an update on the kiddies

Ben
Ben is still enjoying his all-day Kindergarten.  He still voraciously reads books. He still loves playing games with us.  And he's still a tease.  :)

If Jed gets home before dinnertime, he and Ben will most likely play a game of Sorry. Ben loves that game. Every night Ben gets to stay up a little later than Sam and Eliza; it originally started out as being a time for him to read quietly, but Ben and I started playing card games together one-on-one during that time, and it is so fun! We play with a pack of dinosaur cards that my friend Janese gave us, and we play Crazy Eights, Go Fish, Solitaire, Gin Rummy, and Memory/Concentration. It's a lot of fun because he is very competent at playing, so we both have a great time. :)
I've noticed lately that he is pretty outgoing and not intimidated of striking up conversation with people. The other day when I was packing everyone up to leave the library and go home, Ben went to the front desk to wait for me as I strapped Sam into his carrier, and when I got there he was chatting with the librarian, and she was amused by how friendly he was. He's always been comfortable like that with people - makes immediate friends with new kids at the park, went to Nursery and now Primary willingly and alone, talks to all the kids sitting near him at school (sometimes too much :)), etc. He also loves hanging out with his bus-stop friends, and it's fun for me to watch him as he interacts with them.

They other day, he found my jar of CeraVe hand cream and a piece of orange ribbon, and he thought of a great idea. So he  wrapped the lotion up in tape with some paper, er, I mean in paper with some tape :), and tied a ribbon around it and gave it to me as a special present. It was SO cute!  :)  He felt so happy when he presented it to me, and we opened it together.  What a darling.

Eliza
Eliza still loves princesses and fairies, Rapunzel and Flynn Rider, and dress ups and jewelry. Every night she wants me to sing to her. I used to get to sing Primary songs, but all she wants lately are Rapunzel songs, but that's okay because they are fun to sing with her. She likes to pretend to be Rapunzel and I get to be the creepy Mother Gothel :)  and we sing our parts. So she says, "I think he likes me." and I say, "Likes you? Please, Rapunzel, .... don't be a dummy, come with Mummy. Mother-" and she says, "NO!" then I sing the Mother Knows Best reprise.  And sometimes (because Jed downloaded the song clips from the movie and we watch them sometimes for fun) she will even do some hand motion that Mother Gothel did in the song and instruct me, "do this." It is too funny!  And the other Mother Gothel song is the same way - she sings her little parts in the song - like I sing, "Cannibals and snakes! The plague!" and she says, "No!" and I say, "Yes! Also large bugs!"  :)

One day Eliza and I were doing her Tinkerbell puzzle and she left for a couple minutes and then came back like this. It was too funny when I looked up to see her climbing into her chair all decked out in her jewelry.  :)

 
Sam
Sam is our darling baby! He turned one year old last week but he's still army crawling around and I love that! I like to keep him my baby for a just a tiny bit longer.  Once he starts walking he will seem like such a big boy! He is a big eater - I feel like I spend his meal times racking my brain about what else to give him, and scrounging up more things for him to eat, because as soon as I give him a pile of one thing he gobbles it all up quick. He's so cute. :)

Sam is obsessed with balls. It is so funny!  So we brought out our collection, and now if you walk around the living room you will see big balls and small balls, pink balls and blue balls, racquetballs and basketballs, plastic balls, rubber balls and even wood balls. It doesn't matter to him, he loves them all!  He bangs them together, rolls them, throws them, and most of all, chases after them. And don't let me forget that he also gets them stuck places, and then he cries in frustration when he can't reach them. For instance, he is usually pretty dexterous about climbing up and over the horizontal bars between the chair legs (going around them would be way too simple!)  but every now and then the tangle of chair legs will be too much for him to conquer and he will start to cry when he can't reach his ball. And in this picture below, he got his racquetball stuck in this toy and was crying out in frustration about it-- until I got out the camera and then he smiled of course. :)
He is so funny! He loves that toy in the picture. He sets his wooden balls in it and then hammers at them haphazardly until, with some luck, they fall into the toy and roll out the bottom. He does it all while he's on his tummy, reaching up to it.  He also loves to roll a ball back and forth. He's really fun to play with.