Sandboxing

We have a new sandbox! Well, new to us anyway. (thank you craigslist!) It is in our also new play area off the deck. The giant shade making laurel has been removed, and the whole area is now nicely fenced, with a retaining wall in progress. Once we have the ferris wheel and the water slide I will post more photos. Joke. A wading pool is planned though, and eventually maybe some kind of climby swingy thing, but not until next year. I have high hopes that some day I may be able to sit in my lounge chair on the deck, perhaps with an iced beverage and a novel, while Benjamin happily plays by himself in his little play area. Please do not dispell my dreams with your harsh realities, mothers of bigger kids. Let me live with my delusions a little longer. Anyway, Benjamin looooves the sandbox. It is not uncommon for him to wake up in the morning, grab his coat, and stand by the deck door in his pajamas, demanding to go out to the sand box. Funny little guy.

Littlest Yard Worker

Don't call the child labor law people, but we have been putting Benjamin to work doing all kinds of manual labor in the back yard. He is hammering things, shoveling, building retaining walls, weeding and doing all kinds of other important work. You can barely restrain him from going outside when work is going on. He is inherantly driven to go outside by what I can only presume are genes that he inherited from his father. These photos show one stage of the yard improvement work that has been underway at 146. I have high hopes of one day posting before and after photos, in which the yard will be literally unrecognizable. It is undergoing an unbelievable transformation. Please feel free to come and see for yourself, Saturday and Sunday from 8 - 5 on any weekend. Bring work gloves.

So, I have some catching up to do

I know, I know, its been almost a month. I have no excuse. I am very sorry to the three little Fernies, who I know check all the time, only to be disappointed. But look! I am back now! Back with so many things to update on that I don't know where to start. Here are some of the highlights from the last month:

• Jam's first words. We have a tie here. He now says both "up" and "dog" and I could not tell you which one was first. Its a little like the walking. You think there will be this grand definining first moment, but its a lot more gradual than that. He said dog probably a lot before we realized what he meant. Up started as "Hey you, pick me up right now" and evolved into other meanings as well, like "help me" and "I want that". Dog refers mainly to Maisy, but also to Georgia, pictures of dogs, and all cats. We are working on the defining features of what makes a dog a dog, but its hard when you consider everything from Great Danes to those little fluffy dogs are dogs, when really, they don't have a ton of features in common. My mom claims that signs count as words too, so we have a couple of others to include. Waving, which he is a big fan of. Likes to wave good bye and hello, and likes to look out the window and wave. Also does an adorable sign with his hands which means "Give me that", "Pick me up", "you come here" and some other things. I will try to get it on video, as it is hard to explain but it is a two handed gesture, repeatedly folding his fingers into his palms. It is super cute.






• Christmas! What a big fun event! Many cool giftys were exchanged, and Benjamin made out like a bandit. This kid got a haul of presents, everything from power tools, to books, to puzzles, to golf clubs and on and on. Very funny key board with microphone, which he sticks entirely in his mouth, and then makes noises like Charlie Brown's teacher, or whale song. We also learned about Benjamin's sophisticated palet, where dark chocolate is concerned. He got a hold of my 78% cacao content fancy dark chocolate from my stocking and went to town! I had to arm wrestle him to get it back. Apparently the little turkey loooves the dark chocolate.






• Snow storms. We were basically blizzarded in for a few days. It was like Laura Ingalls Wilder in the Long Winter, when the trains almost didn't make it with the Christmas presents. We had to postpone the Nutcracker until after Christmas, miss the Peps Christmas party, and some other parties, skip the second round of Santa photos, and a whole bunch of other sad stuff. On the plus side, we did put Jam in the backpack and tromp through the snow, which was very satisfactory all around.






• Benjamin has mastered climbing the stairs. This was first officially witnessed in Issaquah on Christmas Eve (big night/place for milestones. Christmas Eve last year was the first roll over. We now have a gate at the bottom of the stairs in addition to the old one at the top.






• We had the first swim lesson this week, which is unfortunately scheduled right at nap time, so the poor guy spent most of the half hour rubbing his little eyes and crying with tiredness. Not sure what to do about that, since there is no other time we can take the class together. Stupid work, getting in the way of swimming lessons.






• Other events included a doctor's appointment, a new tooth, a new bathroom, new professional portraits (we love you Cookie!), eating grapefruit (yum!), and most likely some other stuff.






• Some other miscellaneous new tricks:






• Brings books when asked (sometimes)






• Shows tongue on command (rarely)






• eats with a plastic baby fork (more or less)






• feeds stuffed cheetah ("Kitty") dog treats when the real dog is not available to feed. Also now cuddles Kitty at bedtime. Sigh. So cute.






• Dances (so adorable I practically cannot stand it. Must capture on video).






• Can identify which toy is the duck toy and which toy is the frog toy when asked. May say "duck" but it sounds suspiciously like "dog"






• On one memorable occasion, he lunged toward the pack n play when he decided he was ready for his nap.






• Rides his toy lion. Hilarious.





• Throws temper tantrums. When he doesn't get what he wants he immediately flings himself to the ground, crying and flailing. It is simultaneously amusing and traumatic for me.





• Made his first succesful phone call. It was not to 911, which was my fear, but to the Washington State Ferry Information line. He helpfully put it on speaker so I could hear them asking him to say "ferry" for ferry schedule.
  

Now, if I were a super organized person, I would divide these all up into separate posts, and spread them out through out the week, but sadly I am not that person. So, instead I will upload a few miscellaneous photos that go with the above events and then go eat cookies and finish my book.

. H

Extension Cord Baby

So when Loren was working on the bathroom with the door closed, Benjamin was milling around outside the door, trying to figure out how to get in. At one point, Loren was using something or other that plugged in, and had the extension cord going over the top of the door. Jam was fascinated. I like the first photo, where it looks like he is going to climb up the cord a la the man in black up the cliffs of insanity. Then he is very sad that he can't climb it, in despair about what else to use it for, and in the end, very happy with having discovered what the cord is good for.

Hammering BAM

Benjamin is a total tool guy already, it is very funny. He loves to play with any kind of tool and he wants to help his dad with projects so badly. In this sequence of photos, he basically tries to climb up Loren's leg to get the hammer from him. When he can't reach it, he sees his little hammer, and proceeds to hammer the paint, the toilet and basically anything else in his reach. I love the photo where he is wielding the hammer like a weapon, with the crazed look in his eye. Dangerous hammering fiend, I say. In the other photo, Loren is giving him a crowbar to play with. In what universe is it a good idea to let a 1 year old play with a crowbar??? Must be a guy thing. They both survived.

I interrupt the regularly scheduled post....

...for an update on house progress. We have started on what I like to think of as the final frontier of the upstairs of the house, Benjamin's bathroom. These are the before pictures, and the demo pictures. Note that even the before pictures actually show a big improvement from when we bought the house. The paint, light fixture, mirror, towel bars, fan, light switch, etc. etc. are all newly done. So not a true before photo, is what I am getting at. But anyway, exciting progress is being made! These pictures show demo'ing the tub surround that was built around the old clawfoot tub in the 70's. Right now the tub is getting reglazed, and after that comes tile. Yay!

More Shed Progress

I am way behind here, but I will do my best to play catch up. Last weekend Pat and Lee came over and helped out with the shed, and great progress was made. Benjamin was very anxious to help, especially in the area of hammering and ladder climbing. So anxious to help that if he was not helping, he was difficult and cranky.