My Favorite Things: Ben Edition

Fair warning:  This is one of those baby-book posts that contains way more details than most of you care about.  Ben is at an especially fun age right now, and I honestly think multiple times a day, "This is what I hoped motherhood would be like."  For my own sake, I wanted to record some of the things that I'm loving about Ben at fifteen months.

*He calls our Christmas stockings "boots."

*Sometimes he talks stream-of-consciousness style.  And sometimes he says one word, then says other words that sound like it (rhyming or alliterative words, usually).  He recently learned the word "berries," but he pronounces it "boo-des."  Several times lately, he has said, "Boo-des... Stooges."  He learned who the Three Stooges are at my parents house, and they apparently made quite an impression on him.

*He will randomly say "boo!" to scare us.

*He LOVES a seventh-grade boy at our church named Graham (Graham helps his parents in the nursery on Sunday mornings).  Any mention of church, friends, or favorite anythings makes Ben say "Graham!"  A few days ago, Daniel asked Ben, "What's your favorite thing about Mommy?"  Ben's answer?  Graham.  Then last night, we were headed to a Christmas parade and were trying to get Ben excited about it.  I said, "Do you know what we're going to see at the parade?"  Ben got a sweet, hopeful look on his face and said, "Graham?!"

*He gives excellent snuggles, hugs, and kisses.  Sometimes I don't even have to ask :)

*He thinks any beverage not in a sippy cup is coffee.  Even if I have a water bottle, he calls it "taw-hee."

*He likes to pretend to eat and drink things, complete with fake smacking noises.  Then he shares with us or the cat. 

*His favorite thing in the world right now is to play on our bed.  He has two favorite games there:  1)He lays his head down, pretends to sleep, then pops up and says, "Hi!"  2)We give him two coffee cups and a stash of pens, and he transfers pens from one cup to the other, hands pens to us, fake-drinks from the cups, etc.  Yes, this is totally weird.  But some mornings he even requests this game while he eats breakfast - "Bed!  Pen!  Taw-hee!"

*He puts everything (seriously, everything) on his head and calls it a hat.

*He still loves Justin the Cat.  However, he now thinks Justin's name is Midget (his cousins' cat in Abilene).

*At naptime and bedtime, I hand him a little fleecy blanket before I lay him down.  Even if he is upset about going to bed, he snuggle the blanket up to his face and lays his head on my shoulder.  Ohhhh, it is so sweet!

*He calls his grandparents all the time on anything that resembles a phone.  One day this week, he called Nana on a calculator.

*He says "please" a lot.  If he demands something, I can say, "Ask nicely."  And he adds a "peas!"  He doesn't know he's being polite.  He just knows he's more likely to get what he wants when he says "please."  But it sure sounds cute.

*He is a full-time walker now, and it kind of blows my mind.  Walking has done wonders for his moods and my moods (it was time for him to be less mommy-dependent, I promise).  Everyone told me that once he started walking, I would wish he were crawling again.  That has totally not been the case for us.  In fact, my only complaint is that he carries things from one room to another and puts them in strange places.  I have to spend a few minutes every night relocating small objects. 

*He is still not an easy-going kid, but his feisty temperament is sooo much easier to handle now than it was even a few months ago.  So far, toddlerhood suits him quite nicely.  I am so thankful to spend my days with this precious BIG boy!

On walking

Having Ben has taught me a lot about what not to say to other mothers.  So much of what people say to you as a new mom makes you want to kick them in the teeth (or maybe that's just me?).  Therefore, as a public service to anyone who ever comes in contact with a woman who has a baby, I want to offer two pieces of advice regarding what to say:


1. Tell her that her baby is absolutely perfect.  Then tell her that you can't believe she ever gave birth to a child because she looks so smokin' hot.


2. Rather than asking if the baby has reached a specific developmental milestone, ask, "What is he/she doing these days?"  Mom still gets to brag, but you spare her the awkwardness of admitting that her absolutely perfect child has not, in fact, reached that specific milestone.


In my own case, the current milestone is walking (I seem to be talking about this a lot here -- I'm really not as sensitive about it as I'm making myself out to be).  When your child turns one, that is all people ask you about.  "Oh, he's a year old!  Is he walking?"  Then when your child turns fourteen months old, it morphs into the question I got this week:  "He's still not walking?!" (This is where the teeth-kicking urge comes in.)

