Fever.

I have a fever and the cure in this case is not more cowbell. I have cabin fever. More accurately, BEN has cabin fever. He, of course, can't tell me, but I'm fairly certain he's bored of being cooped up inside all day. The only activity we do out of the house is Little Gym on Wednesdays. Other than that, we mostly just play inside unless I have chores to do or errands to run that take us out of the house -but even that isn't PLAYING.

The weather is starting to warm up a little, and I know as soon as it does we'll start taking daily walks and rides in his wagon, going down to the park to play on the swings and the slides and climb and all that fun stuff. But in the mean time - WE. ARE. GOING. NUTS.

Today I tried to let him play with crayons and paper. He scribbled a little, but mostly wanted to eat the crayons and I got tired of telling him they were not for his mouth and put that away. I made him some playdough and that didn't interest him one bit. What did interest him was climbing up my leg and whining at me, which (surprisingly, I know) did NOT interest me.

I've emailed my brother & sister-in-law to see if Emma can come over once a week after kindergarden lets out to play with him for a few hours (Emma & Ben get on like white on rice) and if we're able to do that, that'll help. If she isn't able to come over, well, that's okay but.... I know I have a lot of stay at home mom friends or mom's that only work part time, okay even my full time working parent friends: what the crap do you DO to keep your babies entertained???? For free, I should add. For free. There are loads of indoor play places here but I'm not interested in paying to let him play.

Help a mama out.

Positive.

I read this in a magazine this evening and it really stuck out at me:

To make permanent change,s you need to commit to the long haul. If your resolve weakens, give yourself a boost. Changing bad habits takes discipline and work, and sometimes you might not feel up to it. The trick is to find healthy ways to treat yourself, whether that's splurging on a spa visit or new walking shoes.

That was from the January 21st issue of All You magazine - now in context they're talking about weight loss, but I really think that statement can be used for all areas of your life: if you want to quit smoking, stop drinking soda, improve your general outlook on life, be a nicer person, etc. Anything you want to change in your own life is going to take work and commitment - and duh... you're going to have days you don't feel like doing it. You may have weeks you don't feel like doing it. But I think we all owe it to ourselves to be committed to OURSELVES and strive for what makes us better people.

And that's really all I have to say about that (imagine that in your very best Forrest Gump voice)

Ben's Valetine's Card!

{12/21/2011: This was originally posted on a blog I started just for Ben. I no longer keep up with that blog, so I'm moving them all over to this one}

We took Ben out to the Boise Depot yesterday and shot some fun pictures of him looking at the train they have parked there. He cried when we left - I think he wanted to stay longer and look!

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13 Months.

Adventure is the name of the game every day at our house. Ben is changing so much every single day - he jabbers a lot in his own little language. He doesn't say "cat" any more and instead says "baby" over and over (but it comes out "bahhhhh beeeeeeeeee"). He knows where his toes are, he loves chase, he'll push around his cars & trucks, harass the cat, love Sadie to pieces and gives great big hugs and big wet kisses. If I hand him a teddy bear and say "can you give bear a hug?" he'll smoosh the bear to his chest and just hug as tight as he can.

He walks. A lot. He's getting better and better every day and spends more and more of his time toddling along rather than crawling. His top left front tooth finally poked through yesterday and the top right one is starting to break the surface a little. Not sure when we'll see the bottom right tooth (the bottom left front tooth was the first to come out).

He's picking up some signs more. He'll say "please" usually after prompting. He signals milk for milk, water or food. He waves "bye bye" when he wants to go for a nap. I'm trying to teach him "help" but mostly he looks at me like I've grown a second head when I do it. :)

I think he's starting to drop one of his naps. The last few days he's been widening the awake window between naps and the afternoon nap is getting shorter. Me thinks we're in for a rough adjustment period while teething and trying to change nap schedules at the same time.

He loves to talk on the phone and thinks it's the best game ever when he chats with his nana and grandad in Florida. He's a big ham for the camera and will usually greet anyone taking his picture with a great big smile.

