Cute one-year-old boy

Right after Ben's birthday, he started sleeping incredibly well.  He's never been a horrendous nighttime sleeper, but the past couple of weeks were just heavenly.  And even his naps were easy and long.  But this week?  Well, once again, he's lucky to be cute.  "Protective coloring," my mom calls it.  Here's some evidence:

Last Wednesday we went to Happy Apple Farms.  I let Ben sample an apple and was shocked that he went right to work and ate the whole thing.

 

We didn't end up getting a pumpkin (because I didn't want to carry it all the way back to the car), but here he is sitting by one, still eating the apple.

Then last Friday, we went to an open house at a place called Little Gym.  It's exactly what it sounds like:  a gym for little kids.  

 

 

Ben loved it until one of the workers tried to help him do a forward roll (this is apparently something a twelve-month-old can do?) and he started losing it and we went home.  This was also the first day I stopped nursing him at lunchtime, so that probably contributed to his moodiness.

On Saturday, Daniel and Ben and I went on our favorite easy hike - Mt. Cutler.  I thought we would make it home before naptime, but I was wrong.

And just for fun, I want to share two videos.  Ben is hilarious these days and is gaining new skills all the time, so I'm trying to do better at catching some of it on video.  This is my favorite new trick:

And this one isn't so new, but I still think it's adorable to watch a tiny person climb a giant staircase:

 

I haven't forgotten that I owe you, my loyal readership, a post or two about Ben's birthday.

Summer Catch-up: Part 3

For the sake of getting on with blog-life, I'm just going to put a few pictures and a few captions up from our last trip of the summer.  In mid-August, went with Daniel's brother and his family (same fine people from the previous post) to Estes Park, Colorado, for a few days.  Our cabin, which had a hot tub on and hordes of hummingbirds around its deck (both got two thumbs up from me), was just barely outside Rocky Mountain National Park.  We drove around the park every day and saw loads of pretty scenery like this:

 And this:

And this:

We took multiple family pictures that ended up looking about the same every time:

This one looked a little different:

And this one included the whole crew:

We did some mild hiking (five young kids necessitate mild hiking only):

We toted Ben around in the hiking backpack, which he loved:

We had a superb time all around.  Thanks, Clark & Steph & kids, for sharing your vacation and your s'mores with us!

Summer Catch-up: Part 2

We got home from our Great Louisville Adventure on a Monday, and the following Friday (July 30), we were on the road again.  This time we drove to Abilene, Texas, to visit Daniel's family.  Colorado Springs to Abilene is a long drive.  A loooooong drive.  But we entertained ourselves by making Ben repeat funny sounds -- this was a new trick at that point.

Daniel grew up in Abilene, and his parents are still there, and his brother/sister-in-law/nieces and nephews recently moved there, too!  So it was a big ol' family affair.

This time, we stayed at Clark and Stephanie's (the brother and sister-in-law) house.  They have four insanely cute kids, and Ben was in cousin heaven.  The three oldest cousins were really sweet to play with him, but Asher, who will be two in December, usually wasn't much of a fan.  Probably because Ben constantly poked him in the face.

Whilst in Abilene, we had an early birthday party for Ben because the Wiginton side of the family won't be here for his big birthday bash next week.  I think the pinnacle of a first birthday party is watching the baby smush cake in his face, and I didn't want to jump the gun on that special moment, so we had donuts instead of cake.

He loved the donuts (poor kid has his mama's sweet tooth).  And he got all sorts of fun toys.  Thanks, Grandmommy & Daddo and Clark & Steph!

Despite valiant efforts, we never managed to get a good picture of our little family of three.  Ben's sugar high was probably not helping matters.

Clark and Stephanie live on a lake, so we spent lot of time playing outside and enjoying their backyard and its nice view.  

And as if that weren't awesome enough, Clark bought a kayak while we were there, so we all took a few turns row-row-rowing the boat gently down the lake.

