Lo Mein

We were surprised last night when we got Chinese food for dinner with some friends and Ben actually liked Lo Mein. My former "eat everything in sight" son has become quite picky in his toddler years and has basically written off many of the normal kid foods such as pasta, cheese (with a few exceptions), and of course anything with a mysterious sauce. Who would have thunk that he'd choose to like Lo Mein with it's spaghetti-like quality and brown sauce? :)

Here's a video of me seeing if he still liked it today as leftovers for lunch....and after some contemplation, it seems to be a keeper!

Bedtime

I wanted to take a few photos of Ben in his new Thomas and Friends PJ's that he got for Christmas from Nana and Pop. They're two piece flannels and are SO cute!

Below he is brushing his teeth and then reading his I'm a Big Brother book with his "dadda" before bed tonight. Ben loves this book and every night he asks for the "baby" book and then for his "Bible" after that. Needless to say, these two books have to stay on his nightstand at all times. He's so interested in the new baby brother and how the big brother helps out in the "baby" book and is also concerned for the various babies in his toddler Bible - Jesus, Moses - that we are hoping this compassion will carry to real life in March when his own brother comes home from the hospital. We'll see... :)

Benjamin's 2nd Christmas

We can hardly believe that Benjamin has celebrated his frst two Christmases already! At 21 months old, he was more aware of everything this year than last but still did not truly grasp the concept. He certainly was excited about all of the festivities and cookies all month long and especially for the influx of gifts this past weekend.

We decided to go to my parents' house in NJ on Sunday and stayed until last night. Since Benjamin's main Christmas present from us was too large to transport and he is not old enough to know the actual date, we opted to do our own "Christmas" on Saturday 12/22 so Andrew, Ben and I had our own celebration early. This way, Christmas actually lasted several days for Ben, which he seemed to not mind!

Here are some photos and video of us on Saturday morning. Ben usually likes his breakfast right away when he gets up, but when he saw all of the excitement under the tree, he didn't even seem remotely interested in eating until 9:30AM, after everything was opened!


Raiding his stocking first.

Andrew's mom always had a tradition with the kids when they were young that they would get a new ornament every year. This is something that we have adopted so here is Ben hanging his very own ornament on the tree - a Christmas ball from the Disney Cars movie. We told him it was a ball for the tree so he started saying "ball...tree!" and ran over to the tree to hang it up at his own level. I think it spent more time off the tree than on, though; he was so excited about it and just kept wanting to look at it!

Here Daddy helps him open some gifts that Grandpa G and CC sent up from Florida for Ben. He is patiently waiting while Andrew helps him loosen the ribbons before he can dig in.

He couldn't resist opening the add-on set for his Thomas and Friends Lego set right away! Daddy had a good time with this gift as well...

Like father, like son. Andrew oogles his new jumbo wrench set while Ben goes over to check out Daddy's tools and compare them to his own Ace Hardware toolbox (on table), a gift from Aunt Cinty earlier in the week. He's been talking about his "tools" ever since receiving his own set and found it amusing that his dad got a similar one from Santa! :)

The little puzzle sleuth busy at work with one of the latest additions to his collection - an A, B, C puzzle. Ben loves puzzles and spends quite a bit of time mastering all of the ones he owns. So, we decided to challenge him with this 26-piecer and also a firetruck jigsaw. He is still trying to really figure the jigsaw out but has made great progress and I'm sure he'll master it soon. I'm sure he'll be outshining me soon since jigsaw puzzles were never my forte :).

Here is Ben playing with his main Christmas present from us this year - a train table. He loves this and has not stopped "choo-chooing" since he got it! It's sort of a fun set since it not only has a train on it, but also has a farm with a tractor, a construction zone, a hospital, a port and an airport. So it is sort of like a mini city with a train and all different vehicles.

We arrived at my parents' house on Sunday afternoon. Here is some footage of Ben and Pop reading the paper together on Monday morning.

Here's a family photo of us on Christmas Eve. Ben is dressed up in a little mini sport coat - so cute!

Here's my brother Mike and future sister-in-law Chang.

Santa left this adorable kiddie sled filled with gifts for Ben under the tree at Nana and Pop's house. Too bad it was 55 degrees and raining all weekend instead of snow or else Ben would have been able to try it out right away.

Carefully selecting a gift from under the tree and then opening presents.

Taking a break to go and sit on top of Barney, just in case Barney was bored laying around sleeping.


Taking another break to dance to some tunes.

Here, Ben waits while Pop removes the myriad wire twisties on every single toy. In less than two years, Pop has become Ben's personal slave when they are together. The minute Ben would open something he'd yell "Pop" and go hand his toy to him so that Pop could remove it from the box.

Playing with his new (and loud!) Hess monster truck, which he loves. He's been zooming all over the house with it all day...


Here are some cute photos and footage of Ben's new block set. Andrew and I both remember these sturdy (and fun!) cardboard blocks from our childhoods so we were excited that Nana decided to get them for us, er, Ben...


Knocking them down (while being the center of attention) at Nana and Pop's house yesterday.



...and again this morning at home after discovering the ceiling-height tower that Andrew built last night and left for Ben to find in the basement. Ha, who says 30 year olds can't have fun with cardboard blocks too!



Ben's gift to all of the grandparents and aunts and uncles this year was a sculpted ornament of his professional Christmas photo to hang on their trees. It's basically a cutout of his head from the photo and mounted to resin to make it sturdy. He's obsessed with the one on our tree and keeps talking about the "baby" in the photo. Here he is hanging Nana and Pop's on their tree. I think he may hve snatched it away from them so he could hang it up even before they got to look at it!



