Potty Training

As most of you know, I am a very spoiled daughter :) My mom was just out here for her semi-annual 2 month visit and while she was here she decided to potty train Benjamin. He was going to do the cold-turkey 3 day method - so wake up, after breakfast go and say permanently goodbye to diapers (except for bedtime) and go straight to underwear (no pullups). I purchased the 20 underwear, Sam and I wished her luck - then we headed off to a resort for the weekend for a marriage conference with our church :) Below is us at the marriage conference.
There are no pictures of Ben at the potty training weekend as I guess they were a little busy :) We were told Saturday was 1 accident after another but Sunday morning it 'clicked'. So Sam and I returned home to a potty trained child just 2 days before he turned 2.5 years old. We are approaching the 2 week mark and except for 1 complete relapse day, we haven't had peeing accidents at home or even when I am out running errands. Daycare has been a bit more of a struggle but he's getting there. The 1st day at daycare he held it for 7hrs then let out the flood (and not at the potty). The pooing took him a few more days to learn, but once Sam taught him to do 'pushing' faces, that just 'clicked' for him as well (picture below is grainy since it was taken with Sam's phone and not our camera).

And yes I am sure I just jinxed it all by typing this post :)

Jesus Loves Me

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

Swimming

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

Daddy's Boy

Camping with Daddy

Benjamin and Sam went camping for a weekend with 3 other dads and their kids while I spent the weekend painting and reorganizing the front office. There were 4 adults and 7 kids (5 girls!!) and Ben was the youngest but he behaved great (even took naps!!) and had a fantastic time.

Grandma's House - May 2009

Benjamin and I just had our semi-annual trip to Canada. We spent nearly 3 weeks there this time and the weather was beautiful!! Benjamin had a wonderful time playing indoors and outdoors. His favorite activity this trip was playing with a doll house (he would make the dolls kiss and continually put them to 'bed'). Thanks to Grandma's patience he also mastered puzzles, learned a lot of his colors, and now can recognize the letters A to C. Unfortunately the last weekend was spent trying to dry out my mom's basement after a bad rainstorm. However, Ben enjoyed even that as it meant cool new 'machines' to look at plus a new bed (he slept on his mattress up in Grandmas room). This 1st post are his activities at Grandmas house while I was at work and there are 2 more posts following this showing his weekend fun.

Cousins

This trip there were no pictures with Aunts, Uncles or Grandmas. Benjamin spent all of his weekend time playing with his cousins.

Julia

Benjamin loved playing with all 3 of his cousins but I have to admit that this trip it was definitely Julia he tended to favor. Whenever we showed up at the Kambulow household he would run up to the door chanting her name. And even after we had returned to Arizona, for 2 weeks he would tell us every day that he played with Julia. However, you could completely understand why he enjoyed it so much as Julia was a wonderful 'big sister'. She showed him how to play soccer, taught him how to properly play with the dolls and loved to dress him up with her fairy wings.

Day of Rain

I wanted to do something 'fun' with Benjamin today but I knew it was going to rain so I spent last night trying to think of indoor activities. Well there was no need for that as Benjamin was very ecstatic seeing the rain coming down while he ate his breakfast. As soon as he was done it was off to play in the backyard!!

Hiking

Benjamin and Sam went hiking for a day with friends (and Maully of course). If you compare the location of the tree at the bend on the right of the 1st picture, with how far they are from it in the 2nd - you will see Benjamin didn't last too long before needing a break :)

As you can see by how clean these eaters are, there were no moms on this trip.

Grammy & Grampy come to visit!

Sams Dad and Stepmom flew out from Nova Scotia to visit us for 10 days. We had a wonderful time with them and Benjamin loved having his Grampy and Grammy around to give him more attention :)
3 generations of Waters 'boys' on their laptops.
Grampy fulfilled a desire of his to go for a glider flight.

Painting & Shaving

I was looking through my pictures of Benjamin and found the following from December I had meant to post, just never quite got around to it... For the 1st 2, look at how 'clean' the paper is.

