A Boy's Dream

No, not the DMB song. I'm talking about DIRT. And lots of it. They've dug the basement and poured the foundation for the house right next to us. At first I thought, "what a pain...noise, mud and huge trucks in the street." And then I remembered I had a two year old son and I thought, "awesome! Noise, mud and huge trucks in the street!!" Its already provided hours of entertainment (and I do mean hours) for Bennett. Sure, its a pain to get those mud stains out of his clothes, but sometimes you have to take the bad with the good. Our son is wild. I think Where the Wild Things Are about sums him up right now. But Jon and I let him be that way. Don't get me wrong, we discipline him...a lot. But we pretty much let him climb, slide, jump and crawl on anything he sets his mind to. We're both daredevils at heart and leave it to us to raise one.

Wearing a hat he chose himself that he wore when he was 18 months old:

"Fishing" with some rebar. When I asked him what he caught, he said, "Meat!"

A Summary of the happenings in our house lately:

• Dawson turned 6 months on Sunday, cut his first two teeth on the bottom and started solids the last few weeks. I dropped his nursing schedule down to four feedings but he's definitely ready for more food so I need to start feeding him more in one sitting. I'm psyched to make my own baby food because a good friend of mine loaned me a really nice baby food steamer and processor in one. Its so slick and doesn't get any easier than that so I have no excuse.
• He's also semi-mobile. When Bennett learned to roll over, he did it with gusto but would only roll once and then lay there til you moved him. Dawson rolls, swivels, pivots and rolls some more and can make some pretty good ground. He's so happy and content these days, particularly if we're out of the house. If there are people to look at, he'll sit for a couple hours without so much as a whimper.
• We bought the supplies to start potty-training with Bennett. I'm not so excited about this one but he'll be 3 in 2 1/2 months so the time has come. I'm not sure when we'll officially start, but we needed to really get him thinking about it. We even bought the Diego underwear as motivation (after going to two stores to find it. Seriously, my two year old has no clue who Spider Man or Spongebob is). I let him try them on over his diaper and he put all three pairs on at the same time. (Extra absorbency, maybe?? Not a bad idea.) He also wanted to try sitting on the potty that first day so he stayed on it for about 30 minutes with no results, except for some cute pics.
  
  
  
• I'm going to this seminar on April 17th and am so excited. I've heard great things about the Love & Logic books and feel like I could use a lot of help in every area they're covering that day. Particularly good timing with bullet point number three.
• Bennett is very close to reading. I know I'm totally bragging, so please indulge me :) That's what blogs are for, right?? He can sound out simple three letter words with a little bit of help but is so close. And some of the really easy ones, like MOM or DAD, he can read right away. I'm so proud of him. We talked about going to the zoo tomorrow but he told me he wants to go to the library instead. That's my boy!
• Last but not least, my very best friend, Candy, is coming to visit in July. We met at Emmaus, our first year of college, and, if we didn't live 3000 miles away from each other, we'd be inseparable. I love her dearly and miss her all the time and its been almost 3 years since we've seen each other. Thanks to some frequent flyer miles, she'll make the trek from CA to IA this summer and I feel like a giddy 16 year old, planning our week out in my head.

First bite!

Oh, my sweet baby boy is growing up. He's 5 1/2 months now, so I figured it was time to start on the solid foods. He didn't have much trouble at all! He made a funny face when the spoon first went in his mouth but after several bites, he was even opening his mouth and smacking his lips! He was desperately trying to grab the spoon. It made me remember feeding Bennett--I'd have to give him a spoon in each hand so he wouldn't grab the spoon I was feeding him with. These babies grow so fast but each month brings new fun and laughter. I love how they interact with each other and can't even imagine how funny it will be when Dawson can talk back.

The Zoo isn't just for summertime!

