Benjamin 18 Months

I know we have a lot to catch up on... but let's begin with our boy.

Benjamin is an examiner. He takes things very seriously, especially new people, mechanical objects, ants and dogs. Many people comment on how "serious" he looks. But, that is only if he's not yet 100% comfortable with the situation. As soon as he warms up, Ben is SILLY. It is really, really difficult to get good pictures of him because he makes so many crazy faces once the

camera comes out. He laughs and giggles often in between making shooting, zooming and racing noises. He loves to run around in circles and then fall down, promptly laughing at himself and looking around for admiration!

Benjamin talks a lot. Unfortunately, we often don't have a clue about what he's saying. Slowly his pronunciation is getting better, but many, many words sound the same to us. He is often found looking some object over very, very carefully, speaking gibberish with a half-frown on his face. I believe that once we understand him we're in for some interesting conversations!

Some of the words we do understand are:

Hi

Bye-bye

No

Go away

where'd ee go? where'd daddy go? (said with his head cocked to the side and his shoulders up)

Daddy

Momma

oo-wheat-side (outside)

Go!

apple

bah bah (bottle - talking about sippy cups)

meez (please)

nee-oo (thank you)

bee bee (binky)

mine

more

wa-ter

mee (milk)

peek-a-bah (peek a boo)

tickle tickle tickle

ee (ear)

aiee (eye)

red

Benjamin says the animal sounds for:

dogs

lions

bears

zebras

ducks

He calls all flying things "gee" (for geese).

He is obsessed with anything with wheels, climbing, trying to jump and running the opposite direction of where you'd like him to go. He is pure boy. He throws EVERYTHING! He makes a mess whenever possible. He will play in the backyard for hours (seriously) just pushing a fake lawn mower around, or a giant dump truck. He loves rocks and pine cones and taking walks. He cries when I put away his shoes.

Benjamin also adores his big sister. He wants to do everything she does. Everything. He loves to torture her by stealing her dolls (seriously grabbing and running the other direction). He loves to color beside her while she does her school work (although this often turns into him taking as many caps off the markers as possible and then carefully studying the tips before jamming the caps back on while whining because he can't get them snapped all the way). He likes wearing necklaces (think mardi gras) and hats. He talks to himself in the mirror. The two of them get along most of the time...

At his 18-month Well Check Benjamin weighed 25 pounds, was 33 inches tall and had a head circumference of 48 cm.

A Giving Halloween

From October 31st:

So here are our Halloween pictures - in reverse order, I'm afraid. But, if I take the time to change them to the correct order, then I probably won't get this posted for another week. :P

We carved pumpkins... and once again Seth was the master carver. His pumpkins always get the best comments!

A neighbor brought the kids a light-up blinking smiley face toy and Benjamin LOVED it! He trucked around the neighborhood carrying it. (Oh, and the gash on his nose is from slipping and falling face first into a wooden step. At least his eyes didn't turn black!)

We had a Bride and a snuggly Bear this year. They both enjoyed dressing up a lot. Benjamin thought the candy was fantastic, but just because it had shiny, crinkly wrappers. He didn't get to sample any. Maybe next year!

Seth decided to "prime" Ella's candy carrying pumpkin with some candy from our stash. Eleanor examined it before leaving. Then she walked around, knocked on doors and accepted candy from others. But, before leaving each house she gave a piece of candy to the person offering her candy. It was extremely touching to watch others' reactions to her giving. Some were so touched. Others tried to reason with her. Others "traded." Seth and I just watched and giggled.

About 3/4 of the way through her march around the neighborhood she told us, "I don't have any more candy in here to give out!" We were puzzled. "You have more candy in your pumpkin now than when we started." "No, I don't have any to give out! Now I don't have any candy to give to Judy!" (Judy is our neighbor who is very special to Ella). We realized then that she was giving the candy Seth had originally put in her pumpkin. She thought she needed to give everyone candy from our house since we weren't there to give it out!

Later she had fun giving candy to the other kids who came to our door. We were glad we went early and were back home because it started raining... then snowing. But, it was a fun family day.

Let It Snow Let It Snow Let It Snow

First day of real snow 2011:

Mommy is so glad the snow waited this year! We've had a few days of snow before now (beginning November 1st) but it has been light and has melted right away. This is a full month later than last year! Of course, Eleanor has been waiting and waiting to put on her "snow geared" and build a snowman.

So, these kids just had a blast! And Benjamin lasted outside for a long time while Ella ran around, tried to build a snowman, threw snowballs and made snow angels. I was impressed. It was a fun snow day. We kind of can't wait until we get another one. :)

The first steps

I think I'll just eat some of this stuff

Running around

Hmm, cold!

But it tastes pretty good...

What's that sister doing?

I should try that, too!

Snow angels

Have a happy November day!

Attempting to Reconfigure

Hello all -

The last few months' break happened for a few reasons:

1. We lost access to the blog.

2. We stopped using the internet for a while due to the hacker situation.

3. I didn't have an email address for a long time (I haven't been able to recover my hotmail address, so I'm sorry if you have tried to communicate, but I've had to totally start over and I lost all my contacts).

4. I continued not feeling really great for a long time.

5. We have a just-over-one-year-old and a 3 1/2 year-old who take up 100% of my time!

We are feeling quite removed from so many of our friends and family... so I've decided it is a good use of my time to get this going once again. Plus, we are generally so busy we rarely see our friends around here in Sheridan, so they will appreciate it, too. :)

So, hopefully I will get good at regularly posting again. We have a lot to catch up on!

Benjamin is walking!

On the 17th Benjamin decided to take his first steps. At that point, he was confident walking with a push toy around the house. Since then he's quickly moved to taking steps on his own. I'm not sure how to decide just when he "started walking" since his progression is very different than Ella's was. Once she started, she didn't want anything to do with crawling anymore... Benjamin enjoys using a variety of techniques to get where he's trying to go. He will stand, take 2-4 steps toward something, sit down, crawl the rest of the way and then pull up to cruise around on the object. He's very proficient at this type of travel.

He is now starting to get more interested in just walking and has put many, many steps together at once. This video is from yesterday.

One Email Recovered

So, the process is finally moving along (slowly). I have recovered the email that is linked with blogger, so I can now once again post as myself and & (yah!) will be able to archive this stuff for our family. We are still working hard to get our computer all figured out and reformatted. I have not recovered my main email address, so still be aware of phony emails being sent to you.

More on Email Hijacking

Hey guys, Bethany here, posting as Seth.

I am still unable to access my email at this time. ANYTHING YOU RECEIVE FROM BRTIPPIN@HOTMAIL.COM IS NOT FROM ME!!!!! Please do not respond to emails from that address, and DO NOT GIVE ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION about us or yourselves to that address.

I set up a second email in order to recover the first email and that was hacked, too.

We are redoing everything we possibly can to fix this issue. At this point, if you need to reach me either email Seth or call or text me. Thanks. Also, we are not using the internet at our house currently, so if you choose the email option, it may take a while to get a response.