Weekend Recap: Tigers, Dinos, & Peas

I am sad to see this weekend come to an end because it was such a good one!!  It started with a huge bang because I got to see some of my beloved college friends!  We met (kinda) in the middle for dinner on Friday night.   I felt like I blinked and then it was time to drive home, but it was so good to catch up.  I am truly blessed with some amazing girlfriends.  Thankfully we have dates planned for November and December!

Nana took Benji to music class on Saturday morning and Andy and I hit the gym.  No pics, unfortunately, but I did get the reports that he was an adorable little angel who listens well and is starting to participate independently.  I hate to brag but...it's my blog so I suppose I can brag as much as I want to.  ;)  On Saturday afternoon, we made an impromptu decision to go to the zoo.  There just so happened to be a Halloween celebration going on, so you better believe Benji wore a costume!  We arrived just in time for the costume parade.  We watched in awe of all of the creative costumes out there.  However, all (yes, he has more than one two costumes) are pretty darn cute too.  And at 90% off last season, it was hard to pick just one.  Actually, my mom and I both bought clearance costumes last year-- great minds think alike!

As you can see in these pictures, he was really getting into his role and was trying to act like a tough tiger.  (i.e. no smiles) 

But, being the sweet guy that he is, he ultimately ended up making friends with each and every animal and person he saw.

Andy and I had another famously fall night of scary movies, festive food, and of course fall scents.  We didn't want to have too wild of a night because Sunday morning was Auntie Anna's first 5k run!  It was a bit chilly, so we decided to stop for a quick bite to eat before catching Anna at the finish line.  No sooner did I take my first bite before I realized my phone was ringing.  Oops!  We missed the whole run, but they still managed to dominate without us.    While I think the final verdict was that this was Anna's first and last 5k, they both managed to place in their age group!

As if this weekend wasn't already fun enough, there was more Halloween adorableness in store.  Ben got to go trick or treating for the first time with his bff!  Ben had never had candy before, but he quickly learned that he likes chocolate.  Since I get more than excited when I find foods that he likes, I essentially let him eat whatever he wanted.  Even if I didn't let him, he used his dino chops to bite right through the plastic.

Our neighborhood has night time trick or treating on Thursday, but since we wanted daytime fun we went to Andy's parents' neighborhood.  They live in an awesomely fun subdivision, so we essentially just visited all of his parents' friends.  They really get into it and wear costumes and offer booze to the parents--brilliant.

Since the dino and the pea pod didn't have a beverage to keep them warm, we headed back to Andy's parents' house for dinner after about 7 houses.  

My little tigersourus will debut his third and final costume on the actual Halloween day.  We're going to have some friends over for dinner and to pass out candy.  Ben makes this (and every) holiday infinitely more fun.   I loved Halloween as a kid, but it is even better as an adult watching your own kid.  It is actually debatable as to who had more fun yesterday, the kids or the adults.   All I know is that Ben slept like a champ last night and today and we've now added Reese's candies to his diet.  Happy momma and boy.

Weekend Recap: Football & Shopping

I didn't take too many pictures this weekend, but it was still a good one.  It was our typical Saturday morning routine of music class and working out, both of which were great.  Ben is starting to participate more every week and watching him in action is too cute for words.  He is the youngest in the class, and it is so adorable when he does the things the big kids do.  I think I mentioned this before, but it is a fairly structured class, so I'm not sure if pictures would be allowed.  You're supposed to take your child into the hall if he/she is being disruptive, and I imagine taking pictures would be a little distracting as well.  I think my mom is going to take him next week so maybe I'll have her take some. ;) ;) (Hint, hint)  We had a productive afternoon of cleaning before we headed to our friends' house for a football party.  They have a huge screen and projector, and yesterday was their yearly Badger's party on the big screen.   Unfortunately, we had to leave shortly after the game started.  It was so nice to be able to catch up with friends who we see far too infrequently!  Sadly, the only picture I have from Saturday is of one of the festive treats we made.

We got in our Sunday morning workouts before it was shop-til-you-drop time for Benji and me.  Andy got to watch the Packers game in peace and I had a productive afternoon with my best little buddy.  My mom met up with us for a bit, so it was a win-win-win.  Ben was getting really excited for Christmas after seeing all of the department store decorations.  He even showed me some things he might ask Santa for.  

I don't know if it is just part of being a 13 month old, but Ben's schedule has been all over the place lately.  He is totally not into napping and the second you place him in his bed, even if he is sleeping, he pops right up and looks around like he's at a party.  We'll let him hang out in his crib for a bit, but when we look at the monitor and see his little face looking back at us, we realize that he just might not be tired.  He only napped for an hour and a half today, so hoping he sleeps a lot tonight!  He essentially slept through the night last night, can we be so lucky 2 nights in a row?!  Time for bed for this momma, 5:30am Spin class comes quickly!  Goodnight!