This next one you was Benjamin copying Daddy (Sam did take the blade off the razor!)

Children's Museum

At the end of January (shortly after Benjamin's birthday) we went to the Phoenix Children's Museum with friends of ours. It was the most amazing place filled with active activities so we never had to confine Ben. He had a blast!!

Macy was a great chauffer to her brother Andrew & Benjamin as she kept biking them around and through the 'car wash'. The boys loved their free ride!

This was as messy as Benjamin got eating his egg free chocolate birthday muffin. I made this with a package of instant cake mix and added a can of pumpkin instead of the oils and eggs. It really tasted pretty decent and everyone ate them up - except Ben! He didn't even finish his! Since it's so rare for him to eat any type of baked good due to most of them having eggs, we think he found it too sweet. Now give him a container of frozen yogurt - and that will be gone in seconds. I guess next year it's back to the frozen yogurt cake.

2 Years Old: Jan 21, 2009

Okay, so this post is a little late, and there are no pictures. But at least I'm posting!!

Back at his 2 year appointment, Benjmain measured in at 3 feet and 32lbs (I think he would have been maybe 6 ounces left if they weighed him without his cloth diaper). The following is just a quick (ok, LONG but I tried!!) summary of his temperament and activities over the past year, or at least what I could remember to write down:

• Extremely active: loves to RUN (if he’s not confined – he is GONE!!), climb, jump and dance (if any music comes on, especially Mexican music, Ben dances like crazy).
• Adores all people we meet a lot of strangers now thanks to him having to say HI to everyone) and LOVES all dogs.
• LOVES to eat. We can always tell if he is sick if he is not inhaling his food. Veggies, fruit, meat - he eats more variety than I do!
• Still strongly allergic to eggs & nuts but we have been extremely careful this past year at avoiding them so we did not have to use our epi pen! We’ve also discovered a dog and cat allergy (they give him hives). He doesn’t react to Maully which is lucky for us and him since he just adores her. He has had a hard time with his asthma this past year and has required lots of steroid treatments.
• He was transitioned to a bed early December after he refused to stay in his crib. Took us 1 month to keep him in his bed. 1 week of him sleeping/not-sleeping on the floor beside his door. 3 weeks of us camping outside his door for 30min-3hr to place him back in his bed as soon as he escaped. And then 3 nights of us viewing him with a night vision webcam so we could go in and put him back in bed as soon as his feet hit the ground. We are now back to our wonderful 12hr nights and 3hr naps.
• His vocabulary is definitely growing, but we have a long way to go still. He has a very short fuse if we don’t understand instantly what he is saying. He has definitely mastered the important words – cookie, mine, more, NO, deetdee (TV), BYE (he will tell us this when we are telling him to stop doing something he’s not allowed. He smiles and waves Bye so we leave and he can return to his banned action), Mawwy Bed, 3-2-1 GO (his countdown to his running/jumping - of course it can often end up as 3-2-3-1-2 GO OO or some other variation). He also knows the letter “O”. He will make it with his mouth to show you or and will happily point it out to you wherever he sees it.

Christmas in Canada

Well Sam now knows that every time I start to wish I lived closer to the rest of my family, all he needs to do is take me home for a VERY white Christmas. We spent nearly 2 weeks in Ontario over Christmas and that is definitely the last time I need to see snow for a couple more years. We “enjoyed” a 3.5hr flight delay due to a storm, multiple extended drives due to white out conditions, a tractor pulling us out of a snow bank (I do wish I had remembered my camera for that occasion), and Benjamin getting frost nip on his cheeks after 30min of tobogganing (another time I should have taken a picture!!). But excluding the snow, we had a fantastic time seeing all the family and watching Benjamin finally interacting and wanting to play with his cousins. Benjamin also learned a new word – Open.

Grandma enjoying having all the grandchildren around!

Once the partying was done, we put Benjamin to work. He loves vacumming!

Nana and Grandpa even drove down to spend a couple days with their Grandson.