Babysoroos

The second half of November was lots of fun because Granny and Granda came to visit, all the way from Northern Ireland. They were here for (almost) two weeks, and Ben really had a great time with these new playmates. 🙂

He suddenly learned a bunch of new words, and also started demonstrating a much better understanding of things we say to him. We can now completely change the subject of his focus just by suggesting something. Sometimes, at least. If our suggestion sounds fun. Like, for example, when he was playing with his Legos (thanks, Uncle Steven!) and someone would innocently suggest he take off Granda’s socks. He *liked* that game. Well, Ben did. Not sure about Granda.

New words include:

• booty (for veggie booty, puffed cereal snack)
• naaak (for snacks, crackers)
• cookie (umm, guess 🙂 )
• out
• coat
• goat
• chair
• cheese
• nigh-nigh
• OK
• alright
• eye (while trying to poke mine out)
• nose

And he can moo like a cow, woof like a dog, roar like a lion, quack like a duck and neigh like a horse. Sometimes. Sometimes he gets them mixed up. And sometimes he MOOOOOOs at the moon. But it’s OK, he’s still learning.

View the album.

Ben has become quite the climber lately. He scales chairs and then gets on the table. Or he starts with the coffee table and heads for the stereo… this could get very, very bad. We’re keeping him away from the bookcase!

He’s also starting to really be able to communicate! He signs milk, more, and water. Politely and consistently and demandingly. And the list of words that he says is suddenly growing. His repertoire now includes:

• shoe
• tat (cat)
• googal (Dougal the cat. Or Google? Hmm.)
• car
• up
• down (kinda sorta)
• happy (but I don’t think he knows what it means)
• yeah, yah, da (all mean yes)
• no
• buh-bye
• mummy
• dada
• bapf (bath)
• hot
• hat

That’s all I can think of right now. He doesn’t pronounce them all perfectly, but they’ve all been said repeatedly and with enough consistency that we are sure he knows what they mean. Except happy. We’re not sure he knows what happy means, but he goes around chanting it sometimes. 🙂

Here are some more pictures from around the house, the park, the beach. And signing.

View the album.

And here is our little knight in shining armor.

View the album.

Yet more zoo pictures (think we’re getting our money’s worth from our membership?), photos of Ben’s new armchair, and lots of pictures that are a direct result of mom taking a photography class last month. Ben was a very popular subject on field trips! 🙂

Tomorrow I will post pictures of the Halloween costume – the Knight of the Order of the Carrot. He wore it on three different occasions!

View the album.

Weekend before last, we bought a new backpack to carry Ben in, and immediately went for a hike down to the beach at Discovery Park. It was one of the last warm beautiful days of summer. Ben had a great time looking for sticks and stones and trying to eat the sand.

View the album.

Then last weekend, we went to a pumpkin patch with some friends from Everett, and Ben got to run (well, stumble) around in a pumpkin field while we picked out some lovely pumpkins to carve, cook, and just leave on the porch for decoration. We bought him new boots for the occasion (they’re dinosaurs). There were lots of interesting things for the kids, besides the pumpkins. A goat bridge, a hay house, a tire (tyre) horsey barn… I think Ben enjoyed himself.

View the album.

Some more catching up. Pictures from several trips to the zoo, visiting friends, more eating, goofy walking and dancing.

View the album.

It’s been a busy couple of months! I have a lot of photos to catch up on.

Here’s a start:

We went to the wading pools a lot this summer. Ben really got accustomed to the water and started having a lot of fun. Some pictures from one day towards the end of July.

Ben’s grandparents (Eric’s parents) were here at the end of July. Ben had lots of fun going for walks and reading books with them. Pictures of their visit.

And of course there was lots of photo-taking just around the house and Seattle, as there always is. We had a brief visit from Aunt Cindy, although we didn’t get any good pictures. We went to see the Blue Angels while she was here, Ben loved that. Some pictures from the end of July/beginning of August.