13 Months (10/13/13)

Dear Ben,
    Happy golden month birthday, sweet boy!  I found the 13-24 month stickers on Amazon, but you are getting too smart for me and you try to rip it off as soon as I put it on.  You were checking out Rosco in the first picture, but somehow we got you to not only smile but to actually look at the camera this time around!

GENERAL:  We finally got in to see the pediatrician for your 12 month check up!  At 13 months, you weighed it at 17# 14oz and you are 29.25 inches.  You had to get 4 shots plus a toe poke!  You were sad.  Momma was sad.  Daddy was sad.  I think the nurse thought daddy was crying because she said, "uh oh, it's usually the moms crying not the dads!"  But, in true Benji fashion, you were over it in no time at all.  You were a little grouchy and extra cuddly that night, but after some tylenol (and 12.5 hours of sleep,) you were back to your active little self!

EATING:  Unfortunately, eating is not going as well as I'd like.  I LOVE coming home to see you from work, but I get stressed thinking about dinner time because you just do not like to eat that much.  :(  You do like to snack--pretzels, crackers, puffs, yogurt melts, but meals are another story.  The pediatrician gave us some ideas and also referred us to a feeding clinic.  She said we could try adding formula to your yogurt, but you actually don't even like yogurt that much these days.  You definitely do not like being fed, Mr. Independent.  This is frustrating to me because you at least used to eat some baby food that I would mix with a higher protein/fat content baby food that you wouldn't eat alone.  Lately, you like to eat fruit, particularly watermelon and raspberries, and cheese. You are taking a few ounces of formula during the day, and you usually have a 6oz bottle in the night and a 6oz bottle in the morning (sometimes 4:00am.)  We tried to switch you to whole milk but you were not having it.  We'll keep trying though!  Nana sure sends me a lot of pictures of you eating throughout the day!  You sure LOOK like you like to eat!

SLEEPING:  Sleeping has also not been one of your favorite hobbies.  You seem to be getting away from the 2 nap business, which is fine, but the times of your naps seem to be all over the place.  I wish I was home more to keep you on a schedule. :(  At night, we read a book and then you have your bottle and then we'll put you in your bed and you'll fall right to sleep.  You have been crying these past 2 nights, but I am hoping that's not a permanent thing!  You wake up around 1:30AM like clockwork nearly every night.  We give you a bottle and then you'll (usually) fall right back to sleep.  You are often up again for another bottle at 3:00-4:00ish.  Again, you'll fall right back to sleep.  The pediatrician said that although you do not need to eat in the night, she understands why we do it and says it is up to us if we want to break you from this habit.  I would at least like to get you through your next surgery before cutting your nighttime calories!  Possibly my favorite part of the day is when you wake up for the day, around 6:00 or so, and we bring you into our bed.  You just love your morning snuggles.  Without fail, after you're all cozy, you'll yell "Ra!" over and over until Rosco comes into the room.  You giggle and squeal with excitement as soon as you see her and it is soooo cute.

FINE/ GROSS MOTOR:  Even though I already knew it, the doctor confirmed that you are right on track for all of your developmental milestones.  I am sure you were doing this last month, but you love climbing those stairs!  Actually, you love climbing in general.  You like being on our bed when all the pillows are on it or you love climbing on the pillows on the couch.  You love to do the "itsy bitsy spider" with your hands too; you have the hand movements down!  You are also really good at rolling and throwing your ball.  You love each and every one of your balls!  You also are quite adept at taking all of your toys out of your toy baskets.  It is fun watching you play because you are starting to use your toys properly.  You like to stack things and you like putting the shapes into the shape sorter.

COMMUNICATION/COGNITION:  It sounds like you are making more noises and words everyday.  Your favorite words are still mama, dada, and ra, but it sounds like you are saying some other words too.  You like to repeat what you hear and we're going to have to start watching what we say around you to make sure you don't repeat anything you shouldn't!  You are really good at following directions such as "go get your basketball and put it in the hoop" or "go bring mama a ____."  My favorite thing is when you try and give Rosco one of her bones.  She doesn't always want it, but it is so sweet to watch you try.   You are doing a few signs pretty consistently: "more" and "all done" and you're starting to use "help" appropriately.  You also made up your own sign for "clean" and you rub your hands together like you're watching them.  You love waving "hi" and "bye" and you also like to pretend you're talking on the phone when someone says "hi."  You are super duper curious and you never stop exploring.  It's great, but we can't take our eyes off of you for a second!

Playing & listening at story time at the library.

These months just keep getting better and better.  You are the sweetest and smartest little guy out there. Thank you for making me the happiest momma ever!

Weekend Recap: Date Night & Pumpkins!

