The Big Little Guy

We had a nice week and are winding down the school year-miraculously, just 2 weeks left. Some smaller siblings have taken to visiting our class lately and it is so fun to see Ben handle the little ones since it is he who is "the little one" most of the time. He bends down to a little baby girl and gets this huge smile on his face, gently puts his arm around her and says "hello, baby". He even has a "you are smaller than me" tone that is kinda a bit sweeter and manufactured. After nap the other day a smaller child who is two months younger than Ben woke up and pointing to Ben he shouts, "Ben!" In this big guy tone Ben says, "Yes, that's right, Ben!" So very cute.

Interesting sayings I never taught Ben but he acquired anyway:

"Whoa...motorcycle! Way cool! Awesome!"

"Oh my God!"

"Shut up" (I am not so proud of this one...)

{At the top of his lungs, out the window} "Who wants ice cream?!!!!!"

Potty Time!

Here Ben sits for the first time on the potty! He liked it so much that he stayed for 15 minutes!

HAPPY 2 BEN!!!

So much fun was had in the inflatable bouncy! Ben sits down to accept all the wonderful gifts!

Benny's Birthday!

What a great day! After a week of rain we finally had a gorgeous spring day to celebrate Ben. Everyone came to Lee's for a nice afternoon lunch. We spent most of the day outside-it was a leisure sport decathlon with bad min ton, beach volleyball, baseball and inflatable bouncy hopping all going on all at the same time. Alex and John decided to take it to a new level by playing EXTREME bad min ton where one participant (ahem, the not very responsible dad!) got on the roof of the garage! Shhh...don't tell Brian!

Ben had a blast with Sylvie who he has been requesting to see for weeks! An awesome time was had by all....special thanks to Lee and mom for making it all happen! XXXOOOO

What color to make it??

Pictures

Uncle Addy displays an easter egg made with Benner.

Fantasies!

Ben has now reached a new level in his cognitive abilities to make crazy things up and then act like they are really happening. Remember the fear of caterpillars? Well, this morning he was standing by the window and "saw" a spider: "Oh no! A spider there!" said he. Then he comes over holding his hand and says, "Oh mommy, spider bit me. Spider hurt me." Again, no bite, no spider. But in Ben's mind this whole little drama played out.

He also likes to reenact events: particularly people arriving and going. It goes something like this: "Oh hi guys! How are you? Good? Ok. Ok. All right guys. What are you doing?" then "Bye Grampa. Bye Meghan. See you soon!"

Today we will celebrate his birthday at Aunt Lee's-should be a hit!

Wake up!

It's been a nice week. A funny thing happened the other day. Ask any parent how important a nap is and imagine for a moment the task of putting 10, yes 10, children to sleep. It is a grand one, and it takes us nearly half the year to get all the kids to sleep. Someone in charge, obviously not any one who has ever taken on this immense task, thought it was a good idea to put our school next to a firehouse. So, the other day the children are settling down, tossing their blankies into the air, darting their socks at children next to them-keeping them from sleeping while Enya purrs along, pleading the children to rest for gods sake. Finally they fall asleep and about 10 minutes after the last child finally gives up the battle against Heavy Lid, the fire alarm next door goes off. Ben, from a coma like state of sleep pops up and exclaims: "FIRETRUCK, FIRETRUCK, FIRETRUCK" like he just won 10 million dollars. The children wake up like popcorn, one at a time...it was agonizing and hilarious at the same time.

Ben went to the farm the other day and it was a wonderful trip. He got the chance to pet a cow up close and bossed the 500 lb. mammal around: "Hey you, come here. Hey come on, come back. How are you? Good?" The next morning we went for a walk and found a caterpillar. "Ewwww!!!" he screeched and recoiled. "Go away! Get down". Makes no sense at all!

Happy Birthday to Benny!

Two years old today. What a perfect day! We had the pleasure of listening to 2 serenades of hb to you, compliments of gramma and leekatemeg. Then we enjoyed brownies with friends and sang the earth goes around the sun tra la in circle. We enjoyed giving speed racer stickers to all the friends in Ben's class and making a birthday bow (ben chose blue and green).


Lisa came over and we had pizza for dinner, Ben's favorite. This was followed by ice cream soup since the ice cream cake I picked up at lunch time and stored in the freezer at work did not make the ride home-oh well, it was still delicious! We opened presents presents presents (quoth Ben) and of course he was all "oh my goodness" about his vehicles: a truck that spits out a car, a set of Tonka construction vehicles, a wheel barrel and watering can, and a Diego set of building blocks where you can build up to 6 kinds a things. When I turned the jeep into a plane, Ben looked at me, grinned and said "nice". What an incredible discovery to come home to Adam's wooden vehicles last night-getting the mail will never be the same! A great birthday all around!

