29 months old!

I'm not entirely sure why Bennett is without a shirt in this first picture.  I think we may have been in the process of getting ready for his bath, which usually involves removing clothes wherever he is.  Sometimes he wants to go to the bathroom/hallway to remove his clothes, but not always.  And if he's in the bathroom, he's more likely to start climbing into the tub while still half dressed.

We had put the train table (temporarily) away in the basement when the house was decorated for Christmas.  Then it stayed down there while I had some totes of outgrown clothes sitting in the front room.  Those finally got brought down to the basement, but the train table still hasn't returned.  Soon.  In the meantime, Bennett still plays with his trains on the floor.  And on this occassion, he just played with the junction.  Moving the gates makes a clanging train crossing sound, which he finds to be lots of fun.

When we picked him up from school one day he was busy learning to use scissors.  He had his fingers in correctly, but then he would turn his hand upside down.  I think he needs a bit more practice. 



Reading with Mumma one night.

29 months old!!!  He didn't want to cooperate for the picture though.  Playing was much more fun, so this is the best that I've got.

We wrapped up the final lesson of the skating session.  Bennett was so excited to get a ribbon!  When we collected him at the end of his lesson he had it attached to his wrist and proudly showed it to us.  And he wanted to hold it the whole way home.  What's exciting though is that this particular ribbon means that he passed the Pre-Tot class.  And what was fun for me, is that at one point during class I heard his teacher exclaim, "yay, Bennett!"  I'm not sure what he was doing to garner the praise, but whatever it was, we're happy for him.  I had already signed him up for Pre-Tot again for the next session, but I imagine they might shift him into the Tot class.  Or, in all honesty, I'm sure that keeping him in Pre-Tot again wouldn't be a horrible thing.  But he can now stand up (and apparently on Saturday he did it all by himself) and march a few steps by himself.

I picked up a couple of shakes for Chris and me. We let Bennett have a few sips and he LOVED my Shamrock shake.  What was cute though is I had been out getting my hair cut and Chris had tried to teach Bennett to tell me that he liked my hair.  So when I got back, Chris asked him if he had something to say to Mummy.  His response (having just had some of the shake) was "thank you", said in the most clear voice he's ever used.  Super cute.  Then Chris prompted him and he said, "Mummy, head".  Close enough.

At one point this weekend I was sitting with Bennett reading a book.  There was a picture of puppies.

Me: How many puppies are there?  Can you count them?

Bennett: One, nine.

Hmmm, as a friend commented on Facebook when I relayed this story that I better not take him to adopt a puppy any time soon as it's pretty important to understand the difference between 2 puppies and 9.

Say, "cheese".

We got more snow this weekend.  (That's 3 weekends in a row, for those of you keeping track.)  Sunday afternoon Daddy asked Bennett if he wanted to go outside and shovel and he got VERY excited.  He jumped off the couch and ran to the closet to get his coat.  Then he made sure we all had our boots, snowpants, etc.  He's a little distracted in this video because there were some people across the street who he was watching.  Hopefully he's this excited about shoveling when he's a teenager, but we're not holding our breath.



Week in review

Once again it was a pretty quiet week, although we did get out on this weekend.

Back when Bennett was about 6 months old, I went to a consignment sale and picked up this toy, which we called "the cube of awesome".  Bennett was just starting to stand and would hold onto it- although it was a little tippy so we would have to help it to stay stable.  He played with it nonstop.  Then he stopped for a while, but lately Bennett has been getting back into it.  This week we counted some of the triangle beads that are on the top.  One of the best toy purchases!

Saturday after skating we went to Sturbridge because they were having a sleigh rally.  Being Presidents' weekend they also had some presidential events, including these tricorn hats the kids could wear.

And since then, Bennett has been telling us all about what we did.  "Boba, back, ocken (oxen), cookies."  Obviously we can tell what the most important parts of the day were to him.  :)



Just one of the sleighs.  Cute kid all bundled up, as well as a dog for the sleigh dog category.



