A Journey to Love

One of my most favorite things about my precious little boy is his love for affection. He constantly requests to be held and when I pick him up he lays his head on my shoulder and sucks his thumb with a sigh of contentment. It's like he is saying, "All is right with the world. I'm in my mommy's arms." He also does it with his daddy, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. He is especially infatuated with his Grandpa Kevin these days. As soon as he sees him he says "Papa" and scrambles out of my arms into his. I usually can't tell who is happier when this happens, Benjamin or Grandpa. :) Tonight, while I was folding laundry on the living room floor, he toddled over to me, dragging his blankie and carefully navigating the sorted stacks of clothing. He stopped a few paces in front of me, turned around, and begin backing up until he landed in my lap. He pulled the blanket over him, stuck his thumb in his mouth, and lounged against me with his head on my left ...

What a fabulous family vacation. We spent ten glorious days seeing Southern California in our new camper. Though it was a busy trip, we had so much fun walking the beach, building sand castles (which Benjamin took great delight in knocking down), visiting the tourist attractions, and seeing family and friends. I took over a hundred pictures but whittled them down to these few to share. Enjoy! To break up the long drive to San Diego, we spent the first night at Carpenteria State Beach. We loved the campground and beach so much we decided to stop on the way home for two more nights! The train tracks were right next to us and Benjamin learned his new favorite word: "Choo-choo!" We made our way south and spent five days at S. Carlsbad State Beach. We explored the USS Midway Museum on the harbor, wandered the shopping districts, and frolicked in the waters of Mission Bay. We then headed east to visit our favorite avoc...

So I was getting Benjamin undressed in the bathroom this morning to put him in the shower and I realized that his diaper was really dry for him being in it all night. Just as I am contemplating the possible reasons for this, he begins to pee. On the floor . In a flash of pure genius, I whisk him up to the toilet and encourage him to complete his business. Which he does! (Side note: it was way cute to see him craning his neck to figure out where his "pee-pee" was going.) Anyway, he finishes up and he toddles off while I clean up the floor. I am lavishing him with praise (positive reinforcement, right?) and smugly thinking to myself, "How awesome that my 18 month old is using the toilet!" when I glance over and see Benjamin peeing all over our bedroom carpet. Apparently, he wasn't actually done. Oops.

In three days we leave for our San Diego vacation. We will be gone at least six days, but maybe more. It all depends on how much we are enjoying ourselves. Since we will be living in our camper for the duration of the trip, we might be ready to come home after day three! As Benjamin gets older, it has become harder to travel with him. When he was an infant we would just pack him and all the various baby supplies in the car and go. He would sleep fine in the pack-n-play or hotel crib, he was a dream at restaurants, and when we sat him down somewhere, he would stay just where we left him. Now that he is mobile, things have changed a bit. He now takes off the minute I put him down. Which isn't a problem when we are home, but it's a different story at a busy campground. He has become picky about where he sleeps, as in he doesn't like to sleep anywhere but his crib. He can last all of about 10 minutes in a restaurant before he determines that he is bored and loudly protests...

Poor little Benjamin. He went to see Dr. Patterson today because his eyes were still goopy and Nathan and I were getting a bit concerned that he might have an infection. Well, we were right, partially. He has pink eye in both eyes and an ear infection in both ears and a sinus infection. On top of that he is majorly teething. He's got something wrong with half of the popular children's song "Head, Shoulders, Knees. and Toes!" Of course I feel like a terrible parent because I didn't take him in sooner to see the doctor. This started Friday night and today is Wednesday. I'm only slightly consoled by the fact that I did talk to a nurse in the pediatrician's office on Monday and she gave me the "wait and see" line. But still, if I had insisted on bringing him in that day, he'd probably be feeling a hundred times better now. Man, that mommy guilt is a powerful thing. Of course, it didn't help that Benjamin was still his usual self these l...

We are sick. Again. It seems like just when one of us is getting better, then next one comes down with something else. First I had a 24 hour stomach bug that rendered me completely useless, forcing Nathan to take not one, but two days off of work to take care of me and Benjamin (who wasn't sick but still needed taking care of since he is only 1 and I obviously wasn't doing it). This was a couple weeks before Christmas. Then, about two weeks ago Nathan came down with the same thing, (as did his brother's entire family who's house we coincidentally had dinner at the night before) forcing him to take another two days off of work to recover.  So just as I'm breathing a sigh of relief that Benjamin never showed signs of getting the same bug, he starts in with a barking cough last Friday night, the first night of our camping trip . The whole weekend was spent wiping snot from his nose, drool from his chin (thanks to two new teeth coming in) and green gunk from his ey...