A long overdue photo installment

I've gotten rather busy in the past couple of weeks. Besides recently returning to work, I'm also taking a college course, so unfortunately I haven't been updating Ben's blog as frequently as I'd like. Please bear with me.

Ben playing with his Little People fire truck set he got from Amy and Alex on his birthday:

Admiring (and plotting to knock over) Mommy's cup tower:

Ben's pretty much cruising everywhere these days. He only crawls long-distance.


Ben and his favourite sippy cup. He's doing really well with it. Today he only had one bottle.

You wouldn't know it by the look on his face, but Ben is sitting in the lap of baby seat luxury right here. The Britax Marathon. We needed a second seat so Granny and Granddad Bloomfield could pick him up from daycare for visits, so we'll keep this one and give them Ben's "old" (about 4 months old) car seat.

Sippy cup success!

Ben's dropped his morning bottle these past couple of weeks and now takes his milk in a sippy cup. He'll drink from a spout cup, but I've found a straw cup is much more effective. He likes the Nuby Flip N' Sip cup.


Once we see he's doing well on whole milk we'll start offering him a cup of milk at lunchtime as well. So far no obvious problems with milk though. We'd worried because of his eczema reaction to the Enfamil formula he was on when he was younger, which his paediatrician suspected was related to casein intolerance. Once we switched him to GoodStart2 (which is whey-based, rather than whey *and* casein-based) the eczema cleared right up.

In other news, Ben's paed has scheduled him for food allergy tests. I'll have to follow up today to find out when his appointment is. The reason for the allergy testing is because I'd determined Ben was allergic to egg whites at 11 months. His initial reaction was to a small piece of cake. I suspected egg whites, so I tested the theory the next day, and sure enough... he tried a small piece of egg and he had a red rash and hives around his mouth. As a result our GP hasn't given Ben his 12 month vaccinations because the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine is cultured in egg. The plan is to test Ben periodically to see if the allergy lessens or goes away completely. Eventually though the risk of not being vaccinated versus the risk of a severe allergic reaction is greater, so we'll have to keep an eye on this and hope the allergy dissipates soon.

And I think we're way overdue for photos, so I'll add some later today.

We have a stair climber!

Ben just learned to climb the stairs. It's funny because I was just telling Andi today how Ben can only get up two stairs. He sure has made a liar out of Mommy!



I can hardly believe how quickly these skills are coming now. We also bought him a more sturdy pair of shoes (as requested by his daycare provider) and they seem to be helping to improve his walking skills (holding onto hands, of course.)

And speaking of daycare, Ben is doing really well. His daycare provider is great and doing an amazing job of getting to know him. He's eating and napping well for her, and seems to be enjoying the experience. He also gets a chance to mix with some older kids when her neighbour (who's also a daycare provider) brings her children by. When I went to pick Ben up the other day he was standing at a table intensely observing the three year old boy standing next to him. It was so cute. I bet he'll pick up new skills by watching the other kids too... let's just hope they're all positive skills, and not, say... fire starting. (I joke now - talk to me again in six years!)

Ben's first morning of daycare :*(

A sad day for Mommy indeed.

I brought Ben to his home daycare provider's house this morning. Tina is her name and she's really great, so I'm sure Ben will have lots of fun.

I stuck around for a half hour until Ben found his bearings (he found the Mega Blocks, so that resulted in one happy little clam.) I sat on the floor and played with Ben and the blocks for a while and when I thought about leaving I felt eyes welling up. Not wanting to upset Ben I turned my head and stood up, at which point he tugged on my pant leg and started to cry. That made me feel so incredibly sad. After gathering my composure I sat down and played with him for another 5 minutes or so. When I left he was happy and thoroughly engaged by Tina, Rachel (Tina's daughter), and the Mega Blocks.

Thank goodness Nic will be the one to drop Ben off at Tina's when I return to work because I don't know that I could do it without disolving.

Ben will be there until lunchtime today. I can hardly wait to see him and give him a big snuggle. And it might sound silly being this emotional over only a few hours, but motherhood does strange things to a woman. I could never have imagined prior to Ben joining our family.

And finally, in an effort to cheer this entry up, here's a picture of Ben hitting his daddy on the head with a ball:

Nesting and stacking

It's yet to be determined if this was a fluke but this evening Ben nested all ten of his nesting/stacking cups. I couldn't believe my eyes. And he didn't even look like he was thinking about it much, he just kept picking up the next smallest cup and nesting it until they were all nested. He's been nesting items for a while now, but never has he sorted all ten cups in perfect order. I think he's ahead of the game on this one.

And a definite new skill Ben is working on is stacking. Ben is learning to stack items (cups and blocks), but he gets frustrated because he hasn't yet developed the fine motor coordination to be successful all the time, but he's really doing great.