Ben at eight months- photo essay

(Seriously? You're interrupting my duck time to take pictures and you won't even let me chew on the paper?)

Playing catch-up once again...here are some of our favorite pictures from the last few months.

Em's parents came to visit in August. Ben got to play hooky from daycare one day and stay home for Grandparent Camp. Here is Ben greeting Grandma B. shortly after her arrival:


Playing piano with Grandpa:


We met Dave's parents for breakfast at ingredient, a delicious restaurant in the new Park Place shopping area in Leawood. They have a nice green space outside the restaurant with a bunch of Adirondack chairs in adult & child sizes.


Relaxing in it:

At some point, I guess he decided we were taking way too many pictures. This will go into the "Angry Faces of Ben" collection!


He is finally about big enough to try the fabulous Rockin' Panda from Uncle Kenny & Aunt Lynn. He needed help to stay on it, but really seemed to like it.


Em's friend Neilam came to visit us over Labor Day weekend (more pics coming). Ben was especially fascinated by his guitar playing.


We had kind of a rough weekend because Ben is cutting both top teeth at the same time. They broke through yesterday at daycare, but the poor guy was pretty miserable for the past 3 days. Here you can see his two bottom teeth and his puffy top gums where the two top ones are threatening to pop through.


Ben & I went to the Greek Festival on Sunday while Dave was en route home from New Jersey. Ben got a "Greek for a Day" sticker on his hat, tried to steal some of my food, and enjoyed watching the dancers do the big traditional circle dances.



Ben is now sitting up very well and appears to be on the verge of army crawling. He loves having people help him stand up and can stand while leaning against the outside of his exersaucer. He likes chattering, books, bouncing, dancing, and putting things in his mouth. He does not like us being out of his sight for long, which makes it challenging to get ready in the mornings.

Yesterday he tried his first finger food - little baby cereal puffs that melt in your mouth. He was uncertain at first but seems to be getting the hang of it. In hopes of helping with the teething pain, we also got these mesh feeders and filled them with some frozen peach slices for him to suck on. They chill his gums and let him have fresh fruit but prevent choking on the solid foods.

He is really getting into playing with some of his toys - current favorites include his zebra cart w/jingling fabric cubes from Aunt Stacey, the new cause & effect piano I bought at a consignment sale, and some Fisher-Price plastic cubes that have little animals in them, also found for a bargain at the sale. He enjoyed spending time last Friday with his Opa and taking a walk in the stroller to say hi to the neighborhood dogs and people. He will be headed over there again this Friday and will probably go grocery shopping with Daddy & Grandma on Saturday as I will be away all weekend at bereavement camp for work.

Ben at seven months

Ben turned seven months old on Sunday. He has celebrated by starting to work on some teeth. He still hasn't popped one out yet, but is drooling like crazy, even for him, chewing on everything, and getting fussy at times. Our fridge now has a supply of teethers chilling for him, although sometimes he loves them and sometimes he doesn't really seem to care for them. Overall, he is a very cheerful baby with a very sweet disposition.

At seven months, Ben loves:

• the sound of his own voice, sometimes at pitches that probably alert all the neighborhood dogs. He also likes when we make silly sounds like popping, rolling our r's and blowing raspberries.
  
• active games that involve bouncing, rolling him over, dancing, and lifting him up in the air
• chewing on things. We are going to be in so much trouble if we lose his chewy ring of monkeys! Here he is chomping down on one of his great teether/rattles while hanging out with Niru:
  

• sticking out his tongue:

• rolling over. It took him a while to figure out that he could roll over more than once in the same direction and that this could help him get to a toy he wanted. Or the newspaper.
  
• playing in his Exersaucer
• the Food Network's Giada Di Laurentis and the opening songs of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" which he got to watch with Daddy when he was home sick with a fever last week.
  
• green beans and squash. He still isn't sure about carrots.

• video chatting with Grammie & Grandpa on iChat. He also got to chat with Great-Grandma Toni, Uncle Tony, cousin Andi & Phoebe this month!
• his new Fisher-Price aquarium crib toy, as he's getting too old for the mobile
• baths
  

He doesn't like:

• rice cereal, for which I can't really blame him. It tastes like cardboard. Maybe he'll like it better when we mix some fruit with it.
• sitting up by himself (he was crying today when I came to pick him up from daycare because they were being SO MEAN and making him practice sitting up!)

He and I sat at the piano the other day when he was getting fussy and he had a great time banging away at the keys and really seemed to be exploring reaching for some of the higher & lower keys. Here is part of his composition, with occasional help from me to keep him engaged.

Happy 40th Anniversary, Mom & Dad!

Today is my parents' 40th wedding anniversary! Here they are on their wedding day in 1969:



Goofing off in Vermont after a tour of the Ben & Jerry's factory, sometime in the 1990s:

And taking a trip to Union Station last winter:

A family photo from the 1980s:
And one from our wedding:


Happy anniversary, Mom & Dad! We love you!

One of Ben's favorite games

We're not sure why Ben thinks this is such a hilarious game, but he loves it! It just cracks him up when we pop our heads above his and say "hi!"

This was our first test using our Flip minoHD digital camcorder with my new iMac and iMovie. We trimmed down the original video to a short enough clip to post. We will continue playing with iMovie to see what we can do with our many Ben videos!

Our growing boy!

Ben at about one week with Dave's dog Georgie:

Georgie & Ben at 6 1/2 months on the same Boppy pillow:

6 month stats

Due to our vacation, Ben just had his 6-month checkup yesterday. He is doing well (although currently resisting a much-needed nap) and the nurse practitioner gave us the go-ahead to stop his reflux medication and start stage 1 baby foods.

His giant-in-the-making stats:

Weight: 20 lbs, 6 oz (80-85th percentile)
Length: 29.5" (above the 97th percentile, off the growth charts. The NP looked at the measurement, which the nurse had retaken 3x, and asked, "Are you and your husband really tall?")
Head circumference: 44.7 cm (70th percentile)

According to the charts, his measurements are pretty much in proportion. He is keeping up developmentally, chattering a lot, rolling over like crazy, tries to propel himself toward toys (but is mostly able to just spin himself in a circle) and is working on sitting up. He can't sit up unassisted yet, but does tripod sitting fairly well for short periods and can stay upright on his own for a few seconds before slowly topping over. We just broke out the drum & maraca set that his Uncle Tony got him when he was born, and he was fascinated with the music that the maracas make. We haven't tried the drum yet.

As I said, he has been rolling over like crazy for the past few weeks. We left him on his blanket in the family room the other day, and came back a minute or two later to find that he'd rolled off of it and grabbed the newspaper that was a few feet away. He was having a great time hiding under it,

moving it about,

and crinkling it.

Photo issues

For some reason, we're able to click and magnify the first picture in every post I've written today, but not the rest of the photos. We'll fix the tags when we get a chance. I'm not sure what went wonky, since I uploaded them all the same way. If anyone has ideas about what might've happened, leave a comment.