Mobility Strikes Again

Good-bye tiny baby, hello upcoming toddler. Since Benjamin began crawling a week ago, I've had little time to blink. The very next day, we find him standing at the play table. Maybe he'd been wanting, all that time, to figure out how to get near things so he could pull up and stand? All I know is that now his little cupie head pops up in all sorts of places I'd rather not find it these days...pulling out cords from under chairs, wandering around under foot in the kitchen while I'm cooking, heading off onto porcelain tile where I'm always afraid he'll bonk his head, meandering through my work piles and chewing up my newspapers from PR ("Uh, no, Virginia, I can't write that chapter. Because my baby ate my notes on it. No, really, he did.") I can hear the baby gates calling from down deep in the closets. Oh, how I loved having the freedom to roam the house without unlocking, locking gates every other step. Benj is apparently so excited about all this new freedom (paired with some ferocious teething) that he's decided he doesn't need to sleep. Oh, that's just fabulous, let me tell you. I'm trying SO HARD to finish this dang diss. chapter, and yet in 4 hours of Jack's daycare time, I can usually only eek out an hour and a half of real work time due to Benj's constant need for supervision or our long battles to get him to nap.

I sound like I'm cranky about it. There are down sides, true, but he's also very cute and much happier now that he can get to things he wants now. And he is still very baby-ish and that he still REFUSES to eat solid food. It's all breast milk, all the time. Jack had been eating 3 solid meals a day since he was 7 1/2 months-old. Not Benj. No sir.



Jack's update? He won't shut up. That pretty much covers it.

Okay, he did get to try watercolors the other day.


And he had his friend Symone over. Sandy is Symone's mother. She went to Drake with Mike and I, and she was our realtor when we moved back to Des Moines. Her daughter Symone was born 6 days after Jack, also a premie, so they were in the NICU together. Here they are on their first Halloween, 2 months after leaving the NICU:



Here they are now, at almost 2 and a half:



This was the Jenniges family's third time meeting Benjamin. Sandy had some baby fever.


Other than that, we've had some fun with friends here and there, and I keep chugging away a the diss. I'll be so happy when this chapter is done. Except then it'll hit me that I have to do it all over again about 6 more times.... yikes.


Peter, Terrilee, Loralei and Owen came over last week for dinner and some fun with the Wii. We are getting good use of the Wii. Loralei was a champion hula hooper.

Peter tried, too :)

Owen was seriously flexible and creative with how to move on the balance board.