Ben’s Blog

He loves this hat so much, he slept in it last night.

Ben’s speech has taken off (”turned a corner” says the speechlady). He can easily put together long sentences and complicated stories with the words that he has now. We’re still working on building his vocabulary. His apraxia is pretty severe so he has to practice every single new word to get it into his muscle memory.

He is very much all boy, so some of his new words include “bad guy” and “pewm” and…. “you shall not pass!” He gets to be Gandalf and I have to be the Balrog… no we haven’t shown (or read) him LOTR, don’t worry. Should probably start with The Hobbit anyway.

There is also frequent talk about “Mario red eyes bad” (the red eyed Mario that gets shot with water in Mario Sunshine). I’m thinking he’s ready for some Grimms fairy tales or something with more conflict than Clifford and Eric Carle’s stories.

Also included in the “Ben’s weird phrases” category: dark green pot. No idea where he got this, but he draws pictures of them all the time. He’s also started drawing people… so cute. Big head, eyes, smile, stick arms and legs. Often his people are holding dark green pots.

Two new words from Ben this week and I think he made an excellent choice: Rip and Tucky, the names of his great grandparents (who we are staying with this week). All parties are thrilled with this new development.

Ben’s popping out with more new words every day.

Yesterday’s words: hide, taggie… and there was one more that I can’t remember.

Today’s words: dark (blue), hawk

He’s also worked really hard on a three-syllable word that’s recently become very important to him: mario

I took some stuff to Goodwill today. After I got everything out, Ben asked if I’d remembered to bring Toots the Train. Toots is a train set I got for him last year in the hopes of helping convince him to talk more (Toots has a voice-activated microphone so kids can tell the train to “stop” or “go”). Toots was, it turns out, scary as shit. Toots has lived in the garage ever since.

So Ben asked today if the train was gone yet. I told him no, I forgot to put it in the car, but I promise I’ll bring it next time.

Ben said, “Yay. Mine muwhahahaha.” Meaning, I guess, he’s going to do his evil villain laugh when that darn train is finally gone.

It’s about time! Not a milestone that a lot of parents enjoy, but this one has been such a long time coming, I am actually excited about it (for now…. give it week or two and I may change my tune). Ben can finally ask “why?” and boy, does he ever. He’s also got an adorable, very British “what what?” down pat. After three years, it’s nice to not be the only one talking for a change. I’m enjoying our conversations.

A couple of Ben’s many letters to Santa. He says he wants chocolate. That is all. I’m just so excited that he’s writing (instead of trying to send Santa an email or a text on his iphone).

Oh, and for a change this year, Ben eagerly climbed up on the big man’s lap and gave the camera his best fake smile.

Wow. It’s been a while, huh? Sorry about that. Ben continues to be awesome, so no worries there.

His new speech teacher is amazing. He’s been seeing her for fewer than 6 months (30 minutes twice a week) and she already has him making 3 and 4-word sentences out of the words he can say. Most of the ones they do in speech are silly sentences like “boo bah shoe” but at home that has translated into the ability to say “Mom, go vroom… more o” (mom, let’s go in the car and get more chocolate).

He can say most of his colors (orange, pink, and purple are still tricky although he can correctly identify them, no problem) and can count, “one, two, three, eight, nine, oh!”. There’s a lot more going on in the Bento brain that he can’t let out yet, of course, but he’s awfully proud of what he can now say, and we’re proud of him for saying it. Over and over. And over. And over.

He has one heck of an imagination. For the past week or so I’ve eaten more pretend Hibachi-cooked food than is probably healthy for my imaginary waistline. And just now he went to the bed, pretended to wake up, heard Santa, went out to discover presents, and basically reenacted Christmas morning. Oh is he ever excited about Christmas.

And speaking of Christmas, he went to see Santa today, eagerly (eagerly, I say!) sat on his lap, and declared that the only thing he wants for Christmas is chocolate. Ok then.

We’re back in Kentucky for Thanksgiving right now, so we’re testing his memory pretty hard since he hasn’t been here for nearly a year and hasn’t lived here for almost two years. The only thing he’s confidently remembered are the escalators at Joseph Beth. The rest of his life in KY, it seems, was a blur.

What else? The hibachi chef play has interfered a bit with his “school” since the play kitchen is in the same room as his work shelves and every time we sit down to work he ends up cooking for me instead. That’s ok, I’m thinking of taking it easy until after Christmas anyway and we have a really low-pressure schooling situation anyway. His favorite works (up until the hibachi dinners started) were: daily weather and calendar, stringing beads on pipe cleaners, hammering golf tees into styrofoam, and a simple math game I learned when I was student teaching in a Montessori kindergarten. He continues to love whatever I put into his sensory box (the black beans and Halloween items in October were an especially big hit). He tolerates most of the fine motor stuff. He’ll transfer a few pom poms with tongs or scoop a few beads and then tell me “whew”. No kidding buddy.

Oh! He’s also started really drawing figures. Circle bodies, eyes (often with eyelashes and eyebrows), occasional other facial features, arms, legs, hair, ears, beards. You know, all the basics. This is really cool to see. He will fill up entire little notebooks with these people.

He tells me he is “O” (his word for chocolate or anything brown) and I am “‘ight” (white). Guess that racial recognition stuff starts pretty early too. Color blind children my left foot.

1 turtle

1 baby snake

1 frog/toad in a hole

1 deer (who did not want to talk with me about the destruction of my bean plants)

countless squirrels, birds, and roly polys

1 very happy “country” boy