Fourteen Months Old!

I don't know what's happening with our videos these days. I'll have to check with my tech support, also known as Brian. That's his area. Hopefully these work. They're a bit grainy but you can still see how cute he is. Also, they look black, but just click play and they should still work. Ben has enjoyed dancing, twirling, and kissing lately. His kisses can be cute, but when he gets into it, it can be quite disgusting unless you're his Mom! We're trying to encourage blowing kisses and then keeping his lips closed while kissing!

Things here are going very well. Our house is warm and cozy with our new working furnace! We're enjoying some Olympics and Duke basketball this weekend.

Ben is amazing! That boy is BUSY! He's into everything. He cannot be trusted for minute. He is getting bigger and stronger which bodes well for his climbing onto EVERYTHING! He pulls himself onto the couch, chairs, you name it. He's not very graceful getting down therefore my life is spent making sure he doesn't break his neck. He's also just a quarter inch away from reaching the doorknobs. He knows that you are to spin the knob to open the door, but can't quite reach around it. I'll have to try those handle covers because I like just closing the bedroom and bathroom doors to keep him out of there.

We had to take a trip to the Sprint Store this morning. I think we found Ben's definition of Heaven! He continues to be obsessed with phones or anything that slightly resembles them. We walked into that store, and it was over. He was ALL OVER THE PLACE!

Sleeping habit update: Doing well (knock on wood). We decided to hold off on the whole transition to one nap. This boy just functions better with a morning and afternoon nap. There continue to be pros and cons of this. The biggest con still being if we have to run errands between his naps and mealtimes, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room. He is handling himself well if he misses one. He's a little more sensitive but then generally does go to bed a bit earlier. Bed time continues to be between 7:30 and 8pm. And he sleeps pretty well until 6:30am-ish, so we can't really complain.

Eating habits: Picky. We started a new multi vitamin because this boy is just picky. We continue to keep pushing new things in front of him, but he just turns his head and screams. Then generally throws the food to Abby who anxiously awaits his scraps.

Play habits: Everything continues to be monkeys. He just loves monkeys! He's starting to watch some cartoons. He'll pay attention for a minute or two, and if there are monkeys on then a good 5 minutes, maybe! Penguins of Madagascar is an overall household favorite. I find myself enjoying those guys!

Other play habits include throwing things and hitting things with a bat. Oh the joys of having a one year old boy. I think his real baseball bat is going to have to be put up for while. He's strong enough to swing that thing, and trust me, it hurts! He can't quite control it. Brian is fighting me on this quite a bit. He thinks we need to keep a bat in this kids hands at all times for him to have a shot at the majors. I think Brian also hopes the bat will go through the tv as he continues to push for new flat screen (no honey, there's nothing wrong with the one we have!).

Reading is becoming a longer process. It's one of our favorite times of day. It's the only time he'll sit still and let me cuddle him. Before bed every night, we spend quite a bit of time reading a book to him, then he'll go get another one, we'll read it, then another, and so on, until he falls asleep. He is starting to prefer 3 or 4 of the books (they include monkeys generally). This makes the process a little less interesting for me and Brian. Where we used to read like 20 different books, now we're reading the same ones over and over and over again! I don't even look at the pages anymore, I have them memorized.

Teeth: continues to hold steady at 8. He got those so young I thought we'd have more by now, but we're stable at 8.

That's about it for now. We hope our family is staying warm! Some crazy winter weather going on out there. To think, our southern family thought we were crazy for moving to Chicago! Who's laughing now!

Love you guys!