuff we could fit into a cooler and as Ben and I were getting ready to take the exit to her house, Chris called and told me that Diane had lost power as well, but hers was out due to a wind storm that had taken out power lines. So everyone who I was comfortable staying with had no electricity on the hottest night since 1980 (I believe).

We decided to stay in the Super 8 in Bryant (the only hotel affordable and available..we got the second to last room). It smelled like dog pee since it was a room in which we were allowed to keep animals, but it was very cold and felt wonderful.

Ben did pretty well due to the fact that we had Toy Story playing on my laptop for him to watch separately while everyone else watched cable. I didn't sleep very well because it's strange to stay in a hotel when you're not on vacation and have to go to work the next day. I woke up every few minutes to check the time and make sure that my phone alarm was going to wake me. That next morning, Chris went out to my Saturn to start it to go to work and it was dead. It wouldn't even take a jump, so we knew we had to buy a new battery for it. Both of us were late to work, but we went and bought a battery (checked out of the hotel) and then tried to lead a normal day. Our plan for Thursday night was to stay with Troy and Jamey since their power had returned late the previous night and ours still had not. Troy texted us that afternoon and told us that their power had been turned back off due to Benton using too much electricity (it would have caused the power plant thing to overheat or something), so I was very disappointed and a little crazy/tired at that point. I didn't know where we were going to stay that night, and then Ben came in my office at work and got his finger stuck in the handle of a plastic box that held crayons. His thumb wouldn't come out! I don't know how he got that porky little finger in there, but I tried to manuever it every which way and he just kept crying louder and louder. I started to panic. Luckily, one of the other teachers came into my office and helped me squeeze it out. After I thanked her and she left the room, I just lost it and started crying. No sleep plus hormones and stress can make me a little awkward to be around. My boss and coworker came in and told me to leave Ben with them so I could chill out for a little bit, but I didn't have anywhere to go and I didn't want to spend any more money (we just dropped $100 on a hotel room and we're supposed to be going to Branson next weekend).

Chris told me that Diane's power was supposed to turn back on at 4pm, so Ben and I headed that way in hopes that it was true. 4pm came around and it still wasn't on. Even though it was 85 degrees in her house, it still wasn't too miserable, so Ben played while I laid on the couch. Diane was at work. Finally it came on at 5pm, but it didn't start cooling down until the middle of the night. When I woke up to go to work Friday morning, it was still 78 degrees in her house. BUT, it was Friday and Friday is the day I had been looking forward to for weeks because at 10am we had an appointment for a 3D ultra sound of Eliza! We finally have an idea of what our beautiful little girl will look like (the picture above is the best one that we got. The tech told us she was the most cooperative baby that day and we were very happy about that. She's so pretty and innocent looking! We can't tell who's nose she has, but she definately has Chris' big lips! We also saw that she has long eye lashes and short hair floating around her head. It was a great experience.)

While we were at the appointment, Tiffany texted us and let us know that our power had returned. So Chris and I went back to work after the appointment, but we decided to stay with Diane again that night since our house would probably not cool down enough in time for us to go to sleep.

It seemed pretty warm that night, but I had just thought it was because I had worn a t-shirt to bed instead of a tank top. When I got up this morning, it was 85 degrees in her house. Her air conditioner had broke during the night. Ben woke us up at 6am, and when we realized it wasn't going to cool down (after a few days of being in hot houses), Chris and I packed up and told Diane to come to our house where it had cooled down to 71 degrees. Luckily, Diane had gotten someone to come fix her air conditioner. Chris and I spent the morning cleaning our house (the cats had taken over with their fur all over the place) and the smell coming from the unwashed dishes in the sink made the entire house stink. We had to throw out 4 trash bags full of food from our fridge and freezer. More money gone. We went to Kroger and did VERY well buying off brand and sale items. Then we came home and spent most of the day relaxing and watching Ben play. We're so glad to have our electricity back!!!

Pregnant!

2011-07-23T21:53:00.007-05:00

So obviously I haven't been updating my blog very much lately. Or at all. I'm still working full time, going to grad. school part time, helping take care of a busy two year old, etc. On top of all of that, I'm 29 weeks pregnant! Chris, Ben, and I are expecting a little girl, Eliza Cate, October 6th.

Here's Eliza's 20 week ultrasound. We were so excited to find out she's a girl!

And here's the recap of belly pics....

15 weeks

18 weeks

19 weeks

22 weeks

24 weeks

26 weeks (it bugs me that I'm facing the opposite way this week)

27 weeks

28 weeks

This pregnancy has been wonderfully non-eventful. I had morning (all day) sickness for the first 16 weeks or so, which was a little shorter amount of time than I was sick with Ben. My hips have hurt from very early on and continue to have good days and bad days. All of the hormones causing muscles to loosen up are making me waddle even though I'm not big enough to justify a waddle. Oh well, I'll take aching hips over throwing up any day! Eliza is very healthy, and the doctor says I'm actually measuring a little big (remember Ben was 9lbs 1oz). Glad I'll be getting a C-Section this time around!

We have most of Eliza's stuff ready and waiting her arrival. We are so excited to be adding a little girl to our family. Ben has no concept of what's about to happen. We hope he accepts it well, but he's the only baby/grandbaby/great grandbaby in the family on both sides, so I'm not sure he'll be happy to share the spotlight. I think he'll eventually make a very good older brother. He can be very helpful and loves to be praised for everything he does. He's almost potty trained, too!! We're very happy to not have to have two kids in diapers at the same time. Ben will be 2 1/2 next month, so I feel like he's right where he needs to be in his potty training. He wears underwear all day and a diaper at night. Of course, he thinks he needs to pee every 5 minutes or so, and he needs help in the bathroom with pulling his underwear off and on. I also don't trust him by himself completely, not knowing how much toilet paper he will flush or how much soap he'll spread on his arms like lotion if I'm not monitoring him. So we're not there yet, but we've got a GREAT start.

Early Weekend

2011-02-05T23:20:00.004-06:00

Friday morning it started to snow. Going into work, I KNEW we would close early (this is Arkansas and there is no difference between lava falling from the sky and snow). I just didn't expect us to close as early as we did. After all of our students arrived, we fed them breakfast and then got the official call saying that we were dismissing at 10am. There was no point in going to school that day since breakfast is the only thing we accomplished. It was chaotic and crazy trying to get ahold of all of the parents to make sure they were on their way to get their child or would be there when the buses dropped off the kids early, especially since most of our parent's don't have working phone numbers. Somehow, we managed to contact everyone and Ben and I left work/school around 10:30am.

Ben was SOOO excited about the snow. He loves it!! He wouldn't stop talking about it, and when I tried to get him in the front door, he lost it because he wanted to go play in the "slow". I stuck to his school schedule and made him eat lunch and take a nap before we would go outside. Right after he woke up he made a convincing speech of "slow? outside? slow? slow?" So we got ready and headed outside. Afterall, I had promised him we'd make a snowman.

I just didn't tell him how big of a snowman I was willing to make. He didn't care. He was just excited to be outside and throwing snowballs I compacted for him.

This was Ben playing with his dinosaurs and his parking garage. He's trying to modernize the herd. I've had a fun, relaxing weekend so far. I hate that tomorrow's Sunday. Laundry and homework day.

Picky Eater

2011-02-04T21:08:00.002-06:00

Toddlers are impossible to feed. Ben will LOVE something one day, and the next day refuse to even look at it. The only food we can consistently count on him eating is corn dogs, macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, cheese, and fruit snacks. Some days he will barely eat anything at all, which always resorts in me trying to stuff yogurt or fruit in him to at least get him some nutrition.

Most of the time we try to give him what we're eating for dinner, but that hardly ever works out. We've had recent success with pizza, but only because he likes to pick the cheese off and eat it. He's not a good vegetable eater. Green beans are the only thing we've had mild success with, and that was on one of his good eating days. He seems pretty healthy, and that big belly of his suggests he's getting all the food he really needs, so I suppose I shouldn't worry too much.

I wonder what pioneer parents used to feed their toddlers. There are so many more options now-a-days that Ben refuses to eat, I think he would have starved to death back in the 1800's. Then again, he probably never would have existed since I couldn't ever make it across a river without the wagon tipping over and me dying in the Oregon Trail game.

5 month catch up?

2011-01-26T21:06:00.005-06:00

Blogging isn't all that fun, but looking back and reading blogs from a year ago or a few months ago makes me appreciate it. I really wouldn't have remembered all the little things I included in some of my previous posts if I hadn't read them a few minutes ago. It inspired me to do a very vague update of things that have happened since August.
I'm skipping September since I don't have photographic proof that it was even a month that existed this year. I can't remember anything significant from that month. So here's October. Ben was a Jr. Fisherman for Halloween. We took him trick-or-treating for the first time. We were in Troy and Jamey's neighborhood and only went to two houses since there were only two houses on that street that weren't pretending to not be home. Halloween was on a Sunday this year, and being the Bible Belt, Benton decided that it was going to move Halloween to Saturday, so that's when we went (thinking more people would be up to celebrating the devil if it wasn't on a Sunday...nope). We'll do better next year!

I threw this picture in because it's just Ben. He's so weird. I think this was an October or November picture.This is what Ben thought of Santa this year. Love at first sight. Actually, he was really excited when Santa came out of the courthouse with Mrs. Claus and everyone was clapping and waving, but when it came time to sit him in Santa's lap.....nope.

It made for a better picture. Anyway, Ben's favorite Christmas movie was Rudolph. He now thinks that any deer is called "dudah" (Rudolph). He also says "No, No Bumble!" while watching Rudolph and the abominable snow monster comes on the screen. He ran over to us and stood next to us pointing at the screen telling the bumble no until it was all over. We must have watched that movie at least 50 times in the weeks before Christmas.

We spent Christmas Eve at Ron and Rhonda's out in Hot Springs and Christmas day at Troy and Jamey's. I really like that routine. This was our Christmas day picture at Troy and Jameys. I'm wearing a shirt Chris got me for Christmas, which he based on the clothing that I bought Melissa from Maurices at Christmas. He's a good boy.

We had a great 2010 and hope to have an even better 2011! Right now we're working on planning Ben's birthday party. I think it's going to be mostly family this year. It's less stressful, plus, Ben doesn't really care about playing with other kids yet, so it'll be easier. He's obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine right now, so it's going to be a train themed party. I bought plates and napkins and decorations that have a train on them and instead of saying "choo choo" is says 2, 2! Because he's turning two. It's so surreal to me that it's been almost 2 years since I had him. He's already practicing the terrible twos with an occassional attitude and a constant testing of his parent's patience. I still love that baby. Oh yeah, and today, while in class, another child threw up on the floor and Ben picked it up with his bare hands. Wonderful. I had to write that memory down since it's something I think I'm going to try to supress deep down in my brain.

Chuck E. Cheese

2010-08-14T23:01:00.007-05:00

We took Ben to Chuck E. Cheese's today. Chris and I were more excited than Ben. I haven't been to Chuck E. Cheese in a LONG time. The pizza still tastes the same! I became a member of the Chuck E. Cheese club so that I could get good coupons before we went. We saved a lot of money, but we also spent more money on tokens than we should have. We had so many left that Chris and I were just kind of trying to spend them as quick as we could because it was 12:30pm and it was getting crowded. We ended up with 480 tickets and got Ben a cute Chuck E. Cheese stuffed animal. We had to pay the difference, but oh well.

