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.





I moustache you a question...

Is there anything more fun than a fake moustache?  Especially if you have a Daddy who takes you to look in the mirror and then makes faces with you?



And then I had to get in on the fun.

Why these were available in the Valentine's Day favor section of Target I have no idea.

An interesting visit to Sturbridge

As mentioned last week, Bennett received a toy microwave from Aunt Cathrine and Uncle Bob for Christmas.  He LOVES that thing.  Every day he's cooking something up for us- egg (singular as we only have one), hamburger, hot dog, etc.

One day he was cooking and he brought me Spam and egg.  Having been a teen Monty Python fan, this food combination amused me.

Lately bennett has been messing the the cushions on the couch a lot- hiding toys under them, throwing them on the floor, etc.  On this occassion he needed to get underneath the cushion while Daddy read a story.

Saturday we went to Sturbridge.  More about that in a minute, but here are some pictures. These mittens he's wearing are awesome.  He had been using hand-knits (which are actually the green things dangling from his wrists) but his hands were always still really cold.  Not that he complained, but we always felt bad when we took them off and his hands were red with cold.  But last weekend I was looking through a bag of hand-me-down mittens and hats and found these red ones.  After hours in the cold his hands were still toasty warm.  Awesome!

And it wouldn't be a visit to Sturbridge without stopping at the store to get some cookies.  Today's selection was chocolate chip.  We normally don't give Bennett sweets, but he loves them!

When we went to Sturbridge on the 1st we were in the farm where the women were making candles.  They were discussing the various forms of fats that were available and their uses, and one of the women, in an off-hand comment, mentioned that in a couple of weeks they would be butchering a pig.  I let her finish what she was saying and then asked for more details.  What was the date?  What would we be able to see? How was this process different than in the 1830s? Etc.   We were eager to see this process!  Normally Saturdays don't work well for us to go to Sturbridge due to skating and nap time, but we decided to risk messing up lunch and naps so that we could see this.  After all, there would be much more to see on Saturday than on Sunday.

Due to the sensitive nature of this event (and other similar events) they don't publicize it.  However, we were told that if you ask, they will let you know when it will be.  And apparently pig slaughter is usually the first weekend in January but was delayed a week for some reason or another this year.  They also post signs when you get your tickets (plus the employee verbally told us in case we had missed the sign) and they have signs at the roads as you near the farm.

Apparently lots of the interpreters sign up to participate on weekends like this.  After all, it's not an experience that frequently presents itself and they want to learn as well.  My guess is there was one person there who knew what they were doing and everyone else was learning.

When we first got there, Bennett made his cute pig noises.  He doesn't say"oink".  Instead he makes grunting sounds, much like what  pig would actually make.  Those who could hear him thought it was cute.  He definitely recognized that it was a pig, but I'm not sure that he understood that the pig was dead.

We watched for a while, got a tour of the smokehouse, watched for a while, went into the farm to see what was going on in there (making blood sausage), watched for a while, went to the blacksmith shop, watched for a while, looked at the other animals, watched for a while...

Eventually Bennett had had enough and started saying, "bye-bye".  Guess that was our cue to leave.


If you are easily grossed out, (Mel, this means you- I won't be held responsible for you no longer eating pork products) please don't read the following paragraphs or click on the links.  There is nothing else here for you to see. 



Due to modern regulations the pig must be shot.  They did this just before the museum opened.  Historically they would have knocked it unconscious, hung it up by it's hind legs.  They then would have slit the throat.  By doing it in this order, they would have been able to collect the most blood as the heart would have still been pumping.  There was an awesome interpreter who spoke with us and mentioned that things hadn't gone so well on this occassion.  They had missed the artery when slitting the throat to collect the blood and as a result there was a lot of blood lost on the ground.  They tried to cover it up with some snow (so that it wouldn't be super gruesome) but you could still see some of it.

When we arrived the pig was lying on a table and they were in the process of removing the heart.  Surprisingly it looked very "clean"- really no blood on it.  They put it in a bowl and held it out so that those who were interested could look.

Next they hung it up again so that they could tie off the anus.  Chris and I wondered why this hadn't been done earlier in the process, but I'm sure they had their reasons.  We then went away to do something else.

When we came back, the pig was back on the table.  They had removed the other organs, intestines, etc and were getting ready to further butcher it.  This is around the time Bennett had had enough, so we didn't get to see the rest.

If you're interested, here are a couple of pictures that I took.  If you're really curious I have a few others.
Image 1
Image 2