Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Today was Benjamin's first Halloween so his mommy had to plan something very special for his big day and what better way to celebrate than a Halloween party for him and 9 friends (plus 7 other moms). The soiree started at 10AM and lasted for about 2-1/2 hours, since by that time most of those little bodies were ready for a long nap after a morning of eating, crafts and photo taking.

Ben dressed up as a cuddly leopard and therefore I had to dress up as the mommy kitty to complete his whole look. Here's a photo of us together. The funniest part about my costume was that when Ben first saw it when I went to get him from his morning nap, he kept looking at me and smiling and was completely distracted as I was trying to nurse him. He couldn't seem to get enough of me with ears, whiskers and a pink nose!

I set up a "photo area" near the entrance to my house so that I could (attempt) to get every child's photo when he/she first got to the party. Some are with the moms and some are alone, but here are the photos of our guests today:

Jordan (4-1/2) and Jorianna (2-1/2) Spencer:

Aimee and Elaina (almost 2) Saunders:

Tyler (almost 2) and Samantha (2 months) Kriebel:

Julie and Talya (6 months) Delp:

Nicole and Xander (6 months) Hoishik:

Sarah and Will (1 year) Stewart:

Nicholas Roque (2 weeks!!):

I made some fun themed foods and just about everything was shaped like a pumpkin and tinted orange on the food table! Here are two photos of my two favorite creations, candy corn shaped cookies and Jack-o-lantern yogurt smoothies:

We did two crafts, Cheerio spiders and "decorate your own pumpkin-shaped Rice Krispie treat", and Barney certainly is still having a blast roaming the area where these crafts took place, looking for runaway candy corns and Cheerios!

Here are some of the kids at work on their crafts (and for the babies, the moms had fun doing their craft!) . You should have seen some of the creations that were made - pink and purple spiders and pumpkins with 10 eyes - lol!

I had the best time preparing everyone's favors so I wanted to take a photo of them to share. I gave the babies two organic teething biscuits, the toddlers Play Doh and the moms a Halloween scrapbook page that I put together for each person. Our scrapbook group is meeting on Friday night so it will be fun to scrap our photos together!

The kids all seemed to have a fun time playing together this morning and I particularly love to see Ben interact with the other babies that are close to his age. It's so much fun to watch them explore one another (by pulling each other's hair and swatting each other in the face!). All of the little babies looked so cuddly today in their cute costumes.

Ben and Talya are always so cute together, especially now that they can both sit steadily and therefore are able to interact more.

Ben and Xander have seen each other more often lately and really seem to have a fun time together. How cute and cuddly do they both look in their little animal costumes?!?! (and I swear that Ben's costume is long enough on him as it's a 6-12 month...it's just loose at the legs and kept riding up so it looks like he's wearing knickers in every photo!)

Will joins in the fun. It's hard to see in a photo, but Will had THE best costume and his mom made it! It's a spider where the legs are made out of stuffed socks and when Will crawls, it looks like this enormous spider moving around. The best part, though, was that mom Sarah had a "web" on her white skirt so he looked like he was sitting in his web when she held him in his sling. Adorable and so creative!

Here are a couple photos of the smallest critters today - Nicholas "Rooster" Roque before donning his feathers, just dressed in his regular Halloween attire and Miss Samantha the elephant. The ears on her costume were each at least twice the size of her head - so cute!!

Talya poses in her butterfly wings for the camera. My, it's tough to be a girl these days between Samantha's enormous elephant ears and Talya's oversized butterfly wings. Ben wouldn't have put up with either for very long but these gals were troopers!

Finally, Miss Elaina the Indian Princess is helping me keep Ben well-fed by giving him "O's" out of the bowl of Cheerios that we used for the spider craft. "Here Ben, try one...or twenty!"

First "Real" Meal

Okay, we promise that this will be the last messy mealtime photograph of Benjamin! We just have been having so much fun introducing him to different foods and watching him explore them for the first time that we couldn't resist posting one more. He has been doing so well with all of the usual "baby" finger foods lately so we decided to up the ante on our little gourmand. This weekend we gave him some spaghetti, and a few pieces of meatball and chopped up broccoli.

After playing with the spaghetti and meatballs for, oh, 10 minutes or so, Ben decided to give it a try. He loved it and is definitely my little Italian boy! We had a laugh watching him observe his new slippery food, get it stuck to his face and highchair as he ate, and not even realize when some was hanging out of his mouth. Who knew what fun a few strands of Barilla could be?!? The best part was watching Barney stand at attention next to Benjamin's highchair waiting for some droppings to fall!!

Finger Foods

We have been experimenting with many finger foods lately for Ben, among them fresh fruit, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, teething biscuits, avocado and of course the usual diaperbag fare - Cheerios. He seems intrigued by every new food we give to him and his curiosity buys us some time to eat dinner or get something done around the house (plus we find it amusing when Cheerios get lodged under his chin or fall out of his pants hours after eating them!). Here's a funny picture I took yesterday of Benjamin eating some frozen avocado out of his mesh feeder to help relieve his teething pain. He had a great time making a huge mess but didn't have as much fun when I tried to clean him off once he had finished eating!

Hide 'n Seek

Ben has been scooting and rolling all over the place lately and we think he's on the brink of crawling as he often gets up on all fours or gets into an almost crawling position from sitting up. This morning he was scooting all over our kitchen and family room going after his toys, and I found him like this after I turned my back for a second to answer the phone. He seemed all proud of himself for having found a new hiding place, but soon was screaming to come back out!

