Benny's 11th Month!

Benny's personality has really started to develop this last month. We are all loving watching what a funny, loving little boy he is becoming! It is hard to believe that a year ago I was still pregnant and now we have a baby who is starting to act much more like a toddler than the baby he was just a few short months ago!

The older boys continue to shower Benny with love and attention and really I could not ask for better big brother for Benny. They watch out for him, play games with him, read him books, make him laugh, give him hugs, kisses and snuggles, and overall just love to be around him.

Benny has started to make all sorts of silly faces and loves to make us laugh. He will initiate games of peek-a-boo, and loves to hand toys or books to us so that we play with him.

Benny still babbles up a storm and has added, "Mom!" to his list of words. It is still questionable if he is actually attaching meaning to what he says, but he definitely seems to yell for me or Tim when he sees us. Another new word/sound is, "Yum!" when he is eating. He still LOVES to eat and will stop to clap or say, "Yum!" if he really likes something. He still loves peaches more than anything, but is really not picky at all. He also loves eggs, beans, salmon, peas , yogurt and cheese.

It has become pretty much impossible to accomplish anything when Benny is around. He immediately makes a beeline for the dog bowl, stairs, toilets, cupboards, basically anything that we don't want him to get into. He loves dumping out his toys or books and putting one of them in his mouth and then crawling as fast as he can to show us what he has.

Benny will pull himself to standing on pretty much anything, and will just hold on with one hand, or lean against it with his belly if he needs both hands to do something. He has started cruising around furniture, but isn't pushing anything around or trying to walk yet.

I really need to take a picture of him in the bath because it is one of his favorite parts of the day. He is definitely a water baby and loves to splash around and play in the tub, We just put a few inches of water in the big tub now and let him crawl around and play each night before bed and he has a blast. Our hearts have been so full these past 11 months watching Benny grow and change. We all love him so much and can't imagine our family without him in it!

 

Bennett's 10th Month

Benny's 10th month was another month of milestones! Crawling like a pro, pulling up, getting his first teeth, growing more hair, babbling, clapping, waving, and eating pretty much anything and everything in sight kept Benny busy this last month.

 

Benny is now a serious crawler. He is SO fast and does a mixture of his army crawl and crawling on his hands and knees. His army crawl is the preferred mode of transportation when he is wearing clothes and on our wood floors. He moves so quickly, he looks like a snake slithering across the floor. He just uses the tips of his toes to propel himself forward and it is pretty impressive how quickly he can move. He crawls on his hands and knees if he is in just a diaper, on carpet or outside.

Benny will pull himself up to standing on absolutely anything he can grab ahold of. He loves to stand and has great balance, even when holding on with just one hand. He isn't walking behind anything or cruising yet, but I think it is right around the corner.

We had a particularly bad week and a half of sleep, and at the end of it Benny had 5 teeth. He showed absolutely no discomfort or unhappiness during the day, but just could not get settled at night. He wasn't even upset or crying really, just restless and wanted to be held all night long. He got 3 teeth on the bottom and 2 on top pretty much all at the same time. The 3 on the bottom look so funny, because he has not gotten on of the center ones yet, so he has a little gap that we think make him look like a baby bull dog.

Benny is using all those new teeth to eat everything we give him. He loves solid food, sucks down baby food pouches like a pro and still loves to nurse. He eats so much more than James and Mac did as babies, and based on how much those two eat now, I fear for our future grocery bills. Benny's favorites are fruit-especially bananas, raspberries and peaches and yogurt. He also likes salmon, ham and cheese. Baked goods are not his favorite, but he still eats them.

Benny loves to play with toys now and will find anything that is left on the floor and assume it is fair game to chew on. This means lots of Legos and dog toys have been removed from his mouth. He has started to have an opinion when you take things away from him or (heaven forbid) walk away from him and he will go from smiling to the fakest cry in the world in about half a second. This is always extremely short lived and he goes immediately back to smiling as soon as you pick him up or hand him something else to play with.

Benny gets so excited when Tim gets home and flaps his arms and kicks his feet and crawls as fast as he can to head butt him in the legs until he gets picked up. He will also lunge out of our arms towards whoever he wants to hold him. He babbles like crazy and repeats Dadada and Babababa. He will repeat "Dada" and "Da" for Dad and dog, and "Ba" for ball, and also does a pretty good imitation of, "Yep!" but I don't know that we are counting any of them as actual words yet. He doesn't say them on his own or consistently enough for me to think he is attaching meaning with the words yet. But he does try to repeat us and makes so many sounds compared to his brothers at this age.

Benny has started waving (mainly at himself), clapping when we say, "Yay!" and can make the funniest sounds. He uses his fingers to vibrate his lips to make a good motor boat impression and anytime we pick him up, he tries to do the same thing with his fingers on our lips.

Benny loves Jax and grabs a fistful of his fur whenever he has the chance. He gets excited to see other dogs too.

