Month 5

One more month and he'll be ready to start eating solids... oh that's so bittersweet! Meanwhile, let's keep enjoying the current stages.

Nico's personality is starting to show more and more. Although he can get quite serious, he can be pretty cheerful and seeks out conversation. He is so good at making eye contact and following noise and objects. He reaches out for toys when you place them in front of him. And he loves his feet. He does such a great job at grabbing them!

Just like his brother and his Daddy Norm, he is super ticklish. And along those lines, he loves to smile. Everyone that meets him has something to say about how much he smiles and what a pretty and contagious smile he has. His Mother's Day Out teachers tell us that every single time we both drop him off and pick him up. Melts my heart!

For about 2.5 weeks - since Hurricane Irma, to be exact - he decided to start waking up in the middle of the night to eat... sometimes he'd wake up more than once, just to cry or to fart. Yes, he'd wake up, fart and go back to sleep in the middle of the night. Since about two days ago, he's started sleeping through the night again, which makes us all happy.

He is a pro rolling over from his back to his belly. He hasn't mastered belly to back just yet, although sometimes you'll catch him after he's rolled onto his back as he lays staring up blankly wondering what on earth just happened.

This Pa Broken

For the last few months, Benjamin has been chewing on his pacie (also known as Pa). We weren't going to buy him a new Pa when the last one got gross, but we broke down and did since things were still a bit of chaotic in our lives with Nico's arrival.

We noticed the other day that the current Pa was all chewed up and getting gross. On Friday morning (my birthday), he pulled the Pa out of his mouth and said "This Pa broken. Go in trash".

He walked downstairs and gave it to Norm and told him to throw it away. So Norm did.

In my very paranoid ways as first timer, I wanted to go buy him a new one just in case. But folks knocked some sense into me and I didn't... surely we were going to survive.

Bedtime could be a living hell, or it could be fine. It was just a matter of time to find out...

Bedtime came and as I was getting Benjamin's pajamas on, he asked for Monkey (which lived hand-in-hand with Pa...) and he asked for Pa. I reminded him that he had told us Pa was broken and had asked for it to be thrown out. He paused and did a fake cry. I quickly reminded him again and immediately without skipping a beat changed the subject. It's amazing how we develop super powers like that when we become a parent.

Nighttime has been going great... naptime has been tougher, today he didn't sleep. Which means that everyone's world became miserable come 5:30pm.

The ironic part of this story is that my mom has always told the story how when I was about 2 years old, I grabbed my pacie and threw it away in the bathroom trash - all on my own. And that was the end of the pacie for me. This is pretty much the only reason why I had a tiny hope that Benji wasn't going to go crazy asking for his Pa after he threw it away.

It is becoming more evident that we just may be raising the male version of me which ought to be fun.

Here's an appropriate picture in memory of Pa:

The Things He Says

Because I can barely remember what I wore yesterday (and chances are they are the same clothes I wore the day before), I want to start writing down all the quirky things Benjamin says to help us remember how his little 2-year old brain works.

My mom wears a watch.
Neither Norm nor I wear a watch.

The other day Norm was cleaning out his night stand drawer and found one of his watches. Benjamin saw it, picked it up and gave it to Norm and said:

B - Daddy, this yours?
N - yes, that's my watch
B - that your watch? Like Nonna?
N - yes, like Nonna
B - Daddy, you wear it!

About an hour later, Benjamin was playing and Norm was in the kitchen. Benjamin comes up to Norm and says: "Daddy, you have watch. Like Nonna!"