Ben’s Blog

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

This week’s FFF theme is “hope”. Maybe a bit of a stretch, but I just took these and they’re darn cute. And nothing says hope like a little boy with rain boots and an umbrella, hoping for a bit of a rainshower.

And more crayon melting fun….

After I read this post I was smacking myself in the head… why didn’t I think of juice boxes as crayon molds?! We didn’t have a juice box on hand, so I gave Ben a vanilla milk to down… except, he is two, and he wouldn’t give me the empty carton after he was done.

Ok. Fine.

I had recently dug out the Halloween cookie cutters, so I thought I’d give them a go. I melted the crayons in muffin liners (brilliant!) as directed in the post linked above. Kris suggested the (also brilliant) idea of putting wax paper under the cookie cutters. I may throw in some tinfoil next time too, since the hot crayons melted the wax paper onto the plate a little.

I am too impatient to wait for one layer to cool before adding another, so I just mixed the colors together in the cookie cutters. Someone with a bit more skill could probably make some neat marble effects. Or something.

The pumpkin crayon broke coming out of the mold, but the witch is still holding up. These crayons are neat, but Ben has trouble actually coloring with them since they’re harder to hold than a regular round crayon. But he’s breaking a lot of crayons these days, and I am physically unable to keep from buying super-cheap back to school crayons, so we have plenty to melt. I picked up a bat, cat, and ghost on sale at the grocery store today too. All the cookie cutters I’m using are metal, and I just tossed the witch and pumpkin in the dishwasher, so here’s hoping the residual crayon washes off.

My willing assistant (just not willing to give up his milk carton!). I love it. He’s old enough now that I can say “hold up the witch and smile for me” and he’ll do it.

This week’s theme is baby pictures!

Here’s one of the first pictures we saw of Ben, when he was just a few days old. Check out the gigantic diaper. He was a mere 5 lbs and change at this point.

And here he is in August of 06, three months old, with his foster sister.

This is actually last week’s fff theme, but who’s counting?

We all know Ben’s favorite stuffed friend. Fleece counts as “stuffed” right?

And, although he hasn’t been as popular in recent months.. Mr.Crabby had a good long run as favorite stuffed friend too.

Other random Ben tidbits:

Speech is going well. I’m not sure if I’ve posted much about it yet or not, but his teacher comes twice a week which is apparently quite rare in the world of kids who need speech. He hasn’t really been verbal during speech sessions yet, but after she leaves he’s much more chatty. He’s been babbling constantly and adding in new sounds, using the few words that can say more frequently. Right now she’s just working on oral motor stuff: sticking out his tongue, making silly faces, blowing bubbles. With apraxia, it’s not that the kids *can’t* make speech sounds, it’s that they can’t plan to make the sounds when they want to make them. So it’s almost like memorizing a piece of music, he has to develop the muscle memory for how to say the words he wants to say.

And, like walking, he’s not going to do it until he can do it well. Which makes this even harder, because practice would really help.

He can blow bubbles now, though. After much fruitless work by myself and Ms Lisa (his speech teacher), it was Emily and/or Rebecca who taught him how to blow bubbles. Not sure how it happened, but there ya go. He got a new bubble set and they were playing with it on the deck. The next day, he can blow bubbles.

But on to other non-speech-related topics.

Jumping is still fun. Added fun, now, includes jumping off of things. Blocks, stepstools, the couch. Oy. Over and over.

He also loves climbing walls… not climbing *the* walls, but those fake rock walls that are often found on the sides of playsets. Loves them. There’s a park nearby with a huge rock with handholds all over it… I see him eyeing it, but he’s not been bold enough to tackle that one yet. Maybe in a few weeks.

His imagination has really bloomed in the past few weeks. He’s moving beyond driving cars around (”beep beep, vroom”) and now they take people places and have terriffic wrecks and get stuck in the mud. He’s also rediscovered his play kitchen. He plans, cooks, and serves elaborate meals for anyone who happens to be nearby. Parents, dogs, stuffed animals… all are fair game for being forced to enjoy glasses of milk and an assortment of wooden vegetables.

After a distinctly anti-crayon phase, coloring is fun again, too. He’s got much better control of the crayons now, and he went through one of his coloring books today and vigorously, thorougly, colored in every face. Not sure why.

Oh, and today he brought me a not-quite-dead fly.

Ah this’ll be a fun one!

Ben and his new buddy Cooper..foreshadowing events to come:

The cat is really very tolerant of his baby antics:

Already workin’ the ladies. I phear:

Exhibit B of same:

And the best friend of all:

While Ben can, indeed, shake it with the best of ‘em.. I have remarkably few pictures of said groove shaking. So, instead, here are a few pics of him doing something else he loves… running. Running at full tilt. He was pretty hard to photograph there for a while.

At the farm. Those are walnuts in his hands.

At Bruce and Christy’s Labor Day party last year.
Wow, he’s grown so much just since then.

And a couple from last year’s 4th of July Transy concert… feeling a little sad about missing that this year.

Lovin’ the slide!

I know I FFF these watermelon photos a lot, but I love them! And Bento loves his superfoods!

Almost missed this one.. oops. Bento and his daddy (and I) are in DC this weekend. I’m attending a wedding and Ben and Brian are doing touristy stuff.

Going way back for this daddy and me fff. Here’s the happy duo in our hotel in Guatemala City, the day after we first met Ben.

Do you know, that after the scream/puke-fest that happened while we were boarding our flight from Atlanta home (in Oct 2006) Ben finally fell asleep in Brian’s arms, and Brian didn’t move for the entire flight because he didn’t want to wake Ben? Daddy and me, indeed.

Or, “yr doin it wrong”:

Didn’t have to look far to find pictures for this week’s FFF.

Helping organize the tupperware.

He finally gained access to the pretty yellow box of cornstarch.