Thanksgiving was full of food, family, and friends. We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house and my brother was even in town for the holiday. Benji didn't remember Uncle Dave since it had been a year since they'd seen each other, although we do show him pictures of Uncle Dave so Benji did have some idea that this was a special person. We also saw my family on Sunday of that weekend, meeting them at Enchanted Castle and Benji seemed a bit more at ease with Uncle Dave that time. I hope they get along well at Christmas.
We also saw Megan over the holiday weekend, meeting her in Racine for a few hours. And, as with Dave, Benji was suspicious of this stranger as well. (Lisa, take this as a warning that when we do get together he will be suspicious of you, too.) He seemed a bit happier with Megan, though, at the end of the visit when she gave him his birthday present.
Grandma was daring and decided to have Thanksgiving dinner at the dining room table with a toddler. She even gave him a plate from the good china. It was really nice to have dinner with all the special stuff and I'm happy to report that Benji behaved perfectly. He didn't eat any turkey, of course, but he loved the side dishes, especially the rolls.
What a good Indian!
I wonder how those photos came out...
Mommy, my turn for the camera, please.
While Megan and I chatted away at the Racine mall, Benji played on the kiddie cars, planes, and ice cream truck. Thankfully he hasn't yet figured out (or at least hasn't begged us yet) that they'll move if you put quarters in.
It was so good to see Megan! Now that I'm closer, we shouldn't let it be so long.
On a cold snowy afternoon, a visit to the giant arcade is tons of fun. Most toddlers love balls of any sort so it's no surprise that Benji is particularly fond of Skee-Ball.
Grandma helps Benji get the hang of Skee-Ball while Uncle Dave wins the tickets.
Feeding the tickets into the ticket counter is just as much fun as watching them come out of the games!
A little post-game snack! Yummy!
Great idea Grandpa! It's even better with animal cookies! Mmmm mmmm mmmm!
Thanks for sharing your ice cream, Grandpa.
Now that the ice cream's done, Benji is ready to hit the road. Mommy, however, wants a nice photo with Uncle Dave.
Benji is loving the Christmas season — the lights, the cookies, the music — but it took a while for him to get warmed up to Santa. In concept, he recognizes Santa in pictures, but his reaction in person is quite different. Overall I'm glad he's wary of strangers, but it did make getting my classic Santa photo more difficult. Just wait until next year when he really understands that Santa brings him presents...
Santa #1: This was our first visit to Santa for the season. Although the picture's not very good, you can still see that he's not too thrilled with Santa.
Santa #2, Round 1: This Santa was downtown when we went for the Festival of Lights parade. Even though Santa gave him a little teddy bear, he was still quite skeptical.
Santa #2, Round 2: Since the line wasn't long and they didn't charge you to take pictures (most won't let you take pictures with your own camera), we tried this Santa again. Benji was intrigued by Santa so he was amenable to walking up to him and meeting Santa again.
He seemed happier standing next to Santa so I thought that would be OK for a picture. But, we couldn't get him to look at the camera.
Santa played little games and tickled Benji's hand to get him more comfortable, which Benji actually seemed to like. Santa was very nice and spent more time with us than I would have expected.
Santa #3, Round 2: To finally get the good picture, Matthew took Benji to the mall on a weekday afternoon. I believe they had to visit Santa twice to get Benji acclimated to Santa once again. I'm quite pleased with the final outcome.
With it being football season, Benji has been doing some male bonding with Daddy and Grandpa while watching Bears games several Sundays this fall. And apparently he's been paying closer attention than we realized. For St. Nicholas Day, one of his presents was a Nerf football (with a University of Illinois logo thanks to Grandma and Grandpa) and immediately upon opening it he declared excitedly "football". It happened that the Bears game was on TV in the background so he went over near the TV, put the ball on end with one finger, and gave it a little kick. Who knew Benji had such good form as a kicker? He then proceeded to do a variety of touchdown dances and hiked the ball to Mommy. He was so excited and knew exactly what to do with his football. It was hysterical, but I got zero photos — I was enjoying it in the moment instead of searching for the camera. And it was great.
After going on the search for the Great Pumpkin, of course we had to carve it. I've never been a big fan of cleaning out the pumpkin and sharp knives still kinda scare me, so Matthew was gracious enough to do both the cleaning and the carving while I took photos. He even baked the seeds for me (but not for Benji due to the choking hazard).
As for Halloween itself, Matthew taught Benji about the mechanics of trick-or-treat before I got home from work but it really looked more like the previous Halloween where he just put stuff in containers and back out again. With a bit more practice he started to get the hang of saying "trick-or-treat". So, it was off to visit the neighbors. Since he didn't fully grasp the concept of Halloween, Benji was the slowest trick-or-treater ever. We only made it down our block and back again before it started getting cold and dark. But Benji was happy as a clam with that. We strolled leisurely from house to house, with Benji reading the house numbers of every neighbor along the way. And for those that had stones in the landscaping, Benji was way more interested in trying to take their rocks than their candy. When we got back to our house, Benji went trick-or-treating at Daddy's door, but then he didn't want to go back in the house. So, he ran in wild circles in our driveway for a while. Imagine how funny it must have looked to have this toddler in an elephant costume doing laps of the driveway!
