Bennett is 10 months old!

I can't believe how fast the time is going. Cliche, right? Bennett has officially learned how to walk. I should also mention, he learned how to crawl, which he still uses as a form of transportation. But as of July 26, he can walk across a room on his own, catch his balance more often than not, and voluntarily lets go of furniture to walk somewhere, which in my mind, makes it pretty official. I have a walking baby.

We have taken lots of videos of him learning to walk (and a couple with the learning the crawl). I'll put them in chronological order below so you can see the progression.

June 11- First Steps ever! Obviously, not the greatest., but when this happened, we were so excited! He was only about 8 1/2 months! You can hear him laughing in this video. At first, when we were having him practice walking, he just thought it was the greatest thing on earth and would laugh and laugh the whole time.



June 12- This is how Bennett "crawled" for about 2 months before he actually learned to crawl at the beginning of July. It looks like he is swimming!




July 3- More practice.



July 4- Walking much better!

This is also a good time to mention that Bennett never learned to sit down when he would fall backwards. He would always fall straight back, head first. We tried to catch him at first, and then figured maybe he would never learn if we were always catching him. Mostly we wondered this because he got to the point where he would laugh as he was falling backwards to certain headache. So we stopped catching him. Well, even after hitting his head so many times, he has still never learned. Luckily, he has enough control now to fall forward onto his hands and knees most of the time.

July 4- He also started crawling for the very first time this day. I caught it on camera, too! You can tell he is kind of upset about the fact he is crawling over the rough edges of all his books and toys (ouch!), but he did it! And then he goes right into his "swimming" again at the end. So funny.




July 11- Bennett went through a phase where he would only walk clasping his hands together. I think it started when we would clap and say "yay" every time he would walk between us without falling. He started clapping with us, and then next thing we knew, he was perma-clapping when it came to walking.





July 25- The first time he did "Tarzan."




Last one! July 28- His 10 month birthday. We made him show his walking and crawling. For posterity. And the grandparents.



As you can see, Bennett is getting pretty good at doing things on command. He will wave hi (since 7 months), bye (since about 8 months), he knows where his head is, he will "bang" on things with his hands if we say "bang bang bang," he will blow kisses (which he does with only one finger and it actually looks more like he is gagging himself... we've got to work on it some more), gives high fives (since about 5 months), he's starting to put his fingers to his lips when we tell him "shhhh," and he will fold his arms when we say "time for prayer!" and keep them folded until we say "Amen" about 70% of the time. He has started babbling a lot since the end of July or so, and I think he finally is associating a meaning with "Dada." Not the case with "Mama," yet, though. (boo.). And of course, there is "Tarzan." It is pretty hilarious.

Since he is just getting mobile, he points out things to me every day that I haven't babyproofed yet. Yesterday, he almost pulled the coat rack over onto himself, but I caught him before he did. We are all quickly learning what life is like with a mobile baby. Mostly, I am learning that the only times I will ever be able to get anything done are during naptimes (which are getting progressively shorter). Doesn't it seem like cruel irony that the only time you get to yourself to do something you want like shower or read or eat a meal uninterrupted are also the only times you have to clean anything? So some days, either the house is clean, or I get to shower and do my hair. Some days, neither of those happen. I think that's the adventure of being a Mom!

Integrity

I can't stop thinking about how much more I would love my living room right now if I didn't have integrity.

Today we were at a huge community yard sale to benefit a little boy in our area who was run over by a riding lawn mower. He has lost most of his left hand, and his right forefinger and has already undergone 14 massive surgeries with more to come. People from the community just dropped off things to be sold at this sale and all of the proceeds went to this family. There was a silent auction, a bake sale, and a TON of garage-sale items. Truly, thousands of things. It was the biggest sale of it's type to which I have ever been.

Justin needed a new belt, and we found some hanging on the chain link fence enclosing the tennis courts (the sale was at a park). He found an older-style black one. When putting it around himself to see if it was the right size, he noticed it had a zippered pocket on the inside of the belt. Opening the zippered pocket, I saw him take out some money. Not just a couple of ones or a five, but a $50. Then another $50. Then another, and another. Then one more.