Sunday we woke up to a couple of inches of snow.  We all went out to shovel the driveway. Someone was walking down the street when we were out there and laughed a bit at Bennett.  Considering he was taking snow and dumping it back onto the driveway, he wasn't exactly being the most productive.  But he was having fun, so that's really all that matters.



The past 2 weeks

It's been a pretty quiet, low key couple of weeks.  Here are some pictures and videos of everyday life.


Hey Mummy, there's water on the floor.  Right here by my foot.

  

The wheels on the bus go round and round...

  

Lisa (and son Ben) gave some no longer used trains to Bennett to play with.
Awesome!  He's loving them.  (He especially likes the cargo.)

  

Meals are more fun when eaten out of a divided tray/plate.



We visited Brandeis to go to dinner with Daddy during tech.
Bennett got to go on stage.  He didn't really like being in the "sand". (It's ground cork.)  
He also doesn't ever get in his sandbox either.  He always plays from the side.



Playing with fences is lots of fun.

 


Daddy spilled a cup of water on Bennett, so off came his shirt and pants.

  

Eh, what's up, Doc?



We may need to start using the lock feature on the fridge or Bennett
will start to get water and ice everywhere.



This hat, which claims it is 12-18 months, finally fits!



Shoveling out.  The driveway has about 14"at this spot. 
Our best guess is that we got about 23", although our neighbor felt that number was too low. 



Standing in the street.  Behind him is the mound of snow from the plows.

 Here are a couple of examples of Bennett signing his colors.  In the first one he REALLY wants to watch the video of the Colors song.  We've found his signing to be rather helpful with deciphering his words.  He may not be able to identify all his colors, but he can sign (maybe not correctly, but close enough) colors, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black and white.

And here he is counting.

And the report is in...

US News and World Reports released their rankings of the Best Children's Hospitals 2012-2013 and Boston Children's Hospital was ranked as #1 in the Cardiology & Heart Surgery category.  Also, of the 10 categories included, it was in the top 3 of 9 categories.  And the one it missed?  It was number 4.  That's not too shabby!  (It receive 3 first place, 4 second place, 2 third place, and 1 fourth place).

I'm definitely glad that we live so close.  When we've gone to appointments and staff members are making small talk with us, they will ask where we live.  We really are one of the close ones.  People come from all over the New England area, not to mention the rest of the country and world to be seen at Boston Children's Hospital.  So to give thanks for all of the support that they have given us, we will once again be walking in June to raise money to help them with all that they do.  Chris, Bennett and I would be extremely grateful if you would consider donating to this worthy cause.  You can sponsor us here at my page, or here at Chris' page.

Birthdays and ice cutting

Bennett turned 2 years, 4 months old.  Recently when people ask me his age I've been tempted to say that he's almost two and a half, but he really isn't.  A lot of development can still take place in those two months.

More fun playing with play-dough.  This time Daddy joined in, making a giraffe which then danced around for a bit.  For now we're sticking to one of the rules from school which is that you can only play with one color at a time.  This means we don't end up with nasty mixed together colors.  I'm sure down the line this might change as we want to make cooler items with multiple colors, but for now when all he wants to do is roll things out and cut them up, it works just fine.

I know this will come as a surprise to all of you, but on Sunday we went to Sturbridge again.  This past weekend was "Fire and Ice".  It's an event they have in both summer and winter.  In the summer there are antique firetrucks and icecream.  I'm not sure where the fire was in the winter, but there was ice cutting for the first time in a number of years.  Chris even got a chance to give it a try.  And then was interviewed for a promotional video that they were making.  It was very cold (I think it got up to about 30 degrees when we left) so we didn't stick around for too long.

In the evening we went to a surprise party to celebrate Auntie Hanna's 18th birthday.  Hard to believe that the little girl who was 3 years old when I first met her is now about to graduate from high school!

While we were at the party Uncle Andrew did some push-ups with a wriggly 30ish pound weight on his back.



