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Ben at 23 Months

My forgotten second child sneaked into his 24th month with hardly a nod from me. Seriously, where did March go??? As he quickly approaches two, I have been amazed by his changes. We had our friends’ boys over this past weekend and it was like all of a sudden, he’s one of the kids. He no longer just plays at being one of them, he IS one of them. It’s quite amazing and sudden.

I’ve also noticed a marked improvement in his vocabulary. We have a couple picture/word books that he loves to go through with us or Tabby. He points and says the word or waits for us to supply it. Sometimes he’ll mimic what we say, other times he just files it away only to bring it out again a few days later. Owing to this and that I hadn’t been through the book with him in a couple of weeks and suddenly he’d gone from knowing about 10% of the words to about 40% of them.

Continue reading “Ben at 23 Months”

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Weekend Update

We had a really really nice (though typically busy) weekend. It was a pretty good mix of go and chill and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Friday we had a nice “day off.” It always amazes me how fast our Fridays go. A little workout here, some meals, a nap, a single activity and done. We dropped the kids off with my parents in the evening so we could have a nice evening out with Andrew who leaves this week. Matt, Andrew, Kelly and I went to dinner at Ted’s (hello giant burger!) and then did some “Cosmic Bowling.” I love that we can really enjoy bowling since all the venues are now SMOKE FREE. Sorry smokers, but this makes me ecstatic. We played 3 or 4 games. I actually got above 100 on one of them. I also got to dedicate a song to Uncle Buck.

Saturday Tabby had her mini gymnastics meet that ends this session of “gymnastics.” Then my parents kept Ben while we had our Tabby Date. We took her to Target so she could spend some of her b’day money. She purchased a hot pink sequined Hello Kitty purse and Guess Who. Then we went to Into the Fire so she could paint her very own “box” turtle. Its body is brown, its shell is green and it has camo-colored dots EVERYWHERE (inspired, I think by the salt and pepper shakers I painted). There was a small meltdown when she realized she’d have to wait a week for her turtle to be baked but she got over it and enjoyed lunch at her requested spot “SWEET TOMATOES!” After naps, we got to finish out the evening by joining my parents for pizza and playing several games of Guess Who (which I am apparently very bad at … ha!).

Matt and I started out Sunday with our 7.5 mile run and followed it up with the usual montage of laundry, errands, house cleaning, cooking. Since the sun is now going down later, we were able to take the kids to the park after dinner which was nice. Though unfortunately, the wind was blowing hard and making it pretty chilly so we only stayed for about 30 minutes. I will be excited to get home and enjoy the dinner I started yesterday, Pork Ragu … it smells so so good.

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Party Time!

Since the kids’ birthdays are relatively close together and they still share many of the same friends, I have decided they will have a joint b’day party. I figure it’s a good way to cut down on the number of events our friends have to attend (they do suck the weekend time).

So I am in the midst of the planning stages. We will have it some time in mid April (in other words AFTER our first half marathon) … hopefully the weather will be nice. I think we’ll hold it either at our local community party space or at the “arbor house” at a park. I’m super excited about the theme Matt came up with, PIRATES and MERMAIDS. I spilled the beans to Lisanne and she sent me a terribly cute treasure map “cake” from Family Fun. I have serious doubts about my abilities to recreate it on my own, but I think I might be able to do the concept and stick some pirates and mermaids on top … right? I was also thinking of making placemats for the kids as party favors … some 11×17″ paper, some laminating sheets and you’re good to go.

I am going to be “grinchy” and request that folks not bring presents for the kids. Honestly, the kids have way more toys than they can play with anyhow and our house can’t hold any more!! Ben is way too little to get this, but I still need to talk it over with Tabby so she understands. She has already received many lovely presents from our close friends and family and that is wonderful, but like I said … more than enough. I hope people won’t be offended.

I found a bunch of really great party stuff from Oriental Trading, including a treasure chest  cooler. I was thinking of doing a craft station where kids could decorate some sun-catcher frames. I thought a “treasure hunt” for chocolate coins in a small kiddie pool all decorated up with sand, etc. might be fun too. And I was also thinking of setting up a photo booth … I quoted one from The Traveling Photo Booth, but they wanted almost $900 for a three hour rental so umm… yea, not going to happen!! Too bad. But I figure with a computer and a little bit of action with a nail gun, some plywood and some black fabric we might be in business. We’ll see.