Martin Family History

I have recently been inspired by some friends who also have a blog to add some history to our own blog, showing some of the other fabulous milestones in the life of the Martin Family apart from the birth of Benjamin. That being said, if anyone so desires, there are now some entries that appear in the archives prior to August 2005 that have some pictures and verbiage for some other key events over the past five and half years of our marriage - our wedding, our travels, etc. Since all of these events were photographed using a digital camera, and therefore we have many photos, I had to include only the "highlights" for each. If you are interested in seeing all of our photos from a particular event, let me know and I'll send them to you via Shutterfly. Enjoy!

Hangin' with the Boys

With a few exceptions, almost all of our friends who have recently had babies have had baby boys. This will make for lots of playmates for Ben when all of these babies start interacting with each other a bit more. They may seem far apart in age now but most of them are really only a few months apart so this will seem like nothing in a few years.

Today Ben and I had the chance to visit with so many of these boys at both my friend Nicole's house - she had a group of women I used to work with over for lunch with our babies and every one of them was a baby boy - and at our friends Dave and Barb's house. I made them dinner since Barb just had their baby boy last week.

Here's a photo of Ben and the other little guys at Nicole's house, hanging out in their infant seats. (l-r): Griffin McClatchy - 2 months, Ben - 7 months, Xander Hoishik - 5 months, and Evan Frederick - 4 months. Also there but not in the photo is Justin Frederick - 3 years.

Here Ben does what he does best lately - tries to put whatever crosses his path into his mouth. Poor little Evan's sneaker was Ben's latest victim. "Boy, would that taste good," thinks Ben. "Too bad I knocked it to the ground!"

Big brother Justin intervenes and tries to protect Evan's shoes by putting them back on his baby brother's feet despite Ben's efforts to do otherwise. Mom Jessica says that Justin is just like his dad in that he likes things in order at all times and so one shoe on and one off just doesn't cut it!

"No, Ben. Shoes stay on the feet, any big boy knows that!"

Our next stop was the Roque household where Ben was introduced to Baby Nicholas, who was born just over a week ago. Ben's heard rumors that Nicholas is trying to move in on some of his little girlfriends, so Ben had to get a look at this new kid on the block for himself!

Eyeing him up. "Oh, I get it now...he's the short, dark, and handsome type. I better keep an eye on this guy from now on, especially around my little girlfriends! You know what they say about guys in blue sleepers..."

"He may be cute, but I can be cute myself...and I can sit up AND I have two teeth (that I won't show anyone). Ha, take that, Nicholas!"

Here's a photo of the new family - Barb, Nicholas, and David Roque. In keeping with the current trend among our friends' babies (Ben included), Baby Nicholas looks a lot like his dad, doesn't he? :) What a happy family!

Pop and Nana Babysit

This weekend Andrew and I had another wedding to attend for our friends Nate and Jen so Nana and Pop came out for the weekend to babysit Ben for us. They arrived on Friday evening and left after dinner on Sunday. They had a great time visiting with Ben and Nana even got the chance to spoil him at the Lancaster outlets while all of the men stayed home and had some male bonding time - yardwork, a trip to Home Depot, sports on TV, etc. Even Ben stayed home and supposedly had a fun time at Home Depot with the guys as he babbled away to himself!

Here we are dressed in our finest threads pre-wedding:



Mommy with Benjamin in his cute little Halloween outfit that Nana picked out for him. Oops! Too bad for that hair in front of my face, but a cute photo otherwise so I posted it anyway. Since it's October and Halloween is around the corner, we decided to dress him in his holiday ensemble. Man, Carters must make a killing off of their holiday apparel since they're so cute that they have to be purchased and then are worn only once or twice. There are little candy corns on the pants of this outfit - so cute.


"Smile for the retake, Ben!" (but look at the camera!)


Now he's looking but apparently nobody else knew that I was taking a picture. What a little ham Ben is...he loves the camera now!



Here, Nana and Pop are about to go home so they smother Ben in a "kiss attack." He loved that and was smiling broadly!

Of course this post for our family weekend wouldn't be complete without a picture of Barney. Here he is looking so funny. Our Barney news this week is that after 4-1/2 years of being terrified for some unknown reason, Barney has finally learned to jump into our car. Lifting an 85 pound Labrador up into the car everytime we need to bring him someplace gets old very quickly. So, we decided to go for the gold and try to break his fear this past week. To do so, we started feeding him in the car and he quickly learned that not jumping in the car meant no food. Apparently he wants his breakfast and dinner so much that his fear was quickly overcome, after teetering for only 10 minutes that first day! Silly dog...

Gymboree Fridays

Ben has been enjoying his Gymboree class more and more every week and actually has not been getting cranky halfway through lately. Here are just a few cute photos from today's session:

Ben in an activity boat/rocker with one of his girlfriends, Caroline. Ben and Caroline already have tons in common such as thick heads of hair, needing to wear a bib at all times, and just this week, both getting their first teeth!!! Of course neither of them will show us their little pearly whites but both myself and Caroline's mom Roberta can attest to the fact they have both been crankier than ever this week. Ben now has two teeth that have broken through on the bottom and the gums surrounding two of his top teeth are white and puffy so they look like they will be coming in soon, too. Photos to follow once I can actually get Ben to keep his mouth open long enough for a photo shoot :).

Ben loves playing with these colored Gymboree balls. Each child gets his own ball to mouth each week (yes, they are disinfected after every class, to all of you microphobes out there!). He loves these balls so I may need to invest in a package of them once our class is over since (of course) they are for sale.

For about half of the class each week, the babies get free time to explore all of the different equipment that Gymboree has. There are ramps to practice crawling, slides, tubes to play in, and these large exercise balls to strengthen the leg and back muscles to make sitting, crawling and walking easier. Here's Ben doing "baby situps" with his instructor, Miss Nora.