When we first got there, Ben was very apprehensive about things. He's never been to a place like this before and I think it was just a lot to take in. It wasn't crowded at all when we first got there, which was great. We ordered cheese pizza and some fruit punch, both of which Ben loved. Ben did not like the kiddy rides at first. They scared him once they started moving. He kept saying "all done!" and trying to get us to pick him up.

He liked this motorcycle cop one more than the bug car thing. There was a little screen he could watch to chase down bad guys.

I thought this clock ride was going to go all the way around, but it didn't. Ben still didn't really care for it. He was more about watching other kids spaz around and play.

One of his favorite things to do was to bring all of the tickets Chris and I (sometimes Ben) won and bring them back to Mimi. She mostly stayed at the table, watching our cameras and purses. Thank you! One time Ben had two long strings of tickets, one in each hand, and was dragging them back to Mimi. A few women laughed at how cute and determined he looked on the way back to the table to give them to Mimi. He was on a mission!

This is one of those simulator rides that you can choose a roller coaster or a flying thing, and the screen makes it seem like you're in the rollercoaster/fly thing. The seat also moves. Ben was more interested in watching the kids play air hockey. Chris seemed pretty into it, though.

I can't figure out how to flip these pictures (the blogger flipped them this way for some reason). Anyway, if you put a token in the booth, you can get your picture sketched! It was worth it. Ben looked at the camera right as it took the picture. The entire time before that he was looking away.

Chris got a good nostril shot. Ben was getting fussy and Chris accidentally pressed the button before they were ready. I still think it's a funny picture.

Kim and Jeremy came with a child from Ben's school, but I don't think I'm allowed to post pictures of him due to confidentiality? I'm not sure. Better safe than sorry! Anyway, they had fun and it was good to see them there. Tiffany was also there and took some cute pictures. I'm excited for her to post them!

Slide

2010-08-03T22:09:00.004-05:00

Ben got his first slide last week (bed-head pic above). Mimi bought it for him. It's kind of big, but we're keeping it in our living room until it's not over 100 degrees outside and until the mosquito population drops a little bit. So, it'll be in our living room for a while. Ben loves it! At first he was a wuss about it, then fell off the ladder a few times so he started to get a fear of it, but then I went down and "wheeee'd!!" enthusiastically a few times and Ben decided that he wanted to have fun, too.

We have to put socks on his feet because sometimes he loses his bravery and tries to stop halfway down, using his feet. If he does that he flies forward and lands on his face at the end of the slide, so we just decided he can't do that anymore. We keep a padded playmate at the end of the slide because sometimes he has rough landings, but he's getting very good at Kerri Strugg'in it and sticking his landings.

Sometimes he can't quite position his feet at the top of the slide, like one foot gets stuck under his butt. At first, he would scream/cry about it until we would help, but Chris and I decided to put an end to that and now when he gets stuck, he just looks at you and says "Please?" while signing please. I pretty much give him what he wants when he says please, it's so cute!

July Really Sucked.

2010-08-01T22:34:00.008-05:00

These pictures are the only July pictures that are worth posting. They're from the Fourth of July in Hot Springs. :)

I haven't updated because July was much busier than I would have ever wanted it to be. I had two grad. classes going at once and the amount of homework I did was unbelievable. Chris is awesome and pretty much raised Ben by himself for a month. I had to lock myself in my bedroom (away from prying little boy hands that slam keyboards and rip papers) so I could get my work done. I turned in my last summer class assignment today, so I'm very excited to take a few weeks off from homework before my next class starts.

Lets see...Ben has been...destructive? Accident prone? Pretty much all boy. I've come to not stress out about the amount of injuries he gets while climbing the couch, sliding down his slide, and playing around the living room. This past month Ben has managed to injure himself (not severely) multiple times. It's a good thing he's got a thick head. I think he's built like a pachycephalosaurus, the dinosaur with a thick skull used to ram things. Ben bounced himself off the couch and landed on his head on the hardwood floor, then when I picked him up he was spitting out blood. I calmed down slightly once I realized it was just a tooth bleeding and not brain matter leaking out his mouth. That happened on our 3 year anniversary. Friday at school Ben fell off the teacher's computer chair he wasn't supposed to be climbing and reinacted the couch incident, crying hard and spitting out blood. Awesome. At one point he somewhat fell into our open vent on the bathroom floor (we leave it open because it's SO HOT and the vent actually prevents a lot of air from getting through) and cut his toe on metal. It was just his left leg that fell in, but still. He was trying to close the bathroom door on me because he knows he's not supposed to be in there, so he kind of deserved it.

Speaking of the bathroom door, Ben also locked himself in the bathroom by opening a drawer right next to the door and placing a plunger in it so the drawer couldn't be inched closed. By the time I got into the bathroom (using a puzzle board to push the plunger out of the drawer through the crack in the door), he'd spread out all of his tub toys on the ground, a toilet wand, and of course the plunger. All of these incidents happened on my watch. I'd just like to say that I'm allowing Ben to explore his environment and learn his boundaries. :)

Chris and I are going to Branson this weekend to celebrate my summer grad. classes being over. I'm very excited! Hopefully we'll have some good pictures to post.

Happy Father's Day, Chris!

2010-06-20T14:29:00.002-05:00

As I hear people complain about their husbands all of the time, I always realize how fortunate I am to have married Chris. I'm the luckiest girl to have ended up with him and I've never been happier in my life. Chris is just as great a dad as he is a husband. I knew he'd be a great dad, and I'm always right. :) He loves spending time with Ben and they have so much fun together. Someday Ben will realize just how lucky he is to have a dad like Chris. HAPPY FATHER'S DAY, CHRIS!! I love you!!!

Favorite Things

2010-06-15T19:46:00.008-05:00

I should specify that this blog exists mostly because of my procrastination of homework. You'll see. Also, I want to have a few of Ben's favorite things documented on before he ruins them. He's getting rough with his toys, so I fear this will be soon. Okay...

This is Junie's favorite toy. Ben calls it "ball" which is close. He throws it for her and she about kills herself to scramble after it on our hardwood floor.

Obviously our cat's favorite thing EVER. Baloo's favorite thing, I should say. And it has to have gravy. We have to call it "F.F" at our house because if Baloo is in a dead sleep and hears the words "fancy feast" he wakes up meow-screaming and rubbing against our legs for it.

Ben's favorite living room book. We have a set of books we keep in the living room and a set in the bedroom. It's just easier to always have a book handy and we're usually in one of those two rooms. It's 4 pages long and features pictures of items that start with the letter B. Like BALL, which I should mention is THE most important word for Ben right now. Ben can look through this book and touch every picture of a ball (or a circle) and say "ball?" It's so cute. My baby's a genius, by the way.

This is Ben's favorite bedroom book. He can also find every ball or circle or egg in this book and say "ball?" He's starting to imitate animal sounds. He says MMMMMMM for a cow, and BA BA BA for a chicken (like, bock bock bagock!) How the heck do you spell out a chicken noise? Anyway, he tries to do the impression that I do of a chicken and it's fairly good.

This is Ben's favorite page in the farm book. Chickens! BA BA BA!

This is my favorite purchase of the last month. My shower curtain from Target. It's got squirrels and owls and trees, everything a shower curtain should have! I LOVE it! It's my favorite thing to look at while using the bathroom. Who needs a magazine when you have a good shower curtain pattern to entertain you?

Of course, these are my absolute favorite things...my nerdy boys!

I asked Chris what his favorite thing I could put on the blog was, and at first he held up a Star Trek DVD, but then he thought about it for a second and said me and Ben. Awww, somebody wants a good Father's Day present. :)

Soap and Wizards

2010-06-11T19:57:00.005-05:00

Chris was giving Ben a bath the other night and he called me in there. He wanted me to watch how funny it was when Ben was trying to hold the bar of Dove soap. Of course, it kept slipping out of his hands and splashing back into the tub, which was funny. Then, by some miracle, he held it steady long enough to bring it up to his mouth and take a big bite. This was the face he made.

I could see him moving his tongue around his mouth and making worse faces when it collided with his bottom teeth, so I knew he had soap stuck to his teeth. So I stuck my fingers in his mouth and scraped off a big chunk of soap.

Once it was out, his face returned to normal. But in true Ben fashion, he doesn't just leave things alone....so he grabbed the soap and took another bite and started the process all over again. He really is a little trouble maker, getting into EVERYTHING he's not supposed to. His favorite trouble time thing right now is going into our bathroom and shutting the door while he's in there. The handle on the bathroom door is relatively low, so he could definately manipulate the lock if he tried. Chris and I practiced unlocking the door from the outside in case Ben ever locked himself in there, and we discovered that we would have to take a screw driver to take off the handle if that ever happened, so we've been very strict with Ben going into the bathroom and shutting the door. I tell him, sternly, "sad, sad day!" and then he says "da da daa" in the same tone. He's gotten very good at trying to repeat words and phrases we say, so it's already time to start being word careful.

Two nights ago I was in the bedroom doing homework and Chris brought Ben in to show off his outfit. Chris had put his shirt on Ben and he looked like a little Harry Potter wizard. It was so sweet to see how proud Ben was of wearing daddy's shirt. He even dragged it around the house after he was done wearing it. So cute!

I love my little trouble maker!

Kiddy Pool!

2010-06-07T20:04:00.003-05:00

Chris and I thought it would be a good idea to buy Ben one of those hard plastic kiddy pools so that he could practice his skillz. With a z. It needed to be the hard plastic kind so that Junie could be forced to join him.

Ben trying to "Vogue". He's not doing it right.

His initial enjoyment of the water. Water that was pretty much the same temperature as the air. It was WARM. Overreactor.

I tried to take his mind off of being in the pool, but he wasn't really having it.

He finally got over himself and enjoyed the pool for about three minutes. Then aunt Tiffany and I got selfish and decided it was way too hot outside. Time to go in!

Picture Texts

2010-06-02T19:38:00.006-05:00

Alright, so I was playing with my iphone and looking through different texts that I had saved and I realized that I had quite a few pictures that I would be sad if I never saw again. If my phone ever died or was destroyed, I'm not sure that it'd be easy to get these pictures back, so I decided to post some of the pictures with their texts so that they're at least on my blog. All of them are Ben pictures (why send a picture of anything else?). Some of these pictures have been posted before and some of them are new. They are in absolutely no order.

To Melissa and Reid: "Ben sleeping on the plane."

To me...this was just proof that Ben doesn't hate the water (taken today).

To Tiffany: "Look at how cute this baby is!!"

To me (from Tiffany): "Has Ben ever been through a carwash? Because it's about to happen....A little scared for the first time it passed over, but ok after that."

To me (from Tiffany): "I turned the vibrations on and he laid back and relaxed. This seat has been a huge hit. I just got it out to get his little cash register in the closet."

To Troy and Jamey: "Nerdin it up in his sweats."

To Chris and Tiffany: "A beautiful baby girl."

To Chris, Tiffany, Julie, and Maleia: "Ben enjoyed his birthday cupcake."

To Melissa, Chris, Tiffany: "Quasimodo needs you to come help him down from the bell tower."

To Chris, Tiffany: "This is the way he brushes his teeth."

To Chris, Tiffany: "This is the mess going on here right now."

To Chris, Tiffany, Troy, Jamey, Melissa: "Ben just took his first steps!!! This pic was after the real first steps."

To Melissa, Chris, Tiffany: "Beep beep! He's' concerned with the breeze hitting him."

Working at the Car Wash...

