New Shoes!

We had a big family outing this past weekend to… the shoe store!  Benjamin is now a true walker.  He resorts to crawling only when he falls down in the middle of the floor and has absolutely nothing to help balance him as he stands up.  So he needed a pair of shoes for walking around outside and in places where I was completely comfortable with just his soft-soled shoes. 

Julia also needed shoes because sometime in the past few weeks her feet have grown from a size 8 to a size 10!  Honestly, when I look at her new shoes I can’t believe they belong to my daughter; they just look so big. She can’t possibly be that grown-up already!

The trip to the show store was actually pretty uneventful.  There were a few entertaining moments when we tried Benj’s new shoes on.  He was almost high-stepping around the store as he got used to the new feeling.  It didn’t take him long to adjust though and by the time we made it to Macy’s a few minutes later he was comfortable enough in them to lead me on a high-speed chase through the housewares department.  At the same time, Julia didn’t want to leave my side and kept a close grasp on my hand.  So some bystanders got a few laughs as I tried to keep up with Benj, dragging Julia and trying not to trip over her as I repeatedly extracted Benjamin from encounters with non-toddler friendly objects, like blenders, coffee pots, and you know, fine china.  Somehow, even though I kept returning him to the bedding section, he was drawn like a magnet to appliances and dinnerware.  I’m definitely going to need a little time to adjust to this new phase and I think we’ll be sticking with our Ergo or to stores that have carriages with seatbelts for awhile.

Friday Fun

Just for a smile I thought I would share a video of Benjamin’s current contribution to our dinner time conversation.  He does make us all laugh!

Benjamin at dinner–11 months

Snow Bunnies

It’s a little warmer here this week, mid-40s or so and the snow is beginning to melt but we’ve had lots of fun over the past few days.  As promised here are a couple more pictures of our snow lovers.

Benjamin’s Decorations

For most of the Christmas season we have had a baby gate around our Christmas tree to protect it from Benjamin.  But on Christmas Eve the gate came down and as Benjamin actually wasn’t paying too much attention to the tree anymore it stayed down.  A few days ago Benjamin pushed his box of blocks over to it, got into the box, and then proceeded to decorate the tree.  The result:

Next year he’ll be a pro!

Brrrr….

New Years Day was a chilly one… there was snow on the ground, ice on the roads, and penguins on the beach!

Snow!!!

We received a few snowflakes on Christmas Eve – just enough to say that we had a white Christmas!  But then we had our first real snowstorm right before New Years.  We woke up to this view outside our window:

It wasn’t quite right for snowman making but it was great for sledding!  We have a little hill on the side of our house and it proved to be a perfect first sledding slope! 

It has stayed cold here so there’s been more fun in the last few days, especially after we made a trip to Benny’s to upgrade our sleds!  So more pictures to come!

Christmas!!

So I’ve finally had a few minutes to sit down at the computer and look at the pictures from Christmas and the last week or so.  We have not been doing all that much; Andrew has mostly been off work and we’ve just been hanging out enjoying family time, playing with new toys and getting out in the snow!  We had a great Christmas.  Julia got everything she asked for – Christmas pom-poms and a ball pump – plus a plasma car that Santa thought she would have fun with.  And she has!  She rides it around the house all day, a lot of the time with Benj chasing after her.

It’s actually a lot of fun and even grown-ups can ride it!  I tried it out and so did Andrew and Uncle Jeff when he came to visit over New Years.

Benjamin’s big gift from Santa was a little slide for him to climb on and he quickly figured out not only how much fun it was to slide on but also how conveniently it could be pushed around the room and then used to access things that were previously out of reach.  Within an hour or so of playing with it he had pushed it over to the train table and climbed up on top!

And here’s a video of him in action with the slide.

Other highlights of the day for Benjamin were receiving his ride-on dog from Grandpa Rick and Grandma Les (he was immediately in love with it),

using his hammer to pound balls into the toy that Uncle Jon and Aunt Shannon gave him (this toy wins for capturing the longest continuing attention span! and for hardest to capture on film because he was so excited and his arms never stopped moving!),

and being turned into a present himself by Grandma Laurie!

Another highlight of the day was for Andrew.  Julia received her first real Legos project – a Lightning McQueen car (from the movie Cars).  It was just a small kit as we’re trying to put off having piles of Legos a little while longer since Benj still loves to put anything and everything into his mouth.  But anyway, Andrew and Julia put it together almost immediately and it got Andrew very excited to think about all the Lego building they’ll be doing in the future!

For me the highlight was just enjoying the day with my family.  Seeing Julia get so excited about the holiday and about little things (literally!) like pom-poms, and having fun playing with everyone, aunts, cousins, grandparents… Seeing how much joy Benjamin’s smile brings to everyone and how he can make someone laugh with a single look…  Seeing Andrew feeling right at home among all the Rhode Islanders and feeling right at home myself.  Our new house is starting to gather memories and I’m looking forward to years and years more!