And when the 500-degree weather proved too much for us, we came inside and played with fake mustaches:

This trip also included a fun double-date with Daniel's parents.  We went to a cute, girly restaurant AND a fun little gift shop with local stuff AND a candy store, all in downtown Abilene.  That's pretty much a run-down of my favorite things, so I had a great time.  But I don't have any pictures to prove it :(

I do have a few pictures of the zoo, though!  We went to the Abilene Zoo!  The zoo was mucho fun, until Ben started melting down a little around naptime.  We had to cut our visit short, but we still got to see some good exhibits.

The whole trip was quite enjoyable.  And even though Stephanie destroyed me in several late-night games of Nerts, I think we will probably go back again :)  Assuming our Abilene hosts will have us.

*I'm almost caught up now!  Just one more trip (to Estes Park, CO) to cover, and then the blog will be devoted to a sappy post or two about baby Ben's turning the big oh-one!

Summer Travel Catch-up: Part I

The last month or so has been a bit of a whirlwind compared to our normal (admittedly boring) lives.  And I have been so very negligent when it comes to blogging all our adventures, but no more!  I hereby vow to make three posts this week, catching the blog up on our recent trips before I start making sentimental Ben's-first-birthday posts.  Hooray!

Part I:  Louisville/Southern Indiana with My Girls

I already wrote a little bit about being in Louisville with Daniel and my mildly tragic side trip to Nashville.  We were in Louisville together as a whole family for about a week, but then Ben and I stuck around for an extra week of fun with some of my favorite girls in the whole wide world.

Oh yes, we did take a "prom picture" on the stairs.  That's (left-right) Rebecca, Whitney, me, and Angela.  The four of us have been close friends since high school. After graduating, we started a tradition of making almost-annual trips together to different major-league baseball parks.  This year, we went to Cincinnati (such a cool ballpark!) to see the Reds play the Washington Nationals.

None of us are die-hard MLB fans (sorry, Dad), but the baseball trip tradition gives us a nice excuse to get together in a fun city without the pressure of staying for a long time and doing everything you're supposed to do when you go to a fun city.  Our only stated objective is to see a baseball game.  But the only actual goal is to spend some time together.


This year, we got to spend more time together than normal, which was perfect since our last baseball trip was two years ago.  Whitney and her hubby live in southern Indiana (right across the Ohio River from Louisville, and a short drive from Cincinnati), and they were kind enough to let three extra girls and a baby invade their house for a week.  We couldn't all fit in the one car we had access to, so we just got to bum around Whitney's house most of the time.  It was glorious!  

 

Whitney has a beautiful baby girl named Norah, so we spent a lot of time staring at babies.  And sitting around and eating and not getting dressed until the middle of the afternoon.

 

And reading to babies and dressing them up all young Hollywood-like.  Ben doesn't usually like anyone to play with him except me and Daniel, but he took to my girls very quickly.  I think he might have developed a few little crushes.  Smart boy.  If he marries a girl half as wonderful as one of these, I will be a happy mama.

I am incredibly thankful for these girls' friendship, and I'm so happy we make a point to see each other and stay invested in each other's lives.

As if that weren't enough fun, Angela and Rebecca and I sat by the Doobie Brothers at the Louisville airport at the end of this trip.  One of them talked to Ben, and then Angela got an autograph.  The End.

Boy Wonder

DISCLAIMER:  This is going to be the sort of post that is really uninteresting to everyone except me.  And possibly my mom.  If you choose not to continue reading, you should at least enjoy this cute picture:

In the last few weeks, sweet baby Ben has magically started to get what spoken language is all about.  It's amazing (especially to a mother who may or may not be a language nerd)!
So far, his vocabulary includes:

• ball - He says this one allllll the time now.  It started out as "bop," but now he says "baa" in a funny, nasal way.
• cat - He pronounces it "dat," with special emphasis on the "t" at the end.  If he hears me or Daniel say something about the cat, he starts looking around for Justin and saying, "Dat?  Dat?"
• meow - This one is particularly impressive to me because I didn't try to teach it to him.  He just started saying it (pronounced "mih-now") on his own.  He chased Justin yesterday while saying "mih-now" over and over.
• no, no - Hmm... I wonder where he got that one?  He seems to be better at saying it to us than he is at obeying when we say it.  Little stinker.
• uh-oh - Usually when he drops/throws something on the floor.
• pat - He really loves to pat things (anything, really) and say, "Pat, pat, pat."
• mama - My favorite, of course :)  Sometimes we'll be in the middle of playing, and he will point at me and say, "Mama."  But he is especially good at saying "Mama" when he is upset.  Often, he adds an extra syllable - "mamama."
• bye-bye - His Southern roots come out with the pronunciation of this one.  It also takes him a little while to realize that it's appropriate to say bye.  He'll watch someone leave the room and then wave and tell them "bah-bah."

