Posted on

Ben Speaks

That son of mine. Dang he’s cute. He knows it too and uses it shamelessly to get away with his mischief. Today he is 2 yrs, 9 months old which means he’s having a birthday in 3 months. For an update, I thought I’d share some of the funny things Ben says (there are MANY – I just wish I could remember them all).

Last night at the grocery store, he was riding along with me in the cart and a man near us sneezed. Ben: “Aww, man. You OK?”

Later on, still at the grocery store, he started singing one of Sissy’s favorite tunes. “Down by da baaaay. Where da wattamelons groooow. Back to my home. I didn’t go. Fo if I do. My mutter will say: Did you eva see a moose kissing a goose? Down by da baaaay.” Completely tuneless. Completely adorable.

Lately, all he wants to talk about is “going to the races.” I’m still not sure where this came from, but whenever we get in the car, “Are we goin to da waces?” We had a full-on break down over not going to the races (just to Target) last night.

He is also obsessed with his upcoming  birthday. “I write my name? On my birfday? Wike Sissy? At school?”

At dinner, he is quite opinionated. Sometimes he likes dinner. “I wike dis dinna. Mmmmmmmm!” Sometimes he doesn’t. “Mommy, dis dinner is icky! I no wike dis dinner.”

And he is never afraid to tell us what he wants. He is well known for getting out of bed and coming downstairs all on his own or going up to the fridge or pantry, opening it up and having at it. He will access a container of food (crate of oranges, container of muffins, bag of craisins) and then just leave it in the middle of the kitchen floor. Subtle? Sneaky? He is not. So I tell him that if he leaves the food in Loki’s reach, he will eat it. Ben says, “I share da food wif Woki.” Kudos on the sharing, kid. Tsk on inadvertently feeding the dog 21 muffins.

As funny as he can be, I love the sweet stuff that comes out of his mouth. You can’t help but melt, just a little, even when he’s being totally difficult when he says, “I wuv you, Mama.” Insanely cute, that kid.

Posted on

Ben’s Room WIP

Ben’s room is coming along … slowly. It’s always hard fitting in home improvement projects during the few precious hours you have at home at night during the week, but we are managing!

The room is painted – I really like the color and am so happy we picked it! And we’ve also moved most of his furniture back in there. The old dresser remains in my office. I keep trying to get rid of it and no one is biting. A shame really, it’s very cute! The new storage pieces, from IKEA’s STUVA line, are working out great. He’s got so much more storage than he did before this. And as soon as we can get some things hung on the wall, I can get some stuff cleared out of his closet too.

The yet-to-do list includes:

  • get carpet fixed (scheduled for Monday)
  • rout the baseboard
  • sand and oil the baseboard
  • install the baseboard
  • cut the wood for the bed
  • sand and poly the wood for the bed
  • assemble the bed
  • put it all together
  • hang photos, bulletin board, light
  • install wall decal?

One of the final decisions I’m making is about putting a wall decal behind his bed (like this one or this one or maybe this one or this one). Since it’s a large wide-open (green) space and the bed is treehouseesque, I’m thinking about putting a large tree decal behind his bed. Too much? I can’t decide.

Posted on

Chaos!

Our house is in chaos right now. See two things happened in late December and early Janurary:

1. We got a new couch. While I’m very excited about this new couch, our old one is in our living room (which already has its own couch), waiting for a friend to take it away, or failing that, be sold on Craigslist. There are also a few other items that we are getting rid of hanging around in that general vicinity, so the room to your right as you enter our house? Not really a room so much as a furniture dumping ground. Our tree is also still up, somewhere behind there. Cheers!

2. We started work on Ben’s Big Boy Room. Part of that was getting him a new dresser and bookshelf. See, there used to be cabinets in his room because before it was his room, it was an office,

and we needed a dresser/bookshelf arrangement bigger than the old one to hold the stuff that came out of the cabinets when they were removed (shelves are gone too!). The old bookshelves went to a friend, but the old dresser remains, still needing to make its way to Craigslist. But in any case, new dresser, new bookshelf and old dresser are currently residing in my office because they can’t be in Ben’s room because work is on-going. Ben himself is bouncing between his toddler bed in his room and the aero bed in Sissy’s room (where he stays up ’til all hours chatting with Sissy and making mischief – thank God they don’t have to share a room regularly).The room currently looks like this:

Cabinets are gone, shelves too. There is a strip of bare floor against the wall that we’re trying to cover with remnants. No word yet on whether or not this will work. Matt is making new baseboard for the pieces of wall the cabinets were covering and the wall is primed (it will be a darker green AND I don’t have to do any of the painting – yay!). Once all that (baseboard, carpet, painting) is done, we can start building his bed … and of course get his furniture out of my office.

