At Home With Holly and Ben

Here is a look at what Holly and Ben have been up to over the last two months.

At the end of November, Ben started sitting up on his own and made me one happy mama.  A sweet little baby who sits up and happily plays with toys for long periods of time, not going any place?  It can't be beat.  After a few weeks of that, he decided he had places to go and started army crawling.  He also learned to eat Cheerios and puffs in time for our trip to California.  Ben is a hungry little fella.  By January I began feeding him 3 baby food meals per day, and he nurses about 6 times a day as well.  He likes everything I've fed him so far, but especially likes to feed himself graham crackers and bananas.  He gets so excited at the sight of the Cheerios box or the bag of goldfish crackers.  Once I looked down and saw he had gotten into the pantry and was eating something.  I saw he had found a tortilla chip (yes, I had a tortilla chip on my pantry floor) and was sucking on it, so I took it away.  I have never heard him scream louder or be as angry as he was about losing that tortilla chip!  I looked at Adam and we started laughing...cruel, I know, but it just seemed so funny.  As if he had just discovered the tastiest snack of his life and we snatched it right away from him.  I offered him some goldfish instead and he was happy again. 

The last week of January he began pulling himself up to things and now seems so proud to stand up at the little play table or the edge of the couch.  He is quick to smile and laugh and is in a good mood most of the time.  Everywhere we go, people tell me what a cute baby he is and frequently comment on his handsome dark eyes.

 Holly loves our baby about half of the time, and the other half of the time she makes him cry.  I'd say the number one frustration I experience during the day is hearing the pained cries of little Ben after he's been kicked in the face, dragged by his jammies, knocked over, knelt on or poked in the eye by Holly.  Sometimes it's truly well-meant, but most often she's just exercising her power and authority.  Fortunately, she has stopped taking all his toys away from him and frequently gives him toys instead. 

Holly is mainly into stuffed animals and make-believe games these days.  For about four months now, her play has been inspired by a book of ours called "Biscuit and the Little Pup," in which Biscuit, a golden retriever puppy, meets a tiny brown & white pup who is too shy to come out of his doghouse and play.  One day while playing with Adam, Holly said he should be Biscuit and she was Little Pup, and the game has never stopped.  Holly stays in character much of the time and calls Adam "Biscuit" everywhere we go - she even tells strangers that her dad's name is Biscuit.  Many times I've heard her say, "H-O-L-L-Y, that spells Little Pup!"  Sometimes when we arrive at church, Holly sees Adam across the chapel and runs to him, shouting, "BISCUIT!!!!"  In the Biscuit books (the entire series is about Biscuit, but Little Pup is just in one of the books) Biscuit says always "Woof!" but the Little Pup says "Arf!"  So Holly arfs about 90 times a day, and every night she insists that we sing some Little Pup songs.  Here is an example of a Little Pup song:

(To the tune of Baa, baa, black sheep)
Little Pup, Little Pup, will you come and play?
Arf, arf, arf, arf, No I won't.
Woof, woof, woof, woof, Biscuit has a ball,
Arf, arf, arf, arf, says Little Pup.
Little Pup, Little Pup, will you come and play?
Arf, arf, arf, arf, Yes I will.

And while I am making up the words to another familiar tune, Holly just sings "Arf, arf, arf" along to the tune in the background.  Sometimes the puppy aspect of our lives drives me crazy, like when Holly refuses to wear her raincoat outside because "Little pups dry off in the rain!"  Or when we are trying to leave church through a crowd of people but Little Pup has to walk on all fours. But if she is going to have an obsession, a puppy isn't the worst choice out there.

I stopped giving Holly naps a few months ago and that allows her to fall asleep quickly and easily every night by about 8:00, and she usually sleeps till 8 in the morning.  She still wakes up crying at least once most nights.  But most of those times I just go tuck her in again quickly and she falls right back to sleep.  Once a week or so, she has trouble in the night and she comes in our bed for a couple hours before I take her back to her room.  It's not ideal, but I'm pretty used to it and don't mind too much.  I hope it will improve in time.

Holly is very observant and pays attention to everything she sees and hears.  She asks many great questions throughout the day.  Like many parents, I find I want to "dumb down" my explanation of things I think must be too complicated for her to understand, but I have to remind myself not to.  She seems to handle the real answers to her questions with no problem.

Holly has a lot of interest in words and letters.  Whenever she sees something with words on it, she asks me what it says, and she likes to talk about what letter a word starts with.  She doesn't always get it right...here is a funny one:

 

Thanks, cousin Noah, for the BYU hat!

Holly really enjoys doing chores with me.  Like cooking together, it takes longer to clean together than if I do it myself, but the experience is better when we do the work together.

 

We have unfortunately had a lot of sickness over this winter, as we did last winter.  The worst of it was when Holly got croup back in November.  It was a tough one and scary at times but we got throughout without any trips to the ER.  On her sickest day, all she wanted was her daddy to come home and be with her.  Her spirits improved significantly as soon as she heard the garage door open.  I took this video of her later that night.

I wish I could say we are all better, but as I write this, Holly is asleep in her bed with a 101.5 degree fever.  A few minutes ago she woke up crying, and when we went in to comfort her, she cried, "I want to swim!"  Hopefully by the time summer is here we'll all be healthy again and she can do just that.