 Other language-related tricks include:

• correctly answering the question, "Where is Mama's nose?"
• clapping on command and when we say, "Yay!"
• answering "aah, aah, aah" when I ask what any animal says
• making valiant efforts to imitate any sound effects Daniel and I make with our mouths
• obeying when I tell him to "pat, pat, pat" anything
• laying his head on my shoulder (briefly) when I tell him to "love Mommy"
• attempting to blow kisses -- he rarely gets all the components right, and sometimes when we blow a kiss to him, he makes the noise in this video:

Vanderbilt, All Hail!

Remember that last post when I gushed about how great Ben was on our trip?  Care to guess how he's been now that we're home?  Yeah, not awesome.  There hasn't been a lot of sleeping in our house this week.  I've uttered the phrase "I'm glad you're cute" many times.  So to remind myself just how cute he is -- and to document one more item crossed off my 30 Before 30 list -- I give you pictures of Ben by pretty things at my alma mater.

 

Here we have the lovely, oft-photographed Kirkland Hall.

These are some pretty, growing things outside Furman Hall (I had to look at a campus map to remember what the name of that white building was).

And this is a statue of some lady in the Branscomb family reading a book.  Behind Ben is my sweet friend Melissa, who kindly kept my boy from falling to the ground.

These next pictures don't exactly qualify as pretty things, but they are places on campus that have sentimental and/or comedic value to me:

Kissam Kissam.  This is the building where I lived my freshman year and where Daniel lived his freshman year.  It looks a little like old-style housing projects.  But check out those fine ladies surrounding Ben.  Thanks to Mackenzie, Susanna, and Melissa for making our 24 hours in Nashville so much fun and for running around in the 1000-degree heat to take these pictures!

Baseball Glove Lounge.  Perhaps you can see why this room would have that name.

BCM building.  This is perhaps the ugliest building of all time, but I spent many important hours of my life here.  And I met some of my dearest friends and my husband because of the Baptist Collegiate Ministries.  So, yay! (Also, notice how Ben won't put his leg down in the grass.)

I really loved being back on that campus with Ben.  My life would be very different without Vanderbilt, and my life would certainly be very different without Ben -- so it was fun to bring those two important parts of my life together for a couple of hours.  Almost makes me feel guilty for throwing away all those alumni support letters we get in the mail.

All in a fortnight's work

We're home!  I plan to make a post or two about all the fun we had in the last two weeks of travel (don't I always say that?), but first it's important to note that Ben is suddenly becoming a big kid.  Allow me to offer as evidence all the changes he has made recently.

In the last two weeks, Ben has:

*cut two teeth -- and should get two more any day now.

*started making more sounds -- including an s sound and a motorboat sound -- and imitating more of what we say to him.

*figured out (finally!) how to go from his belly to sitting up.

*gotten pretty darn good at pulling up to standing.

*started saying "pat, pat, pat" when he pat-pat-pats things.  This one is particularly adorable.

*eaten several meals of just table food (instead of baby food).

Honestly, I expected this trip to be a little bit miserable since Ben is... um, not easy-going.  But suddenly he was so easy-going!  There were still some less-than-pleasant moments, but I'm in shock that he was such a champ during our travels.  Go, baby Ben!

One more piece of evidence that he's a big boy now:  he pooped in the toilet tonight.  For real.  I stripped him down in his room and was walking to the bathroom to put him in the tub when he started making his (unmistakable, trust me) "poop face."  I wasn't sure what to do -- putting a diaper on for a few seconds seemed dumb.  So I sat him on the toilet, and he went right ahead and did his business there.  I don't know why everyone acts like potty training is so hard.  That was a breeze. ;)