Morning Fun

Benjamin has been off and in with his morning nap for the past few weeks but finally this week he has been consistently successful in skipping his morning nap and instead taking a longer afternoon nap. Now he is up for about 4-5 hours in the morning, then takes a 3-3.5 hour nap and then is up for about 4-5 hours before going to bed and sleeping 12 more hours. Not bad - he's our little sleepyhead! It took a little work but I found that tiring him out and keeping him busy all morning uses up his energy and doesn't give him time to remember that he is sleepy (and cranky!) when he normally would have been taking his morning nap.

So this week we have been doing lots of exploring - local parks, the backyard, new toys and things around the house, even baking with Mommy! Here are some photos from our week.

Exploring Spring Valley Park. This was Ben's first time on a slide and he was a bit nervous at first, but warmed up after a few tries (yes, I helped him down it but let him explore getting off at the bottom on his own).

He loved the see-saw but unfortunately there were no other kids there this day so he had to go on it by himself. He liked when I just bounced it up and down for him.

Finally, of all the things to do at a park Ben was most fascinated with the wood chips and kept putting them wherever they would fit...over and over and over again! Here he is playing SO seriously...


One morning Ben helped me bake cookies that I needed to bring to a meeting that night. He loved sitting in his high chair and exploring all of the bottles and textures of the ingredients, especially the eggs and the brown sugar. Of course his favorite part was afterwards when he got to try a warm, gooey piece of one of his chocolate chip cookie bars!


Play-Doh also made an appearance in our house this week since Ben has been very interested in crafts and new textures lately. He must have stood there feeling the dough between his fingers for 10 solid minutes before he even tried to eat it (and was stopped by me) and mold the dough back into its container (putting things into containers is a favorite pastime these days).