2010-06-01T21:53:00.003-05:00

Today was the first time in a long time (and I mean LONG time) that I didn't have work to do after work. So, of course, I felt guilty that I wasn't working. I needed to feel like I accomplished something, and since my car had enough bird poop on it to make one question what color my car actually was, I decided to wash my car. Ben helped. I had to let the water run for a while before it wasn't boiling hot (before this picture was taken). It seriously stung my hand it was so hot. I guess we're a lot closer to the sun or something. Hose water isn't even that cold at it's coldest in the summer. If you run sink water in the house, it stays luke warm, so you have to put ice in any glass you want of cold water. The pipes just stay warm. Anyway, Ben was testing out the water. He was tentative at first, but then realized that it tickled his hand when set on the "cone" setting.
This hose nozel is a pain in the butt for anyone with weak hands. I did have one little 'throw the hose down and call it stupid' fit, but Chris came outside to give me the helpful "squeeze harder" advice. Thanks sweety.

It was 94 degrees today, so we were more than happy to get a little wet. Ben kept eating the soap bubbles off the ground. Chris got irritated that I was letting him do it, but in my defense, I thought he would realize that it tasted bad after the first 3 soap tastings. Oh well, I've pulled chunks of cat fur out of his mouth, so I know he's eaten worse. The weather channel is forecasting our temperature to be 99 degrees this weekend. It's June. Yay.

Moving Into Summer

2010-05-29T22:03:00.007-05:00

I can't believe I haven't updated this since Spring break. Sometimes I wish I was a stay at home mom so I could spend all the time in the world with Ben and have time to do things like this. There's no way we could afford that, though. I didn't live up to Madonna's "Material Girl" song ("only boys that save their pennies make my rainy day..."). I married for love, not money! Ha. Anyway, let me update with Ben stuff...
Ben can walk by himself anywhere, everywhere. He's a pro. I was chasing him in the yard earlier and he started to run away, but he's definately not a running pro yet. He did a face plant into the grass. When I picked him up I had to brush the grass off his face from the impact. It was funny (to me, not him). He eats anything, though he definately has his likes and dislikes. His favorite food right now are the toddler mini-raviolis, cheese filled. He also likes to share ice cream cones with mama. And the best and easiest breakfast in the world is a nutrigrain bar. He LOVES those. The picture above was how Ben eats a poptart. He plays a lot with his food. He's also gotten very good at copying what Chris and I do and say, so we have to be careful.
Ben also had his first trip to the Emergency Room a few weeks ago. He was coughing so hard he could barely catch his breath. Of course he started this at about 5pm, so every doctor's office was closed. Chris and I couldn't stand to listen to him coughing so hard (he was even throwing up a little from gagging), so we decided to take him to the ER just so they could at least tell us what was wrong. An hour and a half later, we found out that he had bronchitis. Poor guy. He's totally fine now, but I'm glad that we took him because it could have developed into pneumonia. If you look at the X-Ray, you can see the cloudiness near his sternum. That's the inflammation of his bronchioles, which is bronchitis. If the cloudiness went all the way to the outside of his lungs, that would be pneumonia. That's what the doctor told me, anyway.

Last year Ben was fine going into a swimming pool. This year he's more opinionated about it. He cried almost the entire half hour I had him in the pool last weekend. I think it was too cold, but I know that he's going to throw a fit when we go to put him in it again tomorrow, despite the fact that Troy and Jamey's pool is now up to 86 degrees. He'll have to get over it. I'm not allowing my baby to be a water wimp! :)

Spring Break!

2010-03-25T21:18:00.007-05:00

Though we haven't done anything overly exciting for Spring Break, we've still managed to have some fun. I've enjoyed getting to spend more time with my boys, even if Chris still had to work. Boo.

Ben finally is accepting the slide. He actually laughs on his way down, if I go with him. I'm trying to train him to like things like this so that he'll go on roller coasters with me when he gets older since his daddy's such a wuss. :)

These are the first 'flowers' that Ben has ever picked for me. He pulled them out of the ground, started to stick them in his mouth, then changed his mind and handed them to me. When I took them he said "thank you". My sweet baby. I'm hoping there will be many more weeds picked for me as he gets older. I might even put them in a dixie cup with water.

I was hoping to get an action shot of him mowing the lawn, but he refused. Actually, he threw a crying fit and after he calmed down I took this picture. He had snot coming out of his nose, so I chose a picture that didn't display that.

Here's a sweet picture of Ben and Ava. This was taken at Larson's first birthday party. They were fighting over that toy, and then Ava got a little too personal (grabbing Ben's leg and touching his hair), so he distanced himself.

We're still working on getting Ben to walk by himself. He can do it, but he wants his hand held and he absolutely REFUSES to walk without it. The absence of a hand results in immediately dropping to his knees and crying. Stubborn.

Here's how Ben helps me clean the house. I was attempting a major cleaning spree, but he kept demanding my attention and rearranging the living room I had just cleaned. I pulled the cushions off the couch and vacuumed under them. While I was doing this, Ben was rolling around on one of the cushions on the floor and hit his head when he rolled off on the hardwood floor. I couldn't get anything done! He finally got distracted trying to push my yoga ball between the couch and the coffee table (tight squeeze) and I got a few things done. Nap time could not have come sooner.

Ben wouldn't stop trying to grab the toilet brush and stuff out of the bathroom trash can while I was in there blow drying my hair, so I finally grabbed him, walked him to the living room, and stuck him in a basket.

Zombie boy. If he's in a good mood, he WILL walk from mama to daddy. At least we know he's capable!

This is one of my favorite pictures! Tiffany took this in our side yard where we have a tree that was blooming. The flowers are so pretty and I love seeing Ben's little teeth as he gawks up at the tree.

Sliding and Other Non-Traumatic Events

2010-02-21T11:33:00.004-06:00

Saturday afternoon, Chris, Tiffany, Ben and I all went to Tyndall Park to play around. Ben got to play on the baby playground and Chris and I got to play some very unprofessional tennis.

I think this picture is hilarious. He didn't want to go down the slide by himself, but we made him anyway. He thoroughly enjoyed it, as you can tell. He went down so slow he stopped completely at the bottom of the slide. We probably caused some sort of slide phobia for him.

This was the before picture. I did go down with him once and he actually enjoyed it.

Ben with his I heart my mom onesie on. I had to get in the picture to emphasize who his mom is, just in case you didn't know.

Ben's going to play tennis when he gets older. I think tennis is a very mom friendly sport to watch a child play because there's not a huge chance he'll get hurt.

The ball is bouncing in front of his face. He's not eating it. He chased the tennis balls around the court for a good while. I started to worry he was going to skin his elbows, so we had to stop. Chris was also getting fussy because he chased the tennis ball around a few times and got all tired from it.

When we were done playing tennis, we decided Ben needed some more walking practice. He does well when walking from one person to another, but still won't walk across a room by himself.

Ben always walks slower to Chris and then runs to me, which isn't good because I have to catch him before he does a face plant. He's not very coordinated and doesn't understand that mama isn't coordinated either, which means he'll probably end up doing a face plant one of these times.

My future tennis player. He won't have pink tape on his future tennis racket.

Ben enjoyed the baby swings. He looks so funny with his legs dangling through the seat. He also looks like he gets tired when we're pushing him in the swing. I think it's because he's used to the baby swing we used to put him in to get him to sleep.

My sweet baby. We also got to witness a homeless man digging through the trash and a guy walking down the street with a business suitcase wearing a suit. It was an interesting day!

Birthday Party Flashback

2010-02-17T21:19:00.005-06:00

Okay, so I'm going to keep this post pretty short. These pictures were from Ben's birthday party we had on Saturday the 13th. Everything went really well and Ben got some great gifts. SPOILED.
Here's Ben acting all turdy toward Gannon. Gannon is 9 1/2 months old and traveled from Sherwood to see him.

Here's a Leap Frog musical table thing. The babies all really liked it. The baby in the orange is Larson, who will be one next month.

Ben's birthday cake! It was delicious. Troy did a great job. He made it into a baby dinosaur due to some unexpected cake collapsing, it was hid under an impromptu bib.

Troy bought helium to fill up all of Ben's balloons with. The kids loved playing with them. Such a simple toy. I had brought over some of Ben's toys, but they didn't get played with because of the ample supply of balloons.

Ben started to get into the "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to" spirit. He started getting really fussy. I think all of the people and attention was overwhelming, but I'm not going to make excuses for a fussy gus.

He got some cake and everything was good again. He really likes chocolate...and hats.

Kitchen filled with party goers eating cake. Or not eating cake. Apparently the rule is you have to lean and look all cool if you're not eating cake. I was unaware.

Anyway, Ben had a great birthday party. Thank you to everyone who got him a gift! I'll work on thank you cards when I'm procrastinating homework some more, which is exactly what I'm doing now.

12 months

2010-02-16T20:20:00.011-06:00

Ben at 12 months

*He's taking steps, but definately not walking around the living room yet. The most steps he's ever taken by himself in a row is six.

*He fake cries ALL THE TIME. For attention, of course. Really annoying to listen to when it continues on for more than a few fake cries.

*He says mama, dada, bye bye with a little wave, baba (pronounces his b's as d's most of the time), and my favorite, Uh-oh.

*If you say "Can I have a kiss?" prepare for the slobberiest kiss of your life. He gives you one every time you ask and makes a very good attempt at aiming for your lips, though not always hitting his target.

*He's going through the pointing at everything phase, which is really cute.

*A ball is his favorite toy in the world. Any ball that is big enough to bounce and smack your hand on.

*He's not afraid of ANYTHING. He loves loud noises, especially when he's the one who makes them. He chases the vacuum and smiles when Chris honks the horn when we're driving.

*His favorite solid foods are mini-corndogs and oreos. Healthy, I know. He still has issues eating solid food, but he's doing much better.

*He throws almost everything he gets his little hands on. The first thing he does when he wakes up in the morning is throw all of his toys out of his crib, saying "uh-oh" after every toy hits the floor. This is what I wake up to most mornings at 5am.

*He laughs A LOT, but mostly at what mama and daddy do. The hardest he ever laughs is when Chris tickles him with his beard. He also laughs at peek-a-boo.

*He loves to sleep, which is the only way I manage to get homework done. He takes a nap from around 11:30-1:00pm, then again from 4:30-7:00pm, then sleeps through the night 9:30-5:30am.

*He wears a size 4 shoe (perfect fit right now), 12-18 month clothes, and size 3 diapers.

*He drinks from sippy cups with soft lids. I gave him whole milk for the first time the other day and he LOVED it. It's great because I'll drink any kind of milk and formula is so expensive.

*We finally got to flip his carseat around. The first time he rode facing forward, I kept turning around and he was just STARING out the windshield, trying to understand what was going on. It was so funny.

*He doesn't try to flip over when I change his diaper or get him dressed anymore. I think he got in enough trouble that he finally learned to hold still.

*He tries really hard to imitate words that you say, and comes really close most of the time.

*He will carry things around in his mouth while crawling through the house.

*The things that he gets in trouble for everyday include playing with mama's laptop, trying to sneak into the kitchen, playing with the tv remotes and throwing them, playing with the toilet paper and the trashcan in the bathroom, pulling the cd out of his cd player in his room, and spitting out his food just because.

I'm waiting for Tiffany to post birthday pictures before I do a birthday party post.

One Year Ago Today

2010-02-11T19:15:00.006-06:00

This guy was born one year ago today. Benjamin Cade Allen was born February 11th, 2009 at 5:41pm. He weighed 9lbs 1 oz and was 20 1/2 inches long.

