Decisions, Decisions

Happy Monday! I hope everyone has recovered from any super-bowl festivities you may have partaken in. We stayed at home and flipped between the super-bowl and some other show that seemed very interesting at the time, but now I can't even remotely remember what it was about.....

I have mentioned that our little Ben is going through a bit of a rough patch with separation anxiety. So, I decided to start volunteering in the toddler room at our church. I'm hoping that will eventually help him get used to being in a large group of kids and then at some point I'll start leaving the class halfway through and then hopefully we'll get to a point where he is no longer like this......

But A LOT more like this.....

We went to church as a family yesterday for the first time in a loooooong time. Greg went to "big church" while Ben and I went to Sunday school in the toddler room. As predicted, it was rough until he realized I wasn't leaving him. Then he calmed down and played with some toys. He did pretty well. I'm hoping it will get better and better each time. One thing that cracked me up was how willing he was to help me put away the toys at the end so we could go "bye-bye". All I had to do was tell him once that if he helped me put away the toys, we would go "bye-bye" and he was ON IT.....putting toys in any bin he could find!!!

At home, he is becoming more and more independent. I love this stage because I can give him choices and he makes his own decisions. And he LOVES it. I ask him questions and he can tell me "Yes" and "No". He has certain things that he prefers to wear. For instance, he has a pair of pajamas with dogs on them that he wants to wear EVERY NIGHT. After a couple of nights, we have to hide them so he can't find them in the drawer. He is also fascinated with snakes and has a shirt that Aunt Heather and Uncle Rob gave him that has a rattlesnake on it. He ADORES it and will stick his chest out and hiss at us when he has it on. It is the only item of clothing, other than the dog pajamas, that he will willingly put on. It's so amusing to watch him moving from baby to little person. I know a lot of parents get a little sad during this stage because the baby phase is ending. I have those moments too...especially when I see his little clothes from last year. But, for the most part, this new stage is soooo much fun. Even if it is more challenging.

Ben says, "Yeah, I've got a rooster on my shirt and 50's style "greaser" jeans on....you wanna make something of it??"

We had a minor "carrot up the nose" incident during lunch today. I cut his carrots up very small so he can't choke on them, but he tends to inhale his food sometimes and I think something went down the wrong pipe because he started coughing like crazy. I think all the coughing caused a piece of carrot to get into his nasal passage. He started pointing at his nose and then wanted me to pick him up. That is when I got the up-close view of a rather large piece of carrot blocking his nostril. I used tweezers to get it out and I thought that was the end of it until I looked up further into his nose and there was more carrot. Ugh. The tweezers couldn't safely reach up that far so I held his other nostril closed and told him to blow out (I demonstrated for him). I was afraid he wasn't going to understand how to do it until, all of a sudden, more carrot went flying across the room. Mission accomplished. I know, I lead a very glamorous life. Please don't be jealous.

I'm tossing around the idea of starting a series of posts on my blog entitled, "Tales from the Farm". As many of you know, I grew up on a farm. Growing up on a farm is, um, different. In a good way though. Lets just say I have a lot of stories from my childhood that are......unusual. I will still give weekly updates and pictures of Ben of course. That won't change. This is just something extra I might be doing in an effort to provide some laughs. The first title will likely be "A Goat Named Fancy". What did I tell you??? Unusual indeed ;-)

Love,

Brooke