So three rooms of our house (Ben’s room, our living room and my office) are completely unusable. This of course is pushing stuff that needs to go into these rooms into all the other rooms. And I am inundated by STUFF. Obviously, we’re getting rid of the furniture, etc. as fast as possible, but it takes time! Meanwhile, let’s just hope I don’t have a pile of stuff fall over on me. I really can’t handle it right now. 😉

Posted on

Vail. Weekend. Snow.

We had a lovely time away from home. It was great to have such a nice break after a crazy-busy month and a half (or so). We never did get a good “adult” ski day in, but the kids both got days on the mountain and in the case of Tabby we can actually ski with her.

So for two days, Tabby went skiing all day on the big mountain. She also spent time on the bunny hill whenever Ben was there. She’s really a bit beyond it, but she still had fun. It’s a good time for her b/c she can get on and off the magic carpet on her own and the first day we were there, they had CONES! She took it as her personal mission to ski around them as well as she could and she did awesome. I’m not talking about generally around the cone, I mean RIGHT AROUND the cone. Less than a foot between her and the cone.

Ben shows signs of having pretty great ability and was always gung-ho to “go skiing!” But once he got there he was quite a bit more apathetic about the whole situation, telling us sometimes even that he didn’t want to ski. Since we schlepped him all the way over there, he didn’t really get a choice but to make a run or two and when he did it, he enjoyed it. His balance is good and he seems to have some ability to control his direction, moving the direction Matt pointed to. But he tires quickly and is really still so very little. He was just happy to get outside and play in the snow, really.

With very little snow, we never did get a real day on the mountain just adults. But we got lots of TV watching, game playing, reading, cooking and even some exploring done. It was so peaceful and relaxing. Unfortunately, we woke up on Saturday to find this:

Gorgeous snow coming down, just in time for us to drive home in it!!! GRRRRRRR

The drive home was not terrible, but longer than normal. 2.5 hours compared to 1.5. Compounding the annoyance were our kiddos. As good as they were our whole trip, they were that bad in the car. Whining, crying, screaming, throwing, fighting, grumping. By the time we got home, our nerves were shot. Lucky for us, we had a bottle of premix margaritas in the fridge that we’d barely touched. We did minimal work to get the house back in order (it’s still not nearly back in order) fed everyone dinner and finished off our margaritas. Not often the way we roll, but not bad either.

Posted on

2011 Year in Review: Ben

My baby has really become a big boy this year. Yikes.

At 2.5 years old, Ben is a force to be reckoned with. He is a whirlwind of activity from dawn to dusk (naptime excluded). He loves nothing more than to be going, doing, talking, running, singing, eating, climbing, and oh did I mention, GOING? He’s a pretty good kid, but he’s 2.5 years old. And a boy. His biggest issues are listening and impulse control. Impulse control is better when he’s well-fed and well-rested, but dicey sometimes even then, he can’t quite help himself. He also seems to know he’s charming. And it’s quite hard to not laugh when he gives you his patented cheeky grin before he goes on a spree of defiance/mischief.

When he’s no making mischief, he’s a lover. He doesn’t want to start his day out without a bottle and a snuggle. He loves to tote his lovies from place to place. If he wants to watch TV, he wants to watch it right next to you. In the car, he wants to hold your hand. He wants to sing with you. He wants to dance with you. He is adorable.

Hearing him talk right now is pure joy. He constructs sentences very well when he’s in the mood. Matt and I and some others near him can understand him pretty well, but those outside his inner circle would be hardpressed to get any but the most articulate words. While his sentences can be very complex, they quickly degrade into a few grunts and demands when he is tired or frustrated. “Bad Mommy!” or “It not funny!” never fail to crack me up.

He enjoys our crazy schedule as much as anyone in the family, it seems. He is starting to ask where his friends are, where we’re going, or who’s coming over. It is fun to see him play with the kids, especially the older boys. Several of our friends have boys who are around Tabby’s age and Ben really loves them and looks up to them. We’re lucky that they are really good to include him and play with him and it’s nice to be able to see him keep up with them more or less.

At this point, his eating is pretty hit-or-miss. He will eat some of most of our family favorites, but he would subsist on fruit and milk if we would allow it. And if you ask him what he wants to eat, his answers are invariably toddler food: mac ‘n’ cheese, chicken fingers, noodles. But he is required to take no-thank-you bites same as his sister and sometimes he’ll surprise us and eat a ton of something he hadn’t shown interest in before.

In play he’s getting more and more into drawing. He also constantly talks about writing his name on his birthday which is funny to think about. Cars and trains are his big-deal interest right now – he can usually be found with one or more in his possession. He also likes to play pretend with his sissy and go go go on a trike or plasma car. He is really into books now and for his favorites he will sit still. Getting him into new ones are more of a challenge, but it can be done.