This was probably the only time he ever took a pacifier. Just not a fan.

Look at this swollen little face. I remember he looked so much like Chris when he was born. I was surprised at how big he was (weren't we all?). He has changed so much over the last year.

Here he is now, snotty nose and all. My big boy is all grown up.

Couch potato. I'm not sure what he's eating. These are my favorite pajamas on him, little long johns.

I just had to throw this picture in. He makes the BEST expressions of any baby I've ever encountered.

This little guy has brought so much happiness into our lives. It's strange to think about what our life was like before he came along. It was boring, pretty much.

Ben's 1st Birthday!!

2010-02-11T18:32:00.006-06:00

Ben devoured his birthday cupcake. He threw the first one off his tray (such a dear he can be), so I made him take a bite of the second one and he LOVED it, as evidenced in these pictures. It's the first cupcake he's ever had, though he loves a good oreo.

Blue really is his color. Many of the other teachers came into his classroom and saw his decorated face. Mrs. Jordan and Mrs. Denise also brought their PreK class in and they all sang happy birthday to him. It was too sweet! He's so spoiled by them. :)

The bounce house. Kim and I took pictures throughout the mornning. The kids were having SO MUCH FUN! It was so sweet to watch them laugh and smile. Kim came up with the idea of having the bounce house out on Ben's birthday. The kids enjoyed it so much that they're going to do it more often. They slept a lot better at naptime.

I got in with him, despite the 200 pound weight limit. Haha. Anyway, the second I got in there there was a call on line one that I had to take, so it didn't last long. The person hung up before I got to the phone, and then the doorbell rang, so I walked out to answer the door without my shoes on. I explained to the parents why I was socked, and they were okay with it. I'm very professional.

Oh yeah, his favorite toy in the world (right now) is a ball. He gets all excited when you ask him "where's your ball?" He crawls all over the house, playing with his ball. Chris and I got him a BIGGER ball from Walmart for his birthday. He loves it, of course. We also got him a shape sorter box (the kind where you take the circle and push it through the circle shaped hole in the bucket) and a baby swing that Chris will hang on the ugly tree in our front yard. I think it needs more attention drawn toward it, anyway. Maybe it'll pretty the tree up, like an earring on an ugly person. We'll see.

Anyway, these pictures are from his school birthday. There'll be MANY more to come from his weekend birthday party.

Making a Snowman

2010-02-11T18:14:00.003-06:00

Monday brought a wonderful amount of snow to Arkansas. By far the largest amount I've seen since I've lived here. So school was cancelled and Chris woke me back up (I tried to go back to sleep once I knew school was cancelled) and we went outside to play before it started raining, which was in the forecast.

I'd say Ben helped, but he really didn't. Mama did all the work. He was faking it in this picture. It took me less than 15 minutes to handcraft the snowman. I'm pretty much an expert. Ha. Anyway, the snowman fell over on Wednesday (broke his poor left arm), but it made it through some very heavy rain and a full day of sun.

Ben was mad at this point because he had spent so much time crawling around and eating the snow that it has seeped through his pants.

He really loves the snow. I'm so glad he can enjoy himself in the cold, wet weather. You can see me in the background, working on the snowman. Ben kept crawling toward the street, but it was okay since there was absolutely no traffic.

He was eating the snow off his mittens. He's going to get ice cream for the first time this weekend at his birthday party. I'm sure he'll love it.

Practice Cake

2010-02-06T17:06:00.008-06:00

Okay, so Troy told me he wanted to make Ben's first birthday cake. I told him that made me nervous. I've lived down here for over two years now and I've yet to see a Troy cake creation. He told me that his mom used to make them all the time for people growing up, and I told him that just because his mom could do it, doesn't mean he could. I'm kind of rude, but if you know Troy, then you know you can be honest with him. Anyway, he agreed to do a trial run of a dinosaur birthday cake for Ben and if I didn't like it, then I could just buy one. So I used my iphone to document the process. Yes, so the pictures aren't the best quality, but the cake wasn't moving, which means I have no excuse for blurry pictures (except my shaky old lady hands).

Start with cake. Troy used a pan of brownie, and two pans of devils food cake. Then he cut the pieces to make this shape. He might go buy a dome shaped cake pan for the actual cake, but this worked, too.

We used fondant icing, which needs to be kneaded and eventually rolled out.

Green! Food coloring was added.

Putting the fondant over the cake pieces. Troy had put chocolate icing between the pieces and over them to get them to stick together and be even more delicious (and healthy).

Little dinosaur legs.

Kind of looks like the Loch Ness monster.

The pretty much finished product! I think he did very well. We're going to have cupcakes surrounding him that are going to have Ben's named spelled out in orange icing. These were practice cupcakes. The dinosaur is all shiny because Troy used water to get the spots to stick and to get the powdered sugar off. We decided that the dinosaur is a little overweight. He was recently divorced and ate his feelings. He also lost his job and has to work at Denny's. The next cake is going to be a little smaller. We realized all the little mistakes, so next time it's going to be even better. I think it's cute and I'm very happy that Ben's first birthday cake is going to be shaped like something instead of just a cake with a picture on it. Thank you Troy!

Remember These?

2010-02-05T21:07:00.004-06:00

It was about this time last year that these pictures were taken. Actually, I was more pregnant this time last year than shown in these pictures. Ben had very little room to move in there at this point. He probably weighed 7-8 lbs in these pictures. I weighed a bit more. These were taken at 37 1/2 weeks. Six days until my baby turns one!

First Steps!!!

2010-02-02T18:49:00.005-06:00

Okay, so my baby is now a toddler. I'm not sure what the actual definition of a toddler is, but in my head, it means he toddles. Ben took his first steps this morning! It was about 7:35am and I was showing the physical therapist at work how Ben leans into me when I try to get him to walk. She started showing me tricks to getting him to quit leaning and he was doing very good in the hallway for her. So we (the 5 other teachers and myself) were standing around talking, and Ben was playing on the floor. He was hanging on to a teacher's leg and start to stand, like usual. Then he let go and was standing by himself for about 40 seconds. I interrupted some of the teacher's conversations (quite rudely, but it was IMPORTANT) and told them to look at Ben. Then I held my hands out to him and he took 4 very slow, steady steps and made it to me. So we all witnessed his first steps!! It was so exciting! Ben was very proud and started acting all goofy when he realized everyone's attention was focused on him. Nerd. The pictures I took were right after with my iphone, which is why they're blurry. I wish I could have recorded his actual first steps or that Chris could have seen them, but oh well. At least I got these pictures from RIGHT AFTER it happened. So these are his first steps after his first steps.

So my baby met my goal of him walking before his first birthday. Only nine days until he's ONE. Woah.

Ben's First Snow

2010-01-31T21:38:00.005-06:00

We finally got 'winter' weather here in Arkansas! It was the best weekend! We didn't have school on Friday because of the ice and sleet. There really wasn't that much snow, but the ice was cool. This is a picture Chris took Friday night.

Ben stayed Thursday night through Saturday afternoon at Mimi's. We couldn't go get him because the roads were bad, but Mimi didn't have to work and loved spending the time with him, so it wasn't a big deal. She did lose power for a few hours Saturday morning, but it came back on before her house got cold. These pictures were taken in her backyard in Mabelvale.

Ben liked the snow. We took off his glove so he could feel how cold it was. I scraped a little snow off the ground and put it in my hand. Ben took it out of my hand and ate it. He really liked it because I did it three more times and every time I did, he took his pudgy little fingers and pinched a chunk of snow and ate it. I'd like to think that Ben has inherited his Washington and Alaska roots.

Ben was doing a little dance in this picture. He wouldn't hold still or look at the camera. He was interested in the neighbor dog that wouldn't stop barking while we were out there. He was doing a good job attempting to walk on the snow, even taking a few steps without me holding on, but he didn't know that I wasn't holding on, so I don't count that as walking by himself.

I just thought this picture was funny. Ben was disturbed by the hood of his jacket.

Happy snow day! I miss the snow, but not enough to want it every day.

The Creatures of Ben's Life

2010-01-21T15:50:00.007-06:00

Ben loves animals, which is good since he's surrounded by them at home. His best friend is Junie B., our pug. She likes to lick Ben's face, trying to find left over food. She's gotten a little over zealous lately, spending most of her awake time sniffing the floor for ANYTHING that can be digested. She's also gotten in trouble for chewing up Ben's blocks and bottle caps.

This is Achilles. He's got a nub foot, as you can see in this picture. He doesn't have any toes, it kind of stopped at his ankle, hence the name Achilles. It's his birth defect. He likes Ben the least. Achy wants nothing to do with the fur pulling, face slapping fun that Ben wants to have. None of the cats have attacked Ben yet, but Achy has come the closest. If he did attack Ben, it would be in self-defense. I almost wish Ben would get swatted and learn his lesson, but I can't bring myself to let it happen. Plus, I don't think Ben would learn. And I don't want to have to explain why Ben's face was mauled by a cat to his teachers at school.

This is Baloo. He was my baby boy before I had my baby boy. He puts up with Ben a little more than Achy, but prefers to avoid him all together. He's very sweet and gentle with Ben when he HAS TO BE. He's very cow-like. Very calm, just kind of...there. Don't mention the words "fancy feast" around him because he'll go NUTS. We have to call it F.F. to prevent his hopes from getting up.

This is Chewie. She's my oldest cat. I've had her for about 16 years. She sleeps ALL day. She also avoids Ben, but if he manages to get ahold of her long fur and PULL as hard as he can, she just lays there and takes it. It's like she knows he doesn't know better. Her eye isn't all cloudy in real life, the camera flash messed it up. She's very sweet and loving.

This is Yellow. He's Ben's giraffe scooter thing he got for Christmas from MiMi. He's learning to push himself on it, but most of the time his butt ends up sliding off the back. It'll work better once his legs are longer.

This is Pepperoni Penguin. It's filled with air, like a punching bag for kids, and has some plastic balls inside that bounds around when he's pushed over. It also makes noises like "woah, woah!" and "woohoo hoo hoo!" when it's hit. Ben wrestles this thing every day. He loves it!

I'd show pictures of Ben's hermit crabs, but I honestly think they're dead. I'm waiting for Chris to get home to check on them. They creep me out. I don't like to stick my hand in their cage in case they move at all. All I can see is their shells because they're curled up inside of them. Gross.

Our Weekend in Pictures

2010-01-19T18:35:00.005-06:00

Ben fell asleep. Since he's almost one (crazy!), we're trying to get him to take a sippy cup instead of a bottle. He'll do okay with a regular sippy cup, but we decided to buy a transition sippy cup that has the bottle top, but sippy cup bottom. He does very well with it. It also has different tops that can be put on as he adjusts. The next top is an inbetween bottle and sippy cup top, then the final top is an actual sippy cup top. It was about $7 at Walmart.

Ben, like most children his age, has discovered the many unobvious uses of toilet paper. You can unroll it, throw it, tear it, and eat it. Ben didn't like the taste and spent about 2 minutes trying to pick it out of his mouth.

We've put child locks on all of our bathroom cabinets so Ben can't get my hairspray or hair dryer anymore, but sometimes we forget to shut the bathroom door to prevent this from happening. He always lets us know when he's crawling on his way to something 'exciting', though. He starts crawling really fast and makes little breathy panting noises (I don't know how to describe it) on his way to trouble. He makes those noises when he sees that the gate blocking off the kitchen was accidentally left open, and when the bathroom door was left open. He's gotten stealthier about getting to my laptop, though. No noises, just open handed keyboard slaps. The only time we worry about him is when he's quiet. That usually means he's eating something he found on the floor.