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Childcare Dilemma

Yesterday I found out we will be facing a childcare dilemma. Since Tabby was about 2 months old and I started back to work on a part-time basis, we’ve had one sitter who we adore. She came recommended by a coworker and we’ve loved sending our kids to her house for nearly four years now. My kids have a second home there and she treats them like members of her family. It has been pretty much an ideal situation. But yesterday I got confirmation on something that we knew was probably coming. Our beloved sitter is retiring. Continue reading “Childcare Dilemma”

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From the Mouths of Babes

A conversation between my babes a few weeks ago while riding in the car:

Ben: babble babble
Tabby: That’s a house, Ben. A  house.
Ben: babble babble
Tabby: Say house, Ben! Say house! You need to use your words.
Ben: *screams loudy*
Tabby: He doesn’t seem very interested.
Ben: House! House!

Tabby and I laughed the rest of the way home.

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Inevitably ….

It is weird how these things work. Does anyone else have the experience of only watching a random TV show … say I Love Lucy or Family Ties or Hey Dude … only once in a blue moon; sometimes not for months and years, and yet if you DO catch it one random evening when you’re flipping through the channels it’s the SAME EPISODE you caught that other random time. Maybe it’s just me.

We also “laugh” about how when Matt’s out of town the kids get sick and/or it snows buckets. Maybe not ALL the time, but pretty darn frequently. When I was pregnant with Tabby, we’d had the winter from heck and I dropped him off at the park ‘n’ ride and I could hardly get back to the house because there were cars stuck in the middle of the road all over our neighborhood!

The kids were sick over the weekend and continue to be, so of course Matt left on a business trip this morning. Luckily we have Matt’s brother staying with us so I was able to go to work this AM and get meetings and essentials out of the way and then I could come home at noon and come home to be with my sick kids. We will be doing the same gig tomorrow and possibly Thursday.

They have been good, sweet kids … and of course the upside to them being sick is that they want to snuggle … LOTS … and they like to sleep, except perhaps in the middle of the night. Tabby is mostly on the mend, but Ben is still in the feverish throes of it and he does not appreciate being made to take Tylenol. He does, however, enjoy the Gatorade in his sippy cup. Woot.

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My Funny Valentines

Happy Valentines to all of my favorite people! I know it’s a cheesy greeting card company holiday, but I always like any excuse to tell the special people in your life how much you love them (and of course, involving Hallmark is a personal decision). So to all of my family and friends, near and far … thanks for being in my life and I LOVE YOU!

This year, with all of our recent out-of-town-ness, we didn’t do so well with making Valentines. Tabby and I constructed 18 glittery messes for her classmates and I made these mailboxes for the kids (they are filled with new socks and sunglasses and probably some sort of candy I’ve since forgotten about). I will hand them over to the kids at dinner tonight.

I was happy to see the mailboxes in the Target dollar bin when we were there one day. I still have a little white mailbox with red hearts on it that was given to me one Valentine’s day by my parents. It sits on a shelf in my office and holds my sticky notes. I just decked these out with a little light pink vinyl, cut on my Silhouette.

I hope you all have a Happy Valentine’s day with your special people.

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Blogging Excuses

I Want to Blog, but … (pick your favorite)

• I am in the midst of converting this here blog to Word Press (I just don't have time to keep up with the blogging engine anymore) and it is sucking ALL my time
• my kids are so darn cute and I can't stop staring at their darling little faces.
• we're heading out of town again this weekend and someone needs to pack!
• I'm about half passed out from my tempo run this AM. Long runs, faster pace than normal. Yikes.
• Tabby and I have to make Valentines for her class.
• Ben is drawing himself a bath. *
• it's time to concoct the Pioneer Woman's French Toast Bake so we can eat yummy things tomorrow morning.
• someone has to shovel the walk!
• Big Bang Theory is on and I have to watch it.
• my office is freezing and I've got to rub a couple of highlighters together to start a fire.
• all work and no play makes Jess a dull girl.

*True story – we went to a Superbowl Party on Sunday. The kids were given the run of the upstairs but Matt and I (as well as other parents) were checking on them intermittently. I was downstairs bidding a friend farewell. Ben had been playing near us and just then I noticed he was gone. I mentioned he was not there and my friend said noted that he had been there not 30 seconds ago. I sent Matt off to check on him and a few seconds later the hosting Dad came downstairs holding Ben who was wet from toe to mid-calf. Apparently he'd run upstairs, gotten in the tub and turned it on all in the span of about 90 seconds. Nice job, kiddo.

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Organizing!

I’m stealing borrowing a blog topic from Kjersten today. She is talking on her blog about her current organizing projects and challenges. I love all things organizing, so I thought I’d do the same.

