5am Wake Up Call

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!

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

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

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!