Chris, as a late Christmas present to me, ripped up the ugly carpeting in our bedroom. It was the last room in our house that had carpeting. Chris misses it, but it looks SO MUCH BETTER now.The floor still has some spots that need work, but for floor that had 80's carpeting on it, it's not bad! I was a little worried, but really anything would have been better. I'm going to be mopping and scrubbing the floor this coming weekend.

Here's a random picture of Ben with a yogurt melt stuck to his face. It looks like a camera glitch, but it's not. It stayed on his face for a solid minute before he started pouting and rubbed it off (on accident).

Daddy holding a tired baby.

No More Mullet!!

2010-01-09T17:49:00.009-06:00

Today Ben got his first haircut! We went to a lady who cuts hair in Haskell. Diane gets her hair cut there. It cost $10, which I'm sure is much cheaper than if I had taken him where I get my hair done. He doesn't need highlights, so I figured this was okay.

The lady who cut his hair, Eve, looked at his hair when he first came in and said "wow, he needs a haircut", then when she asked how old he was (almost 11 months) and she said "OOOhh, you can't get his haircut before he's one, that's bad luck!" I said meh, and Tiffany said "yeah, but he has a mullet", and I think a mullet justifies a before one haircut. It'd be different if Ben had straight hair, but it's actually kind of curly and is very messy looking at the length that it was.Here's the before picture of the back of his head.

He's starting to question things...

Still questioning things. He started to get fussy, so I tried to distract him with a toy car.Tada! No more mullet!He just got done crying. His haircut ended in crying. He looks so nerdy in this picture!
There, he got a sucker for all his hard work. He LOVED it! It made me nervous because he started to bite down on it and pulling it back further in his mouth, so sucker time ended rather quickly. But blue tongue lasted for a few hours.

We went back home and Diane came over after she got her hair cut. While we were showing her our new comforter set on our bed, Ben spit up on it, right in the middle. We wiped it up and it's clean now, but still....I think that child knows exactly what he's doing.

Waiting...

2010-01-06T16:09:00.006-06:00

Here's a picture from New Year's Eve. We took it right at midnight. Ben's enthusiastic about it.

That was just a random picture because I can't post without at least one picture of something. I just can't.

I'm currently waiting on a few things. I'm waiting for some late Christmas presents to come in the mail (Chris and I used a gift card we got from amazon and ordered a new comforter, Elmo dvd for Ben, and Super Mario Kart for Nintendo Wii). I'm also waiting for a book I ordered for an Arkansas History class I have to take. I'll complain about that later. I'm also waiting for SNOW!! Everyone's making a HUGE deal about the potential winter weather we're going to have here in central Arkansas, which means that nothing will happen, but there's POTENTIAL. It's hilarious to come from Washington and then experience southerner's hysterics over the idea of driving in snow. Chaos. I'm not lying when I tell you that Walmart and Kroger are probably out of bread and milk. People see the little snowflake graphic on the evening weather forecast and lose their ever-loving minds. They think they're going to be trapped in their house without electricity for the rest of the winter. It was a big topic of conversation at work. We barely got any work done talking about if we'd be going to work tomorrow or not. So we'll see what happens. If Benton schools are cancelled, then I don't have to go to work!!

Okay, so let me complain about Pulaski Technical College. First of all, I needed to register, so I joined the 300 other people on the second floor and followed the directions on the sign. It said sign into the computer and wait for your name to appear on the screen. So I did. I got a prime real-estate seat right in front of the screen when one of the pleasant Pulaski Tech students couldn't wait for a cigarette break any longer and vacated his seat. I almost lost it to another girl, but stood my ground by throwing my purse over the back of the chair before she could take two steps. An hour and thirty minutes later (NOT an exaggeration, ask Brittany at my work who I texted the whole time ((I was texting her all of the interesting names that were popping up on the screen, such as Frenchelle and Lummie))), my name popped up on the screen. I went up to the desk and told the lady I needed to register for classes and she told me that I was supposed to do that downstairs. I told her that I had been waiting for an hour and a half and she said I'm sorry sweetie, but you'll still have to go downstairs. Saying I was mad was an understatement. I told her, as politely as I could muster ( It was past lunch time and I had to pee at this point) that there was not a single sign that said that registering happened downstairs. I just did what the signs told me on this level. So she said she'd make an announcement to the room, pretty much outing me and my inability to know what I was doing. I walked down the stairs as she was making the announcement and got in a line that would be just as long of a wait as what I just came from. About 30 other people followed right behind me as they were confused by the lack of signs as well. So I waited an hour and a half more in this line and learned all about the girl behind me and her pre-arranged marriage (she's from India originally), so it wasn't so bad since I had someone to talk to. I was then told that I needed to walk to the library and register on the computer, so I did. I got into the LAST online Arkansas history class that was offered, but my password wasn't working. Even the library tech guy couldn't figure out what was wrong. They still haven't solved the problem. I need to email him tonight. So I had left work at about 8:30am and got back to work to pick up Ben at 2:50pm. The only good thing was that, since this class is required for my teaching license, I can count the hours I spent there as hours at work, so I got paid.

Okay, on to more important things. Today Ben went and got his check-up. I thought that he was behind on his shots, but it turns out that I just didn't have the updated copy, so we kind of went for nothing, but I learned some stuff from the nurse that explains Ben's issues with food texture. Something about how a baby's tongue moves back and forth until they're about 6 months old, which is good for drinking from a bottle and slurping down pureed foods. Then around 7 or so months the tongue starts to move from side to side in order to sort out solid foods. Well, Ben sometimes throws up when he eats stage 3 baby foods, which often are pureed foods with chunks of stuff in it. So when Ben eats it, he doesn't know which way his tongue is supposed to move because it's got pureed foods and solid chunks, so he ends up gagging and throwing up. The doctor said it's best to just give him foods that are entirely one texture so he knows what to do with it. Now his stats....my big headed child has a 19" head circumference, which puts him in the 96th percentile. He's 30 1/4" tall, which puts him in the 82nd percentile. He weighs 21 lbs, which puts him in the 35th percentile. The doctor thinks that Ben's bout with RSV is why his weight is a little lower than it should be, but I'm just happy that he weighs over 20 pounds because that means, on his first birthday, WE GET TO TURN HIS CARSEAT AROUND!!!!!!!! Anyone with a baby who's rear-facing will understand why this is so exciting. A child has to weigh at least 20 pounds AND be at least 1 year old in order for their carseat to be forward facing. So yay!!!

5am Wake Up Call

2009-12-26T15:11:00.011-06:00

Christmas Eve morning, at about 5am, I was in bed listening to our baby monitor. Ben seemed to be SO MUCH LOUDER than normal, so I played with the volume controls and realized that it was on the lowest setting. He was very happy and talking away about something VERY EXCITING in his bedroom. I decided to go take a look.

I slowly opened the door to his bedroom and saw this.

He was standing in his crib! He hasn't done this before, so I went and grabbed my camera and took some pictures to document this marvel. He was so PROUD of himself. The reason he was so much louder is because his head was so much closer to the monitor receiver. Ben has been a relatively bruise-free child thus far, but I'm sure this is going to change things. Anyway, I took a few pictures, then went back into our bedroom to wake up Chris and show him. I decided I wanted a video clip of it, so I went back into his room and took one, but it won't download! Don't you hate the sound of your own voice on video?

So after I shot a video, I went back into the bedroom and woke Chris up again and made him watch. He was a good husband and laughed appropriately instead of getting grumpy with me, which is good because I don't deal well with grumpy.

Here are a few pictures of Ben at school. He fell asleep with a ball in his crib and he got to see Santa at Civitan. He made the same face as he did with the other Santa he saw. Just stared. He looks so portly on Santa's lap. :)

Naked Baby!

2009-12-21T21:21:00.000-06:00

Is bathtub one word? It doesn't look right no matter which way I type it, so I'm titling this thing Naked Baby instead of bathtub baby. Even though there's only two pictures, they deserve their own post. Ben LOVES baths. He prefers them to be hot, but obviously Chris and I are careful. We usually throw a few squirt bath toys in there so he has something to occupy himself. Ben does really well when you dump a cup of water over his head to rinse his hair. It'll pour over his face and he'll hold his breath, but he recovers quickly. No crying! We try to put wash clothes under his butt to prevent him from sliding around, but sometimes they escape and he's free to slide. I like Johnson's baby shampoo for his hair, but baby magic for his body wash. Ben couldn't care less. He gets a bath every night before bed. Chris usually gives it to him. It's a daddy-Ben thing. Diane said that Ben pooped a little in her bathtub the other day, but thank goodness we haven't seen that yet! Eww. It was bound to happen. And no, that's just a stained washcloth he's sitting on in the picture. Not poop! :)

Colorful Weekend

2009-12-21T20:06:00.000-06:00

This weekend Chris and I decided to paint our bedroom. The previous owners left quite a mess on the bedroom walls. It looks like the walls had wallpaper, then the owners tried peeling it off and got tired halfway through and just painted over everything. You could see exactly where there was wallpaper because it would go from smooth to textured wall, to smooth again. You could even see the outline of the strips of wallpaper that were left on. After over a year of laying in bed and staring at the neutral colored texture mess, I decided we were going to do something about it. I asked Chris if, as a Christmas gift to me, we could paint the bedroom walls and take out the carpeting. The carpeting is a dark brown throwback to the 80's that I don't want to look at any more. There's hardwood underneath it, but I don't know what condition it's in. I guess we'll deal with that in a few weeks. One project at a time.

It took us a few weeks of working on peeling the wallpaper off the walls. We just worked on it whenever we had time. It was hard because the paper would leave behind a layer stuck to the wall and we'd have to use DIF to get it off. DIF is a wallpaper remover in a spray bottle. It took forever to peel all the tiny little slivers of wallpaper off, but we got most of it. Friday we started priming, and Saturday we finished priming the walls. Then Sunday we went to Walmart and got Kilz paint, which guarantees that you only have to paint one coat (they're right!). I picked out Josie blue, which dried a lot darker than I wanted it to, but it still looks much better than the other color, which was just a light tan (same color as our front porch...I think the previous owners actually used the same paint based on the peeling of our front porch). Here are some pictures of the process.

Primer up.

You can see there is a dark patch under the primer..that's tan paint that didn't have wallpaper under it. The places where it was just white with primer is where we had to peel wallpaper off. There were more places that we had to peel wallpaper off than not.

I wanted a steely blue..like a grayish blue I guess, but I like our color. It's very bright and doesn't really match the Christmas comforter on our bed, but I'm buying a bedroom set that will match the walls.

A few months ago Chris, Jamey, Troy, Ben, and I all attended Old Fashion Day, which is pretty much just a day that people go and set up booths around the courthouse in Benton, selling things they've made themselves. It's supposed to be handmade items, but I'm thinking the giant coloring book I bought for Ben wasn't handmade. It's great, though. What we're going to do is have our little family color a few pages each year around Christmas (the book is 'Twas the Night before Christmas). That way we can look back through the pages and see how old Ben was when he colored certain pages. I do something similar every time we go on an airplane somewhere. I have a sudoku puzzle book that I take with me and I make sure I complete at least one puzzle every time we go somewhere, then I date it and write our destination on it. I like to look back and see that the first time I wrote in the book was on a trip to Alaska when Chris and I were still in college, then our honeymoon, etc. Anyway, here are some pictures of Ben getting some major help coloring the first page of our Christmas coloring book.

