Farm Fun!

This morning Bennett and I met up with our friends Jen and Tessa for a day at the petting zoo to hang out with some of the animals. The weather agreed with us just long enough to get up close and personal with some farm life.

Bennett loves all animals. He is so used to our big dog that he didn't seemed phased at all by the bigger animals he met today. He would walk right up to them, pet them and then turn around and run for the mud puddle.

What a fun day! Thanks Jen and Tessa!

Petting the Donkey

Bennett & Tessa with the little animals
Oh, If I could just catch those ducks...

School Pictures

Bennett had school pictures today so I took the opportunity to put him in some cute duds and chase him around with my camera... All the teachers at his school just ate him up today and he sure liked the attention.

Here he is going into the school. We try to keep everything routine by parking in the same area and walking into school like a big boy... He sure seemed to know where he was going and turned at me like "come on mom, aren't you coming?!"

I am such a proud mama at school. He "danced" today when they started playing music and helped find Easter eggs to put in the teachers basket (after giving each of them a good slobber.)

Woke up feeling nearly 100%...

After one morning with this smile around again... all the nights of tears in the last week are a distant memory.

There is something about these Shrek pajamas that made me smile all day!

Catching his "more" sign... in this case it was "more peanut butter toast, mama"

Our family on sleep deprevation...

During his week of recovery Bennett has had good moments and he has had some not so good ones. It turns out that most of the good moments are during the day outside and most of the not so fun ones are in the middle of the night and nap time. So instead of getting too frustrated with our new found sleeping arrangements I decided that we were just going to capitalize on his fun awake moments and get out in the sun and be active.

That was a great plan up until about 6 days in and Joel was forced to come home from work to save mommy from a lack of sleep meltdown. Since then Bennett, and mom, have been sleeping better and almost an hour or two at a time. I am just praying that this is another phase that will pass when he feels 100%. Wish us luck...

Ever since Bennett came home from the hospital last April, if he was cranky, we drug him outside and he was happy. This was our plan of attack for the weekend and it seemed to work. We spent some time at his school playground on Friday and went to visit Katie and Marty while they were camping on Saturday.

He has some new found sounds and although he hasn't completely forgotten his favorite "aaarrggh" sound, he has now replaced it most of the time with "yah-yah" and "mamama" (which I like to think is "mama") He is still going to see Nancy for speech therapy once a week who gives us stuff to work on and he seems to be doing great with it.
He has started his first form of REAL communication with his sign language of the word "more" which is usually refering to "more cracker". He has also learned a thing or two from his father and one of them is to Dance! When you say "lets dance, dance, dance" he shakes his knees.

Where's Bennett?!

If you find yourself asking this question... I am pretty sure I have the answer...

Bennett's friend Ryan gave him these cool tents today. We set them up tonight and I am sure they will be a staple in our living room for a while, it looks a little like tent city. He climbs inside and loves playing the "where's mama?" and "where's Bennett?" game. I must admit it is a little easier for Bennett to navigate them than mom and dad... but we sure gave it our best shot tonight.

Sunshine and Goats!

What an amazing day. Bennett has been feeling better each day so we decided to pack up, throw on some shorts (well for Me anyway) and head to the ZOO. We went with our friends Emily & Ryan and the boys definately had a blast in the sunshine. This is Bennett's forth time going to the Zoo and I am pretty sure this is the first time he has noticed the animals.

He likes the animals that are really close the best... and none got closer than the goats! This is a new petting zoo portion for the little ones and Bennett loved it.

Thanks Emily & Ryan for a great day!!! I am sure we will have many more play days this Summer.

Everytime we go to the zoo I think of the first time we took him there. Bennett was 8 months old and had a trach. We went with Stacey our home nurse (thank the lord for her) and had a great day walking around as if we had a totally average child. Stacey was 6 months pregnant and trucked it around all day with all the equipment. He loved it but I am pretty sure it ment more to me than to him.... we missed you today Stacey!

