BENJI'S second CHRISTMAS

Benji enjoyed opening his second group of presents!!!

What's Benji up to?

Since we'll be seeing you all soon, I thought I'd give a quick update on Benji's current habits and skills so you can all be prepared to get out of our speed demon's way.

Benjamin started walking about a month ago and has really picked up skill and speed in this. He now walks across the room with ease, although he still hasn't given up crawling as a skill. He can bend down to pick something up and then keep walking. When we're out somewhere and we've let him practice walking, he gets very angry when we pick him put to leave (are we beginning terrible two's already?). At home he's recently started walking over to a parent, grabbing a finger, and leading us around the house. He's not holding our hand for balance, but rather because he wants us to go somewhere with him. He also sometimes does the "walking dance" where he waves his arms wildly in the air and shakes his head while walking.

Not everything is about movement, though. In the past week Benjamin has taken a great interest in being read to. Matthew has been taking him to weekly story times for about a month and apparently it's having an impact. He likes to stand in front of you while you read from the sofa or sitting on the floor; he really doesn't like sitting in my lap and reading right now. This seems like a story time way of reading at the library, so that's one reason I think it's been having an impact. Matthew says he'll read the same book eight times in a row. If you puts the book down when it's done, Benji will pick it up and hand it to you to read again. If you try to read a different book, Benji will hand you the old one as a replacement. Eventually Benji will get bored and crawl over to a new book and bring it back to you. His favorites right now include the Cheerios Book, Baby Colors, and First Words (this one has flaps!), all of which are very simple books with no story lines. They drive Matthew crazy, but Benji loves them!

I'm also happy to report that Benjamin is getting even better at feeding himself. We can give him bigger pieces of string cheese and he'll bite off pieces. Or we can give him a Club cracker and he bites off pieces of that. He's also starting to hold his sippy cup better, but interestingly he seems to do better with the simple cheap ones than the fancy ones with handles. We've also discovered that anything is better as a sandwich. There are days when he refuses to eat his meat, but if you wrap some bun around it the chicken becomes infinitely more interesting.

So, if you all were impressed with Cheerios and crawling back in June, just wait until you see full meals and walking next week!

Fun with Wikipedia!

I'm no Wikipedia junkie, but I do occasionally get information from there (as well as update the Handbell wikipedia page), and I've noticed that, sadly, I don't view information from Wikipedia as less accurate as from other sources. Of course, I should -- anyone can go there and write that George Bush is actually the love child of Adolph Hitler and Natasha Fatale. (And I just did it again -- I didn't know Natasha's last name, so I just pulled it from Wikipedia without checking it against a source not open to being changed at anyone's whim.) So for a time, I've been wondering how long it would take for a Wikipedia page to correct a fact that is wrong but not obviously so.

So. On Friday, I decided to test Wikipedia out. I picked a page that would be both relatively well-viewed and that I knew a little something about -- the list of "The Office" (US) episodes. In about 20 minutes, I created synopses for four new episodes that -- to brag just a little bit -- I actually though made a nice little story arc:

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Jan. 18, "The Competitor"
After being angered by Andy’s closeness to Michael, Dwight takes a job at a rival paper distributor. Michael tries to keep his tentative hold on his current paramour. And Karen and Roy both find out the real reason Roy’s and Pam’s engagement was canceled.

Feb. 1, "The Test"
After he is caught not knowing the capital of Pennsylvania, Michael creates a "citizenship" test that every employee must pass to keep his or her job — and one person fails. Dwight starts up a company newsletter, and suddenly a competing newsletter (anonymously written) appears. Meanwhile, an “Office”-mate learns that she is unexpectedly pregnant.

Feb. 8, "Singles' Party"
For her first Valentine’s Day in years without a boyfriend, Pam — and the unexpectedly single Oscar — decide to throw a party for all their unattached friends at the office. When all of the other guests find dates, Pam is left alone — until an unexpected guest arrives. Meanwhile, Andy and Dwight form an alliance to try to prank Jim, and after some inappropriate office nudity, Michael forces Meredith to enter his personal alcohol counseling program.

Feb. 15, "The Policy"
After getting fed up with Michael’s advances, Jan institutes a new policy that coworkers at Dunder-Mifflin are not allowed to date. Michael tries to decide whether to keep his job. Angela finds a loophole, but Dwight isn’t sure he wants to go through it. And the camera crew inadvertently finds something very interesting while eating supper in Carbondale.

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The test was a pretty good success for Wikipedia, I think: My fake episodes were taken down less than seven hours after I posted them, which is a couple days sooner than I had expected.

