Apparently I am so unable to throw things away that not only do I have 1-3 junk drawers in every room of the house, but my laptop's hard drive has been telling me it's FULL for weeks. Which has kept me from downloading all the pictures from SanFran and our life thereafter. But Jack somehow accomplished it yesterday, so now I have no excuses for not blogging. I thought I was going to be forced to keep this blog updated with text alone and/or less-than-ideal pictures that can be posted via my iPhone blogging app (yes, I AM spoiled rotten and realize it every day) but, as always, Jack came to the rescue.
Most importantly, I need to record Ben's latest milestones (and by latest, I mean what he's done the last 2.5 months since March when I posted about his first steps. Bad Mom, what can I say). At 13 months, Ben is now:
- sleeping through the night. Yay! He started this about 2 days after I weaned him at 11 months. He's been a better sleeper than his sisters were even until they turned 2 years old, and now he's leaps and bounds ahead of where they were at this age. He goes down for naps with little to no protest twice a day for at least 45 minutes (this nap length and consistency was unheard of with the girls) and he's sleeping from 8pm to 6:30am-ish each night. If I wasn't a procrastinative, easily distracted night owl, I could easily get 8 hours a nite.
- walking up the stairs while holding the railing. He's also determined to go down the same way but I have been able to intervene so far after a few steps.
- running. Especially after his sisters.
- verbally saying "more" "done" "mama" "dada" and "nana" (banana) VERY consistently and can use signs to say book, drink, more, eat, all done, cat, please, open, close, cook, cold, hot, fish, and drive/car. He's also clearly shaking his head No and recently started doing Yes (altho he shakes his whole upper body to accomplish this! It's adorable).
- determined to run into the street and/or fall into the front yard pond. Those are the first places he goes if he escapes out the garage door. Which he does often. Thank goodness we are on a circle and have neighbors who are too busy to notice my 1 year old throwing rocks into the pond unsupervised.
- a very very good hugger, and he has a super hilarious smile that he pulls out when he knows he's being cute. He also has an incredible laugh that I STILL have not caught on video. Not that I could download it to share it here even if I did. Dangit!
- climbing anything in his way. I find him standing on the girls' kid-size table almost daily, even when I've taken the chairs away. He brought over a box from the playroom one day to use as a step stool and got up there.
- going to be the cause of our first visit to the ER since my hand injury back in 1999. Last week his sisters demonstrated to him how they can jump off the couch and off their beds, landing with a satisfied THUD on their feet. I've seen him trying to do it every day since.
- very social with strangers, even when acting shy. He likes to hand people things, especially rocks or small toys. It was so cute to see him shyly walk up to our neighbor's 5 year old son and his friend with a rock and offer this "gift" to them. He SO wants to be a big kid!
In general, Ben is a joy to be around, even when his temper flares up and he's flailing his 24 lb body around while I'm trying to hold him and cook at the same time (again, the ER visit is imminent). When he hugs you close and then pats or rubs your back in circles, it makes all the crazy work keeping him alive worth it.
With kids, you can never have too many buckets:
A few pics from last week's visit to Gramma and Opa's house in Chicago:
With "Uncle Jonas" and "Great-Auntie Edita":
Hooray for block parties and the bouncy houses they bring! ;)