No, he is still not walking.  Not on his own, at least.  He's awfully fond of walking with a parental finger for support, but he drops to the ground (intentionally) if we try to let go.

Let me reiterate:  we really are not worried.  Lots and lots of perfectly fine kids with perfectly fine parents don't walk until later.  And it's obvious to anyone who has seen Ben walk that he could do it without support.  He is just scared or stubborn or trying to keep his mama humble.

He has also given us some glimmers of hope recently by taking a few independent steps.  He totally ignores our attempts to coax him into walking and just randomly decides to take steps on his own terms.  Then when he's done, he doesn't seem to realize that he accomplished a major feat.  He just moves on like nothing happened.  He is a mystery, that one.  For the grandparents, here is the little mystery in action (turn your volume down -- I'm talking reallllly loudly):

 

Last weekend

We have lived in Colorado Springs for two years, and this is the first time we've experienced a Fall here that lasted longer than five minutes.  I am loooooving it.  I'd forgotten how nice seventy-degree weather is.  This cutie is enjoying some extra time outside, too:

He had better enjoy it because next year he's responsible for raking all those leaves.

My Aunt Cheri sent Ben a super cute shirt for Halloween, and I made some valiant efforts to get a good picture of it last Saturday.  I failed.  This was as good as it got:

His arm is inside an empty puffs container.  He's been really fascinated by sticking his arm into things lately.  We call this move "RoboBen."

On Sunday, Ben finally got to wear his "Happy Reformation Day" shirt that we've been saving since before he was born.  Are we dorks?  Yes, we are.  But you knew that.  Again, I tried and failed to get a good picture of the shirt.  You can't deny that he looks awfully cute, though:

On Sunday night, we changed into our Halloween costumes to go to our church's Fall Festival.  I had the brilliant idea that we would dress up together as Andy Griffith, Aunt Bea, and Opie.  Unfortunately, my execution of this idea was a bit flawed (because I was lazy and cheap), and it was sort of a flop.  Only a few people knew who we were supposed to be.  And I know you'll be shocked by this, but we only got really terrible pictures of ourselves:

For real, these were the best ones.

Despite the stupid looks on our faces, we had fun at the Fall Festival.  Ben got to play in a ball pit, and he got a balloon.  In Ben's world, it really can't get any better than that unless Gogurt consumption is involved.

And finally, my favorite bizarro little man decided that the best place for his upper lip was inside his lower lip.  He spent several hours making this face. He is so. so. weird.  But man-oh-man do I love him.

Don't worry!

Based on the response to my last post, it's probably a good thing I usually only post about good things.  Because now most of you either think I'm crazy, or you're worried that I'll never post cute Ben things here anymore.  I would have a hard time convincing you that I'm not crazy, but I can certainly put your mind at ease about sharing Ben's cuteness.

We took Ben to his first football game today.  Our new friend at church plays for the USAFA Prep School Huskies, and we wanted to go to one of his home games before it got too cold.  I forgot that it's always cold at the Air Force Academy (what's up with that?).  We lasted an hour and a half, which I count as a huge success.  And Ben LOVED it.  He ate some snacks and made some new friends.  He managed to keep his hat and gloves on almost the entire time we were there, and he looked INSANELY ADORABLE in them:

If you want to tell me that's not the cutest thing you've ever seen, I'm going to make you prove it.

To quote our president, "Let me be clear."

I went to a MOPS meeting at church this morning, and our speaker was fabulous.  She reminds me a lot of my own mom, in that she really seems to get it.  She has the wisdom and perspective that years of motherhood provide, but she in no way pretends to be an expert sprinkling her vast understanding on those of us who are too stupid to know things already.  

Something she said today, though, made me think about the way I have presented myself and my family on this blog lately.  She cautioned us to be careful about bragging on our children because the very trait you are so proud of may be something another mom is insecure about in her own child.  And since my very last post here was about how brilliant I think Ben is (and since I hate hate HATE the silent competition that seems to exist between moms), I just want to clear the air:

Yes, Ben is very verbal.  That's just where he excels.  But he is thirteen months old, and I don't think he'll be walking any time soon. 

And he is still way more clingy than a kid his age probably should be.  He cries A LOT every time I drop him off at the church nursery.  Sometimes he's still crying when I pick him up.  He usually wants me or Daniel close by even at home.  