I had paint on my sweatshirt from painting all weekend. We colored this on Sunday night.

Ben just sat on the page and let me move his hand. He only fought a little, when he was trying to eat the crayon and I wouldn't let him. He even drooled on this page so it's a little water damaged and crinkly in one spot. I traced his hand on the first page.

Yeah, it's a pretty big coloring book.

Here's a video of coloring. Chris did the thing where he takes pictures while he's recording, so it's really annoying.

December Catch-Up

2009-12-18T17:05:00.000-06:00

I figured I needed to post one more time (at least) before the new year. I apologize about the lack of blogs, but it's too hard to post with as much stuff as I have going on. And next semester is going to be even worse because I have to take an Arkansas history class on top of another assessment class for grad school. It's going to be expensive, too.

Okay, lets play catchup....

Chris has a new job. He's currently in training for Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance. He's going to be a claims specialist. It's less pay than what he was making before, which will put us in a bind, but it also allows him to have a normal schedule in which he can spend the evenings and EVERY weekend with Ben and I. I LOVE having him at home more. Ben loves it, too. He was tired of his Rineco schedule.

Ben has been through a rough few months. Civitan is a great place, but the kids (as with all daycares) are sick this time of year and it's almost impossible to keep them from contaminating each other. About a month ago Ben had Roseola, and a week or so ago, we found out he had RSV. He had to go on antibiotics and an inhaler for the RSV, which I hate. He's going to have a cough that lasts for about 3 weeks as an after-effect (affect?). He's been in the BEST mood since he's feeling better now. He chatters constantly, talking to everyone and every thing that moves. Or doesn't move. He can say "bye bye" (in context!), mama, dada, baba, and hi. Diane says he says thank you, but I haven't heard that one yet. He still only has two bottom teeth, but they're big enough to see when he smiles now. And he smiles all the time. This weekend things just clicked with him. He started crawling on his knees and can go from belly to sitting with no problem at all. He's usually sitting in his crib when he wakes up from a nap, playing with his crib toys. We keep them stock piled since Ben is prone to waking up in the middle of the night. I will sometimes hear him over the baby monitor, playing with his toys and talking to his dinosaurs at 3am. He pulled himself up to standing using our coffee table today. That's the first time he's done that without help. We're in trouble, now. He managed to pull off papers and knock a candle holder down before I could get to him, and he was only about 4 feet away from me at the time, so...yeah. We're going to have a very bare coffee table here soon.

Alright, I just got back from an 'emergency' bottle spillage on Ben. The bottom of his bottle managed to open (Chris filled it up last...that's all I'm saying) and spilled all over Ben. We had to give him a bath. I think the smell of Johnson's baby shampoo is one of the most addictive smells ever. Ben loves his baths. Hates the getting diapered and dressed afterwards. He's only 10 months old, but he can throw a fit equivalent to a 2 year old in the peak of their terrible twos. He SCREAMS, kicks his legs, throws his head back to head butt, and swings his arms when he's in full brat mode. Things that cause this to happen? Walking past him with a bottle in your hands on your way to fill it up, getting him dressed, and changing his diaper when he wants to play instead. He must get that from Chris. I shouldn't make it seem like he's a brat all the time. 90% of the time he's a sweetheart.

My little 'angel' went and saw Santa yesterday. Ben has a thing about hats. He doesn't like them. Anyone who wears a hat around him gets sad faces and long stares in their direction. So Santa wasn't any different. It made for cute pictures, though!

Trouble Maker!

2009-10-06T16:09:00.000-05:00

Now that Ben's getting a little more mobile and a lot more active, he's been getting into EVERYTHING. I know I've talked about this, but here are some pictures to back up my claims.

Ben turning his playmat sideways. He liked it better this way.

Ben helped himself to a book off the bookshelf. It's Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes.

He pulled the cushion off his swing and walked around with it.

This morning he pulled his mobile down. Looked pretty happy about it, too.

My sweet baby. He'll probably be crawling around Christmas time. Between Ben and our cats, I don't think our Christmas tree will stand a chance.

My Little 7 Month Pumpkin

2009-10-03T11:51:00.000-05:00

We've been so busy lately! Between work, grad school, and taking care of Ben, there's been no time to blog. Right now I'm avoiding work by writing this.

Almost a year ago (October 1st) we found out that Ben was a boy in my five month ultra sound. Everytime I think about it I get so happy. I can remember how excited I was and it makes me feel excited all over again. My baby's now almost 8 months old. It's crazy how fast it goes. He's FINALLLY got the little budding of a tooth on his bottom gum. I'm glad. He's been so fussy lately that I was starting to think it was just his personality. Whew! The last few days he has been in a very good mood. It makes it hard for me to be away from him because I know I'm missing him do something cute. He gives kisses to me all the time now. He grabs my face and pulls his toward me and gives me a big drooly open mouth kiss. It's more like he impacts my face with his lips, but still! It's definately done with intent. He's doing that with some of the teachers at school, too, but he needs to stop because I don't want to share!

He wears size 3 diapers now, drinks juice from a sippy cup (not the biggest fan of it, but we're working on it), wears 9 month clothes, size 4 shoe (a little big, but 3s would be too small in a week), feeds himself little gerber puffs, and laughs at a lot of random stuff. He also grabs at anything within reach, which means you'd better really have a good grip on him because he'll give no warning when he tries to grab for pictures on the wall or a person nearby. He just kind of throws his body in that direction while you're trying to hold him. His favorite thing in the world is being held in a standing position and holding his hands while he walks around the world. That's what he goes for. So putting him on his belly and trying to get him to figure out crawling is pretty much the opposite of his favorite thing, which is why he throws such a big fit about it. The physical therapist at work told me my son is stubborn, which is a good thing that we don't want to break, we just want to bend it a little. I told Chris that he must get that from him, along with his temper and constant talking. Anyway, the PT is now working with his teachers on way to get Ben to start crawling. Ben might be one of those kids that goes straight from sitting to walking. A lot of kids do that.

We're going to go to a new pumpkin patch this year. We're going next weekend and I'm really looking forward to it. It'll be Ben's first pumpkin patch. I hope the weather is good!

One funny thing that Chris did the other day...I asked him to buy vacuum seal bags so we can store all of Ben's clothes in them. Chris bought Bissel vacuum bags. First of all, we don't own a Bissel, and secondly, our vacuum is bagless. I love my husband.

6 months old!!!

2009-08-23T08:27:00.000-05:00

Ben turned six months old August 11th. I know EVERYONE says they can't believe how fast he's growing up, and for the most part, neither can I. This is definately my favorite age for him so far. He's "talking" like crazy. All those little noises he makes are so cute. Sometimes it sounds like he's singing. He's laughing more and moving more. Yesterday he scooted himself about 3 feet backward while laying on his belly. He's always chewing on his fingers or sucking his thumb. He wants so badly to play with Junie, but she doesn't hold still long enough, or Junie starts licking his face so she gets yelled at to leave him alone. Junie also gets in trouble for chewing on Ben's teethers, which for some reason, she thinks are hers despite the amount of trouble she gets in when she's caught. They're the rubbery things filled with water so that you can put them in the fridge (label says no freezer, but whatever) and let the baby chew on them when they're cold to ease tooth pain.

Chris took Ben to his six month doctors appointment. Ben did very well. For his age, he's in the 30% for weight (so I guess he should be fatter) weighing 16lbs. 11oz. He's in the 90% for height measuring 28 inches tall. And he's in the 91% for head size. Imagine that, he's got a big head. :) The doctor said that babies go through growth spurts with their head and Ben seems to be going through one with his gigantic candy apple head. Hopefully his body will catch up. The doctor also told us that Ben can only "use his car seat for the next inch of his life" (Chris said it like that). So we're getting ready to upgrade to one Gina from work gave me. It's VERY nice. I've had it in the garage since I was like, 8 months pregnant, so when I went and got it it was dirty. It took me literally 20 minutes to get the cover off of it. A wrench had to be involved (as per explanations of people on the internet who also tried to wash their same car seat cover). Very frustrating. But it's clean and looks great! The only thing that sucks is that it's not the kind of car seat that comes out of the car, so now I'm going to have to carry Ben in without a carrier. I'm just paranoid of dropping him while I carry all my work crap.

I've been cleaning our house this weekend since this is the last weekend that I won't have homework. I start Grad. classes tomorrow. Not really looking forward to it. It's only on Mondays from 4:30-8:40pm. I'm riding with a friend from work who also has to take classes at the same time so at least we don't have to walk to the parking lot at night by ourselves. Alright, Ben's getting mad about the lack of a bottle in his face.

The Last Few Weeks

2009-08-04T15:26:00.000-05:00

Ben taking a nap on Troy and Jamey's spare bedroom bed.

I'm kind of sad I only wrote one blog for the month of July. I've been very busy with work I've had to take home. Only a few mildly interesting things happened. It's been very stormy here over the last few weeks. Saturday morning our yard flooded with all the water that had poured from down the streets. Apparently our house sits at a lower part of the neighborhood. I went outside and played in it.

After it stopped raining and the water stopped flowing through our yard, we went up to Cakery Affairs in Bryant to plan Ben's 6 month birthday cake. I know there's no REAL point in it, but mostly I've just been craving cake and need an excuse to have a cute one. I brought in a picture of a cartoon giraffe I want on it, and then I drew a little tree with the words "Happy 6 month Ben" written in different parts of it. I asked if the giraffe could have some leaves in it's mouth to make it look like it's eating the tree. It's a chocolate cake with white icing. We'll see how they do with this cake. If it's cute (and delicious) we'll probably go back in 6 months to order his 1 year birthday cake. I can't believe my baby is already almost 6 months old!! Ben is babbling like crazy now! Right now I'm listening to him in his jumperoo and he sounds like he's saying "dadadadada" and "ayeyayaya" When he's mad is when he really sounds like he's saying something. He uses his angry tones and looks you in the eye and yells at you. He also sounds like a mad Louie Armstrong with his deep gurgly growly voice. He rolls over all the time now. Belly to back and back to belly. Here is a picture taken of him immediately after he rolled from belly to back. It was the first time I'd actually watched him do it. I was trying to get video of it, but the batteries were almost dead.

Sunday Tiffany came over and took a whole bunch of pictures that I LOVE! She has them on her flickr account, but here are a few of my favorites. Oh, and Ben doesn't smile outside. Nature is too distracting.

Look at the little belly on my baby! This is one of my favorite pictures of just Ben. He's using the grass to hold himself up. I was right behind him, waiting for him to tip over. Which he did.

That Needs A Little Drool...

2009-07-15T16:06:00.000-05:00

So Ben's newest phase is the putting everything, EVERYTHING in his mouth phase. He's been doing this for about 2 months, but now it's to the point where I have to fight to keep things OUT of his mouth. I even saw him grab one of Junie's wrinkles (on her little puggy back) and try to pull it to his mouth. Luckily Junie doesn't hold still for more than a second. It's really cute, but it also means that he's getting sick more often as he's in the baby room and they also put everything in their mouth. Germ sharing fun. Ben also gives his version of kisses. He comes at your face with his mouth open and connects with your chin. I'm pretty sure he's just trying to suck on my nose or chin, but it counts as a kiss to me! :)

Ben can also imitate certain things you do. He can imitate a popping noise you make with your mouth, and yesterday I was shaking my head at him and he shook his head back. He only did that once, though. He holds his bottle by himself for an entire feeding, rolls from back to stomach, and sits up from a leaned back position. He can also stand with very little support from us. He laughs and smiles and also sleeps entirely through the night. He drinks formula still, but we add cereal to his nightly bottle. He also eats fruits and vegetables from the 'baby's first foods' containers at lunch and dinner. I try to give him one of each at each feeding, though I'm not entirely sure what they do at preschool with him for lunch. Ben recognizes different people, especially mama and daddy. But he also recognizes teachers at his preschool, too. He gets mad at me when he can see I'm in the room and am not holding him. I think major separation anxiety is going to start soon with him. I dread that.