I love the Easter Bunny

Bennett has been feeling better so we took an outing with Grandmama Ruth and Auntie Katie. We went to the mall and ran right into the Easter Bunny. Although I was anticipating it may send Bennett into hysterics, I just couldn't help myself.

Little did I know he would LOVE him. He was out loud laughing and enjoying every second. Thankfully I have been carting my camera around everywhere and the sweet woman working with the Easter Bunny let us sneak some of our own pictures.

Happy Easter Everyone!!

The Great Outdoors

Is that Bambi in our backyard?!

An overdose of cuddling...

Bennett's medicine of choice is a snuggle from his mommy... I never thought I would ever be tired of snuggling my boy but I am pretty sure my lap will be numb for a month, a 6 lb newborn snuggle is a little different than a 26 lb drugged up 15 month old... but I sure loved every second.

The 18 hour snuggle...

He has now been moved to a Tylenol regiment and is doing great. He is up running around like crazy and definitely seems to be on the mend.

Watching his dog out the window...

Not sure if there is anything cuter than a little boy in pajama bottoms...

Farewell Childrens Hospital...

We were only there for one night this time but, it is so nice to finally feel like we will most likely never again be overnight residents of Seattle Childrens Hospital. We have definately had a love hate relationship with the hospital. Although I hate the pain and craziness Bennett has been through, we couldn't have been through it at a better place. We will forever be thankful for the team that cared for Bennett during his hardest times. They made it as comfortable as possible for Bennett and all the family members that stayed and cared for him. He had some Dr & nurse vistors yesterday that just came by to visit and were thrilled to see him doing so well. I can honestly say Bennett and I have made some true friends there and they seem to genuinely enjoy seeing Bennett grow up. We look forward to showing him off to everyone on his routine check-ups there for a couple years.

I made the mistake of thinking that there was any such thing as an "easy" surgery. Although this was nothing compared to a couple of his other procedures and we were only there one night, it was still really difficult and scary to see him in pain. It didnt make it any easier that I didn't sleep until 5:30 AM because Bennett wanted to be rocked and they wouldnt let us put him in bed with us. He had a very long night and I was honestly a bit nervous that he wouldn't be ready to go home this morning.

But right about 7 (his home wake up time) he woke up and started wiggling to get down... I put on his little Crocks to attempt to keep germs from his feet... and he was off. I let him leave his room on his own, something he has never been able to do and that was the end of it. I looked at the nurse and said "we need to get going or this is going to be a problem" I would love to say that I kept him from rolling around on the floor of his hospital room, but no such luck. It was truly the only way to keep him from running out the door at every chance and ending up in places such as behind the nurses station and in other patients rooms. Although everyone thought he was super cute we quickly packed and were on our way.

We got some pictures of a few fun animal visits on the way out... I passed these animals numerous times a day while living there and it was fun to see Bennett run over to check them out. We couldn't be happier to have all the surgies in the past and with a smile we bid farewell to being an overnight guest of the hospital.

On the other side of surgery and feeling alright

Daddy helping him get in his surgery gear...

When they brought him back to us... snuggling mommy and his Aunt Pam blanket...

Enjoying his special surgery day toy... feeling ok...

Playing for a second before the codine kicked in and he fell back to sleepy land in mommy's lap... the Spiderman balloon was definately the best part of his day.

Bennett is doing great. He went into surgery around 8 am and we didnt see him until around 12:30. He has been really groggy but is sleeping soundly now and seems like he will wake up a little bit more of his normal playful self.

As we were getting ready he definately seemed to be a little more nervous and seemed to know that something was up... he cried all the way to the OR and broke my heart as they put him under. He seemed to do pretty well with waking up and was brought down to us snuggled in a nurses arms.

He wants to be held ALL the time and I must admit I am selfishly enjoying the snuggle time. We have watched Baby Signing Time, his favorite movie, about 7 times through and I am pretty sure the songs will be stuck in my head until he is 10.