Another fabulous fall weekend in the books.  We've really stepped up our workouts, so we were beat by Friday and crashed nice and early--so early that we didn't even finish a really good Dateline.  Thank goodness for DVR!  It was a typical Saturday morning with music class for Benji and momma while daddy hit the gym.  It was a rainy Saturday so we cleaned the disaster that was the work room in basement--exciting stuff!  However, we didn't want to exert ourselves too much, because Saturday night was....DATE NIGHT!!!  I still can barely believe that we had a Saturday night out!  Thanks, Auntie Anna, for volunteering to hang with Benj for a few hours so we could be grown-ups for a bit!  We went to a wine bar we've been wanting to check out and then to one of our fav restaurants.  It ended up being a gorgeous night and we had so much fun together.  Hopefully Auntie Anna had fun too so she'll want to come back more often... :)  We used to have date night every Monday, but Auntie has quite the social life!  We love you, Auntie Anna!

We got our workouts (and Packer game watching) in on Sunday before heading to the pumpkin farm!  I am truly blessed in the fabulous co-worker department, so we went to the farm with some of my coworkers and their families.  No sooner were we off the tractor wagon was Benji off and running in search of the perfect pumpkin.  As anticipated, he found a super sized pumpkin and proceeded to try and pick it up himself.  :)

The pumpkins were so huge that unfortunately Benji could not carry his own, so he asked daddy for some help.  

He wasn't discouraged though and found plenty of rocks and sticks that were his own size. :)

Luckily, daddy is super strong, so he was able to carry 2 pumpkins so I could keep track of the cutest pumpkin (Benj--obviously).

It was a little different than last year's trip to the pumpkin farm, but equally fun!

After we found the perfect pumpkins, which was actually hard because you had to hurry back to the tractor before it left without you, we checked out the corn maze.  Luckily, we had some great navigators because with Andy pulling the wagon and a certain hungry boy who was refusing to hold his own bottle, it was hard to pay attention to a map. :)

Talk about a perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon in the fall.  Hopefully the ginormous pumpkins will offer lots of seeds!

Weekend Recap: Vacation Staycation, Part 2 (Not really a staycation because we left for a bit...)

It's already Sunday, again, but I have a few rare minutes of free time while Andy is at the gym and Ben is napping, so I'll see if I can write this quickly!  Hmmm, I really have to think to remember what we did last Saturday.  Wow, my memory stinks!   Ben and I went to music class in the morning and then Andy finished painting our bedroom in the afternoon.  I was a little nervous that the color would be too dark, but it is perfect and relaxing.  I just love it!  Benji and I made a quick trip to the mall and ran some errands while Andy painted, and then we came home to get ready for our big road trip!

Such a good helper picking out holiday scented soap!

Although part of the reason our 4 day road trip turned into a 1 night trip to the Dells was due to poor planning on our part, it really worked out perfectly.  I was a little leery about how Ben would do in a hotel room.  He goes to bed at 7:30 so we didn't want to sit in silence in the dark for the rest of the night, so we opted to rent a cabin.  Since it was a Sunday in the off-season, it was actually quite reasonable.  We ended up with a 3 bedroom + a loft, 2 bathroom cabin.  It was spacious yet cozy!  Since we had enough room to sleep 10 people, we decided to invite some friends to join in the fun.  Luckily, our friend Maggie was able to join us!  (Although we were sad that her hubby was on-call.)  We made it there just in time for Andy to watch some of the Packers game.  However, he was loving the cabin and the scenery (and his awesome wife who found the place) so much that I would venture to say that he would have been just fine without the game.  

We were so happy we opted for the cabin over a hotel room.  There was much more room for Ben to explore AND the kitchen even had a perfect spot for his lobster chair.  He's quite the messy eater so it really helps to keep him contained for meals.  Benji even had his own room with bunk beds.  The fireplace was two sided so that you could see if when you were outside on the deck too.  Such a good idea!

After snacking a bit, we went to check out the water park.  I was expecting Ben to like it a little more than he did, but we still had fun.   I would have posted more pictures of my little shark in action, but unfortunately the majority of them are blurry--boo!  After we swam, we went back to the cabin for some dinner.  Andy made some tasty pumpkin ravioli for dinner!  After the little guy went to bed, it was vino for the girls and pumpkin beer for Andy.  We played an intensely awesome game of cranium for a good 3+ hours before we crashed for the night a few minutes before Ben woke up.

I wish I could say Ben slept like a champ in the pack 'n play, but not only did he end up in our room, he ended up on our bed.  He would not, could not, did not sleep in the pack 'n play.   I did not realize he is a total wiggle worm in the night and multiple times he was completely perpendicular to Andy and me.  I was barely sleeping because I was afraid he was going to climb out of the bed.  I remember being excited reading 6:24 on the clock, because it meant that the night was over.  We had a fairly lazy Monday morning, complete with pumpkin pancake thanks to the super chef Andy, before hitting the outlet mall!  