1. CLUTTER I am forever at war with clutter. With paper clutter I try to immediately eliminate what I can (junk mail) and then scan the rest to our fileserver. Tabby’s art work has a box in her closet (rapidly getting full) that we put the A list stuff in. The rest, I am a bit chagrined to admit, goes in the trash. All the rest of the clutter is subject to my rather heavy tossing hand. I randomly attack sections of our house that look too “full” and toss toss toss. Closets, dressers, drawers, pantry … nothing is safe from me. As soon as I get one section done, I notice two others that need attention. It’s never ending. I make a conscious effort not to buy or otherwise acquire junk, but nonetheless, we still manage to ship off a box or two to Good Will every month.

2. KID STUFF Any parent can commiserate I’m sure. Kids just have tons of stuff. They outgrow toys, clothes, books, kitchen equipment, DVDs, and even furniture at an alarming rate. That means I’m always trying to sort out the discarded. Clothes are especially tricky because sometimes they might be able to wear something next season, but meanwhile it’s taking up space in their drawers. Yet if you put it away you might not remember to take it out in time. I’m sure Martha has a perfect system but I don’t!

The other thing we’re running into now is a reluctance from my kids to get rid of things, even if they never play with it or have 15 just like it. So I take a similar tact with the kids’ rooms that I do with everywhere else. When I can’t stands it no more, I go nuts and fill up boxes to go to Good Will or friends. But it seems like barely a month passes and I’m back at square one all over.

3. BLACK HOLE PANTRY Of all of the many things I love about our house, the #1 thing I HATE about it is our crap pantry. I’m not even sure you could call it that. It’s just a giant, DEEP, DARK Black hole food cabinet. We have discussed myriad solutions to the problem, but (arguably) the best one involves moving our washer and dryer into Matt’s shop (in the basement) and neither of us wants that, though for very different reasons (he: wants his shop space, me: lazy). So I am now hounding him about installing one of these swing out pantry contraptions in order to fix the black hole scenario. It’s pretty much still in the theoretical stages.

4. BEN’S ROOM My forgotten second child is still living in a thrown-together castoffs sort of bedroom. I don’t think he cares, but I of course feel some amount of mommy guilt over this. Fairly soon, as I have mentioned, he will probably need a big boy bed and at that time we will get him new furniture and decorate and organize his room properly … so that maybe it won’t look like a home office with a crib and some board books thrown in.

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2010 in Review: Ben

 

ben2010
What a difference a year makes. This time last year, my sweet Ben was still quite baby-like but there is little of that left in him now. He’s a big boy in so so many ways. He’s given up his bottle. He runs and climbs and jumps everywhere. He talks up a storm (even though we still understand little of what he says). He sings. He throws. He blows kisses. He plays with other kids. He (sometimes) helps. He is BUSY.

 

He has had a good year, overall very healthy, though I’ve commented to many that I’ve seen about 3x more blood from him in 18 months than I’ve seen from Tabby in 43 months. It’s impossible not to compare him with Tabby at a similar age and I find it interesting. They really seem to live up to the boy-girl stereotypes. She was all fine motor skills and VERBAL. He is all PHYSICAL and quite mischievous. It’s really lovely to see and enjoy the differences in them.

Ben’s favorite thing right now is Toy Story … he is not much interested in anything on TV that is not Toy Story. He also loves anything he can throw or vroom … balls and cars for example, but also, in a pinch, blocks and dolls or food and books. He’s actually not very particular, come to think of it.

He is quite a snuggler and has a special attachment to his family, but to Matt in particular. He also is a big fan of my grandma, his GiGi. He says her name with relish and goes to check on her to make sure she’s coming to the table for dinner or keeping up with us at the zoo. We also recently discovered that Ben is having some stranger anxiety issues with our gym daycare. He’s fine without us, but not without us AND without Tabby (Sissy as he calls her). He pretty much worships his Sissy and loves it when she sings to him.

His chatter is mostly incomprehensible, but he does have about 50 words that are clear and a bunch of signs. He seems to pick up the signs more quickly than the verbalizations, so they are nice and very helpful. He has started stringing his words together in sentences as well, his most clear being “I wamma BaBa!!!” One of the funniest things he does is mug for the camera and loudly exclaim “Cheeeee!” when we point the camera at him.

He eats like a champ most of the time. I can probably point to applesauce as his favorite food. He still loves pasta and meatballs and any kind of “cakka!!! or cheeee!” (crackers and cheese). He is still very much attached to his milk, though he now drinks it from a sippy or a cup.

He is a sweet, sunny little guy with a mischievous streak that I adore. He has had a great year and I am so excited to see what 2011 has in store for him.