His airway is pretty swollen making him not the best sleeper but with luck we will be on our way home in the morning. We appreciate everyones good thoughts!

Way too much playing with camera... way too little everything else...

As I should be packing up and getting ready for Bennett's surgery this Friday, I am spending way too much time playing with the camera and mostly chasing my child around with it.

We caved after a grumpy morning stuck inside and went to the mall play area. We have been on germ lock down for a while because of his surgery but Bennett was done playing in the living room and wanted to get out to explore.

We will be heading to Children's Hospital once again this Friday morning for *hopefully* his last surgery for a long while. He will be getting a circumcision, an adenoidectomy (again) and a cosmetic closure of his tracheostomy site (so that he wont have a scar later on). Just the full meal deal so that he is only under anesthesia once.

He had been doing wonderful sleeping and then a couple weeks ago he was snoring like his daddyy (not good) so being the crazy over worried mother that I am, I rushed him too Children's and had his surgeon take a look. He deemed, with a long camera inserted up his nose, that Bennett's adenoids had returned. We were warned of this when he got them removed last June that since he was so young and his adenoids were not done developing that "someday" he would start snoring and we would need to remove them again. Although we were thankful that it seems like a pretty simple fix, I was not happy to have him have a sore airway once again.

So keep our little man in your thoughts this Friday... I am sure he will once again amaze us with his strength.

Bennett has had a tough "teething" day with 4 molars coming in and some eye teeth on top on bottom... this kid can not get a break. Needless to say, we have been doing anything to keep him happy including walking around all over outside.

Sometimes change is good...

As you can see we changed up the blog a bit... It has been a crazy journey since our first post on this blog titled "We are having a baby" when we first found out I was pregnant in May of 2008. It has been a pretty fun past couple months since Bennett has been mostly healthy and we felt like we needed a bit of a change.

Another change is that mama got a new camera! It took a bit of researching (thanks Ryan!) and a lot of learning to go but I already love it. (We ended up going with the Canon Rebel T2i for those camera folk out there)

For the record we are definately leaving the photography to the professionals but I am so happy to finally capture those cute family moments with a bit more quality.

The battery was finally charged just a couple minutes before Bennett went to bath time tonight so I turned it on and snapped a couple pictures. Bennett is teething with 4 molars coming in right now so he was not the happiest little guy.

First Day of Pre-Pre-School

I snapped a quick picture of a few of the kids before snack time with my phoneI tried to take a "first day of school" picture... didnt go so well... hopefully he will hold still when we are trying to get his first day of real school picture.
1st art project for the fridge
Bennett had his first day of pre-pre-school or Toddler Group today. He will get to go every Tuesday afternoon. It is only and hour and a half and I stay with him. He has 7 kids in his class and they are all between 18 months and 3 years old. (Bennett got in a little early) It is at the elementry school right near our house.

He was a little nervous at first but soon joined right in with the free play time and sat quietly in amazement during the singing circle time. He was taking notes on table manners from the older kids during snack time and he even did his very first school art project by adding the pink leaves to his tree with real paint.

I was so proud of how well he did and how excited he was to be there playing with the other kids. It is going to be great for his communication and we feel pretty lucky to find this class they offer for kids like Bennett that had a bit of a rough go in the beginning of life.

Happy little camper

As many people know, Joel and I have always been camping people and made our first big purchase as a couple before we were married when we bought our trailer 4 years ago. It was not easy for us to stay at home all last summer. When I was pregnant with Bennett all we could talk about was taking him camping and playing all summer long...

This weekend we FINALLY took him camping. It was a beautiful weekend and Bennett did great. He slept wonderful in the trailer and loved being outside the whole time. From the moment his eyes opened in the morning he wanted to be outside playing in the dirt. A normal little boy playing in the dirt... it has been a long wait and we are so happy to be enjoying this new phase of parenthood.

He had fun playing with his cousins Reece and Evie... it was the very first trip out with the whole Jones family.... so fun!

I am so thankful for our little family and we can't wait to play tons this summer.