I forgot a few

A few more Ben-isms that I left off of the last list...

"What's dat - way down dere?" from the backseat of my car - referring to anything he wants to know about down the road...
"What happened?" or "What's happening?"
"All done nap." Heard from the monitor yesterday as he was waking up...
"Still sleeping, daddy" - as Andy peeked in on him last weekend during the end of naptime.

The rest of the fest (-ival)

The rest of the festival weekend went well. I'm pretty sure that Ben had a blast!

Thursday - watched the kid parade, shared an elephant ear with mommy

Friday - checking out the crafty booths, listening to a bit of music

Sat - BIG parade, Andy's fam came over for the evening - we had dinner, another elephant ear, and fireworks!! Ben got to stay up late and watch the fireworks from our backyard. Watching them with a 2 year old sure adds a new twist - We got to listen to the color, size and loudness factor of each firework - "Woah - ne-now (yellow)." "Woah - bright green". "Loud?" "Little one", "Wow - BIG one".

Of course, the fire engine sirens were "Too loud" for Ben. Poor guy inherited my super-sound sensitive ears...

Sun - cruise by the car show, hang out, shark pool in the evening.

Great weekend!

Random Things...

Last week/ weekend we decided it was time to get Ben into his "Big Boy Bed". Well, we kind of HAD to - we need to make room in the crib/nursery for the baby. We had the bed set up in the spare room upstairs for quite some time, so Ben had a chance to get used to it - He liked to "pretend" to go ni-night in it frequently, so it seemed like he was on the path to successful transition. I attempted the big boy bed twice for nap time during the week (unsuccessfully), and gave up and just reverted to the crib. I think it was Saturday that we hit this with full force. It took some crying and exhaustion to get him in the bed, but after his first nap in it, he automatically headed there for bedtime, too. We also got him some new shelves, a few decorations and moved most of his books and toys into the room, to make the room more "his". So far, the move to the bed has gone very well. Today we had a bit of a setback, but I think it was due to a slight change in pre-bedtime routine, and a poopy diaper. He was out of his bed (several times) and watching out the window at all of the festival goers in our neighborhood. (It is the weekend of the Old Fashioned Festival in our little town and our house is smack dab in the middle of all of the activities.) On another note, we got to watch a kids parade on Thursday night. Ben did a great job sitting on the curb and watching the parade go by and picking up candy. I didn't even have to tell him what to do, really. He figured it out pretty quickly. We are looking forward to more festival fun on Fri/ Sat/ Sun, which means more elephant ears for this 34-week pregnant lady!!

The bed transition is just one of the many little preparations we are making for the upcoming arrival of baby #2!!! We had to run to storage to get #1 the tub of newborn-3 month clothes that I have (luckily) saved, #2 the box of bottles and related plastic thingy-s and #3 the box of baby toys. It's starting to feel real that we will soon have a tiny little baby joining our family! This week, I got to visit my friend, Lauren, and her 1 month old son, Camden - which was very nice and really helped me to wake up and remember the joys/ struggles of newborn care!!

Other random things I want to record:

Ben pooped and peed on the potty (appears to be just a fluke - since it hasn't happened since then) upon our return from the MN trip on July 4th...

He has pretty much memorized his entire "Little Blue Truck" book. I can stop at nearly any point and he will finish the sentence.

Some of his favorite phrases right now:

• Bye, bye, going to work!
• Too fa away
• Oh -tay, mommy!
• Mommy, kiss it (referring to an owie)
• One more time!
• Counting random things in his own random way (one, two, tee, four, six, seben, eight, eleben, fourteen, eleben-teen, twenty-teen)
• Oww, that hurts.
• Not working. (once, he said this upon waking up and trying to move his hand - must have been asleep) (another instance - I hear a strange sound - What was that, Ben? Reply: giggle giggle - "a toot: one more time" - he tries to push another toot - then: "not working".)
• I did it!
• Socks on, shoes on, outside!
• Nemo touch boat (he said this during dinner 2 days after we watched the first 20 minutes of Nemo - you never know what these kids are taking in...)
• Hold still, mommy (so he can tickle me)
• Opps - fall down, bad owie

That's all I can think of right now...

