All Bundled Up

Last weekend I was in NJ to bring Barney to my parents' house so that they can watch him for us while we are on vacation next week. It was pretty chilly out so my mom and I bundled Benjamin up in his snowsuit and went for a visit to Abma's Farm and the park. I thought these pictures were cute - Ben looks so cuddly and soft in his big fleece suit. It was a gift from one of our Buffalo relatives so it's nice to know we have our cold-weather kin to keep Ben warm and toasty all winter long! :)

We are leaving in a few hours for a long roadtrip to Florida to visit Grandpa G and CC, Aunt Catherine and Uncle Emil, and Aunt Fee. We're looking forward to our trip and will be sure to post some photos when we return to the cold weather next weekend!

Exploring All of His Nationalities

Ben has certainly whetted his palate this week and has had a crash course in the cuisine from some of his nationalities (while we don't like to call our son a mutt, he certainly has a vast array of heritage - Irish, Italian, Polish, and British are the main ones). We've tried some potatoes and some spaghetti and meatballs already so tonight was Polish influence - fresh Polish sausage, pierogies, and rye bread. Hopefully Dr. Kleback hasn't discovered this blog by accident since I'm not certain if tonight's meal would qualify as a "Second Phase Food" but a few tiny pieces can't hurt, right? :) Taking after his father, Ben went immediately for the meat when offered a few tastes of each dish and seemed to really enjoy it.

Yum! Dinner is served and Ben ate every bite off of his tray! (just kidding...since this meal isn't a messy one we had to find some way to pose him with his new food, didn't we?)

First "Real" Haircut

Well, folks, the day has finally arrived - Ben's first professional haircut. Sure, I have trimmed the hair around his ears and neck a few times myself to keep him looking "manly" but now that he squirms around so much I decided that it was time to leave this job to the professionals. So, at 7-1/2 months old, Benjamin had his first trip to the baby barber.

This afternoon the two of us went to the most adorable children's hairdresser in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia called Cookie Cutters. I had heard great things about this place so we decided to give it a whirl. They specialize in baby and children's hairdos and have all sorts of distractions for the kids to keep them occupied - videos playing above each chair, toys, mirrors, lollipops (for older kids), balloons, and my personal favorite - the special vehicle chairs for the babies to sit in. Ben got to sit in an airplane chair and LOVED it (this may be an understatement, actually).

The Day of Reckoning....here's "Mr. Wild Hair" as we are about to leave the house for the big appointment. It could be me, but Ben seems like he knows something is up, wouldn't you agree?

Here's a photo of our cute little barbershop:

My big guy in the driver's seat. We got one of the chairs on the enclosed front porch so Ben was full of stimulating things to look at between the cars passing by outside, the video in front of him and the big, shiny steering wheel on his airplane. In the cockpit getting ready for the big event (and testing out his lungs with excitement!!):

Bye-bye baby locks (sad day for Mom)...

Ben was SO good the entire time and hardly fussed at all. Here's his finished look. What a handsome guy! Plus, as an added bonus, if you look closely you can actually see his bottom two teeth. This is the first photo we have been able to get of his teeth and he now actually has the two top ones as well but you'd never know it since he won't show them to anyone!! :)

It was such a beautiful day that we spent some extra time going on a long walk through the town and looking in some shops. What a wonderful afternoon. Here are some shots of my little guy on our way home.

"Phew, I'm glad that's over with!"

"With this 'do, nobody will mistake me for a girl now, Mom, don't you worry!"

Little Mr. Nosey

Ben has been trying to pull up on just about everything lately, mainly me, Andrew and the coffee table. He is getting close but still needs to build his strength some more before he will be able to pull up all the way. One thing he has started to do, though, is to pull himself up onto his toy baskets so that he can fish around inside and pull out what he wants to play with. It's so funny when I try to give him something that I think looks fun and he obviously has other ideas because the next thing I know he has his back to me, is pulled up onto his basket and is throwing things out of the way to get to exactly the toy he wants!

Little Mr. Nosey:


"Aha! I found just what I was looking for, my plastic credit card!"

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!!