Ben has been back to school since last Wednesday — fantastic! Everything seems to be going well at school. Every day when I go to pick him up, it seems like he has learned a new word that day. Yesterday the new word was “necklace”. Ben has gotten pretty good at learning new words through imitation, so his vocabulary is expanding at an increasing rate. I’m so impressed by the things that Ben learns without me really thinking about teaching him. It’s amazing how kids can pick things up just by watching the people around them.

Another thing that Ben is doing much more these days is saying hello and goodbye. It used to be that we would rarely get him to wave goodbye when we left, but now he does it every time. I think yesterday I even taught him to say “bye-bye” when he was waving. He is also doing a better job of waving hello to people when he greets them.

Ben is still pretty cranky in the morning, but for some reason he has been sleeping in later these past few days. Today we were able to sleep in until 6:40 with no interruption — sweet relief!

Ben returned to school for the first day yesterday and seemed to get back in the swing of things with no trouble at all. The ladies who work there report that he was eating like a horse. I can’t blame him — after being stuck at home with nothing but rice, bananas, and applesauce for 10 days, I’d eat a tin can if you put some soy sauce on it. Speaking of that, Ben has developed a craving for rice covered in teriyaki sauce. Don’t ask me why.

Lately Ben has been waking up very early (say around 4:30) and being very upset when I come in to get him. We decided to wait him out and let him calm himself down, which works, but it doesn’t make that last 90 minutes of sleep very easy for Marcie and myself. I wonder why this is happening?

The stomach virus is over! Ben’s digestion has returned to normal!

Angels peal and join the chorus of song.

Looking back, the last 10 days was excruciating on several levels, but it was also valuable in some ways. I really felt like Ben and I bonded more through all the time that we spent together. Even more to the point, Ben and Mary got much closer together since they spent so many days at home. (Thank you, thank you, thank you Mary! We wouldn’t have survived without you!)

As with most parenting experiences, I’m sure that this will be a learning experience and that next time we will know what to expect. I’ve learned not to get my hopes up and to be patient while waiting for things to subside. It was a blessing that Ben was in such a good mood this week; I can’t imagine remaining so cheerful if I had been in his shoes!

Benjamin said “cracker” today. It sounds a little like “quacker,” with the less than hard /k/ sound at the beginning. It’s the most precious word he’s said so far. It’s super cute. I’ll try to get a video of it tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll be eating more crackers tomorrow, that’s about all he ate today. He had about a sleeve and a half of graham crackers so far today. There’s still more eating time to come, so we’ll see if he’ll finish the second sleeve. I might have to join him in the cracker fest as I have caught the same ickies that he had. Ugh.

My mom spent Wednesday through Friday taking care of our sick Ben so Roger and I could work. I think they both had a great time together, some quality bonding time for sure. Mom even reports that Ben said “Grandma” to her on many occasions. Awesome work B!

Let’s see some cute pictures instead of dwelling on the pestilence that has descended upon our household.

The face gets a new hat from GrandMary.

It takes some pretty good timing to find a pile of leaves around campus. The grounds crew typically vacuumes them up as their falling from the sky. So this pile was a special treat for Ben. He climbed in it and burried himself looking super cute the whole time.

Our long national poopy nightmare continues unabated. On Wednesday, Ben went the entire afternoon and evening without any diarrhea, and I really thought that we had turned the corner. But yesterday morning he woke up with his pajamas full of poop. At this point the diapers are really just an optimistic thought. No improvement through lunch and dinner, although applesauce does seem to improve the color and aroma of the situation.

Yesterday afternoon was a very trying time for this father, and I am getting increasingly ground down by this thing. Ben was outrageously cranky yesterday afternoon, and seemed inconsolable for a long time. Fortunately he calmed down around dinner time and managed to make it through the shower fairly uneventfully.

This morning Marcie reports that his BM is a little more solid, but I can’t get my hopes up and get my soul crushed again. If we can go the whole day without any diarrhea, then I will start to feel a little better about things.

I’m taking a Multimedia class at the school I work at. We’ve learned to make virtual realities in the early part of the class. Now we’re starting movie editing. Because I missed class yesterday I decided to splice together a video to practice. The clips are from our visit to the Children’s Museum on Sunday. Watch out for the music, it’s wacky.

Warning: the following post is messy and disturbing on multiple levels, including scatological. You were warned.

Good news, we seem to be out of the woods with our cold from last week — the cough has almost disappeared. Unfortunately, it seems to be replaced by a virulent stomach bug. Ben was home again today and will also be home tomorrow as he tries to recuperate.

This one has been characterized by *explosive* diarrhea. I mean, you have no idea. We have suffered containment breaches in the past with his diapers, but this time there’s no keeping up. Last night in the dining hall, he totally blew out the back of his diaper, through his pants, and even onto the back of his jacket — that was a fun time trying to carry him home! And this morning he woke up with poop all over the inside of his pajamas. I had to actually give him a surprise shower this morning just to get it all off.

It’s really gross, too — the only way I can describe the smell is that it’s like the smell of rotten algae that you sometimes get in your aquariums if you haven’t been doing a very good job of scraping down the glass walls. Tonight, as I was getting ready to put him in the shower, I took off his diaper and found that he had pooped on both sides of the diaper and also on the diaper cover. While I was in the process of scraping all of that into the toilet (and clogging it), Ben decided to pee all over the floor. Ahh, the joys of parenting…

Exciting news from day care yesterday — Ben said three new words!

• cold
• off
• all done

I have also heard him try to say the words “pasta” and “pizza”.