In the meantime, however, apparently my synposes made it around the Internet and back, so to speak. One of the better "Office" websites, OfficeTally.com, posted them as potential spoilers. Television Without Pity, for example -- the most intelligent and thoughtful TV discussion board -- had maybe 150 posts about my episodes, starting here -- some skeptical, others less so. (My favorite comment from TWoP: "If they're made up I kind of wish the maker-upper wrote for the show.") And the kicker: Someone even apparently actually called NBC to find out if this episodes were legitimate or not. (NBC's response: They don't know of episodes with those titles.)

Anyway, it got to be a much bigger deal than I was intending, but maybe that makes sense. After all, if I had seen those episodes on Wikipedia, wouldn't I have automatically assumed that they were true as well? Yeah, probably, in all likelihood. Is this a problem with the Wikipedia model or with, well, all of us gullible people? I don't know.

BenjiTube

Not too long ago I saw some blurb about the cutest baby on YouTube. If I had the guts to post Benji video clips for the whole world of YouTube to watch, surely Benji would win out. As it is, though, you are my (biased) audience and my creative outlet. Enjoy this selection of recent Benji clips. But for those of you with dial-up, you might want to wait until you can use wi-fi somewhere.

Benjamin's birthday at Chipotle. This is a super long video clip (so definitely not to be downloaded on dial-up), but it's really sweet. You can see the "high five game" and "hand stacking game" that we sometimes play at mealtimes. I especially love when Benji puts Mommy and Daddy's hands together.

Ooh Mommy! 75 Legos to leave around the house. Over the past two months Benji has been quite fond of taking things out of boxes and putting them back in, whether they be Legos, toys in the toybox, candy in his Halloween bucket, or animals in his Noah's ark.

Noisy but very happy. Every so often Benji gets into a high-pitched squeal mood. Not so bad if he's at home or outdoors, but not so good in public.

Window shopping and practice walking. When Benji was learning to walk we noticed that he was more likely to practice walking in places other than the house, probably because he could crawl on the soft carpet at home but the concrete wasn't so nice outside.

BenjiTube. And in the spirit of YouTube, here's Benji watching Chicken Dance Elmo on YouTube.

Bye-bye, Benji

Benjamin has finally learned to wave "Bye-bye!" and like all new skills he likes to practice and practice.

Can't get enough of them characters

On day 7 of our Disney World trip we were supposed to have breakfast with Mickey and friends and the Contemporary hotel. It turns out it takes way longer to get from one hotel to another than to get from a hotel to a park. It took us so long to get there that we ended up missing our reservation altogether. Thankfully they had recently added a lunch character meal so we were able to have lunch with Mickey instead.

As at the Pooh meal, the main character didn't stop very long to visit with us. In fact, I don't think we even got a worthwhile picture with Mickey at all. The chipmunks, however, were more personable to Benji. The best character was at the very end, and he was great. Pluto didn't visit the tables (we think his feet were too big to climb the steps or navigate the aisles) so you had to visit with him on your way out. When Benji came up Pluto was sitting on the ground and Benji crawled very excitedly to Pluto's outstretched arms. Then Benji got very interested in Pluto's nose, as he did with every character. Eventually Benji crawled away and Pluto crawled after him. It was so sweet and funny to watch the giant dog and Benji have their own crawling race across the restaurant!

Later that evening we had dinner over in Epcot once more (have I mentioned how Epcot has the best food in Disney World?) at Chefs de France. I think Matthew was expecting a quiet French bistro. Instead it was a bustling and noisy French cafe. It actually did remind me of the dinner I had in Paris in that it was noisy and the waitstaff wasn't the most attentive (it seemed like they had too many tables for each waiter here). I loved my appetizer here! I had escargot in garlic and butter and it was excellent! Matthew had quite the entree with a $23 burger, although Benjamin was completely unimpressed by it. One of our desserts was creme brulee, which was the third time Matthew had creme brulee on the trip. I think he said the first one (at the Coral Reef) was the best of the three. I keep thinking we need to scan in all the receipts and write reviewlets of the restaurants for future reference. I think I had more $100+ meals that week than I had had cumulatively in the many years before.





Come back here!














Benji just loves the noses of the characters.

A hint of summer

For those of you covered in snow this weekend, here's a bit of summer reminiscing. Way back in August we took Benjamin to his first major league baseball game. (This was not his first baseball game since we had taken him to the Richmond Braves in the spring.) Of course Matthew chose a Blue Jays game for this momentous occasion, but unfortunately they lost to the Orioles. Regardless, Benji had a great time, cheering for the team, people watching, and taking a nice nap on Mommy. And doesn't he look great in his baseball outfit?


Can we see Daddy's influence already?


Hi Mommy! I'm ready for this game to start.


Hmmm... Let's see what the scoreboard says.


Is that ball coming towards us?


Instead of stretching with everyone else, I think I'll check out Daddy's teeth.


Boy, cheering on those Blue Jays is hard work.


I'm ready to go again. And now I get my own seat!


As long as I'm in Baltimore, I should check out the Inner Harbor.