More picking...

Last weekend we did some more berry picking. This time: Blueberries. Less messy and quicker to pick and stuff in your mouth than the strawberries we picked a few weeks ago ...
I thought Ben might actually help us fill our buckets, but as you can see, he mostly stuffed his mouth full of them. His bucket occasionally had about 10 berries in it, but then he would promptly eat the 10 that he just picked for "later".
We got about 4 lbs of berries for $1/ lb. Pretty good deal! But we had to leave before I would have liked, because we couldn't stop Ben from eating them (literally) non-stop.

We had some of that great Northwest summer weather. Finally! - after record highs last week and near record lows earlier this week we were rewarded with 80 and party sunny, so we blew up the old shark pool. Ben played for an hour and a half. His poor little toes were quite pruny by the end of his splash session...

Here's a video of Ben singing London Bridge...

...and another of Ben's future career plan, in which he says he's going to make "money's" to buy bananas.

No big plans for this weekend. Maybe I'll get my car washed...

We packed a lot into one trip!

Although we had a stellar time in MN - It sure was good to be home last night!

In a nutshell - Here was our itinerary:

Travel to MN: Ben chose to skip his nap (maybe the first time ever...) on the plane ride out which made for fun times entertaining a 2 year old for 3 hours (who, after 2 hours on the airplane, kept repeating, "No more air-pane").

Stay with friends in Mpls: Hang out for a day and a half with 12 adults, 11 kids, a bouncy house, great food, great company, and lots of reminiscing. It was great to see all of my college girls all together again!
Cabin time: We spent about 5 days with ga-ma and gam-pa playing outside as much as possible.

Ben had a ton of fun throwing pinecones, acorns, sticks and anything else he could find into the lake. Ben did a little "fishing" with grandpa
Got to drive the boat...

And go for many boatrides.

Found a toad to play with... and went to the Longville playground...

Grandpa not only showed Ben how to fish, but he also took Andy out Musky fishing for the first time. Andy bought a 24 hour out-of-state fishing license and within a few hours, caught this: (a 46.5 inch musky - close to the biggest one that my dad and brother have EVER caught!!! What beginners luck!!!! I think he's still in shock.)

Baseball Game: We headed back to Mpls to see a Twins game on Friday against the Tampa Bay Rays at the brand-new Target field. What a cool stadium - outdoor baseball in Minnesota - finally!
We were in the very top row of the stadium behind home plate. The view was actually just fine!

Ben got to look out the backside of the stadium at the buses, trains, and police cars going by...
Sometimes it got too loud for Ben... :) but he made it to the end of the 7th inning, before we headed for home.
Cousin time: We got to spend some time visiting Brent, Patti and cousin Nick. He is a cutie! Good to see him - he's growing so fast!

Nick showed Ben his favorite "splash pad" park...

The plane ride home: was better - Ben actually napped, which made it a lot easier. All in all a great time was had by all! Thank you to all of you who put us up, fed us and made time for us!

I'm hoping to add a few more pics as they get e-mailed to me...

We're off!

Well, actually tomorrow... for a fun-packed trip to Minnesota!

Here are a few quick pics from the backyard... We finally have some decent weather here - the raspberries are ready for the picking!

We have a great little helper for all of our mowing and weeding - He loves to wear these cute gardening gloves (although it takes quite some time for mommy to get the fingers lined up just right to get them on...)

First day of summer vacation

...and we met up with some friends and their sons for a trip to the zoo. We had a great time. We got there before the crowds hit (which was after lunch). Ben started out in the backpack, but ended up walking most of the way on his own.

Here he is with his (almost) birthday buddy, Dylan (whose birthday was today!)

Ben fell asleep before we even left the parking lot! Great start to the summer!