Meal times are also a big adventure. I never know what he'll stuff himself silly on and what he'll think goes better on the floor than in his mouth. He's recently discovered that he can lift the high chair cover away from the side of the chair and stuff food down there. So he does. And that's fun to clean up. :)

I used to leave the TV on PBS almost all day, just for background noise. I've been noticing recently that he'll stop and stare for long periods of time so now the TV is either turned off or set to a music station. I don't mind if he watches TV every now and then but I don't want to get in the habit of using it as a babysitter or getting to the point where he'd rather sit and watch TV than play.

That's about it for the Ben update. He still loves his Little Gym class (though I am way bummed - we started a new semester at Little Gym and we got a new instructor - I loved our old one a lot and so did Ben) and I signed him up for a baby music class (it actually started yesterday but we had other plans so had to miss the first class).

Mom.

(for those of you that happen to read my blog via Facebook post - I have no idea when this will choose to import to Facebook. I'm writing this blog late at night on Friday, setting it to post around the time of my mom's services Saturday afternoon)

First things first - we (and by "we" I mean my dad) have set up a donation page at Susan G Komen where donations for the cure can be made in my mom's name. If you haven't already made a donation, I'm going to be super bold here and request that you consider doing so. It can be for any amount and even small amounts add up. If you're reading this from my blog, you can click my mom's picture on the sidebar to the right. Or you can click right here.

Second - at the bottom of this post will be the video/slide show dealie I made for the services on Saturday. You can skip reading all this in the middle and just look at the movie, but I'm not posting it til the end. So there. (Imagine me sticking out my tongue like a little kid.)

Third... well... I haven't decided yet (I know... I know... running out of time) if I'll speak at my mom's service. I sort of want to and sort of don't. I hate public speaking. I don't even like talking in front of 7 people that I know. Speaking in front of a large group of people that I loosely know, and at my mom's memorial service... well I don't know if I can pull it off. But if I were going to speak, I think this is what I might say (you should imagine a whole lot of pausing, no typing, staring off in to space, typing random things, deleting it all and starting again):

There isn't much I didn't say to my mom before she passed - no things I never got around to saying, no little regrets of things I didn't do or anything like that. So this won't be about things I wish had done. As you heard from the chaplain and will see in the pictures, my mom loved to travel. She loved adventure and seeing new things and sharing memories of those travels with others. I wanted to share a story of one of those travels – if my mom were sitting here right now, she’d probably start to giggle, knowing what I was about to say. So mom, as promised… let’s talk about Anne Frank.

Some time in the late 80s, early 90s, my dad was sent to fight in the first Gulf War while we were stationed in Germany. My granny came to live with us while he was gone. I don't remember all the details of how this all came to be, but some how the three of us ended up on a nice chartered bus with a ton of other people from our base headed to Holland for what I think was a weekend trip.
During that trip, we got to do and see a lot of really amazing things. We stayed at a host families house, we went to the Keukenhof, we explored Amsterdam (we even got lost at one point... she so kindly point out the people doing drugs in the alley and told me that's what would happen to me if I ever did drugs - point made) and had a truly fantastic time.

There's one thing, however, that we didn't get to do. Perhaps you're familiar with another young girl named Anne Frank. Maybe you remember that her family hid from the Nazi's in a house in where? Oh yeah. Amsterdam. Where we WERE. Of course, I had just read the book for school, and I wanted to go tour the house. But... we didn't. The day before we left on our trip, my mom smashed her foot at work, breaking the pinkie toe. That and the shocking fact that my granny was well, old, equaled no Anne Frank's house for us. This was a Very. Big. Deal.

Well, to be honest, I’m not sure at the time it was such a huge deal. I know as I got older, I started teasing her about it more and more. In fact, I promised to her on many occasions that I’d tell just this story on just this day. I might not get back to Europe til I'm 80 years old, but I'll get back and I’ll climb up that narrow ladder (or so I’m told it’s narrow – did I also mention that my mom had been to Amsterdam before and had already toured Anne Frank’s house?) and probably shrug my shoulders and think “wow….this really wasn’t a big deal at all.” I will probably nip a little piece of mom to take with me….and leave her outside while I go in.

So, if I choose to talk at her services, I'll probably share that story. And she'd totally laugh. :)

As promised - here's the link to the movie :)