It's good to know you're growing up

It's hard to believe it, but Ben's "due date" was a year ago yesterday. When he was first born it felt like he would always be a cute, totally helpless bundle of baby in a never-ending cycle of diaper-cry-diaper-food-cry-diaper-cry-diaper-cry-cry-foooooood!!! 

dapper Ben

While he is still technically in that cycle, it's spread out much more over the course of the day, and at least now he can make a lot of his wishes known (so much less crying!). He has true likes and dislikes and is mostly a real joy to be around (unless I'm trying to get a project around and he doesn't want me to leave his sight).

When people say that "babies grow up so fast" they are so right... unless you are a new new mom and then that is the most ridiculous, frustrating thing you've ever heard.

I know I didn't properly appreciate how hard being a new mom was, and over the past year I feel like every single thing about my life has changed, and is still changing and changing with every stage he goes though. I definitely like each stage better than the last one, too!

I remember a good teacher friend of mine told me that being a mom had made her a better, much more flexible teacher. I totally believe that. If/when I go back to the classroom I know I won't be able to get there at 6 in the morning and have everything over-prepared and completely structured, but I will also be a bit more understanding of some of the students (and their parents!), and I know I will be better at goofy read-alouds.

playtime with Grady: mostly they shared toys very nicely!

"reading" to Auden

favorite zoo animal: fish! (he can get right up in their faces)

and I thought teething was bad...

Poor Ben has his first ear infection. While he suffered a lot every time a new tooth made its way to the surface of his mouth, this ear infection not only pains Ben during the day, but it has been causing him to wake up every 40 minutes to two hours at night. NOT fun. This is his fifth day on antibiotics, and last night he only woke up once, so I think (finally!!) he must be feeling better.

We discovered his ear infection in kind of a round-about way. After spending a lovely week in El Paso visiting my family, Ben and I flew home on Saturday. That evening, on our way back from dinner, a brightly colored ball bounced out in front of Clay's car. Clay hit the brakes, imagining a 5-year-old in hot pursuit of the ball, and we were rear-ended by a Land Rover going pretty fast. Ben immediately started screaming, which was really terrifying. 

unhappy boy with an ear-ache

Clay pulled off the road and we immediately dashed out to check on Ben. The back of Clay's car was pretty smashed in, and it was hard for him to get the doors open on his side of the car. Luckily, once we had Ben out of the car seat and in our arms, he calmed down after about five minutes. It's amazing how much more scary everything is when your child is involved!

Anyway, after making a police report (the officer also helped Clay cut away part of the tire-well that was now scraping the back tire), we finally made it back home. Clay and I had pretty bad whiplash and went to the doctor to get checked out the next day. When we took Ben to get checked out by the doctor, she discovered his ear infection, which we've been battling all week.

In happier news, during his stay in El Paso, it seems like Ben hit another milestone: he now walks (instead of crawling) about 95% of the time. He mostly only crawls now when playing with a car toy or when he's really tired. Because he's getting so good at walking, I'm now putting shoes on him most times when we go out. Who knew getting a shoe onto the foot of another human being could be so tricky? Certainly not me.

I'm still in the process of getting what-used-to-be-the-pond transformed into a normal part of my yard. It's taking a whole lot more dirt that I imagined, and I'm having to go back and cut more holes in the plastic liner of the pond so it will drain properly. I hope that soon I can just plant some pretty foliage there, and have done with it!

Here are the newest additions to our backyard (generously donated by our friends, Luis & Leilani). Now our yard really looks like a kid lives here!

de-ponding in progress: still needs MORE dirt!

Jake (and his velcro hands) hitching a ride

**and a few more pictures from our El Paso/ New Mexico visit**

learning to climb trees with Grandpa

riding the Cloudcroft, NM trails with Gramma

talking a forest hike 

El Paso, Ahoy!

Arg! Pirate Ben splashes in the Seven Seas

While Clay is "enjoying" an especially busy period at work, I'm visiting my parents and brother in El Paso. We've only been here a few days so far, but Ben has already learned the joys of splashing in his own water-filled plastic pirate ship, gotten to "teach" Gramma about the joys of randomly banging on her computer keyboard, and been carried around the El Paso Zoo by his Uncle Greg.

loves the sliding glass door

The last time we were here, Ben wasn't even sitting up very well on his own, and now he's up and walking (and much more fun to be around). He surprisingly hasn't given my parents' dogs or cat too hard of a time, and they have mostly ignored him.

Last week Ben hit a real milestone with baby sign language. Instead of just using the "more" sign during meal time after I'd used it first, he signed "more" when we came to the end of his morning milk bottle (with no prompting from me). It's so wonderful-- now instead of crying until I figure out what he wants, we can really start communicating in a meaningful way!

teaching Gramma about PowerPoint

story time

Uncle Greg introduces Ben to prairie dogs

lions!

Every day is independence day

Now that he's 11 months old, Ben has seemingly hit some sort of mental milestone. He has stopped using clapping as his "more" sign language sign, and is starting to sign it more correctly every time he wants more at meal time. He can also point to my nose and some times to my mouth when I ask where they are. 

Meal times are definitely more challenging these days. He went from being a spoon-fed, puree-eating champ to refusing to let me spoon-feed him at all. Although he often gags on bits real food, he prefers little bits of chopped food that he tries valiantly to feed to himself (I'd say he probably has a 25% success rate when getting the food into his mouth). I guess it's ultimately good that he's so keen to do everything all by himself. He also doesn't want anyone's help when he's walking and would rather fall than grap someone's hand. Sheesh.

eleven month Ben

Ben has also gotten into a "try to kiss everything with fur" phase. He especially seemed to enjoy trying to bestow open-mouthed kisses on the two dogs we were dog-sitting last weekend. Sadly, the pug, Titus was as interested in receiving Ben's kisses as Ben was at giving them. (See pictures below)

We recently let Ben play in the grass for the first time, and although he was initially very weirded out by it's springy spongey-ness, he ended up enjoying it a lot. (Every other time he'd been set down outside, I'd always put a blanket under him.) 

I've been looking for (free!) places where I can take Ben where he can get a lot of good, safe, & independent crawling/walking time, and one of our friends suggested Landa Park's lawn. It has a huge expanse of shady St. Augustine grass, but leave it to my boy to make a bee-line for the gravel path at the edge and then try to eat the gravel... repeatedly. Ah well, at least he did get some nice outside time while it lasted!

Speaking of outside, we finally got rid of our backyard pond (in an effort to make the backyard a nice, safe place for Ben to play in). I spent all of last Sunday draining the pond and trying to save as much of the waterlily and as many fish as possible. The day before San Antonio reached a high of 108, but luckily for me, it rained the entire time I was outside working on the pond stuff. I have been trying to fill in the pond with dirt and leaves, but it seems like no matter how much dirt I buy, you can still see the pond's rubber liner. I guess I shouldn't have made the pond so raccoon-proofed/deep!

It's pretty sad to look out at what used to be the pond and see the sad hole in the ground, but I know as soon as I've gotten it filled and planted some plants there, it'll be better. 

working on his future modeling career

exploring sunbeams

bubble machine at "Baby Time" @ the library

learning to self-feed (tricky business)

movin' in for the kiss with visitor Titus Puggo

trying to steal visitor Chanti's "bling" (dog tags)

Titus Puggo: a captivated audience?