Lately

Sometimes I just can't stand how cute that kid is.  His routine for a long time has been to fall asleep while I nurse him at night, so I was surprised the last two nights when he finished eating and was wide awake -- and extraordinarily happy about it.  It didn't feel right to put him straight in his crib, so I read him a story from his baby Bible, then I rocked him and sang him a couple of songs.  Rather, I tried to sing him a couple of songs, but I had some trouble containing my laughter.  He was staring at me, smiling, and reaching up to touch my mouth.  And he made me so very happy that I had to laugh.

Everything goes straight to his mouth these days.  Everything.  Even things that do not come close to fitting in his mouth, like my giant Nalgene water bottle.  The picture above doesn't quite capture it, but I put him in his Exersaucer one morning while I got ready, and when I looked back, he had each hand on a different toy and his mouth on that steering wheel.

Last week, his favorite face was the old-man-with-no-teeth face.

This week he prefers the stick-out-your-tongue-like-a-crazy-person face.  He has probably spent fifty percent of his waking hours making some version of that face this week.  All the weirdness he inherited from Daniel and me is already starting to come out.

We took a family day trip to Estes Park on Tuesday and had a chance to use our baby hiking backpack for the first time.  Ben was definitely a fan.  Doesn't this picture make us look outdoorsy?  You would never know that we only hiked about a quarter of a mile, including the walk from our car to the trailhead.  Behind us is a lake that was so frozen people were making snowmen on it.  Pretty impressive destination for such a measly hike.  That's my kind of outdoorsiness.

Ben rolled from his back to his tummy for the first time today (the picture above is an action shot of tummy-to-back rolling, which he has fully mastered, thanks to his disdain for tummy time).  It was really entertaining to watch because it required so much effort and concentration.  He made several failed attempts but eventually managed to hoist his body weight over his arm, flop onto his belly, and finish with a big grin.  He was pretty proud of himself.  I might be pretty proud of him, too.