We are coming up on a lot of big changes this year. We’re working on potty training him in the next few weeks. Whether or not it will take this go-around, I don’t know, but I do know he’ll be potty trained within the next few months. This summer, we plan to put him in day-camp with Tabby and then in the fall, he will leave our sitter’s and start full-time preschool. I am sure he will make the adjustment just fine, but it will be a big adjustment nonetheless.

It’s a bit jarring to think of how much he will change in the coming year, but oh so fun to watch. He’s amazing and adorable and a large than life personality that I just love seeing grow and change. The thought of having a boy intimidated me a lot when I first found out, but I am so incredibly happy to have him as part of my life. He’s so unique and wonderful and a true joy to raise. I’m … we’re … so so lucky.

Posted on

Ben on Skis

This weekend we endangered all the guests on Vail Mountain’s Bunny slope by taking Ben up for his first go. Just kidding … our little danger “baby” did very well and had loads of fun. He has been trying to get on skis since last year, hopping on Tabby’s whether she was currently using them or not and trying on his gear every chance he got. Undoubtedly, his beloved sister’s love for the sport influenced him somewhat, but he is naturally into anything physical, he probably would have been gunning to get up there in any case.

We did the typical things you do with a first timer his age … basically catch and release. We ride up the magic carpet with him and take turns catching and releasing. He had a huge smile on his face practically the entire time or at least until he got cold and tired. He was his typically fearless self and even a few minor spills didn’t flag his enthusiasm. But his balance was something to behold and he could right himself quite well 90% of the time he started to fall. He asked to go back later in the evening on his first day and again when we asked him the next morning, so Matt took him back for another go. He didn’t make it long, but he had fun.

Tabby had new skis to try out and whether it was because of rusty legs or the new skis and boots, she had a few more spills the first couple of trips down the hill than the last time she was up. But in no time she figured it out and she was doing really well, moving beyond the “pizza” or snowplow technique and well into a nice parallel technique, beginning to turn and stop in parallel. She was super excited for us to get her up on the big mountain and neither of us can wait to have a chance to do so, but this go-around it was about our friends and their boys and Ben having a first go. Beyond that, the snow was pretty cruddy and we didn’t want to use our own skis so we would’ve had to rend which is a pain. But we have every confidence that she will be tearing it up when we’re back in Jan.

The rest of the weekend was lovely. For years we have done a “cookie weekend” with our friends and then as kids came, the kids as well, and my parents and sister. This year we backed off the cookies (we only made one type) and mostly just played around, watched movies and relaxing. Matt’s travel schedule meant we had to cut out one evening, but it was still nice and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

As always, it’s a bit hard to come back to reality. Oh well.

Posted on

A Tale of Two Weekends

After a totally crazy Friday, Matt and Tabby left for their very first daddy-daughter weekend. They flew to Nashville to meet our new niece and cousin, Baby Autumn. They had a great weekend, filled with baby snuggles, fun outings, and plenty of attention for Miss Tabby. It also made us realize that there will be a day in the not too distant future when air travel with the kids will be a helluva lot easier. Like when Ben is Tabby’s age (or maybe a bit older). I missed having them around like crazy, but I’m so glad they had a nice trip.

Meanwhile, back in CO, Ben and I had a wonderful time together too. Friday night we had a Team Umizoomi mini marathon (2 eps) and CHICKEN NUGGETS for dinner. Saturday we went to the gym (always a hit), ran some errands and then he had a very long nap while I got some things done (cleaning). He was my date at a dinner party with our friends and their kids and he had such a nice time being one of the big boys, running around playing with toys and dressing up in costumes.

Sunday we went grocery shopping together and then Christmas shopping with my mom and sister. We finished up by having dinner with Papa and GiGi as well and then straight home for bedtime. He was pretty exhausted.

He was super cuddly this weekend and kind of unsure about not having Daddy and Sissy around. He only wanted Mommy to hang out with him and hold him and help him. A bit exhausting, but sweet. It was so nice to be able to focus only on him and really hear what he has to say (a lot) and sing (Jingle Bells!). He is coming along so well developmentally and I think sometimes I don’t notice it as much because there’s so much more going on around us. I also noticed his behavior was somewhat improved. No doubt the extra attention had something to do with that.

 

Posted on

Music City Weekend

Tomorrow, two lucky people are heading to Music City for the weekend. See Matt’s sister had a beautiful baby girl a couple of weeks ago and they are headed to pay her a visit. We were initially planning to wait until February to go see our new niece and cousin, but we just couldn’t wait. Unfortunately we’re out of vacation time, so a weekend was about the best we could do. Of course taking two kids for a weekend trip (out Friday, Back Sunday) seemed a bit too insane even for us, so we decided it would be best for just half of us to go.

