Elaina's Birthday Party

Alright, we admit it - Ben's quite a popular little guy. In the past two weeks he has had three birthday parties and three Christmas parties and I have captured some photos from many of these. Last Friday was his friend Elaina's second birthday party. The soiree had a Dora the Explorer theme and consisted of six children and their moms.

Here's Benjamin exploring Elaina's Laugh and Learn House. He loved this thing and tried to work all of the buttons, even some with his mouth!




Here is their friend Tyler hugging baby sister Samantha. Aww!

Talya playing...

More of Ben playing hard...

Lunch consisted of grilled cheese, salad, macaroni salad and make-your-own cupcakes. Ben liked everything, as usual!

Elaina decorating her own star-shaped cupcake before blowing out the candles. We had to light it five times since she kept blowing it out before anyone got a picture!!

Finally, Ben felt that it was his duty to help Elaina open the gift he gave to her by removing the bow and starting to rip the paper! Here's the Birthday Girl and her "helper" and then below Elaina poses in one of the gifts she received, all smiles!

Self-Feeding

Ben was full of surprises today. It started when I went to get him from his nap and found all of his hats that we hang on hooks beside his crib in bed with him! I'm not certain if he stood up to get them (I have not caught him standing in his crib yet) or if he just managed to reach through the slats to get them, but it was funny nonetheless to find him in a different surrounding than when I had left him an hour and a half earlier.

The fun continued when it was dinnertime. For weeks Ben has been grabbing the spoon from us and then just wanting to play with it or throw it on the floor. However, today he grabbed his spoon and proceeded to feed himself his own dinner. He would open his mouth, shovel the food in, and then hand the spoon back to me so that I could put more peas and carrots on it for him! This happened during the entire meal and he literally fed himself every drop of his dinner tonight. Despite the (messy) photos I captured, he actually did not do too badly with his new feat and did manage to get most of the food into his mouth. I had read that babies will usually turn the spoon on its side before it gets to their mouth but Ben didn't seem to have too many problems keeping it straight and getting himself fed.

What a big boy he is feeding himself dinner!

"All gone!" (He never likes these words, given the hearty appetite he has. :) ). Yes, he was as angry at me as he appears when I had to break the bad news to him!

So proud of himself!

Barney likes it much better when Benjamin feeds himself dinner or eats finger food as opposed to when I feed him (and make much less of a mess). Carrots are Barney's favorite snack (seriously!) so he particularly liked tonight's choice of baby cuisine.

"No, Benjamin! Spoons are only for humans!!!!"

Look at this face. Couldn't you just kiss it? (if it weren't covered in carrots and yogurt!). These are always the moments when Ben decides to give me big hugs and kisses (plus I had on a white shirt today!!).

Now that dinner is over, time for a....BATH!

Aw, Mom, clean up is never as much fun as getting messy!

Sneak Preview

This morning I took Ben for his nine-month photos so here he is in his Christmas outfit exploring the tree. I put our Christmas gifts around the tree this morning while he napped - what a surprise he was in for when he woke up and discovered all of the new things to touch downstairs. At least these gifts keep his attention away from our ornaments and my Department 56 Snow Village though!!

What a curious little guy Ben is! When I turned my back for a minute, he did a test-run of how he will rip his packages open on Christmas morning. I guess my painstaking wrapping process was all for nothing. This wasn't the big tub of Legos you see in all the pictures, though. We didn't wrap this to begin with since we figured he'd have no clue what inside until it was opened up anyways. In the meantime, he has decided that he likes to pull himself up and bang on the tub. We knew he'd like the container more than the actual contents when we bought this for him! :)

Guilty!

Alright, I admit it - I'm guilty of giving Ben one of his Christmas gifts already. I couldn't help it! He's only a baby and will never know that he is receiving it a week and a half early, right? Well whatever the case, Ben is now the proud owner of a Leap Frog Learn and Groove table and spent the last forty-five minutes playing with it. This table is hilarious - it has all sorts of functions to handle and plays some jazzy blues music whenever something is touched. Maybe this will entice Ben to finally want to dance (unless he's like his dad and then he will still not want to dance when he's nearly 30 years old!).


Here are Ben and his two girlfriends Caroline (front) and Olivia at a playgroup yesterday playing with Olivia's Leap Frog table:

And here's Ben with his own table this afternoon after Santa stopped by and left it under the tree for Ben while he napped. He is standing really well now and can hold himself up for a long time before he starts to freak out when he realizes that he doesn't know how to sit back down yet!

This Hair!