Benny takes two solid naps a day, though he has started pushing his morning nap later and later. I would really love for him to be on one nap a day by the time the boys go back to school or he is going to have an interrupted afternoon nap every single day. The woes of a third child!

Benny LOVES to be outside and will crawl through the grass, on cement and through dirt. He doesn't care the terrain, he just loves to explore and eat whatever he might find in his path.

Benny continues to delight all of us and we are just trying to soak up every second of his sweet, easy going,  and happy personality.

Bennett's 9th Month

Now that Benny is almost 10 months old, I figured I better hurry up with his 9 month update! The biggest milestone for Benny last month was he finally figured out how to crawl! He army crawls all over the place and is also proficient at going from sitting to crawling back to sitting. He is also pulling up on things to his knees before losing his balance and toppling over.

Some of Benny's favorite things in the last month:

• Going swimming. He LOVES being in the water and splashing around.
• Jax-he loves his dog and cracks up watching him play fetch.
• His brothers-I am pretty sure Benny is the luckiest baby in the world with James and Mac as big brothers. They absolutely adore him and the feeling is most definitely mutual. Nothing makes him laugh harder than watching Mac be crazy.
• Toys-he loves Jax's mini tennis balls and Duplos the best. Of course anything he finds goes straight into his mouth.
• Eating-Benny continues to love everything we give him to eat. Yogurt, pouches, pancakes and waffles, spinach cakes, pretzel sticks and eggs are all favorites right now.

Benny takes two solid naps a day-usually at 9 and 1. Nighttime sleep is not going so well. He keeps sitting up in his sleep, which wakes him up and makes him angry and has to be picked up and walked around before he can calm down. He still only nurses once a night, but has started waking up way more than that. Although I am ready for this phase to be over, he is so sweet and cuddly at night, I try to remind myself this is just a phase and to soak up his baby cuddles while I still can.

Benny's 9 month appointment stats were 20lbs and 28.5 inches. About the 50-60th percentile for both height and weight. He seems so big to me, this surprised me. His head is still off the charts, no surprise there.

We are all so in love with this sweet baby, I still can't believe how lucky we all are that he is here!

Bennett's 8th month

It seems like every month that passes in Benny's first year goes by more quickly than each previous month. When people ask how old Benny is lately, I usually have to stop myself from saying, "6 months."  8 months just seems so old!

It is so much fun to see Benny's personality develop more and more each month and get to know his likes and dislikes. Benny's number one love is definitely his family. He gets so excited to see all of us and it never gets old watching him light up when he catches a glimpse of any of us. When Tim gets home from work, Benny starts flapping his arms so much, it looks like he is about to take flight. He then lunges out of my arms (or wherever he is) towards Tim to be picked up. If one of us is holding him and he wants to be held by someone else, he just hurls himself in that general direction. And when one of the older boys is sitting by him, he lunges towards them and grabs their hair or face if he wants a snuggle. He definitely has a way of showing his affection, and we all just eat it up. When we pick him up, he lays his head on our chest and snuggles in close and it never fails to melt my heart each and every time.

James and Mac enjoy Benny more and more each month as he gets more interactive and wants to play with them. They love entertaining him, reading him books, playing peek-a-boo, trying to get him to laugh and holding him. If Benny hears one of their voices, he stops what he is doing and cranes his neck looking around to find them and then greets them with his big, gummy smile. Adorable.

 

Benny has definitely mastered sitting up this month and is super stable. He has also started leaning forward onto his arms and trying to scoot. He isn't crawling yet, but he sure wants to! He will spin around in circles when he is on his stomach, kick his legs and wiggle like crazy. He just hasn't figured out the forward motion part yet. I think it is coming very soon, he gets more mobile each day and it is only a matter of time before he puts all his moves together and really starts to crawl!



Benny is a great napper and is getting better at his nighttime sleeping as well. He takes two good naps a day in his crib that are usually over an hour. He goes to bed around 8pm and eats once around 4-5am. Sometimes he sleeps right through until that 4-5am feeding time, but more often than not, he wakes up around midnight or 1am and can just be shushed and have his back patted to quickly fall back asleep. Benny is an early riser just like James. He wakes up for the day between 6-6:30, regardless of what time he goes to bed.

Benny loves Jax and loves his toys. He loves to watch us play fetch with him and tries to grab a fistful of his fur whenever he is nearby. Thankfully, Jax is very tolerant of this, especially now that Benny is eating solid food and Jax knows that he is the ticket to lots of dropped puffs.

Benny is still a huge fan of eating. He gets so excited for meal time and loves pretty much anything we give him. He is still mainly on purees, but his pincer grasp is getting pretty good, so I will probably start more finger foods soon. He is so enthusiastic about eating that he cries when the food runs out. His favorites seem to be yogurt and bananas.

Benny is super vocal and squeals, screeches and babbles. His favorite is, "Dadadadadada!" and blowing raspberries. He is so much more vocal than either of the other boys were as babies, I am interested to see if he starts talking sooner than they did.

We just can't get enough of Benny. We adore everything about him and love watching him grow and change each month.