(Eating can get tiring)

Chris and I had our 2 year anniversary yesterday. We went and saw The Proposal. It was so good. Then we ate at Applebees since it was pretty much in the same parking lot. Ben got to spend time with Mimi, which he loves. And Junie got to spend time with Tiffany, which she loves.

(He just couldn't stay awake for Aunt Tiffany)

Since the last time I posted, Chris and I have gone to Memphis to see Wicked. We got to see fireworks from the roof of the Peabody hotel. It was awesome. The next weekend we got to see Jerry Seinfeld perform, which was hilarious. We're really lucky we have family to watch Ben!
My friend from college, Christine, also came by on her way up to Utah from Georgia. It was great to get to see her again! I'll have to post that picture later, since I can't find it! :)

Heat and Humidity...The Up Side.

2009-06-29T19:26:00.000-05:00

With all the miserable heat and humidity, something positive has to come of it, right? Besides mosquitoes. Our plants are doing VERY well. It's exciting to live in a place that allows tropical looking plants to grow. Chris and I picked out some plants that remind us of Hawaii, where we had our honeymoon. There were beautiful plants everywhere. It was one of the best parts of Hawaii. It kind of set the atmosphere to let you know you were obviously in a completely different environment.I'm not good with the names of plants like Chris is. But Chris told me that it's our Taro plant that has leaves bigger than Ben. I love it! I had Chris hold Ben up next to it so I could get a picture comparing their sizes. Of course being outside for 30 seconds means a mosquito bit my face right where the smile crease forms, so I get a fun little reminder when I smile, which is nothing to smile about. Ben got all squinty because apparently it's blindingly bright outside. I love the Star Gazer Lillies, they were in my wedding boquet. Definately my favorite flower. Anyway, here are some plant pictures! (all taken with my iphone, sorry!) It's weird to only have one picture of Ben in a blog post...

Spending Too Much Money

2009-06-26T19:54:00.000-05:00

Today I had to take off work early to take Ben to a doctor's appointment. He woke up VERY congested and had a deep sounding cough, so I thought it would be best if I took him to the doctor so this wouldn't get worse over the weekend. The doctor (actually, nurse practitioner) looked in his ears and saw that he had fluid in his right ear. She recommended Ben take amoxicillin twice a day. I gave it to him this afternoon, and he loves the taste of it. It smells like bubblegum. So hopefully he'll be feeling better soon, though he hasn't acted sick at all. He's actually been in a very good mood these last few days. He's laughing more often and his favorite game isn't really a game, it's just holding Ben up over your head and making him act like he's flying. He LOVES being above me for some reason. I think it might have to do with Ben's teacher at Preschool. Mrs. Teresa's husband comes to eat lunch with her all the time, and he's like 6"7. Ben loves her husband and I always see him holding Ben when he's in the baby room eating lunch. So when her husband holds Ben, he's pretty much getting a high up view of the world that not a lot of people see. Maybe Ben will be tall, but I can guarantee he's not going to be 6ft 7in.

Chris and I have spent a lot of money these last few days. We spoiled ourselves and Ben. Chris got a late Father's Day gift of a Wii. Then I added onto it for myself by getting the Wii Fit and a personal trainer 'game' for the Wii. It's too hot to go for walks/jogs, no matter what time of day, so I figure that an inside way of working out will be better. Plus it'll be more fun and less embarrassing by myself.

The next day we bought Ben a jumperoo ( I had to look on the box to know what to call it). He LOVES it. Bouncing, spinning, allowing him to stand, and making noises...it encompasses his favorite things! We have to cut back on spending money for at least a week so that Chris and I can afford to go to Memphis to see Wicked on the fourth of July. Yay!

Oh yeah, and Ben is doing very well with his baby food. His likes include: cereal, bananas, green beans, and sweet potatoes. His dislikes: prunes (and maybe applesauce. It's hard to tell because he's been in a bad mood the last few times I tried to feed it to him, so I don't know if he was throwing a fit because it's gross or because he's a brat) :)

Hmmm...Cereal.

2009-06-17T18:15:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Chris took Ben to the pediatrician for his well child checkup. Ben got his four month immunizations. Chris was so good, he took the list of questions I made to ask the pediatrician and ACTUALLY asked them! I'm so proud!

The pediatrician said that Ben now weighs 13lbs 4oz and is 26 inches tall. When he was born he weighed 9lbs 1oz and was 20 1/2 inches tall. Chris was told that we should start Ben on cereal so he can gain a little more weight. He's not under weight, but most babies gain more weight than he has in the first four months. We bought some rice cereal and mixed it in a bowl with Ben's formula (like the package said). The doctor said to spoon feed him cereal and not put it in his bottle. Apparently cereal in bottles leads to obesity and gas. There have been studies, I guess. But Ben's never eaten from a spoon, so I kind of figured it wasn't going to go well. But I really hoped that it would!

Hoping doesn't really make things happen like it should. We bought Ben some spoons and bowls and mixed the cereal and put it in his mouth, and he kind of just left his mouth hanging open and cried. Then when a little bit managed to slide it's way down his throat, he gagged and then cried some more. It was actually really funny as mean as that sounds. He's my little over-reactor (he gets that from Chris). I got him to smile a few times while we spoon fed him, which was really cute because he had cereal all over his face.

We finally thought that maybe he just needed to just get used to the taste, so we put it in a bottle and he sucked it down incredibly fast. So he likes cereal, just not spoons. We're going to work on that the next few weeks.

Strolling Along

2009-06-10T18:57:00.000-05:00

Ben and I have been going on walks this week. Up until Sunday night I had not really taken any walks around this neighborhood, and though I know it's safe, I just wanted to make sure that the route that I would take with just Ben and I (on nights when Chris is working) would be okay with things like dogs escaping yards or any creepy neighbors. It is okay, although I now know a street that I won't go down tomorrow. There's a rotweiler (sp?) in a yard with a low fence, and he's a high jumper. He managed to climb the chain linked fence to the point of having his front shoulders hanging over the top. It's scary when you can tell that their owner isn't home and there would be nowhere to run, especially with a stroller.

The first time we went on a walk, it was Chris, Ben, Junie, and I. Junie made it almost the whole way, but she got tired and overheated about a block from our house (on the way back) and she started laying down in peoples yards, dragging her belly on their cool grass. She looked like such a dork. I finally told Chris just to put her in the bottom of our stroller since there's a basket. She fit nicely, though she had to be told to sit down constantly. (picture up above)

Ben did very good on his walk today. Sometimes he gets fussy, but usually it's only when the sun is getting in his eyes. It's fun walking down the street with a crying baby in a stroller. Ben likes looking around outside. It was overcast, but VERY humid today.

Ben is starting to show he's spoiled at the preschool. When I'm holding him and I go to lay him down in his crib (because I'm SUPPOSED to be working), he'll start to throw a screaming fit. He's such a brat! Then I'll pick him up and he'll be totally fine. It's sweet, but hard on the teachers in his class because I'll have to leave Ben screaming in there. I'm so lucky they're understanding about it. I love my nini bear. He also gets a lot of attention from the teachers outside of the baby room. He's the 'grandbaby' to some of them until they get their own grandbabies. And Ben loves ALL of the teachers at the preschool!! They've all helped me out at one point or another by holding him while I get our stuff together, or helping me carry my stuff and Ben out to the car in the afternoons. The baby room teachers are AWESOME! They always make sure all those babies get what they need and those babies are definately needy! I don't think any of them read this, but if they do, you guys are really appreciated!!

Ben's Big Boy Day (Chrissy)

2009-06-05T16:24:00.000-05:00

Today Ben got to experience some big boy activities today. This morning I was sitting in my office and Kim, one of Ben's teachers, came in and told me to come look at Ben. When I got into the room he was sitting at the table in one of the built in chairs where the other babies who eat lunch sit. It was SO CUTE! He's never done that before, although he loves to sit up. When I hold him he prefers to be in the sitting position or with his head resting on my shoulder so he can see everything that's going on. He's getting very nosey. He still needs to be supported, though. It was so much fun seeing my little baby sitting in a chair by himself. When I got in there and started taking pictures with my phone, he started to get fussy because mama was ignoring him and taking pictures instead of picking him up. I love my grouchy Gus!

Later, Mrs. Teresa put Ben in a little thing called the 'exersaucer' which spins and allows Ben to sit up and play with things attached to it. His skinny legs barely touched the floor, but they did touch! Kim came and got me when they did that so I could take some more pictures. I love that she did that. I like being able to document his 'firsts'. So today he had his first sit in a big boy seat, and his first sit in an exersaucer. He's actually passed out on the couch next to me right now, snoring. Such a busy day!

Ouch My Hair! (Chrissy)

2009-06-03T16:46:00.000-05:00

Ben's new favorite game is peek-a-boo and pull mama's hair. Today I wore my hair curly and Ben grabbed ahold and wrapped his little slobbery fingers around all the hair he could. It took a good 30 seconds for me to unwrap his fingers. His goal is to try to put my hair in his mouth. He's very mouth oriented. He loves to suck on hands, fingers, bibs, and blankets. We have a toy that we lay Ben down under and it has two arches that have different toys dangling. He spends a majority of his time trying to pull them into his mouth. He's also started playing with his feet and having a lot of tummy time.

He's getting better with tummy time. He still hates it, but it just takes longer for him to have a screaming fit about it. Today I took a picture of how high he can lift his head up off the floor now. He rolls on his back from side to side all the time, but he's yet to roll over (on purpose) from his stomach to his back. That's not supposed to happen for a few months yet, though. :) He's also trying to hold his bottle. Sometimes it slips out of his mouth while he's been holding it, and I can see him struggling to try to get it back in his mouth. He tries so hard, but he usually misses and the bottle ends up on the floor.

Ben was laughing so hard (in his own way) when we were playing peek-a-boo. It was the closest to a real giggle that he's ever gotten. And it was the most he's ever laughed at something before, too. I called Melissa so she could hear him, but she didn't answer her phone. I'm pretty sure she wasn't doing anything as important as listening to her nephew would have been. Don't worry, Melissa is the only one I call and make listen to all the noises Ben makes. The conversations usually end with Melissa saying something like "is that why you called me?"

Another picture I'm going to include in this blog is one where Ben is trying to focus on a toy and his eyes are crossing. I love when he does that! And yes, that's completely normal. There's nothing wrong with my baby's eyes!

It's been very hot here the last few days. Heat doesn't bother me as long as I can go inside to escape it. But when it's 92 degrees outside (with wonderful southern humidity) and it's in the upper 70's in your house, despite the thermostat being set at 67, it's kind of ridiculous. I strip Ben down into his onesie and diaper since he's usually wearing shorts or overalls on top of that. I think our house has bad insulation or something.

