news tidbits

Benjamin is turning into a real charmer. He's smiling a lot more now (mostly during the day; he still gets a bit fussy in the evenings, so sadly Clay usually misses the best of his happy time), and I might have heard him laugh for the first time this morning. Just like with his first "real smile" I wasn't sure if it was the real thing or not. He's enjoying looking at things, and when his hands happen upon a toy, he enjoys holding it and putting it in his mouth, too. He especially loves a stuffed giraffe toy/blanket given to him by a friend of his grandma Irene.

At the moment he's sitting in his bouncy chair behind me, holding on to a rung of a plastic baby chain, and saying "Aoooh?" then kicking his legs. Every time he kicks his legs it makes the other dangling toys dance around, which makes him kick harder. Good exercise and pretty darn cute.

Gramma's first book

In other news, we've been trying to be better about taking The Colonel for evening walks every night. It helps that mostly the weather has started cooling off. Benjamin enjoys the walks almost as much as The Colonel. If he doesn't fall asleep, Ben likes looking around with huge eyes at the sky and trees as from the vantage point of the baby backpack.

He's also still enjoying being read to and stares hard at the pictures. His Gramma Jan has been working on modifying books to make them special for him. Yesterday she sent us a copy of "On the Night You Were Born" in which she had labeled all the pictures (so when he's older we can have fun reading them together). I'm so excited about her future book-modifying/making projects! My Nana did that for a book for me, and it always made me feel so loved.

I just finished reading a book called Brain Rules for Baby which I definitely recommend to anyone who is thinking of having a baby (the first section is about pregnancy), who has a baby, or is just interested in child psychology. It is written by a brain scientist and is all about what scientific studies say about the growing brain, happiness, and intelligence. Definitely worth the read!

In some not so good news, last weekend I got an e-mail from my bank that my debit card had suspicious charges on it. Sure enough there were 4 different charges that I didn't make. They only amounted to about $35 total, but (of course) the bank had to cancel my debit card and send me a new one, which was kind of annoying to be without all week. The weird thing was, one of the products ordered by the fraudulent charges was a skin cream that was actually shipped to me yesterday. So today I called my bank to tell them and mailed the cream back. Sheesh. I hope this is the last of all of the banking trouble.

"learning tower" step stool

Today I did a bit of investing for Ben's future fun by buying a gently-used "Learning Tower" from one of my former co-workers. It's a toddler/preschooler step stool that is apparently great for kids "helping" in the kitchen and elsewhere around the house. I'm excited about it's future prospects!

Tomorrow night Clay and I plan to leave little Ben for the first time while we go to a banquet associated with Clay's work. I had imagined this would make me a bit nervous, but we're leaving him with one of our good friends who already knows him and is great with babies, so I'm know it will be fine. It will certainly be weird to have dinner and not have him near us though!

milk drunk

getting ready to go for a walk