Communication

I love the way that Bennett communicates with us.  Ok, I could do without the tantrums that we get when things don't go his way.  (For instance, when pushing up his sleeves for dinner, Mummy has to do his left sleeve and Daddy does his right.  We are NOT allowed to do the wrong sleeve or both sleeves.)

One night he came home from school and wanted to watch TV.  He went over to the couch and pointed at it.  We said no, he couldn't watch.  He saw some books lying on the couch and coffee table, and thinking that he wasn't allowed because he had things out already, he put them away and then sat back down and pointed at the TV again.  And this time he made monkey noises to let us know that he wanted to watch Curious George.  Sorry Bennett.  You don't get to watch TV every day.

Another night, while we were at the dinner table, I picked up my phone to check something.  He likes to use my phone to watch this video of a girl signing colors so he started signing "colors" to let me know that's what he wanted.  No, not now.  Next he signed "orange".  I said no, he couldn't watch now, he would have to wait until we were done.  So he says all done and pushes his plate away.  Then he signs "all done".  Hmm, this still wasn't working for him.  I said everyone had to be done- Mummy and Daddy were still eating.  He tried saying down, bib, washcloth- anything he could think of to let us know he was done. 

It really is cute to watch how his thought process works.  We're not doing what he wanted, so he feels we just don't understand what he wants- so then he tries expressing it differently.  If only he would do this more often rather than having meltdowns all the time.

A visit to Children's (the fun one!)

I've noticed that Chris and I refer to both a hospital and a museum as "Children's".  Hmm, this could become confusing for Bennett at some point. (Example: "We need to take Bennett to Children's for an appointment." versus "What should we do today?  How about a trip to Children's?")

But on Sunday we decided to take advantage of our membership to the Children's Museum (only one more visit and it will have paid for itself).  Like pretty much every other time we've gone there, it was a mad house!  They have a large 3-story climbing structure that we debated allowing him to go on.  Once we saw how crazy it was there we knew we wouldn't let him.  He has severe selective listening, so I think it would be quite difficult to get him out of there when it was time to move on to something else.

What was fun though is that we explored a number of areas that we haven't seen on previous visits.  Such as:

Shooting baskets with Daddy

Playing in the grocery store (surprisingly not as interested in this as we thought he would be)

And going to a (free) performance of the Three Little Pigs.  It had audience participation, and days later he is putting a finger on his chin and saying "chin, chin chin" (not by the hair of my chinny, chin, chin).

Other moments this week....

One night Bennett started telling us a story about getting money from Uncle Andrew.  He must be thinking about this a lot, because he kept on talking about it that night, and he still keeps bringing it up.

Here he is microwaving an egg.  Playing with that is an almost daily favorite!

When we picked him up from school one day we saw him sitting in the pre-k room reading.  Apparently he sat himself in the chair, covered himself with a blanket, and then pulled the other chair over so that he could rest his book on it.

We got some snow this week so after school Daddy and Bennett finished shoveling the driveway, getting the bits that the plow had missed.  The next day he was upset that he couldn't go out and shovel again.

I've always been pro play-dough.  We've given it as gifts before to our nieces and nephew and their parents have complained that it's a horrible gift because it gets ground into the carpet.  We've always thought this was an odd excuse- just don't allow the kid to play with it in a room that has carpet.  However, for us this means it can only be used in the kitchen.  And since we lack a kitchen table, it seldom gets played with (much to Bennett's dismay).  Last week I pulled Bennett's learning tower over to the counter and let him go to town.  He had a blast.  Note to self: keep counter clean so that Bennett can play more often.

And then these next pictures are an example of what happens when Mum and Dad want to try to sleep a little longer.  Even though Bennett *can* get out of bed on his own, he doesn't.  So Sunday I got him up and we told him to play.  Occasionally he would bring something over to one of us, but he mostly played on his own.

Books being strewn on the floor. 
The sound of these being pulled off the shelf is what finally got me out of bed.



Clothes that used to be neatly folded in the basket and on top of those bins.



Play food, brought up from downstairs. 
There actually is a lot more that you can't see.