BEN UPDATE

Long time, no type. I think I need to do a Benjamin update.

Height: Tall enough to reach light switches from the floor.. I have been meaning to measure him and haven't.
Weight: Around 30 lbs. He loved playing on the bathroom scale

Speech: He is a talker, what can I say. He has a large vocabulary and is constantly telling stories and asking questions. One of the things that prompted this post is that last night he sang the entire ABCs all on his own. They have been working on it at daycare the last two weeks. His favorite question to ask recently is "Whats in ____?" Mostly with food, but if he runs out of food, he gets creative. What's in chicken nuggets? What's in blueberries? What's in Chocolate Milk? What's in french fries? I he is in the right mood he will ask about everything on his plate, then switch to "What's in a mouth?" "What's in a car?". He also has been very into making classifications/clarifications lately. Things like "Some dinosaurs are nice, some dinosaurs are scary". A recent one was "Some big ore boats are load, some big ore boats are quiet. Some little boats are quiet. Some little boats are a little loud". He doesn't like to admit he is doesn't know something, or that he is wrong. For example, the following conversation from this morning:

ME: Your shirt has a dinosaur on it! Do you know a song about dinosaurs?
BEN: Yes
ME: What song? Can you sing it?
BEn: Talk about a song about dinosaurs.

He uses that phrase - "talk about ___" instead of saying he doesn't know. Its cute, he wants you to tell him new things so he can learn. I love it. 

He forecasts the weather. I know I put this on facebook, but for prosperity, it needs in the blog:

BEN (Looking off into the sky): What is that?
DH: a seagull
ME: Unless you are looking farther away. What are you looking at?
BEN: I am looking at what is going to happen.
ME: You are looking at the future??
BEN: Yes I am looking at the future.
(DH and I crack up... this is funny, right?? then he blows our minds).
Ben: I am looking at the dark clouds. It's going to rain, it's time to go home.

He immediately started to walk to the car. LOL. It was pretty hilarious. The only bad thing with his speech is that he is pretty hard to understand. His vocabular is amazing, but his articulation is poor. He drops certain letters and pronounces others incorrectly (Grim is Dim for example, Yes is Wes etc). We were told if this is still an issue when he is 3 we should seek speech therapy. We shall see. For now, I translate a lot for him.

MOTOR SKILLS: Ben is learning to climb ladders at the playground. He is a pretty cautious child and DH has been trying to refrain from saying "be careful" to telling Ben to "go for it". He is learning to hang now as well. We are going to "Wednesday Night at the Races" next week. I am hoping he has a good time!

Besides being cautious, Benjamin is just not a physically curious child, if that makes sense. He doesn't seek out physical adventures, he doesn't get into things, he doesn't explore new areas by seeing what is there and what he can reach and what he can do with it. He doesn't have any interest in potty training, in taking off (or putting on) his own clothes. He isn't a kid that is going to put a magazine in the toilet to see what happens, or stuff cheese in an outlet. Stuff like that wouldn't even occur to him. He explores the world with words, not actions and experiments.

INTERESTS: His toy of choice is for sure cars. He has about a gajillion matchbox cars, they are everywhere. In the cars, in the living room, in the bathroom. He often takes one (and only one) into daycare to leave in his cubby for the day. He makes a variety of engine, brake, and siren noises, and if questioned will demonstrate them for you "this is a loud siren.. this is a quiet siren" etc. If asked to use his indoor engine/siren, he will usually, very very seriously say "I know its loud but I got to make the loud siren noise". It is a very serious matter to him. He drives the cars, he parks the cars. Lots of cars parked in rows, then in rows in other places, then back in the first place.

He recently discovered his Elmo Matching game (Memory cards). He likes to flip one over and hold it, then look under each of the others until he finds the match, then put all the matches in a line.
He likes music. We listen to classical music in the car, and recently he has gotten into "playing" on the piano or on a special night, getting my violin out to play around with. When we listen to classical music, he wants to know what instruments are playing. He can sort of identify violin, guitar, and drums, though he often gets them confused with other things (piano for example could be labelled as any of these things). He likes to sing songs too.

He likes doing puzzles. He likes books. His favorite book at this exact moment is "B for Bulldozer", but it changes frequently. We have one from the library called "Go Go Go STOP" that he likes a lot. He likes going to the library and reading new books there, and picking some to bring home.

He loves playing outside, pushing dumptrucks around in dirt piles, pulling wagons, riding his big-wheel style bike or scooters or pedal go karts or whatever is available. He loves sidewalk chalk.

Another milestone of the last few days, besides the ABCs -- On Monday night, out of no where, he told DH at bedtime that his pacifier was bad. We are not sure if he meant it tasted bad or it just was bad, either way he didn't want it. Totally voluntarily he has slept the last two nights with no pacifier, and done pretty darn well. Its one battle I was expecting to fight that now I don't have to.

We have introducted Benjamin to the world of computers. He plays on a couple apps on my Kindle. The main app we use right now is Thomas the Train. He can Color, do puzzles (that play a reward video), or a matching game. I think its time to find him a new app because he spends most of his time on this one now just enjoying navigating through the menus and seeing if he can find a "new" place in the app.

He also likes movies, a bit too much perhaps. I can't be sure, but I would say his favorite movie is Wreck-It Ralph, which is good because I like that movie too. He also really likes "lightning mcqueen" (Cars 2). We recently did Tarzan and Pocohantas. He loved Meeko in Pocohantas and laughs SO HARD at this. We watched Land Before Time once ("Cera ran away"), and he liked that, and he occasionally requests my We Sing tape ("the one with the band"). We occasionally watch the Fox and Hound, Kung Fu Panda (1-2), and other random netflix stuff, like Mighty Machines television series. We have tried to cut back on TV time with the beautiful weather, but he watches it in the morning while we are getting ready for work, and if he is sick its all bets off movie palooza.

I am out of time! I am sure there are other things I wanted to say.. we will see if I add them later or not.