We went to the zoo on Thursday afternoon. I guess all this sunshine and snow melt is giving us the itch to be out! It was so much fun. I loved walking through the rainforest part inside....it was all warm and sunny. Such a good feeling after being sequestered indoors for months with our only view being layer upon layer of snow. A lot of the animals were still there...even the flamingos! There's one tiger who's always pacing outside and one tiger who's always inside at the window (what happens to these animals where they get into these ruts?? So weird.) Anyway, the tiger inside usually walks up to the window and then turns around and walks out. Well, she seemed like she was so happy to see people, she came right up to the window, stood on her hind legs and would rub her paws up and down the glass, like she wanted to play with us. Then she'd get back down and put her eye right up to the glass and stare at us for a while. It was incredible to be that close. I put Bennett right up there and he'd get really nervous at first when she jumped up but he gave her a five and thought it was pretty cool.
When we were watching the sea lions swim around, they'd come up for air and blow their breath out. Bennett starting breathing loud and blowing air out of his nose. I asked him if he was breathing like the sea lions and he said, "no, Mom. I'm talking to them." He continued "talking" to them for several minutes. It was so cute. At one point he was picking up little chunks of snow and trying to throw them over the rail but he could barely reach the top on his tip toes so it would fall straight down. He said, "I'm trying to give them ice but the river is too far away!"
I didn't have my camera that day to capture all of Bennett's hilarious antics but it was so much fun having the zoo almost to ourselves and having a relaxing stroll in the sunshine!

You know its bad when...

I never in my life thought I would hear these words come out of my husband's mouth: "Honey, will you make me some tea?". Wow. He must really be sick. If you know my husband well, you're probably as shocked as I am. He hates hot drinks and refuses to ever drink one. I told him last night that he should drink some throat relief tea I have and it might help him stop coughing, so he relented. I knew he must be desperate for some relief. Every time I looked at him with that mug, I started laughing. It was just the most hilarious thing to me. It would be like if you saw your husband wearing high heels or something. It looked that out of place to me! i asked him if I could take his picture so I'd have proof. So tonight he actually asked me on his own to make him another cup.

So does this mean there's hope I might someday hear these words too? "Honey, I really think you should go shopping today." One can only dream, right?

Happy Birthday to Nana

To celebrate Judie's birthday, John booked a room at a hotel in Ankeny so that we could all go swimming! It was so much fun...especially in the dead of winter. Bennett didn't miss a beat from the last time he was swimming more than 5 months ago and was jumping in on his own and swimming around with his water wings on. Boy, does that kid take after his mom and dad though...he thought the big pool was too cold and spent probably 75% of his time in the hot tub. (And no, never more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time for all you safety nuts out there thinking, 'isn't he too young to be in there that much??'). We all had dinner and cake together after a couple hours of swimming and Nana and Poppy were sweet enough to let the newlyweds (Aaron and Bria) have the room for the night :) My favorite thing about being tight on money these days is that stuff like this seems so special now. That may sound cheesy, but I can't tell you how excited I was about it and how much fun it was telling Bennett we were going to get to go swimming. I just really appreciate my new found perspective on everything these days. You'd think we'd be feeling negative about a lot of things, but its the complete opposite--I find ways to think of everything as a positive now. We're so blessed and I love spending time with our whole family. Thanks again, Poppy! And thank you, Nana, for wanting your birthday to be a special day for all of us!

Dawson snoozing poolside:

A Real Boy!

Sorry folks...I'm way behind on blogging. Feel like I can't even catch my breath these days. And some of you moms work full time?? Honestly...I don't know how you do it!! I had a couple posts I wanted to do but my DVR'd Project Runway is seriously calling my name so I'm only going to do the most important one. Bennett's 1st Haircut!! Yes, he's 2 1/2, but I was having a really hard time admitting he was really ready for one. I hate when little baby boys turn into big boys overnight when their parents chop off all that fine wispy baby hair so soon and I didn't want Bennett to be a big boy yet! But as you can tell from these before pics, it was a little overdue. (Funny...I didn't realize how overdue it was until I saw these before and after pics! Yikes!) I have a new awesome hairstylist who goes to my church so I just brought him over to her house today and she did it for me. She just trimmed the back and the sides so we can keep growing it out.

Here's the before:

While she was cutting it, he sat so incredibly still with this serious expression on his face. So cute. I told him he was turning into a real boy and he said, "Like Pinocchio!".

And the after!:

It definitely tore at my heart watching him grow up before my very eyes but he looks adorable now. And he won't be so high-maintenance anymore. We used to have to do lots of wetting and combing every morning so he didn't go out with his Afro.