Creative little guy

Ben has been creative lately, doing more pretend play, enjoying art & music, getting interested in helping in the kitchen, and talking up a storm. In the last 3 weeks or so, he's been using a lot more sentences instead of short phrases and getting better at describing things. We had parent-teacher conferences at daycare Wednesday and his teacher said he continues to be further ahead on his verbal skills than his motor skills, which is consistent with how his development has been previously. Overall, he's doing well and especially loves storytime, playing in the kitchen area, and art/music activities.

A few things we've been up to:

Playing the guitar with Mommy. He also loves the baritone ukulele that Dave's mom had found at a rummage sale for $1(!) & given me a few years back. I finally got new strings for it and after a few adjustments, it seems to be playing great. It's a really nice size for him. Other than a fascination with the tuning pegs, he does a pretty good job with playing them gently.

Playing drums with Daddy:

Playing peekaboo with a Cheerios double-sized box. You would not believe the wailing when we wouldn't let him take the box to his room one night! I think he would've wanted to play peekaboo all night long if we'd let him bring it.

My parents visited a few weeks ago and Ben was fascinated by Papa's touch screen phone and the photos on it. When he saw this photo on the monitor, he got excited and said, "I helping Papa!"

My guitar needed to be repaired and my regular guy didn't have time for it, so he sent me to Mass Street Music in Lawrence, KS. It was a blustery day but we enjoyed some brief window shopping downtown with my parents. Ben was thrilled to see the giant inflatable Jayhawk (the University of Kansas' mascot), as he has loved pointing out the "birdie" in the local college logos decorating our grocery store.

Grammie & Ben playing with Mr. Potato Heads:

Having fun painting:

Today we got really ambitious and decided to use some of the beautiful blueberries Dave got at Sam's Club last week for blueberry muffins. Ben has so desperately wanted to help with cooking (and everything else) lately that I pulled up the stepstool and had him help with the measuring and stirring. While I was measuring the wet ingredients, he figured out how to open the pinch-top plastic flour container and was scooping the flour into an extra bowl. He had such a good time with it that I let him continue playing after the muffins were in the oven...at least until "I pretend eating muffin, Mommy" turned into actually eating some raw dough twice after being warned about it.

The final product. Alton Brown's instructions have you flip the muffins out upside down onto a towel so the bottoms can set, but he must do it a little smoother than I was able. Some got kind of smushed. But they were pretty tasty and Ben was so proud.

Showing off the muffin:

We put Ben to bed and I went in the next room to write this post. He was quiet for a little while, but about a half-hour later, he suddenly started singing to himself. He just finished a long rendition of "Where is Thumbkin?" and is now singing "Picking Up a Baby Bumblebee." Now we've moved on to "Wheels on the Bus." ...and now I think he's finally fallen asleep, 45 minutes after we put him to bed. Pretty typical.