In the middle of August, we went to Chicago for a weekend to meet some of my friends from the online messageboard, who all have babies around Ben’s age. We spent a day at the zoo, and on the Saturday night had a “party” in one of the hotel suites. Ten adults, seven one-year-olds. Chaos! But lots of fun. Pictures of Ben and the other babies (warning – this is a long album! 42 pictures).

After that, we rented a car and drove to Iowa to visit some family for a week. Eric’s mom met us there for a couple of days, and we went to the Iowa State Fair. We got to spend a lot of time with Great Grandma Peg, and Eric’s Uncle Phil and Aunt Judy. We went swimming nearly every day – there’s a wonderful toddler pool there and Ben really had fun in the water (sorry, no pictures of that). Pictures of Iowa.

That’s it for now. More catching up later. And I promise to put some pictures on the home page next time.

We had Ben’s one year doctor’s appointment on Wednesday. He weighed in at 30lbs 12oz, and measured 32.25″ long. (Or tall. When do we start talking height instead of length?) Anyway, still big. Still way off the charts, but at least he’s maintaining his own curve quite nicely. And the doctor was happy with all his developmental milestones.

Speaking of which, here’s a little summary of what he can do as a just-turned-one-year-old:

• He walks very steadily. He even sometimes walks places we need to go, as long as we’re not in a hurry.
• He can finally get up to standing from the middle of the floor. No more crawling.
• He knows where his bellybutton is and can point to it if I ask him.
• He waves bye-bye. Sometimes even if noone is leaving.
• He claps and grins when you say “good job!” or “Yay!”
• He points to trees and says “dee?”
• He brings you books and expects you to read them to him.
• He brings you the diaper bag and expects you to feed him the snacks that we keep in it.
• He dances to music. Some music, at least.
• He babbles a lot. Few words, but lots of intonation and expression.
• He still tries to put everything his mouth. Except some types of food which belong on the floor.
• He loves drinking water and gets very excited when I offer it to him at the end of a meal. And then he takes a few sips and throws it on the floor too.
• He’s starting to feed himself with a spoon, occasionally.
• He can sort of throw a ball. Well, sometimes it goes forward and sometimes backward, but he’s getting the idea.

He’s a really cheerful little guy most of the time. He has a wonderful variety of laughs and giggles and cackles, and he makes us very happy. This has been such a fantastic year!

Here are some more pictures from July – from before and after his birthday. This one’s a fairly long album. Some from around the house, playing with our bedroom curtains (he’s been fascinated with those since he was tiny – he used to just stare at them when he was only weeks old!), the joint birthday party for all the playgroup kids, and some more from the zoo – we took Grandma and Grandpa while they were visiting.

View the album.

Thursday was Ben’s first birthday! Ben celebrated by refusing to take a nap all afternoon, but he was surprisingly happy despite the lack of sleep.

Grandma and Grandpa Soroos arrived in the afternoon and we had some cake, which Ben seemed to enjoy immensely. He even managed to actually eat some of it! After he got cleaned up (and boy, did he need cleaned up!), we opened presents. He got lots of cool new toys to keep him entertained.

The album below is all birthday photos. I have some other recent ones to post in the next few days. Sorry for the lack of recent updates – we’ve been having computer problems. Hopefully we’re back to regular new photo-sharing now, though.

View the album.

Last week, Ben turned 11 months old. The first few pictures of this set were taken the next day (we missed taking pictures on the 21st this month, oops). It’s so hard to believe he’s almost 1 year old! Although, looking at some of these pictures, he is clearly turning into a little boy and not a baby anymore.

One evening we took him down to the Ballard Locks to look at the boats. He was able to wander around for quite a while – a nice change of scenery from our living room, and flatter ground than the park, and also more contained with fences on either side so we didn’t have to chase him so much. He seemed to have a blast walking around smiling and waving at people and laughing at us.

View the album.