He's 11 months old today

Pic from the backyard yesterday.
I took Wednesday off and hung out with Ben because my daycare provider had a horrible case of food poisoning. It was nice to have a weekday to catch up on a few odds and ends. We have had a laid back weekend so far. Andy helped his brother Adam move today (Saturday) and I don't think we have any major plans for Sunday - Just catching up on some projects (maintaining Ben's neglected baby book) and continuing the never-ending cycle of cleaning, laundry, dishes, etc...

I think we have created a monster... We are trying not to encourage this, but it's too funny... Sometimes, Ben keeps doing it for like 5 minutes straight. He does it with such a serious face, then breaks into a big smile.

Here is the little guy cruising with his walker on his own - Just needs a little work on the steering.

I can't think of a title for this post.

Leave a 10 1/2 month old baby alone in a room for 1 minute, and this is what you get... Notice the empty book shelf (and the dust in the back corner...). Ben was reading up on adjustable rate mortgages in the Home Buying for Dummies book, when I re-entered the room. Both Saturday and Sunday were gorgeous days here in Oregon. I wish I could list all of the great outdoor activities that we did, but I don't really know where the weekend went. All of a sudden, we realized that it was already Sunday afternoon, so we packed up the Bikes, Burley and Ben and headed to a nearby state park - only 13 minutes from our front door. We got a helmet for Ben last week, and got it fitted and everything. We put it on him and he seemed to be OK with it outside of the Burley, but when he is sitting in it, the back of the seat totally pushes the helmet forward and covers his eyes. It appears that no amount of adjusting or tightening will help, so we will just ride carefully helmetless until he grows into the helmet.
A pic from this afternoon.

Ben is a still a crawling machine and is really starting to use the push behind walker on his own. He is still working on some words, though I think he has said "dada" a few times without knowing it. He is waving with a raised hand, and loves to get into anything and everything. He loves books and will sit patiently for long periods of time reading book after book. He likes to stand at the front door or any of our low windows watching the world go by. He has turned into a great sleeper - 2 naps a day and a solid 8PM - 6:30AM night time. He is getting over what seems like his 83rd cold, so I hope the old adage is true - that he will have a great immunity built up for Kindergarten... He gets quite "gaggy" whenever he has a cold (which seems like always), so trying to move to the more chunky foods hasn't really gone as planned - because he tends to choke on the food and throw it up. He loves ripe pear chunks and can surely make a mess of his face and hair while eating them. I've tried things like chunks of pancake, but they usually just end up on the floor. Ben is taking sips of water from a cup (held by me), but hasn't quite figured out the sucking part of the sippy cup. Soon, I think.

It's been great keeping up with everyone on their blogs - Keep up the good posts, girls!

Cheers and Happy Easter!

Saturday afternoon was spent at the Spring Beer and Wine fest in Portland. This was Ben's second beerfest of his short life. Does this tell you something??? Here are a few shots of the festivities.Ben got a bit antsy being all couped up in the stroller, so I took him outside of the festival to the lobby area at the Convention Center.


Ben had tons of fun crawling all over the carpet and even tackled a whole flight of stairs! (His first time ever - these were wider steps than normal, so I think it helped.)
Here is Ben on his first Easter Egg hunt.

Spring has arrived

We awoke the past 2 days with the sun shining in through our bedroom window. That hasn't happened since like October or something... Today's high was probably 75 or so. We pulled some weeds, did some other yard cleanup then got air in the tires on our bikes and the tires on Ben's Burley Bike Trailer. We got all set up to go to the nearby Champoeg State Park with the bikes on a hitch rack on the Jeep and the Burley in the back. We just had to stop at Freddies to get a helmet for Ben. They didn't have one small enough for Ben, and there are not a whole lot of other shopping options in our little town, so we ended up doing our trial run of bike/ Burley thru the streets of Newberg where we could go slow. Ben took it all in stride. He was mostly just chilling, and smiling, chewing one of the straps, and waving at me when I rode next to him in the trailer.

A short one of Ben and his favorite purple ball.

This may be my new fav pic of Ben.

On the sleeping front, Ben is back to the old routine. I guess it was just a week-long bump in his usually pretty easy sleep pattern. He now has it back down to about 1-2 minutes of fussing, then fast asleep.

Oh - and 2 new things from Friday. Ben has started to wave (although just a hand in the air, no motion involved, but he definitely does it to say "Hi"). Also, he has now started progressing toward speaking a bit more. He has been repeating (very quietly - like a whisper) the 'c' as in car sound along with 'd' and 't' - they all kind of mingle together, but this is the first time we have heard anything that could lead to a first word. Still no 'm' or 'b' which I think are typical first sounds... (maybe it'll be dada before mama - I'll need to work hard on those 'm's!)

A kind of long post about sleeping

Just when you think you have your baby all figured out... They mix it up on you.

So, we thought we were in such a good place. We had a baby that could sooth himself to sleep. All we had to do was wrap him in a swaddle (arms out), give him a pacifier, turn on some music and off to dreamland for Ben. Up until about a week ago when he figured out that he can stand up in his crib. So, even when we got him all sleepy and we put him down, he would go into his hyper-spaz mode and be crawling all over the place, standing, sitting, crawling, sitting, standing, and then start crying and screaming inside the crib. We thought we had gotten past this "let them cry it out" stage. Little did we know that we had yet to return to it. He would stand at the edge of the crib and cry for 20 minutes at a time. One time, I stood outside his room to see what was going on in there. I watched as he finally stopped crying (after 15 minutes) and fell asleep sitting up. I wish I had the video camera. He kept tipping forward, semi-waking up, sitting back up and then fall asleep again. I finally had to go knock him over. I guess that most kids go thru this stage of not knowing to "lay down" to go to sleep. Ben just did it again today for afternoon nap. He cried for maybe 7 minutes or so, then stopped on his own. I went up to check on him and there he was sitting up - asleep. It was pretty cool to watch him this time. After about 1 minute, he just sort of took a deep breath, and laid down. I'm hoping that I was witnessing the learning process and that next time he will remember. We'll see.

This week, I had to decide what I wanted to do about my work schedule next year. You know me and decisions - After much hemming and hawing, I opted to continue part-time, but increase my work schedule an additional hour (going from 66% to 85%). That means I would be getting home around 2:30, instead of 1:30. Other than that - Not a whole lot going on here. Looking forward to a decent weather weekend - Maybe we can plant some peas, and a few other veggies and do some other outdoor activity...

Can't wait to hear about Baby B! Best of luck, my friend!

Guesses for B's baby girl?

OK, UMM girls. B is due soon (April 15th according to her, but may be induced by the 9th). We can take guesses on the due date, weight, and length but I think the question is, what about a name for her new baby girl? Thoughts?