Less than six weeks after his last haircut, Ben needed another one since this hair of his seems to grow out of control in the blink of an eye. He's having his 9-month pictures taken on Wednesday in his Christmas outfit so we wanted him to look as handsome as ever for his big photo shoot. So, today I took him back to Cookie Cutters and he had another haircut. This time he got to sit in the little green car (versus the airplane last time) and was entertained by his favorite while the lady cut his locks: Baby Einstein's Baby Noah DVD. Here's the finished product but unfortunately Baby Noah was so mesmerizing that he wouldn't look at me!

Here Comes Trouble!

Now that Benjamin is crawling (and getting faster by the day, it seems), we're definitely in trouble! He has discovered Barney's water bowl and has dumped it on himself and the poor dog a handful of times already, has found the Christmas tree and has also discovered that the stereo knobs are fun to play with. Recently, he discovered the stairs and our basket of catalogues and has become fascinated with his findings. Lucky for us, we receive a new round of catalogues at least every few weeks so this morning I didn't really see the harm in letting Ben explore to his heart's content.

Caught red-handed!

So much fun. Too bad his basket of toys aren't this exciting...

Taking a rest. Tearing, tossing, chewing and crinkling catalogue after catalogue is tough work!



On to bigger and better things once the excitement wears off, but Mommy's house is left a mess!


Next stop: the stairs. He pulls himself up and is now reaching for the second or third step but has not yet figured out that he can climb them so our house is still free of wooden gates until he realizes this!

Happy Birthday, Tyler!

This past Monday Ben and I went to my friend Amy's house to celebrate her son Tyler's second birthday. Our other friend Aimee and her (soon to be) two-year-old daughter, Elaina, were also there. It was Ben's first birthday party that he has attended and between the gifts, balloons and cake, it certainly was good practice for his Big Day in March! We got some cute photos of the four kids since Tyler's younger sister Samantha was also there with us, so here they are:

Ben being "gentle" with Baby Samantha. We've been working on this lately around other babies and animals since Ben is known to whomp Barney in the head, much to the poor dog's dismay, and also to try to grab his friends' hair without realizing his own strength!

Amy gave each child a balloon with a little goodie bag tied to the end of it. Ben got a cool pair of orange sunglasses (he still prefers my prescription ones!!), a ball and a book. Even better than the prizes, though, was watching the helium balloons float to the ceiling of Amy's two-story family room.

Here, Ben stares at these bright latex wonders as they float to the ceiling and then chews on the end of his balloon's string.



Here, Tyler and Elaina show off their new shades.

Now for the favorite part of the day - CAKE! I allowed Ben to have a small piece of Tyler's birthday cake and boy did he love this. It was a yellow cake infused with red Jello then topped with pudding and whipped cream. The only thing that could have been messier would have been chocolate cake!! We all had a fun time watching Ben try to jam the entire piece of cake into his mouth at once.

The funniest moment at the party was when we found that Tyler had already helped himself to his gifts as the moms cleaned up after lunch (and I dealt with Ben's red, cream-coated face!). Here Tyler is "caught red-handed" in the act.

"Who me? I didn't do anything."

Ben gave Tyler a band-in-a-box for his present (yes, I've already apologized to Amy for this!!) and the kids all had a fun time playing with it. There were moraccos to shake, drum sticks to bang, a harmonica to play and loads of other goodies. Here Tyler tries out the drum as Elaina watches her little boyfriend all dreamy-eyed.

"Oh Tyler, you're such a good drummer..." /sigh/

Ben observes the action as he has never seen a drum before (except if you count my double boiler and a wooden spoon, which he sometimes plays with at home).

Ben decides to join the band...

...or steal the entire band altogether!

What a fun time we had celebrating Tyler's big day with him and next week we do the same for Elaina at her second birthday party!

Cute Photo With Dad

Ben and Andrew relaxing last weekend as Andrew takes a break from some home improvements he is doing around the house.

Decorating for Christmas

This past weekend we decorated for Christmas. Here is Ben helping out as we brought up all of our (many!) plastic tubs filled with holiday decor. He's crawling all over the place and pulling up constantly now so this made decorating quite the process (so much so that we did most of it while he napped!). His favorite decorations? Well, the little ceramic village I have underneath our tree and the fallen pine needles, naturally!

Here he is in his Anywhere Chair with his new snowman friend.

Finally, at church this past weekend, Ben made his first craft. Two, actually. Here are his two creations - what a little Picasso! The ladies in his Sunday School class vowed that Ben made these all by himself (wink, wink). Maybe he will follow after my own heart and be a craft lover himself (as I type this, he has lost interst in his toys and is fiercely crawling across the room on a mission for my own craft supplies!). Of course his creations are showcased on our refrigerator...