b e n j a m i n f a l k e n b e r g

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…in 1936, my Dad, Clarence, was born. He’d be 70 today, if he was still around. Hard to believe he’s been gone now as long as he has.

Benjamin’s middle name is Clarence, after my dad, if you weren’t already aware.

He would be so proud and excited about Benjamin, and I think he’d be proud of Stacey and me, too, as parents. He died before I met Stacey, in fact, so he never got a chance to meet her, either, but I’m confident he would approve. :)

I still miss ya, Dad. Pretty much every day. You left us all way, way too soon. And rest assured, Benjamin will know the origin and person behind his middle name.

Benjamin’s first baseball game was last night, Friday night: Brewers home game against the Cincinnati Reds (Brewers lost, big surprise, 4-3). The three of us went with Mom’s parents, and we had fun, although it was waaaay too hot.

Benjamin himself seemed to have had a good time… The big crowd (attendance was around 33,000) seemed both interesting and scary to him. He looked around a lot at all the people, all the activity, but when there was a big play and lots of cheering, or some sudden yelling or catcalling, he freaked out and started crying. :(

Closer to the end of the game he seemed to be handling it a LOT better; we made sure to see that it was happy yelling and cheering, showing him that we were clapping and being excited and all that. It seemed to help.

There were some fireworks at the start of the game; Benjamin LOVED them.

Our little guy got hungry while we were there, too… Mom was a little nervous breastfeeding in front of 33,000 people, but did it anyway. Mom’s really not afraid to feed him pretty much anywhere, anytime. Go, Mom! :)

Benjamin was pretty hyper duing a lot of the game, mostly due to the craziness of the crowd, but closer to the end, he managed to fall asleep for a while, which helped his demeanor. He was up past his bedtime, and it was starting to show. It was also really, really hot; we stripped him down to just his diaper, which seemed to help, but we were all dripping with sweat.

Over the course of the game, he dropped almost every toy we brought on the peanut-shell- and beer-covered floor, too, so he was running out of things to play with…

In the end, it all went pretty well. It looks like we can take him to another game sometime and not have any real problem. Dad’s pretty excited about eventually taking him to some hockey games now!

Benjamin’s getting to be more and more active. He’s also wanting to be more mobile than he’s currently capable of being, and it seems to be frustrating him a little bit. He’s rolling over back and forth like there’s no tomorrow, and he’s even kind of figured out how to mini-steamroll around the room, but only for a couple of flips before he stops… He can spin himself around pretty easily, either while on his back or his belly, and if you’re not paying close attention, he can move about ten feet across the floor and be in a totally different orientation, leaving you wondering how he even did it…

He’s still not quite crawling, but he is up on all fours now pretty often (and more and more every day). He rocks back and forth now, and he’s been occasionally bunny-hopping his way across the floor in very short spurts. He’s got the idea of crawling down, we think, but he’s not quite coordinated enough to make it work; he gets on his stomach, realizes he can’t do what he wants to do, and eventually gets frustrated and needs some help.

He sits up for an hour or longer at a time now, so we think he’s got that pretty well under control, unless he’s hungry or tired or bored, in which case he very readily falls back/over and cries for assistance or additional entertainment. Smart kid, heh. He’s getting so much better at entertaining himself for longer stretches of time, too, playing with different toys…and he’s quite the little talker when we’re playing with him, too! He is increasingly ticklish and loves to laugh–great sense of humor so far!

Benjamin’s still on cereal twice a day (in addition to regular breast/bottled-breastmilk feedings), and that’s going really, really well. We’ll be introducing some vegetable baby food in a couple weeks or less, we think. He’s been sleeping really well all night long, too, which is fantastic… it’s so nice to have some quiet, alone time for Mom and Dad in the evenings. He’s up earlier in the morning now as a result, which has obliterated Dad’s morning 1.5 hours or so’s free work time…but Dad will get used to it.

We started babyproofing the house recently, too. Fun! (ok, not really…) Outlet covers, some cabinet locks, etc. Crawling around on the floor trying to see things from his vantage point… We have some openings between rooms that aren’t the right size for standard baby gates, so we’re not sure what we’re going to do about that just yet, but we’re shopping around still hoping we’ll find some that will work. We finally got around to buying a new vacuum cleaner, too, so that’s taken care of now.

We were also talking a couple days ago how he’s starting to look more like a little boy and less like a baby (cue Dad’s excuses about the lack-of-pictures situation here). We were also talking about how everyone has told us how quickly this time would fly by, and how we were prepared for it to go by quickly, but we’ve still been stunned at just how much more quickly it’s gone by than we ever could have imagined! We’ve probably said it a billion times in the last nearly-six months: amazing!

Friday we were excited that he’s been sleeping through the nights again, only to be awakened Friday night by a boy with an upset stomach… We were on Day 10 or something of this most recent run of all-night sleep. Darn. At least he’s not waking up for food or attention, so that’s good. :) He was only awake for 20-30 minutes, needed some comforting through his stomach gurgling (from the cereal? we don’t know), and went back down for the rest of the night.

As for his progress crawling, it’s an ongoing thing, but he’s been making big strides this week, and in the last few days in particular. He’s getting his legs and knees up under himself and rocking back and forth, and making small gains in the forward–and occasionally backward–direction(s)… It won’t be too long, we figure…and we still need to babyproof the outlets, etc. We’ve gotten down to baby level on the floor and taken care of a lot of the lower stuff he could get into, but we still need to rearrange some furniture, cover outlets, move cords, and buy a new vacuum cleaner that works better than our current one. It’s amazing how dirty your carpet suddenly seems when you’re down with your face in it with your new child!

We found Benjamin’s (exact replacement) giraffe today!

Gurnee Mills, IL Carter’s Outlet store. They had two, and we bought them both.

Several people this week–some complete strangers–offered help and did some checking for us, and we want you to know we really, truly appreciate it.

In the end, Carter’s Corporate was no help. Kohl’s was no help. And by no help, we mean not even a thanks-for-contacting-us response. Sad.

["Hello, Kohl's? Carter's? How about some customer service, please? Hello? Is this thing on?"]

Anyway….Benjamin recognized the thing right away, and immediately started chewing on its head. heh. Good times…

A picture of Benjamin’s “new” giraffe is here:

Dad’s from-memory text description wasn’t too far off!

Anyway, yippee!!!

Finding the thing (all two of ‘em) didn’t just make our day, it made our MONTH (Dad’s in particular). We’ve been spending so much time calling checking around, emailing places, visiting stores, begging people online for help, etc, trying to find the thing. We sauntered into the store today expecting to be totally disappointed…AGAIN.

We were totally in disbelief when we saw one hanging on a hook…and then another one behind it!

If they’d had 10 of them, we probably would have bought them all ($10 a pop, ouch, heh)..no lie. Crazy! Dad about busted into tears today when he saw it…and again when Benjamin recognized it on the spot. He had it good and slobbered up before we’d even paid for it…

Phew! :)