Although it was a short little getaway, it was 100% awesome (minus the sleep, so more like 99.99%.)  Actually, I suppose I have to subtract some more awesomeness if we count Ben's crashing fall during lunch.  We were almost ready to go, and Ben was standing on the bench of the booth and he somehow fell forward and smashed his little nose into the table.  Lots of tears and a little blood later, he was as good as new.  He slept most of the way home and it was mighty nice to be home again, even though we were barely gone for 24 hours.  We'll obviously try a vacation again, but man, there is no place like home!

Weekend Recap: Staycation Vacation, Part 1

I'm falling behind AGAIN.  I'm in a rather blah mood tonight and I'm crabby that I work so much and don't have much time to blog, so hopefully writing this post will make me :).  I actually have a lot to be :) about because I had a wonderful 4 day weekend with my little family!  I am probably forgetting something, but I don't believe that I have had 4 consecutive days off since my maternity leave!  Waaay too long!  I seriously loved every work-free minute.  I don't know if I would be the best full-time stay at home mom, but I would certainly love to work even a little bit less.  We had big plans to go on a 4 day road trip, but after realizing that we weren't sure how Ben would do in a hotel room, we opted to only spend 1 night away.  (Hindsight: BRILLIANT move on our part.)  It was rainy on Friday, so we decided to take a trip to the children's museum.  We had never been there before and it was awesome!  I think Ben could have stayed and played all night.  

 

Ben jumped right in there with each and every thing that caught his little eye.  He is getting quite good at repeating what he sees.  He loved throwing the fake fruit down the chute!

He also loved checking out the "home town" exhibits.   Ben was quite the tour guide and made sure that we did not miss an attraction.  He was an excellent bus driver and was a pro at opening and shutting the (invisible) door--probably because we sing "Wheels On The Bus" about 10 times a day.

He had to stop at the ATM before we got too far.  Unfortunately, it was only dispensing plastic cash that day.  Good thing he found us a little free library nearby, although he preferred opening and closing the cabinet doors over the actual books.  

We made a quick stop at the fake grocery store so Benji could pick up one of his favorites--watermelon!  He was seriously trying to eat it, much to my germaphobic chagrin.  

And since I'm a total thrill seeker who loves to live life on the edge (not), we ended our trip with a ride on a Harley (without helmets) and broadcasting the news at a crime scene.  Hopefully this is the closest that Ben will ever get to both of these things. :)

These pictures do not even come close to demonstrating the amount of energy that was expended that day, and thus, no sooner did we get home did I find the boys like this:

I'm feeling as tired as these guys right now, so I'm going to make this a 2 part post.  I've been working out in the morning lately, which I had been missing terribly, but this also requires an earlier bedtime.  Hopefully I'll have time to finish writing before it's the weekend again!  Super pumped that tomorrow is already Thursday!

Weekend Recap: Working and Working

This might be my most boring post to date, but I couldn't break my streak!  Actually, Andy and Ben had fun the entire weekend, I guess I'm just the bitter one who had to work.  (I organized a conference at work so I kinda had to be there.)  Anyway, while I was working, the boys were doing some serious father-son bonding.  They went to REI, out to lunch, looked at an open house (we're not moving--at the moment), and played outside.  I was thinking Andy was going to be exhausted when I got home, but the house was spic 'n span and he was bragging about how much fun they had.  Meanwhile, I crashed immediately after Ben went to bed.  Since I didn't take any pics on Saturday, I'll just post a photo that makes me smile....and makes Andy cringe.

On Sunday, I somehow told  convinced Andy that it was a good idea to rearrange our bedroom furniture AND paint the walls.  He wasn't loving the idea, but he kept an open mind, as I requested before sharing my amazing thoughts, and he willingly went to look at paint with me.  I think it helped that we had just added a few more fall decorations + the fall candles were going; how can you not be in a happy mood with all of that goodness!?  With Ben's help, we ended up picking a nice "steel wool" grey.  Assuming we apply the paint in more than a few random spots, I'll post pictures some day.  Clearly, Ben was as excited about paint shopping as his momma!

After a productive day of house projects, we went to Andy's parents' house to celebrate his bro's birthday.   Benji got to play with his one and only cousin, so of course he was taking the big kid toys every chance he got.  It was a wonderfully relaxing way to end a fall weekend.  While I feel like I got gypped (spelled correctly per dictionary.com) of a weekend day, thankfully I took off a few days this coming weekend to make up for my Benji deprivation.

Happy October!  It might have been in the 80's today, but an apple pie is in the oven so it's FALL!