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

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Benjamin is in his new room tonight, in his new toddler bed!

We got the room more or less ready (minus a few decorative details) a few days ago. He’s been in there to play several times over the last few days, too. He seems to love the room. He’s got his own little table and chairs, his toddler bed, a toybox, a beanbag chair, a bookshelf with some of his books, stars on the walls, etc. It’s a space theme, and the bedding/toybox and table/chairs all match with rockets and stuff on ‘em. We have a corner hanging rocket storage dealie from Ikea, and a little toddler-sized rocking chair we got from Goodwill for…3 bucks?

All his favorite stuffed animals are lounging about in all of his chairs and he just goes batty in there. It probably sounds cooler than it actually looks, since we have bare white walls in there still, but hey, as long as he likes it… Pictures/posters and blue and silver stars are planned for the walls, any day now.

Anyway, I spent about an hour and half today putting him back down over and over again getting him to realize he was in there for a nap today. His first time sleeping in there at all. He finally fell asleep, but he was half hanging off the bed with his blanket all piled up over his head–his standard thing for some reason. Mom went to put him to bed tonight and he pointed at his new room! He went down very easily, and he’s not been awake or fallen out of bed yet. I’ve got the baby monitor next to me here at my desk, though, just in case.

Anyway, pretty cool! He’s transitioned so well with everything so far, and we’re soooo proud of him. Yay! :)

Last weekend it was Germanfest, and this weekend it was Wisconsin State Fair.

Pretty hot both days. Temperature today was much nicer than last weekend at Germanfest, but State Fair today was very humid, and at one point the sun came out and it got really hot on top of that. We ducked in and out of shade and various buildings today, so that worked out pretty well. It was more difficult at Germanfest last week; the Summerfest grounds don’t really offer a lot of shade unless you’re smoking and drinking in a bar area/tent.

Dad and Mom took turns today carrying Benjamin in his carrier, wearing him in the front, facing out, so he could see everything. He was having a pretty good time, but he didn’t like some of the crowds… There were some new piglets being born in the birthing barn as we were there, but Benjamin wasn’t terribly interested. He seemed to like looking at all the cows, though!

It’s not easy to find a place to breastfeed at the Fair; we finally hunkered down at a picnic table in what appeared to be a break area for the ambulance service, behind their office trailer. We were almost shooed away by a security guy until he saw what we were doing. Thank you, security guy.

We were there about three and a half hours; Benjamin finally managed to settle down enough from all the chaos around him into a nap, so we figured it was time to go. :)

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!

So he’s been sitting up for a minute or two or more, with increasing duration, for a couple weeks or so now…maybe three?

Yesterday he was sitting on the lawn at a backyard party, for about 15 minutes. Unassisted.

Today, he’s been sitting off and on, minding his own business–unassisted, again–for most of the afternoon!

Sure, he still falls over once in a while, but he’s definitely able to catch himself and prevent falls (most of the time), and he’s got really great control overall.

We’ve spent a fair amount of time with him practicing, and most importantly, we think, letting him crawl around on and around us in awkward positions, getting a feel for upside down, rightside up, trying to right himself no matter what angle he’s at or position he’s in, helping him with standing up, walking and dancing around, etc. We think it’s helped him get strong and develop better control.

He’s also coming along very quickly now with the crawling… he’s not crawling anywhere yet, but he’s able to get his legs underneath himself, and he can reposition himself and spin around and kind of wobble around. Give him a week and he’ll be crawling, too!

As for back-to-front flipping/rolling over, he’s basically got down what he needs to do to make it happen…it’s just a matter of putting it all together now; any day!

Two naps today on his back, too. He’s getting better about that, but he still has to be pretty darn tired for it to happen successfully.

Anyway, another Proud Parents Moment(tm)! :) It’s weird that these things seem to be happening so quickly; we’re still pretty thrilled from the initial rollovers a few days ago! Pretty soon he’ll be borrowing the car!

…by Ashley’s recent success (read: not to be outdone by the babysitter! ;)), I was able to get Benjamin to back-nap once today. Only for half an hour, but hey, it’s a work in progress.

He was really tired when it finally happened, however; he was resisting pretty mightily.

Yes, it’s true. She did something yesterday that Mom and Dad can’t seem to really do… Mind you, it didn’t last long, but we were very impressed.

Before I go any further, I should just mention one thing: her name is Ashley. I didn’t mention her name previously because I don’t know if she cares that I’m writing about her here or not. I suppose if she has a problem with it, she’ll let me know… ;)

So I was upstairs yesterday and Ashley’s watching Ben. I hear a little bit of crying. Totally normal for Ben about an hour or so after eating…he’s tired and needs a nap. We were inching closer to it being time for Ashley to go home, and suddenly I realized I didn’t hear Ben crying anymore.

She must have gotten him down for a nap! Yes!

So I snuck downstairs quietly and looked around from the banister; I saw Ashley, but no Ben. He’s… asleep?

Not only asleep, but asleep on his back. Now, before anyone gets their feathers ruffled, he DOES indeed sleep on his back overnight. Every time. But for his naps during the day, for some reason, he seems to prefer his belly. No idea why; that’s just how it’s been, and we’ve been kinda rolling with it.

So he was ON HIS BACK. NAPPING. I about freaked out. Ashley ROCKS!

It didn’t last very long; he startled himself awake, probably dreaming about rock climbing or something. But 20 minutes on his back for a nap is a start!

We’ve been trying more and more recently to solve the increasingly-irritating problem of getting him to sleep at night. He just doesn’t seem “ready”. It can take hours sometimes, and it’s frustrating. Just go to sleep, little man… We’ve got a pretty good routine, but he just doesn’t buy it sometimes. It doesn’t help that with it being summer the days are longer and there’s still daylight going on. We’ve added a light-blocking blind to the window in his room, and it helps, but we think he can still smell daylight or something… (we’re open to suggestions!)

Anyway, back napping. Great news. And Ashley’s obviously working out really well so far. :)