Spotlight on Ben

Ben was excited that it was his turn to be the Spotlight in his 2nd grade class a few weeks ago. He filled out a questionnaire and got to take photos to put on a special spotlight bulletin board in his classroom. He chose the pictures he wanted to take, and I thought they were cute, so I thought I'd post them here:










First season of T-Ball Summer 2007.


Halloween 2007.





With his cactus named Tom, whom we adopted after a trip to Arizona.












Christmas Blizzard of 2006 in Denver.








Ben at his 2 year birthday party eating pasta.





Ben is such an amazing kid. He loves to learn and remembers everything. He is still very interested in weather, and is also into astronomy. He loves to look at the stars, point out Jupiter and the International Space Station when it floats by in the night sky. He has also been showing an interest in minerals lately. The other day he told me he would find me a huge diamond in the ground so I could be rich! Such a good boy to take care of his mama!

Ben is so smart, too. He is reading way beyond his grade level, is an excellent speller (got 4th place in the 2nd grade spelling bee the other day), and says Math is his favorite subject. His imagination and creativity is really coming out in his drawings of tornadoes, gemstones, and robot inventions. I never know what he'll think of next. He loves to teach others as well. Last night he said to Erik "Hey Erik, want to look at math flashcards so you can be smart?" They were 7 times tables, and he kept giving Erik hints like "7 x 8. Its one more than 55." Erik enjoyed this game. A few weeks ago he drew a poster his teacher showed the class of a way to remember how many cups, pints, quarts, etc are in a gallon, and could hardly wait to share it with our church Home Teachers when they came over.


Ben constantly entertains us. His teacher tells me he is the class clown, which didn't surprise me, but I know that he didn't get that from me! (or Shaun. I think it skipped a generation). He loves to tell Laffy Taffy jokes and to make all of us laugh. Shaun and I remember that from the time he was still quite small...before he could talk...he LOVED to laugh HARD! You know how something just catches you off guard and makes you suddenly burst out laughing? He would try to do that to himself again and again just to get the rush! He still loves to laugh until his belly hurts and he can hardly breathe and he has Erik to laugh right along with him. They really get each other going sometimes. As a parent, its a joy to watch!

He has been all I could have hoped for and more as a Big Brother to Erik from Day One. I love to overhear the games and make-believe that they come up with together. I still can't believe how consistently inclusive and patient Ben is with his younger brother. When I was expecting Erik, I read up on sibling rivalry and feared I'd be dealing with jealousy when the new baby came because it seemed so common and inevitable. Well, to my amazement, I've never needed any of that info with Ben. He doesn't have a mean or jealous bone in his body, so I should've known not to worry. And now he is so fun to watch with Alex. Alex smiles and can't keep his eyes off Ben when he gets home from school each day. I'm sure they will have a great relationship as well.

Ben, I know this will embarrass you, but we are so proud of the person you are! When we see what a great young man you are becoming, it makes us feel like we must be pretty amazing parents, but really we know that it all comes from inside you! We are so lucky to be your Mom and Dad! We enjoy every minute with you and are so happy you are in our family!

Alex SuperBaby

Every mother should be lucky enough to have a baby as great as Alex. He is such a joy to be around. Always in a good mood, even when I'm not. Don't get me wrong, motherhood is tough, and being a mom with three boys is very demanding. I have many hard days when I feel so tired and completely inadequate, just the nature of the job for me, I guess. But this baby is so amazing. Here's a list of a few things that amaze me and that I love about our little Alex:

1. I never knew some babies don't spit up. Ever! I bought a whole pack of new burp cloths expecting the volume of spit my other boys gave us. This child has literally spit up 4 times in his whole life, and each time it is the size of a dime. Hardly counts as spit up, really.

2. He only cries if he is absolutely starving or sick. When he wakes up at night, he just grunts and makes complain-y noises. If he gets lonely or wants some extra attention he coos. If we lay him in his bed to see if he'll go to sleep on his own, he usually makes a few wiggly noises and falls asleep. Again, I wouldn't have believed it humanly possible, I have heard stories and rumors of babies who behaved that way, but from my previous experience I thought they were joking. This baby is making me a believer! The other day, I tried to lay him in his bed for a nap during the day, and while he didn't fall asleep, he never cried. Just laid in his crib perfectly happy for 45 minutes entertaining himself with his feet until I decided he wasn't going to sleep and we had to go get Ben from school.

3. His fuzzy hair. He wasn't "blessed" with my cowlick the way Erik was, but Alex's hair is so fuzzy right now. I love to rub my cheek on his head just to feel that baby soft hair.

4. He is already starting to sleep through the night! My other children never came close to this accomplishment before they were almost a year old. This child is not even six months and he has slept through the night 3 times in the last month, and has only been waking up once fairly consistantly lately. Last night was his longest sleep yet...9pm to 7:20 am! I'm so especially thankful for this amazing aspect of him because I was already at my breaking point sleep-deprivation wise. No way I could have survived several more months of this schedule. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Alex!!

We love WordGirl!

In case you haven't had the pleasure of catching an episode of WordGirl on PBS, here's a a video of Captain Huggyface doing what he does best!

Halloween Pics...explanation to follow at a later date!

I should hire Shaun out for face painting at birthday parties! He did a great job on Frankenstein's face!


Captain Huggyface falls asleep
Word Up! Its Word Girl and Captain Huggyface!
Thanks for taking this picture Ben! Good Job!