He really doesn't like to be told "no."  If he doesn't flat-out ignore me, then he throws a fit about it.  There is a lot of crying in our house.  And I'm not even very good about sticking to my guns every time I tell him "no."

His sleeping is somewhat inconsistent.  Sometimes he wakes up at 8:30 in the morning, and sometimes he wakes up at 6:30.  I got so tired of guessing every day whether he would take good naps that I only put him down for an afternoon nap now.  He probably still needs the morning nap some days, but I know he'll be exhausted by the time 1:30 rolls around, and I can count on two hours of peace.  So in case I make myself seem like I have it all together on this blog, you can rest assured that I don't.

In fact, motherhood makes me feel more incompetent than anything else I have ever done.  And that includes teaching middle school, which I will freely admit kicked my butt.

I care way too much about what other people think of my mothering, too.  I come home from church crying most Sundays because of some off-hand comment that I took personally (Ben isn't walking because I carry him too much, I shouldn't be weaning him already, his crying makes the other kids in the nursery cry, I need to suck it up and stop worrying about him in the nursery, and on and on).  I wish I weren't so sensitive, but I am SO SENSITIVE about the job I'm doing as Ben's mom.

And sometimes I'm legitimately not doing a good job.  Like the times I forget to change his diaper for hours at a time and he ends up with diaper rash.  And I have to let him run around naked and he pees on things.

And maybe you missed it a couple of posts ago when I had to take him to the hospital because I let him play with a Tylenol bottle.  That should clear up any misconceptions that the Wiginton household is running like a dream.

I usually choose to post about the fun, happy things that happen around here because this blog is closest I'm ever going to get to a scrapbook (there's another area where I don't have it together).  Also, my natural tendency in life is to focus on the negative, so this blog helps me remind myself what an incredible gift it is to be Ben's mom.

So I hope you'll understand that what I post here is only part of our lives -- usually just the better part.

No, seriously. He is a genius.

Ben is obsessed with books right now.  Really, really obsessed (I can't imagine where he gets that).  We easily "read" 30 books every day, and quite a few of those feature animals.  Apparently he's actually been paying attention because he suddenly knows all sorts of animal sounds:

We intentionally taught him most of these, but he caught on to the owl and dolphin sounds on his own.  I know, right?  My experience with 13-month-olds is a little limited, but I'll just go ahead and assert that this one is a genius.  Yet he doesn't seem to understand when I tell him not to throw things from his highchair...

Molly Maid

First, a little back-story:  On Tuesday morning, Ben was playing in my room while I got ready.  I'm not in the habit of leaving medication on the floor, but there was a box of various medical-type things on the floor of my closet that day (Mistake #1).  Ben discovered a couple of pill bottles and decided they were fun shakers.  I saw they had child-proof caps and let him shake away (Mistake #2).  To avoid an inevitable meltdown, I let him continue to shake a bottle of Tylenol while he ate breakfast (Mistake #3).  Then I stopped thinking and left him alone in his highchair while I got my own breakfast.  Roughly two minutes later, I made the panicked realization that HE STILL HAD THE TYLENOL (Mistake #4).  Of course, he had managed to open the bottle.  Of course.

Based on my frantic forensic analysis, I was about 95% certain that he hadn't taken any pills.  However, when you call the pediatrician and they tell you that even one extra-strength Tylenol can kill your child, you do not rely on 95% certainty.  And it seems the only people who can determine if your child has taken Tylenol are the kind-but-not-so-efficient doctors at the ER.  So we spent Tuesday morning at the ER -- my patient husband, my slightly bored baby, and his mother who felt like the scum of the Earth.

Now that we have those minor details out of the way, let's discuss the real story here.  While attempting to entertain Ben at the ER, we took several walks down the halls, and Ben took a bizarre interest in the janitor's cart.  I pointed out the broom to him, and he latched right on to that.  He would point at the cart and yell, "Broom!" (pronounced "boom") - over and over and over - every time we went into the hall.

Then the next morning, I pulled out our broom, and it got the same reaction.

I thought it would be another couple of years before Ben would be good slave labor, but I have hit the baby jackpot with him.  Maybe I can teach him to clean a toilet before he learns how to use one!  Score!