We finally decided to try to take some pictures of Ben with the belly while we still have the chance. He wasn’t exactly cooperative, but we got a few. He seems to have a pretty good understanding of what’s in there — most nights recently he gives the belly a hug and a kiss and says “goodnight baby” before he goes to bed. 🙂
Sunday was Ben’s two and a halfth birthday. We celebrated by taking pictures, of course.
We got snow again a few days ago. This is certainly an unusual winter in the Pacific Northwest. This time, we were able to get out and play in it a bit more — Ben was much more interested in it than he was just a month and a half ago. We even built a snowman! A small snowman, because the snow was so very powdery it didn’t stick together well, but one with a hat and a face and buttons and all that. Identifiably a snowman.
Eric’s family joined us for Christmas again this year, since we obviously weren’t traveling anywhere at this stage of pregnancy. We had a wonderful, relaxed holiday. Ben greatly enjoyed having grandparents and aunts here to read to him and build train tracks for him. He received some wonderful gifts, but not enough stuff to overwhelm him, for which we are grateful. He had lots of fun opening presents, though — whether they were his or not. 🙂
…or roughly thereabouts, Ben fell asleep at the table during his afternoon snack. He rarely naps anymore, so this was something of a shock. And I don’t think he’s ever fallen asleep at the table before! Naturally, our first reaction was to take pictures, and then to move him to the bed. 🙂
Oh, and the title…. is one of Ben’s favorite things to say these days. Apparently he was very busy “las’ week, half hour ago,” doing all sorts of things!
And also, sorry for the gap in posting. Between a 2.5 day power outage (due to this storm) and the resulting computer network chaos at our house, I’m only now able to actually get to the photos to be able to upload them. More pictures coming soon of the 35 week belly and the Christmas tree.
The day after Thanksgiving, instead of going shopping like many people do, we like to honor Buy Nothing Day. Over the years, that evolved into Make Something Day, and last year, we decided to start our own new family tradition of making Christmas ornaments on that day. That means we get new and meaningful Christmas ornaments to add to our collection every year, we get to explore whatever craft idea seems age-appropriate for the kids, and we sort of kick off our holiday season with a day spent together being creative and goofy.
This year, we decided to bake inedible cookies and decorate them with glue and glitter and paint. Ben was involved at every stage of the process, and was way more focused than I expected him to be. He sat and happily played with glue and glitter for probably over an hour. He created his own little works of art which will hang with pride on our tree this year.
On Sunday we carved pumpkins. Yes, we all did. Yes, we gave Ben a knife and told him to stab a pumpkin. He cackled. (It was a special pumpkin-carving knife and it wasn’t actually dangerously sharp.) He certainly seemed to enjoy using it. 🙂
Today, he wore his costume, the “Hawaiian Lion.” The background: Ben has several Hawaiian shirts, and he loves them. But last summer, he couldn’t say Hawaiian. Instead, he called them his Lion shirts. And if he saw anyone else in a Hawaiian shirt, he called it a Lion shirt too. It sort of morphed into this Hallowe’en costume of a lion in a Hawaiian shirt. And now he can say it.
We went to a non-scary family Hallowe’en party at a local church tonight, and it was a huge party! On the way, we stopped to Trick-or-Treat at the houses of two friends (our neighborhood isn’t very pedestrian-Trick-or-Treat friendly, and it was freezing), and while Ben could happily repeat to himself “crick or treat” in the car, when we got to the first house, he held up his pumpkin bucket and said “Bucket.” At the second one he said nothing at all. Oh well. I’m sure next year he’ll have the idea.
On Saturday, Ben turned 27 months old. Two and a quarter. Getting so big!
We haven’t been good about taking photos every month lately, but decided to try to take some on his quarter-birthday. It was a gorgeous sunny fall day so we went to the park.
…on the face and in the hair. Sometimes he’s good about feeding himself yogurt, and sometimes he’s better about smearing it all over his head. 🙂