First Piano Recital

Ben has been taking piano lessons at USU this fall and is really enjoying it. (Phew! I was worried my scheme would backfire.) I think much of his enjoyment, at least initially, is due to the fact that he has a male teacher, Pete, who is a very hip, long-board riding, young college student, which is a good example for Ben (as in boys who play piano aren't sissies!)

Ben is in love with the National Anthem lately. Yes I'm talking about the good old Star Spangled Banner. His school sings it together in the gym every morning along with saying the Pledge as part of their "Morning Greeting." As soon as he started piano, he begged me to find him some simple sheet music for it and teach him to play it. He memorized it so quickly (its a page and a half long!) and happily pounds it out on the piano several times a day after school. Ben takes the fact that the piano is a percussion instrument quite literally! He's taught Erik some of the words, so now I am regularly serenaded during the day with strains of "gave poof through tonight, that our flag was over there..." and other close-but-not-quite lyrics. It always puts a smile on my face.

This video is his very first piano recital at USU. They had a special Halloween one where all the kids got to wear their costumes and go to a halloween carnival after their recital. Ben played "Old MacDonald's Ghost" for his song. (Ben is Frankenstein this year, more on that in a later post). Ben and Erik had a blast and Grandma Joy and Grandpa Steve came over for the occasion. We were sitting in the audience, and Erik asked if he could have a turn. "Sorry, Erik, maybe next year," I told him. Well, after it was over, Erik went down to the piano and gave us this number:




Ben likes to "teach" Erik some of what he's learning at piano lessons, and Erik seems to love it, too. We are so lucky to have been able to move my Grandma Ericksen's piano to our little house. I have fond childhood memories of tinkering around on it at my grandma's house and I have always loved that piano. Its so beautiful. Shaun thought I was nuts when I said I wanted to move it over here and enroll Ben in piano lessons because our house is so tiny, but it has already paid off. Ben plays the opening song for us for Family Home Evening each week. (We're getting to know The Star Spangled Banner pretty well!) and Erik plays his own original composition for the closing song. Having kids interested in piano make me feel like such a good mom for some reason! Listening to them pound out chopsticks or the PBS Kids jingle (which Ben figured out himself...have you noticed we watch a lot of PBS?) is so satisfying and just makes me feel like I'm doing something right. Ben also still plans on learning guitar and drums when he gets older, so I look forward to having our house filled with music often.

New Pictures of Alex

I'm glad to have met my goal of posting more than once during the month of October!

Here's Alex at 15 weeks old. Such a handsome little guy! He is just starting to laugh a little. He is also reaching for and holding on to toys. He prefers to chew on his fingers the most, though. He is also very drooly! He likes to smile at the cute baby in the mirror and bounce and jump when we hold him on our laps. So much fun! Sleeping through the night would be nice, but it will come someday...

Believe it or not, he has much more hair than Ben or Erik did at this stage. Its so fun when we wash it and it fuzzes straight up. He's also missing my major frontal cowlick, so I think he must have inherited Shaun's hair. I'm thinking he looks most like Ben at this stage in his babyhood...but I can see some of Erik's cheeks in Alex sometimes, too.

Alex's Blessing Day (was in September!)

We finally had Alex's blessing on September 14th (and I'm finally posting it over a month later). He had almost grown out of his special white satin suit! His blessing was beautiful and we had a small brunch with family in our backyard (with our new grass!) afterward and the weather was sunny and perfect.

If you look closely you will see that his pants don't match his shirt. He caught a virus the day before that gave him diarrhea and he frequently overloaded the holding capacity of his diapers. We were sweating it all morning hoping he wouldn't leak on the fancy clothes. Well, we did make it through his blessing and most of sacrament meeting before we finally had a blow out. Grandma Joy's quick-rinsing in the restroom at church saved the pants from total loss. Can't say the same for a couple of his onesies later during the week which we actually cut off of him rather than trying to get the messy shirt over his head. It was a two person operation with Shaun operating the scissors like it was the Jaws-of-Life while I held his hands out of it. And at 3 AM, of course! Ah, babies...so wonderful and yet kind of gross.

Back when I started this post at the beginning of October, I was debating if I should put the outfit on him again to get pictures. I failed to get any special pictures of my other children in their blessing outfits. We tried with Ben, but his Blessing Day also happened to be his first day of colic. We held him and rocked him while he cried all morning trying to figure out what was wrong instead of getting the photo op. I do have a lovely, blurry photo of him screaming, and one of his face nestled against Shaun when he finally fell asleep hours later. I forget what the no-photo issue was with Erik...we have a few photos from his special day, but I know I always planned to put him back in his outfit for some portrait-type pictures before he grew out of it, but alas! Life happened and pictures didn't.

I was trying to decided whether I should try extra hard to get the fancy outfit pictures for Alex, or if that wouldn't be fair for the other boys who don't have nice fancy outfit pictures. Well, it was decided for me in a way because Alex got very unhappy when he developed an earache and wasn't too happy on the antibiotics either. (A side note here: Alex had just gotten over two weeks worth of diarrhea...10 poopy diapers a day for 14 days straight! Finally he got it all out of his system and then earache comes accompanied by 2 days of near incessant crying (poor kid!) and a nursing strike. Our pediatrician gave us Amoxicillan and what did it say on the bottle? "May cause diarrhea!" and it did, again!) Anyway...no one was sleeping well, and getting pictures in his white suit was the farthest thing from my mind. I'm pretty sure he's grown out of it now, so I guess I have no fancy pictures of any of my kids in their blessing outfits after all. At least I've been equally negligent! No favorites here!

And, I'm happy to report there's finally no more diarrhea! HOORAY!