Smorgasbord

Tonight, Bennett and I met Brian at our favorite Mexican restaurant, El Palenque, for dinner. Bean and I had just left a play date and Brian was coming home from work. Bennett and I got there a few minutes before Brian, which was fine. They have fresh chips and salsa - yum!

Oh my goodness, y'all. Bennett literally shoveled the salsa in to his mouth. He'd load up a chip and then bite off as much as he could, licking his fingers between bites. We have given up ordering or even offering him anything else when we go there. All he eats is salsa.

Tonight he had lemonade to drink and every now and then, he'd get this semi-panicked look on his face, stick out his tongue and say, "too spicy, mama!" I'd direct his attention to his cup and he'd slurp down some lemonade to put out the fire before diving back in - teeth first.

Brian arrived just before Bennett had emptied the chip basket, thank goodness. The first thing Bennett said to Brian? "I have yummy salsa, daddy. Have good day?" Upturned salsa-covered face, sweet smile, salsa-covered hand lovingly placed on clean white t-shirt. All we could do was giggle.

Funny things he says . . .

When he's finished getting dressed, he screams out what is supposed to be, "All set!" It sounds more like, "Oh Shit!" (I giggle inside every time!)

He also likes to tell me that things are "apornant". That's "important" in Bennett-speak.

I'm sure there are more - I'll add them when I hear them. We could all use a good laugh, right?

Puppy Runs

I have had puppies several times in my life. They used to do this thing that I fondly called, "puppy runs". It meant that they started running back and forth very quickly between two previously unimportant spots in the yard. It looked a little like what basketball players called a "suicide".

Bennett sometimes does this. It's quite funny to see! The other day, he was hyped on late afternoon sun and he just ran and ran and ran from the front door to the kitchen and back again. He has the biggest grin on his face and giggles like he's hearing a very funny joke in his head.

The Rocker

He fell asleep in his rocking chair again tonight. I was able to move him to his bed after he'd been down for an hour or so, thank goodness. I don't know where this is coming from!

He's been trying to so hard to be "big" and go to sleep on his own, but he's not as brave as he thinks. Maybe. Maybe he's just so used to having me there, that even though he knows I'm going to leave when I put him in his bed, he still thinks I'll come back.

Tonight - we were getting him dressed (read: baby wrangling a thirty pound alligator) and it took longer than usual, so we had to cut our book reading from three books to two. He blew me away when he didn't protest or demand another book or fifTEEN. Check out this video to understand how that number is supposed to sound: John John Counting. He simply got up to hug Brian, and then climbed in his bed and said "night night". WHAT?!?! You're all grown up now?

Yeah, right. We hugged him, told him we loved him and that we'd see him in the morning. Brian flipped the light switch off and we left. There were immediate tears and when I finally got the monitor turned on, I could see that he was trying to turn on his lamp and in the process, hit the ottoman at the rocker and fell over. I couldn't just leave him in there at that point, so I went in. He said, "Mama, rock?" Of course, my sweet love.

We rocked for a few minutes and he got all loungy and relaxed, so I leaned in real close to his ear and whispered, "Would you like for mama to leave you here on the rocker by yourself to fall asleep?" His reply, "Yes, please." So I did.

He stayed there for a little while, but then he started to cry and wandered around. He rested for a while in his bed, then got out and propped the blanket on the end of it before walking back to the rocker. He ultimately fell asleep there and I moved him back to his bed where he still sleeps peacefully.

Mr. Pitiful

Bennett has had a pretty rough cough for most of today. In fact, it was so bad this afternoon, that he had ZERO nap. Fun for me, right? Wrong.

Anyway, tonight, after his bath we gave him a little medicine to help him feel better. He took it without any protest and then we went on with the rest of the process. He picked out three books to read, then turned off his light before climbing into the rocker with me for some snuggles.

After chatting about his day and then a couple of more stories, he looked up at me (I guess that's what he did because it's pitch black in there and you can't see a damn thing.) and said, oh so pitifully, "I coughing mama. Medississ." (Translation: "I'm coughing, mama. Medicine?") I assured him that we had already given him some medississ and that it just needed a minute to start working. He nodded and immediately drifted off to sleep.

Now that's some trust, right there!

Sleeping

We put Bennett down for sleep tonight after having a little talk about how big boys sleep. The key is that when they wake up in the middle of the night, they get back in their bed and put themselves to sleep again. They don't cry for mama . . .

I looked at the monitor about fifteen minutes ago and saw this:

I thought he had just rolled out of his bed - the brown blob in the middle of the white was his hand and the brown blob at the bottom of the screen was his head in my opinion. Then, I scrolled the camera based on a hunch and found this:

It seems he followed my advice a little bit. I hadn't even heard him get out of bed. Good boy!

