Story time for Benjamin

Benjamin is easily overstimulated. He loves books, for example, but if he sits on my lap while I read picture books he gets hyper (jerky movements/fast breathing) and spitty. He's fine for longer books when he can look at the same page for a minute but if we're reading a little board book and I'm flipping the page every few seconds he wigs out and starts throwing up everywhere.

We read The Bear Went Over the Mountain today, for example, and that was far too much for him since I was singing the words and had to turn the pages to keep in time with the music. He was fussing and puking by the time we finished.

So usually he gets to lie in my lap and look up at the cover of the book while we read and he seems to enjoy that quite a bit.

We read a book called Colors (by Charles Harper) next. I'm a little torn over his illustrations. Some of them I like a lot. Others I don't. Others I like but wonder why he included them in a board book for babies (the tan page, for instance). Benjamin was completely transfixed by the cover so when Miriam and I had finished reading it and looking at the pictures we decided to let Benjamin have a turn.

We put him on the floor for tummy time and propped the book up in front of him (something both my girls enjoyed as babies as well).

We let him soak up each picture...spending as much time on each page as he needed. This part was difficult for Miriam because she felt he should "read" faster. He's just a slow reader, what can I say?

He was really quite enamoured with this book, though.

House Tour, Part II

Today I'll show off our bedroom/office/nursery, where we keep our bed, our books, and our baby. I went to an interior design class last weekend and picked up a few tips (it was only an hour long) and have been trying to apply them around the house. I'm still not very good at it but I think I like this wall a whole lot:

Don't worry; the baby's fine—Miriam's just playing doctor

Monkey Business

When we first found out we was going to have a boy we were gifted a monkey outfit. It was the first outfit we got for him and it changed my mind about boy clothes—you mean, they make cute stuff for boys?!

And then Benjamin, the silly guy, came far too early to fit in that 0-3 month monkey outfit, so the same person who had given us the original outfit ran to the store and found a preemie monkey outfit for Benjamin to wear.

June 24, 2012 (3 weeks old)

Now that Benjamin's wearing cloth diapers he's big enough to fill out at 0-3 month onesie (cloth diapers make your bum look big) so I put him in his monkey outfit for church today but before we left I took some pictures of Benjamin with his old monkey outfit.

Getting ready for church

This Sunday we weren't nearly as popular on Skype as last Sunday so I thought I'd try something new with my "spare" time and actually do my hair before going to church. A novel idea, I know.

I broke out the curling iron Andrew gave me for my birthday over a year ago (and that I've used on my own hair only once or twice before) and got three curls in before Miriam entered the bathroom.

"Mom! You're curling your hair! Will you curl my hair, too?" she exclaimed, plopping herself in front of me expectantly.

So I began curling her hair, leaving my three curls dangling limp and lonely on one side of my head.

No sooner had I put three or four curls in her hair when Rachel wandered into the bathroom. "Oh, wow! Miriam—you look beautiful! And, Mom, one side of your head looks nice, but the other side...well, I'm sorry to say this but you forgot to curl it."

"I didn't forget," I told her. "I was just interrupted."

"Oh. Will you curl my hair, too?"

So I finished curling Miriam's hair and then started on Rachel's. Both of these girls have rather long hair. Miriam's is relatively easy to curl because its still baby fine. Rachel's on the other hand took quite a bit of work and then the curls started falling out right away because I didn't have any product on hand to spray them stiff—so we threw her hair in a ponytail and let the curls play with the tips of her hair. She was pleased with the look (even if you can't see her curls in the picture).

Thank-nouncement

Although our hearts have been bursting with gratitude these past few months, we are just now getting around to sending out our thank you cards...and, um, also Benjamin's birth announcement. He's only like 4 months old so it's not like we're slow or anything. In our defense he took us by surprise.

We still have some personal messages to send out, but here is our general thank you to the world:

The doctors, nurses, and staff at both hospitals were phenomenal.

Our ward and neighours were wonderful.

Our families were amazing.

We feel incredibly blessed to know the kind people we know, that we live in a world with modern medicine, and that we are under our loving Heavenly Father's constant care.

Thank you!

Miriam's recent artwork

We burn through scrap paper at our house. Not literally, of course, but my girls could (and do) spend hours colouring every day! They found some hand turkeys they made last year and having been drawing dozens of hand turkeys since. Here's one of Miriam's, with a sun in each corner:

Visiting Rachel's school

I'm not sure why I'm doing this post the day before Rachel comes home from school on the last day of school in September since it includes several projects that she's worked on at school. Chances are she'll bring home some spectacular project and then I'll have to do a new blog post (which you all know will be a real burden (kidding)). I have some time and both my arms right now, though, so I'm going to write anyway.

Last night we went to "Literacy Night" at Rachel's school. They had someone there promoting our regional branch of Durham's public library—little did they know we had gone to the library earlier that day to get library cards and check out some books. Our regional library is small...but awesome.

We got to meet Rachel's new principal, who is very nice, and have a little dinner with her in the cafeteria. The school supplied Subway sandwiches and were evidently planning on more people attending because there were a ton of leftovers. Our school struggles for support, evidently—they can't even get people to come out for a free meal. We are still in grad school, though, so we never say no to free food (it's free, people)!

EC, take 3

I've had several people ask me if/when I was going to begin elimination communication with Benjamin.   The answer to that is...yes, now.

Pancake Day

Rachel was gorgeous this morning—as in, stunningly beautiful. Unfortunately she banged her knee into the bench on her way to stand by the wall for a picture so instead of a smile she gave me a grimace. Imagine the smile; she's got a beautiful smile. Somehow we've broken into the world of regular pants—this particular pair are cords—and it makes her seem a whole lot more grown up.

Thanks, Pavlov

Last night I went out with some neighbour friends for "coffee." Not unlike owning a "coffee table," going out for "coffee" doesn't mean that you actually have to have coffee. I don't drink coffee but it wasn't awkward at all because my neighbour across the street doesn't drink coffee either—and she's the wife of an evangelical pastor. She and I got the Caramel Apple Spice drink...from the kids' menu. It was divine!

But I digress...

Besides Relief Society meetings I've never had a "girl's night out" before (because I've always gone out with friends, all our children in tow, during the day) but I think it's a fabulous idea. Benjamin tagged along, of course, but he's cute and doesn't interrupt conversations (too badly). We were able to sympathize with each other about the difficult day we'd had with our children while simultaneously giggling that we'd left our husbands in charge of them while we were out having grown up conversations. Of course, our conversations had the same subject matter that they do when we visit on the porch steps while our children play in the front yard, but we were at least able to visit with each other without interjecting commands ("If you found that on the ground don't eat it!") and reprimands ("Next time you pull hair we're going home!") or answering random questions ("No, you can't have any gummy bears. We don't even have gummy bears!").

Because I was planning on going out this evening—after Andrew got home from school but before bedtime—I moved our bedtime routine back a bit so that I could do story time and the whole shebang before I left so that the girls would go to bed nicely for Andrew. He's taking a killer stats class this semester and has been so stressed out about homework that I didn't want him to have to fight them to bed.