Mamma's a Wooman

When you explain things to your children it seems that you always wonder how much actually sinks in. Either because of how little attention they seem to paying to your explanation or because you're not sure your explanation was at the appropriate level.

Over the past few months we have been telling Ben about the upcoming birth of his first sibling. We try to explain it pretty thouroughly without overwhelming him and we often wonder how much has gotten through. A couple days ago I was standing behind Ben as he stood on his stool to wash his hands. This means his head is right in my belly. He turns and looks at my belly and says: "Mamma has a baby in her belly because she's a wooman. You don't have a baby in your belly cause you're a guy. I'm a guy too."

Apparently some things sunk in.

Jumping Ben

I've heard it said that toddlers, especially boys, seem to have a physiological need to run. Just to exercise their legs and get all their pent up energy out. I understand that jumping is a big part of that as well and Ben has definitely entered the jumping stage.

Somewhere along the line Ben has picked up the phrase "jumping for joy" and he loves to use it when he's excited. Accompanied, of course, by much jumping. It's so cute how literal toddlers can be.

We are due today with our second son and so we've been going to the birthing center quite a bit lately. Ben really likes going there and seeing our midwives. Maybe almost as much as we do. One of the apprentice's names is Joy and the other day, Ben asked if we were going to see Joy when we went to the birthing center. When Mindy said that we would he proceeded to say "I'm excited. I'm jumping for seeing Joy."

Lately Ben has also added jumping as part of his normal mode of getting from one place to another. Two nights ago as he was getting ready for bed, I had asked him to come to the sink to brush his teeth, and to come into the hall for this or that; just normal getting ready for bed stuff, but not for Ben. Everytime he came or went someplace he would run a few steps, then jump to the spot he was headed for and say "Daddy, I jumped here!" What I wouldn't give to have that much energy!

"Be"ing Ben

Don't you just love the fun ways kids say things when they're puzzling out how to form the correct sounds. I have to be on constant guard not to repeat Ben's cute pronunciations because I don't want to re-inforce them. I also inevitably laugh when I do repeat one and I don't want him to feel bad that he can't say it right.

His current pronunciation quirk involves lots of the syllable "be." Sometimes it's in place of a syllable that is difficult, as in the case of "begot" for "forgot." Other times it's in place of a similar sounding syllable, as in "bevotions" for "devotions." The funniest one by far is his recent declarations about what he's doing when he is repeating lines from Dr. Seuss or VeggieTales. When we notice what he's doing and chuckle at him, he grins and says "I'm bequoting VeggieTales!"

Expanding Vocabulary

They say that the language explosion for children happens between 18 months and 2 years old. This was pretty much on target for Ben, and I remember being amazed at all the new words he was picking up. That was a stage when you had to be especially careful of what you said, because you might hear it come out of your toddlers mouth the next instant.

Now we are reaching that stage where I'm continually shocked by hearing Ben use words that we don't use very often and aren't really what you might consider part of toddler vocabulary. The other night when we were getting ready for Ben's bath, he was getting his clothes off in the bathroom while I was doing something else to get ready for bed. When I came back in he was diligently working on getting his shirt off and he JUMPED. He looked at me very seriously and said "Daddy, you startled me." It's so exciting to see him growing in so many ways.

Quoting Dr. Seuss and Veggie Tales

It all started last December when Ben couldn't get enough of us reading "The Night Before Christmas." He really seemed to enjoy the rhythm and the pictures in our edition gave his nearly two year old mind, lots of things to point at and name. Not long after this started, we began to hear phrases coming out of Ben's mouth at random times that he was quite sure of, but we didn't really understand them. And they weren't just random, because he would repeat them verbatim when asked what he said. A couple days after this started, we finally got one of the phrases nailed down. It was "And to all a Good Night!" Soon we understood "Eight tiny reindeer" and many other phrases out of that poem.

For Christmas or his birthday that year, Ben got a stack of Dr. Seuss books from his Uncle Jamie and Aunt Trish. Little did we know... Soon he was asking for The Cat in the Hat and Fox in Socks for nearly every story time. Soon we were hearing random phrases out of Dr. Seuss books just pulled out of mid-air and quoted verbatim. We recently checked out Horton Hatches and Egg from the library and that is his current favorite, so we have been hearing about Mayzie the lazy bird and all about how she talks Horton into sitting on her nest. If you let him go, Ben can quote nearly the first two pages of the book before he starts skipping to various memorable moments in the book.

Ben is also a big fan of listening to his VeggieTales CD in the van when we go somewhere, so he's got a good share of that memorized also. And not just the songs, but the talking between the songs as well. There is an exchange before one of the songs between some French peas and the Veggie Isrealites who were marching around Jericho to knock the wall down. The French pea says "You just go ahead and keep walking" and then the music plays a three beat intro before they start in with the song. So when Ben is quoting this particular section, not only does he do a fair imitation of a French accent (for a 2 1/2 year old), but after he says "You just go ahead and keep walking," he goes "Bump, bump, bump, Keep walking, cause you won't knock down our wall, keep walking..." I just can't keep from grinning every time he does it.

Ben likes to plug things in

Ben, like most toddlers, is naturally curious. Over the past several months his naptime has turned into quiet time or room time which means it's more common for him to spend the time playing in his room than actually getting any rest. One result of this is that he now has more unsupervised time in his room.

For a while a favorite hobby of his was unplugging his fan and finding other things to plug in to that outlet. These things were appropriate things, like a heating pad or a lamp, so at least he wasn't trying to stick a fork in them or something, but it still made us very nervous. Unplugging the fan and replacing it with an outlet cover only had limited success in preventing this.

His adeptness at plugging things in was demonstrated very clearly one morning at playgroup. Mindy told me that the mom whose house they were at had unplugged the battery from the little electric jeep that the kids were driving around. This was to prevent anymore inadvertant backing over other playmates, but was very sad for all the kids there. A little while later they saw Ben with his head under the hood of the jeep and when Mindy commented on this to the other mom, she reassured her by saying "That's really hard, I doubt he'll be able to get it plugged in." She hadn't even finished the sentence when they were brought up short by the sound of the jeep motoring across the yard with Ben behind the wheel...

That's my boy!

My First Post

Someone told me a few weeks ago that I should keep a journal of memorable things that my kids do, so I thought I'd try a blog and see how it worked. The first few posts I may try and tell stories from the past 2 and a half years with Benjamin, and after that I hope this can become a place to journal about funny stories and sweet memories of my children and my family.

So now for the first sweet/funny Ben moment of this blog. I was talking on the phone this morning with Mindy and Ben while they were having breakfast and as we were saying goodbye, I said, "I love you lots." Ben's response was: "My name's not lots, it's Benjamin."