Benji got a big kick out of helping Daddy to clean the pumpkin. He wanted to see everything that was going on and climbed up on a chair to help scoop out pumpkin guts. Thankfully he was pretty patient in sitting on Mommy's lap during the actual carving so we didn't have any mishaps with the knife.
After Daddy finished carving, Benji wandered into the family room and found the plastic knife that goes with his fake fruit and vegetable set. He had decided he needed to carve the pumpkin too!
What a helpful young lad!
For the second year we dressed Benji as Dumbo again. Most of the costume fit pretty well, although the hood didn't like to stay up (and bobby pins weren't as helpful as I would have liked).
A week after Halloween Benji's park district class had their Halloween party so Benji got to be an elephant again. I think in this picture he's decorating his treat bag with stickers — aahh how we love stickers!
First off, let's make it clear that it's pretty much impossible to make apples-to-apples comparisons between high-quality high schools across the country and that it's mostly to sell issues that Newsweek and now U.S. News & World Report are making the Quixotian attempt to rank America's high schools. (That goes quintuple for Newsweek and the ranking algorithm that they must have spent minutes figuring out: AP tests taken divided by students.) Despite that, it is heartening to see that U.S. News' (less stupid) methodology has found that Benji's high school in 12 years or so, Adlai Stevenson High School, is the best traditional (i.e. public, open-enrollment, non-magnet) high school in Illinois and one of the 30 or so best traditional schools in America. Yay Stevenson.
Also yay Ames High School for being named in the same rankings as one of the best two public schools in Iowa. Ames Hi aims high, etc.
Benji, precocious as always, has moved past his Elmo and Curious George stages and is now into, of all things, "Schoolhouse Rock." His major focus right now is the 11 songs that constitute "Multiplication Rock," since who doesn't love bigger and bigger numbers, huh? (Alas, he has not yet learned his multiplication tables from "Multiplication Rock," although he will happily tell us that "8 is double 4.")
Benji's current favorite song from "SR" is "Ready or Not, Here I Come," one of the four or so "SR"s I remember from my childhood:
However, my favorite — and one of Kim's favorites as well — deals with the very important subject of adverbs:
And while we're on a '70s educational programming kick, here's my favorite "Sesame Street" song from that era, mostly because of the awesome mixed meter:
Who should really be playing in the BCS Championship Game.
I think we all know the answer, since it's so painfully obvious: Iowa State v. Notre Dame. After all, Iowa State beat Iowa (15-13) who beat Illinois (10-6) who beat Ohio State (28-21), and Notre Dame beat Stanford (21-14) who beat California (13-10) who beat Tennessee (45-31) who beat Kentucky (52-50) who beat LSU (43-37).
This year the seasons and their traditions have been so much more fun now that Benji is starting to understand or at least actively enjoy them. Last year Halloween was all about putting candy in and out of the candy bucket. It was also about putting his tiny pumpkins in and out of the candy bucket. Come to think of it, at that time last year most everything was about filling and emptying containers. This year, on the other hand, was filled with stereotypical traditions. We went to the pumpkin patch and took a hayride to pick our pumpkin, carved a pumpkin, and learned how to say "trick-or-treat".
A few weeks prior to Halloween we were at the park near our house and one of the hayride tractors drove past. Benji got very excited about the "truck" and wanted to chase it down the dirt road. Needless to say he was not happy that Mommy made him sit in her lap and wave to instead of chase after the tractor. So when it came time to get our Halloween pumpkin of course we had to go to the farm instead of getting it at the grocery store. And of course we had to go on the hayride instead of just getting it at the farmstand. Benji wasn't as completely excited as he was when we saw the tractor a few weeks earlier, but he still enjoyed the ride and picking a pumpkin straight from the patch. He checked out a few bigger ones before settling on a very small one. Of course it helped that he could actually carry the small one himself. After an entire month of storytimes with pumpkin-themed books, he was quite familiar with pumpkins and excited to have his very own!
Hayride! What fun!
Let me check out this big pumpkin.
Actually, this little one is just right.
We thought Benji would want a really big pumpkin, but it turns out he preferred one he could carry himself.
Got to get a photo with the tractor, right? (As I was writing this blog post, Benji came over and decided to help me narrate. Benji's caption: "Benji and truck.")
At the farm they had lots of wooden characters and other decorations. Benji ran right up to this one and popped his head through the driver's window. So cute! ("Benji in bus")
They also had a kid-sized playhouse which Benji adored. We spent so long running around in there and peeking out the windows. ("Benji in house")
Every time any parent would call to their kids to get a photo in the window Benji would also run over. He loved peeking out those windows!
Doesn't he look like he belongs in a magazine or catalog in this one?
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