Ben’s cold actually seems to be getting a little worse. Today he woke up with a 100.6 degree fever, so that meant a day at home with Daddy and the beginning of a course of antibiotics. I’m sure that the medicine will clear things up quickly. Generally Ben has been pretty cheerful for a sick little guy, although his appetite is a little off and he is much more tired. Let’s hope for a quick turnaround!

Ben had another great speech therapy appointment today. I’ve noticed recently that Ben has become much more able and willing to imitate new words that he hears — just in the past few days, I have heard him try to say “socks” and “hot dog” right after I say them. Very exciting! This week at his appointment he did some finger painting while working on his “help”.

Ben dressed up as a gorilla for Halloween this year! It was a cute hand-me-down from our neighbors who hosted a little kids Halloween party.

Ben wasn’t really thrilled to be in the gorilla suit, he really didn’t like the hood part.

We went to the party to see all the other cuties in their costumes. Here’ a photo of Lisa and her twins, you might remember them from infancy packed up in baby carriers.

Here we have a gorilla, a pink puppy, and a bumble bee.

Me and my gorilla. Maybe Ben should have just gone as “The Face” for Halloween, it’s a costume he’s comfortable with and it’s easy to capture it on film.

Like herding kittens: Our host got all the kiddies into a group shot. I have a funny video of the horde trying to assemble, it’s pure pandemonium!

Thanks to Marcie for putting up a bunch of posts lately. I’ve been really busy and haven’t put as much time into the blog lately as I would have liked. Anyway, since our last update from the speech therapist it seems like Ben’s vocabulary development is really coming along. He has a few words that he is using consistently:

• Hiya
• Ball
• Bottle
• Open
• Uh-oh
• Up

Also, there are some other words that Ben has said a few times, including hot, help, car, and strangely enough, “Edyta”, the name of the lady who takes care of him at day care. It is really fun now trying to communicate with Ben, because you can actually try to have some sort of a conversation with him, like this:

Ben: “bo-ben” (Open)
Me: “Open what?”
Ben: (signs please)
Me: “Open what please?”
Ben: (points at door)
Me: “Oh, open DOOR please. OK!”

I think that the therapy is really helping and that Ben’s pace will get faster over the next few weeks. The trick is to just keep practicing!

A typical morning around our house consist of breakfast for Ben with Mommy. He and I have culinary adventures together in the morning. Some favorites are pancakes, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, french toast (called Frenchy! in our house), PB&J, and cereal. On Tuesday Ben got really interested in my Kashi Autumn Wheat cereal and insisted on having most of my bowl – he really likes it! Too bad it has more fiber than a 27 pound human needs in a week! I’ll have to find him some baby friendly shredded wheat. Here are a couple of videos from breakfast yesterday. My favorite part of watching Ben eat is seeing how BIG he makes his mouth to get all his food in. Very cute. These are not examples of Ben at is absolute cutest, but they are real breakfast footage.

Gag me with a spoon! Some things just need to be tried, repeated!

In this video Ben shows us his two spooned eating technique for oats and yogurt, also his baby cough.

Roger, Ben and I went to the West Hartford Children’s Museum today with our friend Melissa and baby Grant. The museum had some great animal exhibits and some adequate other parts and some not-so-hot features that were new and cool about 20 years ago. Overall, the museum gets a C- rating from me. Ben enjoyed himself so that may be inflating the grade a bit. The Portland Children’s Museum still gets our vote for the most awesome museum to date. Here are some videos and photos from our day.

Mommy said: Ben, lay down so I can put your diaper on.

And Ben laid down and very nicely let me put his diaper on!

I almost fell over.

Ben and I have not enjoyed diapering time, ever. Well, that’s not really fair…about 65% of the time Ben does something that makes diapering him EXTREMELY irritating. Examples include: screaming, turning over (my least favorite and most often encountered irritation), grabbing at things on the shelf, and grabbing at the diapers or his privates when there’s poop present.

Like I said, I almost fell over, this kid is super cool.

I was so impressed with Ben today. He walked out to the car when I picked him up from day care, and he also walked almost all the way to dinner and all the way back home from dinner all by himself, with very few diversions. Then when we were getting ready for bed, I told him to “go take off your clothes” and he went into his bedroom and climbed up on his changing table to get undressed. He always seems so happy when he can figure out what you are asking him to do and actually accomplish the task!

First, Ben’s cough has improved dramatically, so it seems that the antibiotics that he was taking for the past few days have done a good job of clearing up his pneumonia. We’ll know for sure when we get his chest rechecked in a few weeks, but all signs now point up.

Ben’s speech appointment yesterday had some exciting results. Ben was able to say “ball” fairly consistently when we were playing with a giant orange fitness ball. Also, we found out that Ben really likes to dance to music, so Melissa tried to teach him the sign for “music”. It’s a hard one, though — you have to brush your hand up and down the other arm, so I think that might take Ben a while. The rest of the session was pretty typical — some playing with toys, a lot of emphasis on “open” and “closed”.

I finally got YouTube to cooperate with my new Mac so we’re back to being able to post videos! Yippy! I’ll have more posted in the future, but for now sleep.

Ben and I worked on a project for the middle schoolers today. My friend Stephen is teaching me and the kids how to juggle and found the round juggling balls I bought for the group to be too hard for beginners to catch. So Ben and I set about making some bean bags to replace the balls. We bought 15 bags of split peas and cut up some of the dozens of receiving blankets we have accumulated. The result was an activity that kept Ben from thinking about his teething pain for about 2 hours. Betsy and Piper even got a treat when Ben flung the peas over the edge of his play bucket.

Ben sat on my lap while I sewed the first two sides of each bag.

He enjoyed scooping the peas and moving them from cup to cup. He wasn’t much help with the stuffing though.

7 sets made. Not bad for juggling sewing and Benjamin at the same time!