Monday, December 3, 2007

Gratitude


My very talented sister-in-law took this beautiful photo of Benson on Thanksgiving. Although Thanksgiving is over, the season of gratitude continues. I am so grateful for family: a wonderful husband, a darling little boy, awesome brothers, mothers, and in-laws, and for all the friends that are considered family in my mind too! Thanks for all the love and support I receive so abundantly!

Whoops!

And suddenly it is December. I truly don't know what happened to November, but anyway, I though I'd better get back to posting, because otherwise, I might never do it again. We have spent the month focused a lot on our little boy and our house. Phil has put in tons of insulation and drywall, and we've decided to try and get our kitchen done (yea!) before Christmas. Usually our jobs take longer than we expect, but here's for hoping!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I'll post pictures later!

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Constrution Updates

I thought I'd update our blog about current construction activity. This picture shows our front bedroom after Phil took down the inner walls, and, by the way, I made Phil pose that way! Our outside walls had no insulation, and were just made of two layers of bricks with plaster attached to the inner brick wall. Phil took down ALL the walls, including ceilings, and then took out the inner brick wall. So, for about a month, the walls we had in our bedrooms were red brick, the same that made up the outside of the house. Needless to say, we needed to get insulation and walls in by the time it got cold.

This picture shows the newly framed 2x4 wall that Phil built to replace the inner brick wall. The Pink stuff is a thin type of R5 insulation that serves as a vapor barrier too. He rewired the bedrooms completely, and then we installed the regular R13 insulation that you can see on the right hand side. Getting the insulation in has improved our home's ability to keep a more constant temperature, and it has been wonderful! Let's hope for lower heating bills this winter!

Halloween Preview

Here is our little Pea Pod a week early. He didn't really love getting into the costume, but we snapped a couple of shots with out any crying. Getting out of it was another story.

If you notice the walls in the background, you will see what walls look like underneath wood panelling when exposed. We tore down the wood panelling, and since then, Phil took down all of the dry wall in order to insulate and wire. Fun, fun!

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Close-ups

Gotta love great cameras! Thanks, Grandpa Jankovich, for letting us use your camera! (Benson doesn't have any unidentified growths on his face- these pictures were in the middle of a graham cracker fest!)





Sunday Graham Crackers

Today we visited Grandma and Grandpa Jankovich and Benson decided to eat a graham cracker all by himself. He's gotten so good at sitting that we didn't need to stuff a blanket in the sides of the booster that Grandma J has, and he just had a grand old time creating a film of graham-juice all over himself and everything he touched.


He needed to wash the graham cracker down with some water, but this picture also shows his reaction to the flash of Grandpa's awesome Canon SLR camera. He didn't like it.


He's concentrating really hard on what to do next in his cracker adventure. The tongue must help him think. . . just like his mama.


Look at that graham cracker film on everything. He's cute with it, though!

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Brain

MRI results: Perfectly Normal! Yea!

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Stats

As of last week, which is an almost 8 month measure, Benson is 18 lbs, and 27 1/2 inches long. That means he has grown 5 pounds in 2 months, 4 of which he gained in the first month of good old formula supplementing. He gained the other pound in the past month, which puts him at the 25% curve, up from the 2% mark. Good job, buddy! He's holding his own head up in this picture, which for him is tremendous!

delinquent

I thought maybe it had been a week since I'd posted, but now suddenly its October. Whoops! Benson is now a professional solid food eater, and his favorite food, as shown by the pictures, are prunes. He loves prunes! He stopped spitting the food out once I started using a graham cracker as his spoon. Because he loves graham crackers, he now loves food!

We brought Benson to an Opthamologist in the middle of September to check out his eyes, which tend to work better if he's looking out their sides, and the Doctor said nothing is wrong with the shape of the lens, so he won't need glasses, but he also didn't know what was wrong, so he ordered an MRI that we had up at Primary Children's last week. I am still waiting for the results.

He is super motivated to action whenever he sees a glass full of water- he pretty much goes crazy trying to get it. When we give him the glass, two things happen: He actually does swallow some, as well as drowning the front of his outfit. He also fills the glass so full of floaties that you really can't share with him. Maybe he does that on purpose so he can have it all to himself. One way or the other, he is growing and changing so much that everyday is an adventure! It's awesome!

Monday, September 17, 2007

Motherly Musings on Monday

In trying to figure out how to balance all of the necesseties of life, here is what I've been thinking lately:

* My little boy is adorable
*A schedule/routine is important to get anything done
*If the kitchen is messy, the whole house is messy
*If the kitchen is clean, the whole house might be clean
*If the whole house is clean, mommy is smiling
*Mopping is an important part of the week
*Showering is an important part of the day
*Dirty diapers accumulate fast unless you throw them outside right away
*Spiders are bad
*Construction can kind of drive you crazy (but that's okay, of course)
*Losing weight is tricky
*Chocolate is not tricky
*A good book can make you have a little vacation
*Too many good books makes for messy kitchen, house, etc.
*Blog posts without pictures are kind of boring
*My little boy is singing to me right now, in a tired, please-give-me-a-bottle-and-a-nap kind of way

If anyone has any great ideas on how to get it all done, everyday, please let me know. In the meantime, I'll keep counting my blessings.

Friday, September 14, 2007

7 months

Thought I'd post these pictures that Joslyn took at her house this week. She is so talented at catching the best expressions that my camera and ability can't come close to, and I just love these! Thanks Jos!
A little Benson update: He is what I'd call "officially" sitting up, although pretty wobbly, and he ate pears today. . . and he didn't throw up! Yea!