Of course I wanted to be part of the half that gets to snuggle the beautiful Miss Autumn Grace, but it didn’t seem fair for me to go see Matt’s sister and the rest of his family. So I encouraged him to take Tabby with him and proposed that I stay home with Ben. So that is the plan. I know they’re looking forward to some daddy-daughter time – Tabby always relishes alone time with any adults. And of course I am looking forward to some time with just my Ben.

We’ll try not to get too crazy.

Posted on

A Treehouse Grows in Ben’s Room

As I may have mentioned before, I’ve never really put much effort into Ben’s room. Well that’s not precisely true. We did FINISH OUR BASEMENT just so he could have his own room, which was Matt’s old office. But after all that was done (a good percentage we did ourselves), we just didn’t seem to have the energy to really DESIGN Ben’s room. So we re-assembled the crib, slapped up a few prints, brought in Tabby’s old dresser and called it good.

So now that Ben is shedding the crib (apparently this is going to be a slow process), we are preparing to get rid of the crib (*SOB*) and really design him room. Our initial idea was a loft bed, maybe with a clubhouse sort of element, but Ben’s room has an AWESOME and very necessary ceiling fan that is cool looking but quite big. So loft bed=bad idea. The type of bad idea where you could get your head/limb sliced up. Of course it took our 6’7″ friend to point this out. Really tall people are useful like that.

So, completely frustrated, we hung around Ben’s room for a while yesterday looking for inspiration. A plain ol’ bed just didn’t seem to suit and we were getting pretty frustrated. Then suddenly I remembered a magazine I stashed away 10 yrs ago (yes, 10). Back then, we were still in college and Matt’s uncle and cousins came to town for a while, sometime after their visit, I found a copy of (the now sadly defunct) Martha Stewart Kids’ magazine that they had left. I loved it immediately and purchased every issue (still have them all!). But in that first issue almost to the back was a feature on a great kid’s room – a treehouse. The bed was just elevated enough (2ft) to give it some height (not much more than the bed in our room and out of fan reach). The room had fun tree-house style details, like a tin-can light, a burlap canopy, simple shelves lined with tin cans and jars of crawly things, a saw-horse desk.

I brought out the magazine and we looked it over and it just clicked. Everything about it feels right. The boyness of it, the playfulness of it, the simplicity of it. It even works with the owl prints he already has. Obviously, it won’t go up as designed. Ben has no use for a desk at this juncture and he will need some bookshelves (rain  gutter) and some other storage, including a dresser (hello IKEA!). Also, we will move the color scheme a bit more into the browns and oranges for some more interest.

I can’t wait to get started on it. Of course first, he needs to be fully out of his crib. Also, we need to rip out the cabinets that are in there and lay down carpet underneath (hope our attic stock is big enough!). But I couldn’t help myself. I already bought some bedding. What? It was on sale!

Meanwhile, you can follow my Ben’s Big Boy Bedroom Pinterest board.

Posted on

Ben’s Big Boy Bed

OK so Ben is (and has been) able to climb out of his crib for a while now. He still almost exclusively climbs IN, but knowing, as I do, a couple of people whose little ones have had broken limbs (one from climbing out of a crib!) I have some anxiety about continuing to allow Ben to sleep in a crib when he is capable of climbing out. But we were not ready to do his big boy room. It will involve a loft bed and without a bit more cognitive development, I’m not sure it’s a good idea for him to be too far off the ground. So with that in mind, we endeavored to find him a temporary big boy bed (toddler size) this weekend.

We first tried Walmart/Target. Their beds were around $60 but the only choices were dark wood and white. Neither suited and we wanted to find something a bit more to our taste. So we trekked down to IKEA and purchased their SNIGLAR bed which looked perfect. It wasn’t. It was longer than a crib mattress (though the same width??) and on top of that, the single rail was all but useless since the crib mattress came almost to the top of it. Frustrated, we disassembled and got it ready to take back to IKEA (a 40 minute drive, AWESOME).

This morning, I decided to do a last ditch Craigslist search. I’d searched before but found nothing suitable or priced reasonably, but this morning around 7:30 I found one posted less than an hour earlier, for $20 that was perfect. Blonde wood, rails, good condition, for $20. I wrote immediately and within an hour we were cleared to pickup and the pickup was on the way back to IKEA!!

We picked up the new bed, returned the other one and brought it home. Ben was super excited to assemble it and really really pleased when he saw the robot sheets I purchased for him over a year ago. He climbed right in for some photo ops, but by bedtime, he wasn’t so interested and opted for his crib over the BBB. Which is OK … he’s got the option now and we’ll work towards that. I don’t want him growing up too fast anyhow.