Ben, you are the sunshine of our life. We love more than you will ever fathom and consider ourselves the luckiest humans on earth.

I leave you with something from around 8 months old and something kinda recent:

Fancy food handling

Ben in the bath

Boilin'

Ben is sleeping after a complete meltdown that dad didn't put him to sleep, instead it was me, chopliver. The tantrums have been intense-sometimes he turns red and screams cause he dropped his car and he can't reach it from his car seat; sometimes he freaks out when it's time to put his work away-especially cars, man is it hard to part with cars. Little guy has a temper and it has been hard to watch him fall apart at the seemingly smallest of things lately. In some ways it is a tiny bit funny to watch him go stiff as an ironing board and watch his head turn into a tomato. I guess I just dig deep down to find the patience to handle it as best as I can.

"Oh my goodness" is uttered at least 15 times a day lately, he loves saying it and doing the Home Alone hands on cheeks thing. Today I enjoyed watching him play football. It was funny and so terrible twos: He would throw me the ball and I was allowed to catch it. But if I held out my hands to catch while he was practicing the kick he was all, "no mommy, mine!" But if I should try to do anything else like read something I might be interested in that was completely unacceptable too. Oh Ben!!! Two days till your birthday, little guy!

My Helper

Ben wakes up from his nap grumpy. Today he woke up and designated himself the ambassador of classroom safety. As he munched on an animal cracker he yells "Ella, no running!" Paige, dismayed at the outburst squealed some complaint and Ben says, "No thank you, Paige" and smugly sips his apple juice.

Completely on his own and much to my surprise, he has taken an interest in sitting on Drayton's potty! So exciting...he points to it and says "Poopy there! Sit!" So I put him on and we chat. He feels cool, you can tell.

Tonight for dinner we had chick pattie parm and shells. A hungry Boo demands, "I want boat, more boat"-an apt description for the little pasta shells.

Tuesday Score

Today I trashpicked a great set of unopened blocks. On our way home from school Ben insisted that I open the blocks and he made a "firetruck". Nevermind that it was vertical and looked nothing like a firetruck-it was indeed a big red fire engine in benny's mind and he sirened the whole way home. Meanwhile I sang him "hurry hurry drive the firetruck" and he asked "again? again? again?" until I simply could not comply any more. The motor vehicles thing is a full on obsession that never stops. I don't see it, vroom vroom...what's the big deal? But Ben is in love so what can I do but cheer at a mack truck or better yet school bus sighting too? Sirens are a whole other category of elation.

We had a nice day at school with almost no incidents. Ben ate his body weight in hummus and I discovered that he loves oranges so I am happy to add those items to his diet since he is such a carb freak. He is still dealing with separation issues which really blows my mind. If I leave the playground to take a kid to the bathroom, he freaks out and when I leave for lunch at nap time, the same drama ensues. I mean I come back each and every time, so it is curious to me that we aren't over it yet. New twist on the crying, while he wails he says, "I want daddy". Yesterday he fell and bit his lip, a big gushy bloody mess and the whole time it's "daddy, daddy". What's up with that? I'm chopped liver, I guess.

Today was funny. Douglas, a boy in Ben's class who is around one year older was crying and screaming when his mom came to get him. He always freaks out when she comes. Any way as he is sobbing kicking and carrying on, me and Ben were leaving and Ben is saying "Bye Douglas, bye Douglas, bye-bye." He just wouldn't let up till Douglas acknowledged him. Feeling bad for Douglas's mom who is obviously humiliated by this daily display, I picked Ben up and nudged him along. He shouts, "Bye bye Douglas" over my shoulder. All of a sudden Douglas stops crying says "Bye, Ben!" cheerfully then resumes his screaming. Agh...toddlers! How many days left till the end of the school year?

Bossy

Ben has been a little bossy lately, to everybody but most especially Rissy. If she meows, Ben says, "Rissy! Stop that now!" Or if she complains about wanting to go into the basement he sighs, runs up to her and says, "No Riss, go away. No pushing."

Yesterday we went to a restaurant after Meghan's communion. He loved the gazebo and especially chasing panpa (grandpa) around the gazebo, but when it was time to have some appetizers, he wanted no part of coming inside and screamed at the top of his lungs "No mommy! Stooop it! Don't! Go away!!!" Lovely...so I managed to get him inside kicking and screaming and into his highchair. Much to my surprise he was appeased with a few mozzarella sticks and "dip" (a big fan of the condiments is Ben). A few minutes later I felt his little hand stroking my back....is it possible for a 2 year old to have remorse? Probably not, but it did make me feel all better!