Even more surprises were in store for Ben last night when we got home from NJ, as there were more packages waiting at our doorstep for him! Here he is exploring his new Lego table from Grandpa G and CC. He must have stood there for 20 minutes, taking Legos out of the mesh storage bag and moving them around the table, without acknowleging anything around him as he first explored his new toy.

So silly...

Playing with Barney and Daddy after dinner tonight. Oh, and that high-pitched squeal is Barney's toy, not Ben! This video shows some usual behavior at our house. Ben and Barney are obsessed with each other and chase after each other all day long. Of course Andrew always promotes even sillier behavior from the two of them by egging them both on...

Bathtime

This is my first attempt at embedding YouTube videos onto my blog from my YouTube account and it seems to be working okay so far. Yay! Just click on the box below to activate the control if it appears empty at first. Now I can post videos here as well for your viewing entertainment :)

This one was taken this morning during Saturday bathtime. Ben loves his bath any day but really loves weekend baths the most when his dad is home and can give it to him. Barney's always a source of entertainment as Ben bathes as well.

First Christmas Presents

Ben was in for a treat this morning when he woke up to find his first Christmas presents of the season waiting on his highchair for him. We had our babysitter Alyssa over last night while Andrew and I went to his company Christmas party and unfortunately she remembered on her way to our house that she had forgotten Ben's present at her house! Andrew picked it up when he drove her home later that night. So, we promised we'd take some photos of him opening the gifts so that she and her sister Brielle, who also babysits for us, could see how excited he was to get their gift :).

For me? You shouldn't have... Ok, I'll pose for one quick photo, Mom, but then I'm tearing these gifts open!

After getting over the excitement of the penguins on the wrapping paper, Ben wasted no time opening his gifts.


Wow, it's a book shaped like a doctor's bag with pictures and punch outs of all the things he sees at the doctor's office when we go. He loves this - it's a book and a puzzle in one when he tries to reposition the punch outs into their appropriate spots- his two favorite things!

OK, onto number two....a Winnie the Pooh talking alphabet book. Wow! As you can see, Ben LOVES this one too. He's obsessed with bees and "B's" lately so this book is perfect since it has both (there isn't a page in a Pooh book without a bee flying around). He tries to do his alphabets but gets fixated on the letter B at this point...A, B, C, B, B, B... So he has been having fun hitting the B button all day long.

Barney and Ben

Just two photos of Ben and Barney rolling around on the ground together, playing tug-o-war this morning...aka, the usual behavior for them! Barney is so gentle with him, actually letting Ben grab his toys from him every so often, and Ben just loves his big dog. The baby's always hysterically laughing when they play together and runs up to a resting Barney several times a day just to give him a big hug or kiss - aww!

On a side note, Ben has become a bit attached to one of his blankets lately so I now call him Linus sometimes. He's never been attached to a pacifier or animal before so this blanket is his first love...it accompanies him everyplace now!

Celebrating the Season

This weekend we decked our house out for the Christmas season. It was so much fun to see Ben's reaction to everything this year since he is so much more excited about everything than last year.

We knew that he would love going to the local farm to pick out our Christmas tree - he's been obsessed with Christmas trees since they started to appear in the stores (in September!) and he loves the outdoors more than anything, no matter how chilly it is. We were not mistaken; getting the tree was probably the highlight of his day. He ran up and down the aisles of trees yelling "tree! tree!" interspersed with "Uh-oh. Dada?" whenever Andrew was out of his view. Then he would run faster to try to hunt his dad down and laugh when he finally did find him amongst the evergreens.

Ben in action, searching for the right tree for us.

Ah-ha, I think the boys have found our tree. Here they are sizing it up. Yes, they do have matching jackets, too, just in case someone didn't think they already looked like clones!


On the road, headed home...


Once decorated at home, Ben became intrigued with the ornaments, especially the Bob the Builder one that we placed front and center. Here he is sneaking a peek at it, trying to look non-chalant...


"Maybe if I run away really quickly, nobody will notice that it's gone..."


Later on we all baked cookies together. Not just any cookies but the "cooky" press green Christmas tree spritz cookies that Andrew always used to make with his mom when he was a little boy. It has become a tradition in our house to make these every year and Andrew is always in charge of them.

Did I mention that the best part about being the only source of estrogen in the house is that you can make your boys dress up in matching Christmas aprons while they bake together? In defense of Andrew's masculinity, the adult-sized apron really is mine but he needed to keep clean somehow, didn't he?


Ben enjoyed sorting (and resorting and resorting again) the cookie press disks in the retro cooky press kit that Andrew found on ebay last year, a direct replica of his mom's old cooky press they always used.

Uh-oh, maybe I shouldn't have put Ben in charge of the sprinkles for the tops of the cookies. Well, after one huge dump, we gave him his own cupful to play with while I took over sprinkle duty. He seemed to find the whole situation quite amusing, though.

Andrew takes cookie making very seriously, apparently. They all must be perfectly engineered and laid out :).
Yum! Cookie dough and sprinkles! And it's red and green, too...

"CHEESE!!!" Ben is into saying "cheese" when you take his photo and then making a super-goofy face for the camera. Here he is, goofy-faced and covered in red sprinkles!

Later on, trying the goods once they came out of the oven. Yum! Ever since Ben had this first "tree" yesterday he has been asking for "more....tree!" ever since!