After quieting our laughter, I went in to move him back to his bed. Not a peep. And for the record, he's holding his bubby in the bottom photo. Kept his security with him, I see.

Santa, redeaux again

We went to see a third Santa tonight. My friend Tamara (CJ's mom) invited us to join them at the Festival of Lights at the Erie Co. Fairgrounds this evening. I'm so glad that we went! I didn't think that Bennett would really be into seeing Santa, but he was okay. He didn't burst into tears, which was wonderful! (He told Santa that he wanted "lights" for Christmas. News to me!)

High Fives for Santa!

Before we stopped to see Santa, we drove through a field of lighted displays, which was lots of fun. Bennett loved identifying what each theme was. He especially liked the reindeer. I'm only sad that we drove the Elantra rather than the Volvo because my clutch leg is exhausted!

Then, we went inside where we met up with CJ, Tamara and Chris for the boys to ride some rides. What fun! There was a car ride similar to the one they rode last summer at the Old Home Days, a motor boat ride and a train.

Definitely an activity to repeat next year.

Snow

It finally snowed. Bennett and Brian worked hard to do some shoveling late last week. We finished up the job this morning. Bennett had a great time!

I'm quite positive that he won't love it as much the tenth time we send him outside with his snow shovel!

Why?

It seems we've entered the "Why?" phase. I overheard bathtub conversation tonight and the majority of the sound coming out of Bennett's mouth sounded like, "Why?"

Great. (Please read the masked sarcasm here. I'm VERY excited that he's curious. I just hoped we'd be able to wait a while before that particular developmental stage set in.)

This one is for my mom . . .

Last Friday, we hosted playgroup at our house for some close friends. I served chicken salad for lunch. Just like his mama - Bennett separated out the celery first.

Then - he ATE IT!

Unlike his mama.

Today, I served the same chicken salad again. I tried to feed him and he said, "celery first". Someone needs to do a DNA test. I'm not sure he's mine.

Christmas fun, exhibit A

Today was a really busy and mostly great day!

This morning, we rearranged Bennett's bedroom because he had made escapes from his crib every sleeping time since my last post. ACK! We decided to take one side off his crib and begin the conversion to Big Boy Bed. We had to rearrange the rest of the furniture so that we could put the new "bed" against a wall.

He only slept one hour before he "escaped" and tried to get out of his room. Ugh.

The afternoon felt like it was dominated by Sir Cranks Alot. We had pulled a tiny three-wheeled scooter out of the trash pile of a neighbor earlier in the day. Brian spent the little bit of nap time fixing it so that Bennett could ride it this afternoon. Oh my gracious - that scooter or "skateboard" as Bennett likes to call it caused so much drama! He learned to ride it in the living room and seemed to have a handle on the idea.

Brian took Bennett outside to try it on the sidewalk. We even got his bike helmet on and everything. No. The second Bennett got outside, he wanted to "drive" Brian's car. Then, he tried running out into the street. UGH! I had been trying to get us packed up to go Christmas tree hunting and put that into a quicker gear.

After much crying and lots of refusal of any snacks offered, Bennett calmed down as we got closer to the tree farm. Thank goodness! We had so much fun picking out a tree. Our tree is small (about 4.5 feet), but has a nice round bottom and even shape. It's sitting outside on our porch waiting to be put in the stand. I think I'll get lights on it tonight and then we can decorate it with ornaments tomorrow night.

At the zoo with his pal Logan

The place that we went for our tree was a little north of us in Wilson called Erway Christmas Tree Adventure. What a fun place! Not only could we cut down our own tree, but they also had a lodge where we could go to warm up. Inside this lodge were all kinds of taxidermied animals - including the head of a giraffe AND an elephant head. Very neat to see. Also in the lodge was a couch with Santa. We had a horrible experience with Santa at the zoo yesterday (see photo evidence). Tonight's attempt went a bit better, I think!

In addition to Santa, the farm had a life sized Rudolph character greeting the children. Bennett thought that was the coolest thing ever. He kept saying, "I want to hug it!" Now that was fun. See below:

Yay! We're making progress, for sure. There will be more fun documented and posted as it happens!

prisonbreak, part 1

It seems we have an escape artist on our hands.

About one hour into his nap, Bennett sat up and cried out. I thought nothing of it because he usually wakes up about an hour in to pee. However, this day was different.

I watched him scale the side of his crib (his mattress is on the floor inside the frame of his crib, so this was no small feat), traverse the crevasse b/n bed and rocker, then safely shimmy to the floor. He waddled to the door, tried the knob and then called out - "Hey mom. I wake!"

I'm not really sure what to do now.