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Sleepy Boys


Daddy and Benson took a Sunday afternoon nap today at Grandma's house. Sundays get to be tricky for Benson's naps because church isn't exactly the ideal napping place. He gets tired earlier in the afternoon because of this, and apparantely so does Daddy. Oh. And he might be tired too because he just cut his second tooth yesterday, and there's been a little bit less sleep the past few days!

Couldn't Resist These


I think he's saying, "Oh, bless your heart!"



Shy boy

Saturday, September 1, 2007

More Exercise

I'm possibly becoming one of those annoying, bragging mommies who always says how brilliant her child is, but really, I'm just so proud of our little boy! He's making such good progress in so short a time. Yesterday he finally did a variation on the "tripod sit" on top of Daddy, and he didn't flop all the way over like he did on Monday.

More tummy time practice on the Boppy! He cried at first, but then Phil and I started making crazy faces and noises to entertain him, and he forgot that he was unhappy, and held his head and chest up great!
Although Benson hangs out in the bouncy seat a little bit everyday, he has never, except once, actually played with or even really noticed those hanging toys. Today he was staring at them, and his hands cooperated! He first grabbed the toy with one hand, then he brought the other one up to help,

Friday, August 31, 2007

Muscle Mass Man

DISCLAIMER: First of all, I couldn't catch the smiles today with our slow camera, so I always caught the half shut eyes blinking from the flash.

Although this might look like any normal baby pose, (besides the crazy eyes) this was one of the best days yet. Benson is behind on his gross motor skills, like holding his head up at all in tummy time, and we had an Occupational Therapist come to our house on Monday to test him, and see what was up. He said his neck, shoulders and lower back muscles are too weak, and we need to strengthen them. When we put him on his tummy on Monday, he wouldn't lift his head at all. The therapist showed me some simple exercises to do with Benson to prop his head up so he could at least get some practice, and so we've been working on them all week. Now, just 5 days later, he was in this position on our Boppy pillow! It truly is miraculous!


These two pictures show what he usually does when you put him on his tummy, basically acts like a two month old or so. . . But now he can lift up his head! How darn exciting! The Boppy helps a lot because he is already off the ground a bit.


Even though he obviously doesn't love being right on his stomach and doing his little exercises, if we prop his arms underneath him like this picture shows, he will lift up his head, and turn and look all around!


So, in 5 days his muscles must have strengthened at least some to be able to do what he could not even get close to for the past 6 1/2 months! Way to grow, buddy!

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Ceilings!

No Ceiling
Yea for ceilings! Who knew that having (or not having) ceilings could change your life so much. The plastic in the background of this picture was the current "door" into our bedroom, blocked off to keep out the dust. Thanks to a lot of hard work from Phil and his mom, we officially have ceilings in our two front bedrooms. This enabled us to move Benson out of our bedroom and back into his, because now, if spiders want to crawl on the rafters of the house, they won't fall into his crib. I hope. Stay tuned next week for 2x4 walls!

Ceiling!

Monday, August 27, 2007

Cute.

The Bouncy Seat Narcotic

I started teaching piano again when Benson was almost 2 months. Holding him in my arms while teaching was a little bit tricky, but he wasn't happy any other way. And then, we discovered The Bouncy Seat. He would hang out there for an hour while I taught two piano lessons and be perfectly happy and playful.

Lately, however, we are thinking it is more like a drug, because Benson will stay happy in it longer than anything else. Is this normal? During the last half hour of a three lesson stretch last week he even fell asleep. With a six year old playing a lovely rendition of Jingle Bells. Only a drug could do that. So, we are trying to lower the Bouncy Seat time, and try to get the "happy times" to last longer doing other things.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Grow Baby, Grow!

Practicing sitting up at 6 months

He's pretty much always smiling. . .
. . .unless he's busy playing.


I think Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is playing into our little boy's life right now. Maslow said that if a person's basic needs are not being met, they won't be able to develop into any higher level of being. Two weeks ago, right before Benson turned six months, I looked at him and said, "Buddy, you are one scrawny dude!" We went to weigh him, and he weighed in at 13 lbs 12 oz. He was 13 lbs 2 oz at his 4 month appointment. Needless to say, he hadn't grown enough. I think I possibly only make skim milk or something, because he seemed to eat constantly, but somehow hadn't grown much. We started supplementing every other feeding with formula, and in a week's time his development has exploded. He is SO much more alert and happy, and is babbling constantly now, as well as rolling over. When we went back to the doctor a week later, he weighed in at a whopping 15 lbs 2 oz, or at the 8% for his age group. He will have to do some catch up in the developmental department, but we are so grateful that he seems to be thriving!




Construction Zone

We are remodeling our house in our "spare time." Now that we have a baby, it is trickier to find more time, but we seem to be finding it, because he needs to learn to crawl in a lead-paint-chip free zone. My idea of remodeling was "paint and decorate," and Phil's was "rip the house down and build a new one," so our compromise has lead to all new plumbing, HVAC, upstairs bathroom, new walls (and less walls) and more insulation. We are almost getting to the "paint and decorate" part of the adventure, and I can't wait. Kind of crazy, but very exciting.
Phil and I ripping out the wall between our kitchen and dining room last Spring

Yes, that is a brick wall separating our kitchen from our dining room. It is now at the dump. Along with a lot more of our house.


New skylight where the swamp cooler used to be


This is the most current job- Phil ripped out the walls in two bedrooms because there was no insulation there at all. We could feel a cold breeze there during the winter. He took out the cinder-block wall, and is reframing and insulating. Yea for lower energy bills!