For A Minute

I happened to walk in on these two peacefully working together to build this train full of super heroes.  Most of their games involve more chasing and screaming and teasing, but they are getting pretty sweet with their playing and conversations.

Yesterday Ethan came upstairs crying because he hit his head on an open medicine cabinet.  After getting a hug from me he went and told Benton what happened and Benton said, "uh oh, sorry" and gave him a kiss.  It is surprising to me how good they are at communicating with each other.

Super Ear!

I've been watching Benton's ear recently waiting for drainage because he has had a cold.  So far, the only consistent indicator of his ear infections is a green runny nose.  He doesn't get a fever and doesn't act upset.  Today I could finally tell for sure that his ear was draining.  A nurse called in ear drops, but we probably still need to see a doctor because his other ear doesn't have tubes, so the drops don't work, and it has always been infected too.

ANYWAY, the ear drops require 4 drops and then putting cotton in his ear.  If I ask to see Benton's ear, he will lay down on my lap, letting me look inside.  When I asked if he wanted to come put medicine in his ear he said, "Super Ear!"  I put cotton in my ear to show him and then asked him to let me see his ear.  He laid down, counted to 4 with me, waited while I put the cotton in, and then stood up and said, "Super Ear, to the rescue!" and ran off super hero style.  He doesn't want to take the cotton out and periodically counts to four and repeats, "Super Ear, to the rescue!"

Look Who is Tracing!

I'm excited for Benton's progress in holding a pencil lately. He's wanted to be able to write for a long time and it is so adorable.  This is what he did while I finishes dinner tonight. 

He's a month shy of 2.5.

Family Memory

I made sets of these memory cards for my nieces and nephews on my side of the family as kind of an early Christmas present. Maybe if I play it enough, the boys will get all the uncles and Joes straight.

30 Weeks

I guess it's a sign of my 3rd pregnancy that I am 30 weeks and this is my first belly picture, but for the record: look, my stomach is getting bigger!

Of course this picture is as I'm way out the door to the gym because I also don't get "ready" very often.  If I waited until I was fully dressed with hair and make up done AND remembered to take a picture, the baby may already be crawling...or walking.

One Year Later

Yesterday was the 1 year anniversary of Benton being admitted to the hospital for his crazy experience with Mastoiditis.

Now he is a silly little two year old who hops or runs pretty much every where he goes (literally from the the minute he gets out of bed until he goes to sleep) and talks A LOT.  He loves learning.  Today he showed that he is starting to be able to use a pencil (he circled and traced numbers on a preschool worksheet).  He can also spell 5/6 letters of his name consistently when I help him write it.  (And, as I mentioned in an earlier post, he knows his letters, their sounds, numbers into the 20s, sight words, shapes, colors, etc. which is noteworthy considering all the risks to his brain with the infection and surgeries).  He is a sweet little guy, quick to apologize or put himself in time out, but active and crazy like his brother.

The video below shows some of his hopping.  He had just woken up and came to get me.  You can see he still loves Curious George.  I love that this video also captures how he says, "Hey Guys!"  He is learning to say excuse me to get people's attention, but still yells, "HEY!" a lot in his deep little voice instead.  If you listen carefully you can hear another trademark Benton conversation: "Hey_______, a doing? [waits for answer] Wow!"  That one is super cute, but has become a constant question all day.  In the car, he is a very persistent back seat driver: "MOM!  STOP! Red! Stop!" or "Excuse me Mom? Excuse me Mom? Excuse me Mom? Green, go."

We are so very grateful that Benton not only made it home, but that he made it home with 0 neurological deficits.  We feel very blessed!

January Snippets

These two are getting pretty cute playing together.  Here they are pretending to sleep.

 One of the few times we have remembered about the first Saturday crafts at Home Depot:

 Benton has started bringing his pillow and Curious George grocery shopping.  There isn't much room in the cart with these two "sleeping".  Now granted, we go shopping between 7 and 8am, but they are the ones that wake ME up every morning.

 Christmas cards turned into Valentine's decorations.

 Ethan has started requesting to put Benton down for naps.  He reads him a book and sings him songs (silly versions of course).  Pretty darn cute.

This Saturday we went to the zoo.  I love that Benton actually shows an interest in the animals.  Ethan is pretty much only interested in the playgrounds and asks why we HAVE to look at the animals.

 Ethan was not interested in feeding the giraffes, so I just took Benton.

 Pretty cool.

This may be the first picture of me obviously pregnant (all the holiday pictures I was just looking chubby).  

 My favorite part of the zoo is the Squirrel Monkey enclosure.  Ethan actually got interested in this part, so we stayed for awhile.  He wanted to see the monkeys go in and out of their houses, but they decided to stop in the sun as you can see on the ropes in the pictures below.

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Notice it isn't all sunshine and swimming pools; we actually do need sweaters in the winter...in the morning.

  We saw this little ground squirrel and Mike thought it was adorable.  Mike decided to feed it some Cheetos, despite my protests.

 I had a short list of animals I thought Benton would recognize and enjoy that we were required to see before we could hit the playground (the list helped Ethan patiently endure the wait).  The last on our list was the elephant.  We got to see it up close eating a carrot too.

 Benton's "cheese!" face.

 We finally made it to a playground!  There was an orange tree dropping fruit, so the boys used them as balls.

 Cute brothers having so much fun, until a dirty diaper necessitated an early retreat to the van.

Preschool is a BIG part of our lives this year.  9 hours each week I am teaching three 5 year olds and Benton.  Benton already knew his letters and really liked reading alphabet books before preschool started, but I think preschool has magnified that (now he knows letters and their sounds, numbers into the 20s I think, shapes, colors, sight words...).  He loves to "perform" for the class (all of the kids present in front of the class every day).  We've started making little videos because he cracks me up how much he keeps up with the big kids.  Here are two little clips:

(He is about 2 years and 3 or 4 months.)

New Years with Nana and Papa

Mom and Gary  (aka Nana and Papa) were here for a week.  Unfortunately, several of those days were filled with a stomach bug, but we still had a lot of fun and Nana got to play a lot of Cars Monopoly as she recovered.  For some reason I don't have pictures of our trip to the McCormick Stillman Train Park in Scottsdale, but that made for a fun afternoon.

 New Years Eve was a day spent at home recovering, so I picked up a pack of fireworks at Walmart.  I think it is crazy we can do fireworks even this small in AZ, but the boys loved it.

 Trying to keep sparklers away from Benton's face.

 Ethan liked photographing everything.

 Cute brothers.

 On New Years Day, we went to the zoo.

 Nana treated Ethan to his first camel ride.

 We didn't think Benton would want to go alone, but, his drive to be like Ethan got him a ride too.