Ben Update (Chrissy)

2009-05-29T16:40:00.000-05:00

It's really cool all the things that babies can do once they hit 3 months. My job as a developmental therapist includes testing kids 0-5 to see where they are developmentally. A few weeks ago I brought one of our test booklets home (I had to write a report for a child a little older than Ben) to see where he was. What, I was curious! :)

There are 5 areas that we test children in. They are: gross motor, fine motor, cognitive, speech, and self-help social/adaptive. Ben is exactly where he needs to be with gross motor and fine motor skills, and a month ahead in cognitive, speech, and self-help social. I'm so proud of my little guy! All kids develop at their own pace, though, so even if Ben was behind in any area, I really wouldn't be worried. It just depends on when things click for them. I've seen kids at our center increase 4 months in skills in 1 month's time before. Pretty impressive.

I LOVE how much Ben smiles now. I can get him to smile whenever I talk to him (depending on his mood of course. And also, if you're specifically trying to show someone how he smiles, he probably won't do it. It's his goal to prove mama a liar.) Ben slept all the way through the night again last night. He's such a good sleeper. You'd think I'd feel less tired today with him having slept all night, but the thing you don't think about is that it's a habit to wake up and check on Ben when he hasn't woken you up. It's hard for me to get out of the worry mode...is he still breathing? What if his blanket is suffocating him? Ben also has a little aquarium toy that hangs off the side of his cradle. It plays music and lights up with bubbles when you turn it on. And Ben has figured out how to turn it on. And off. And back on again. And back off again. At first I thought he was doing it on accident, but then I watched him for a while, and I could see his little hand clumsily reaching up and slapping the power button on the front. He usually chooses 5am for aquarium fun time, which stinks because it's 30 minutes before my alarm goes off and I can't go back to sleep because Ben starts talking to Jumbalaya (the fake fish in his tank), plus the music and bubble sounds from the aquarium. As annoying as it seems, I still think it's cute, even while it's happening. I'll sacrafice 30 minutes of sleep for listening to a happy baby.

Ben and I were playing earlier and he was laughing and grabbing a squeaky toy out of my hand. When he brings things up to his face his eyes cross when he tries to focus on it. It's so cute! I also like his little laugh. It's like a cough-squeal. I can't wait for him to start giggling. Baby laughs are one of the best things in the world!

Mult-Tasking Mama (Chrissy)

2009-05-23T20:33:00.000-05:00

Saturday is the day I do my heavy duty cleaning. So every Saturday I do all the laundry, vacuuming, bathroom cleaning, and decluttering the house needs. If Ben is having a good day then I can get all this done in about 6 hours. If he's very needy, then sometimes I have to finish some stuff on Sunday, which is my work day (reports and paperwork from Civitan). Today was a good day for Ben. If he cried for a bottle, then I propped a bottle up with a blanket when Ben was in his swing so he could drink it that way. I never leave the room when I prop up a bottle, for obvious reasons. So I would just clean the living room while Ben was drinking his bottle in his swing. It's the only way I can get stuff done without having to stop what I'm doing. He's starting to gain a real interest in TV, which is nice, but scary. I don't want him to be one of those kids whose life revolves around TV. He watched a good portion of Mean Girls while sitting in his bouncy chair, kicking his elephant that makes a rattle noise.

Things I got done today:

3 loads of laundry, sorted and folded

1 load of dishes in the dishwasher

Vacuum-living room, couches, Chewie's chair, bathroom rugs, window sills (dead ant corpses),bedroom, kitchen by the litterbox, and Junie's kennel.

Bathroom-toilet, sink, floor

Put away tons of dvds sitting around without their boxes

Ben's bath

Cleaned off the coffee table

Tried on all my jeans and put ones that don't fit or I don't wear in a bag to donate while reorganizing my closet

Moved Ben's cradle

Made beds

Mixed formula

Took care of Ben in between cleaning sprees

Took a 20 minute nap with Ben on the guest bed in his room
Organized diaper bag and restocked diapers on changing table

Emptied trash out of every room

Cleaned off coffee table and organized mail

A lot of other random things, but I'll stop the list here

We also think that Ben is teething. He just starts screaming like he's in pain randomly. We can see a spot on his gums on his bottom right that looks like a little tooth might poke through, but you can't feel anything yet. We've bought baby orajel swabs and nighttime stuff for him. He screamed a little this morning and Chris swabbed him, and he felt better. Then Ben did a big poop and he was in the best mood after that. He hasn't screamed at all today. My mom said that I was 3 months old when I got my first tooth, so I guess it might be time. I wonder what he's going to look like with teeth.

I moved Ben's cradle in our bedroom. He's been sleeping in a cradle next to my side of the bed. It was perfect because I can just look over and see what he's doing and ease those first few months of 'is he still breathing?' Chris and I are hoping to have Ben sleeping in his own crib in his own nursery by the time he's 4 months old. He's 3 months old now. So what I did was move his cradle from my side of the bed over to the other side of the room to see how he does tonight. It'll be a good test for me to see if I can handle him being on the other side of the room, let alone in another room in a few weeks. I think we'll both do fine. It'll be nice to not stub my toe on the end of his cradle, or trip over the humidifier cord anymore.

The picture of Ben is of him hanging out in his bouncy chair, watching Mean Girls. I stopped vacuuming to take the picture. He was very intense about it.

My Nerdy Baby Boy (Chrissy)

2009-05-21T20:46:00.000-05:00

Ben's been cooing and laughing (his attempt at it) a lot lately. This morning he woke Chris and I up at about 5am because of a conversation he was having with the giraffe on his mobile. Sometimes he talks smack to it, but this morning it seemed to be a pleasant conversation, just really loud. We've also discovered Ben's favorite time to talk is while we're talking. I might have mentioned this before, but he's actually quite rude. In a funny way. If you're talking to him, he interrupts and starts cooing louder and louder to cover your voice. Chris came up with a knock knock joke for Ben. It's like "knock knock" "WHO'S THERE" "interrupting Ben" "INTERRUPTING BEN WHO" (while the second person says interrupting Ben who? you say ehhhhh...like Ben would say, interrupting the other person).

Today he got mad at me because I was talking to another baby in the baby room (at work/school) and Ben was sitting in a bouncy seat about 7 feet away from me. I was talking baby talk to this other baby and Ben kept yelling at me. I would look over at him and tell him I'm talking to someone else and I'll be there in a minute. Ben just kept staring at me and yelling until he finally started crying so I would go over there and pick him up. He was jealous.

So You Think You Can Dance started tonight. It's my summer show and it was very entertaining. It's like the other show that has new episodes over the summer. I recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it. It's like American Idol, but with dancing. Chris and I are watching HOUSE and House asked a patient to name an animal that starts with the letter B, and the kid just stared at him for like 20 seconds and finally said "baby elephant". I don't know why that was so funny.

Baby Clothes Anyone? (Chrissy)

2009-05-16T21:52:00.001-05:00

So there comes a point in every new mama's life in which she has to start putting away clothes that don't fit her growing child. This takes HOURS. Especially when your child is spoiled and has too many clothes to begin with. The hardest thing is to figure out what you'll be keeping and what you're giving away. Luckily for me, there are two women at my work who are pregnant and having boys, so any clothes that I decide not to keep goes to them. I spent all day sorting clothes in Ben's closet and drawers. There are clothes that he's never even worn that I'm giving away because Arkansas is already too warm for him to be wearing long sleeved shirts and pants. I'm also keeping a lot of clothes that have sentimental meaning, like the outfit he wore home from the hospital, my favorite dinosaur onesie, my favorite overalls, etc. I also kept a lot of clothes that were still in new condition in case Chris and I ever have another boy. You never know....
I've come to realize that I don't really call Ben by his name. I have a thing about nicknames. Chris and I are really good at coming up with different things to call Ben. And then the nicknames take on their own nicknames.
I started with Benito -->Benini-->Nini Bear-->Bear.
I also call him Sirsie (like when I tell him "No Sir"!), and doo doo. :)
Chris has gone with Benny Binkleman, Benny Boodleburg, Boo Boo, Bobopie, Benelope, and ninerbucket. But the most common one for Chris to call him is definately Boo Boo.
He's going to be one of those kids who just stares at you when you ask them what their name is. Or he could be like one of the kids at the preschool I work at. When I ask them what their name is and they tell me they're 4 and hold up 3 fingers. Sad sad day.

Son of a Bad Word! (Chrissy)

2009-05-15T17:53:00.000-05:00

One of the preschoolers told a teacher that her little sister got smacked in the mouth by mama for saying a bad word. The teacher asked what she said, and the preschooler said "Son of a Bad Word". I think I'll use this in the place of swearing.

I got a letter saying I was accepted into the graduate program at UALR for special education. I need to do this in order to keep the job that I have, since I'm doing a job that requires me to be certified in special education, which I'm not. I guess classes start in August. I'll only have to take a few at a time, maybe even just one at a time. It'll be hard, though, to work during the day and attend classes at night. Maybe I can do some classes online. I'll have to talk to my advisor.

I can hear Ben screaming in the bedroom. He's going through a really annoying stage of crying when I'm not holding him. Usually his fits take place after we get home from school/work. It's hard for me to get things done. I know he's not hungry because he just ate, and he's not wet because I just changed him, and he doesn't have to burp. Those are the things that go through my head whenever he cries, kind of like a check off list. So I'll let him scream. He won't wear himself out, but at least I get a little break. It's the kind of screaming that he can turn off the second he sees my face peeking over the crib. As southerners down here tell a child throwing a fit "He needs to dry it up".

Today I got an awesome gift from Grandma Barbie and Great Grandma Chris. They designed and made Ben safari themed curtains and a blanket! It's soo cute! I can't believe the amount of detail that went into it. I'd never in a million years be able to make something so amazing. I love it. I already told Ben that he has to keep it in his room until he's at least 10. I need to have Chris lower the curtain rods a few inches and it'll be perfect! You can see Ben in the crib screaming if you look closely. Mama wasn't holding him. :) He's in the back right hand corner of the crib. It's a blurry picture, so it's hard to tell.

New Blog (Chrissy)

2009-05-14T21:23:00.000-05:00

I know we're probably not going to keep up with this very well, but we're really going to try. I figured that I'll probably be the one who blogs the most, but Chris might have a random thought every once in a while. I'm also going to try to make sure I put my name next to the title of the blog so that you guys can tell who's talking. Genius, I know.

Through Melissa's review of the new Star Trek movie, I decided that if she liked it, then I'd like it. And I really did like it. Like, REALLY liked it. I almost cried at the beginning of the movie and got pissed off at myself because I was not going to cry at a Trekkie movie. Chris is a big fan of Star Trek. As most of you know, Christopher Kirk Allen is named after Captain Christopher Pike and Captain Jim Kirk. We also house a Star Trek comforter (twin sized) in our garage. It's Chris' old one from when he was really little. I just asked him how long he's had that comforter, and he said "longer than I remember". That means he probably had it when he was 15. Anyways, it was a good movie and I highly recommend it to anyone, Trekkie or not.

Ben is just getting cuter. He is talking all the time now. He talks more to me than he does to Chris, but I also think that it's because I talk to him way more than Chris does. I can see that he's going to be one of those kids who asks a lot of questions. It's going to be annoying. He's also started squealing when I play with him. He likes the game "mama's going to get your belly" which just consists of me saying "mama's going to get your belly" and slowly moving my mouth toward his tummy. He can't stand the anticipation and sometimes squeals about it. He also laughs and smiles while we do this. It's funny because when I finally blow on his belly, it's rock hard from being tense. Funny little guy.