And then, two $100 bills.

All of the bills were clearly old. The dates were from 1950. If $550 is a lot now, imagine how much this guy had stashed in his belt then.

We found someone with a helper's shirt on, who we later found out was the hurt little boy's uncle. Justin gave him the belt and money and explained what happened. Since everyone from the whole community had donated items for the sale, there was no way to know whose the money was. Clearly, whoever donated the item had forgotten about their little rainy day savings stash (or, possibly, never even knew it was there. A woman donating her deceased husband's belt, or maybe someone else picked up the belt from DI and donated it to this sale later on, or a hundred other "maybe" stories). The kid's uncle looked so grateful.

So even though I do not get to buy my new sectional today (which is on sale at Edward's furniture so they only have one left, and I am lusting after it, and I could have bought today with the money and still had money left over!), I am really glad that the money went to help a sweet little boy who was in such a terrible accident. I guess this is like one of those stories from the Young Women's manual about "how much your integrity is worth." $550 and counting.

I'll admit it.

I have been truly awful about blogging lately. Is it weird that I am kind of getting bored of the internet? Does this just mean I am becoming old and boring? If so, how depressing.

Bennett has been growing and changing so much lately! He had his 9 month appointment last Monday, on his 9 month birthday. 21.5lbs (he has lost some weight due to being sick ALL June with a cold, cough and then a sinus infection), and 29 inches. 76th percentile for height, 66th for weight. He pulled himself up for the first time ever on a toy in the doctor's office that day (but has yet to really do it on much else). He gets around a LOT these days. He can finally get to a sitting position on his own from laying down. I have been waiting for that for so long, because he hates getting stuck on his belly. He can get to his knees from sitting in approximately 4 milliseconds as far as I can tell. He still refuses to crawl, though he has been attempting it more often. He still prefers to "crawl" via a strange swimming-like motion which I will have to post a video of sometime soon. It is so funny. He will cruise around on furniture now, and loves to practice walking and balancing.

Today, I laid him down for his nap and for about 10 minutes, he was absolutely squealing with delight- singing, talking, moving around a lot. Justin and I were just laughing about it until we realized there is only one thing that could make him that happy. I checked on him and confirmed my fears- he was standing up in his crib, happily looking out the window. Good thing we lowered the mattress about a month ago!

As for Justin and I, it's same old, same old. We were really excited recently when we found a great headboard/footboard combo at DI. We have wanted one since we first got married, but could just never bring ourselves to shell out the money for one. It needed a little touch up painting in a few spots where the wood had been chipped, but overall, it was definitely great for us. Mostly because it was cheap. Anyway, I touched it all up, and one night about 9:30p, we decided we'd take down our old frame. Our first mistake was starting at 9:30p. Well, technically, our first mistake was buying a queen headboard/footboard that came with twin-size bed rails, but we didn't know that yet. We took down our old frame, stacked the mattress and box spring against the wall, emptied out what was underneath our bed (it had been on risers to maximize storage space) into the hall, put together the new frame, and went to put the box spring on. That is when we discovered that there is a 6 inch difference between twin rails and queen rails. I just tell you this so you never make the same mistake. Needless to say, that about 11:30pm, when we finally admitted to ourselves that there was no way to fix this that night, and that we would have to sleep on the floor, we were a little grumpy.

So now, we are in the process of trying to a) find queen bed rails at yard sales, b) find bed rails at DI, c) determine if we can alter our previous bedframe so that we could bolt a footboard onto it (the frame is about 8 inches shorter than our box spring. I don't know why that is, but it is), d) weld new bits of angle iron into the twin bed rails to make them each 6 inches longer and make them have a center support beam for the box spring, e) convince ourselves to pay almost 50% more for bed rails than we paid for the headboard/footboard. All of this has turned our little cheap & fast headboard/footboard project into a definitely not quick and possibly not even cheap endeavor including daily trips to DI and committing ourselves to go to almost every yard sale we can stomach on Saturdays. Happy 4th of July weekend!

Any other summer DIY projects not going exactly as planned?