One Year Picture

It's small, but cute!

Haircut!

Check out the hair before the haircut- long locks of craziness!

Then. . .voila! The Saturday after Benson's birthday, I laid him on the floor on his changing pad, gave him a grahama cracker, and cut his hair. It isn't perfect, but I figured out of his eyes is better than totally even. And, he looked darn handsome, if I do say so myself! Of course, we saved a lock in a baggie for his scrapbook. I guess it's just what you do!

Birthday

Happy Birthday to the sweetest boy in the world who has completely changed my life and expanded my ability to love unselfishly and thoroughly! I love giggling with him, reading to him, throwing balls with him, singing finger-play songs, pointing at things with him, making him laugh, him making me laugh, watching him learn how to fold his arms, clap, wave, scoot, and a million other little things that he does! Motherhood is wonderful, and I am priveleged to have such an amazing boy for a son! Love you, buddy!

Holidays

Here are the highlights from the Holidays which, until now, have been nonexistent on our blog:

Phil and Benson downtown at the lights.

Cold, happy family

Christmas Morning- Benson got a bath toy from Santa. . .

but really it's the paper that he loved the most!

Christmas at Grandma Nielson's house. These are some of his favorite toys- stacking cups and blocks from IKEA, and classic Fisher Price stacking rings. Learning how to put the rings on the stacker taught him all sorts of great fine motor skills! Thanks Grandma!

What a fun first Christmas for Benson!

Delinquent

three months later. . .what can I say?

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!

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!

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!

Brain

MRI results: Perfectly Normal! Yea!

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!

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.

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!

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

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,

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!