All Boy

My kid is all boy. Here are some reasons why:

• He loves trucks and trains above all things.
• He loves--loves--for his Daddy to pick him up and throw him across the room. Actually, he loves all forms of horseplay.
  
• He still does not care at all if his diaper is dirty. Dirtiness in any form is no problem for him. This makes me think potty training is a little ways off....
• He absolutely loves to be outside, especially in a wooded or natural area. This is more a reflection of how much he is like his daddy than how boyish he is, but still.
• He loves to yell loudly and make loud noises.
  
• Nathan made him a fort for the first time this weekend out of couch cushions, and he no sooner had it up than Noah went straight in. It cracked us up that he knew exactly what it was for and knew exactly what to do.
• He does daring things that make me afraid for him.
• He likes to throw things off the front balcony. Nathan often has to go downstairs and wade through the plants in the front yard to find a stray toy.
  
• He is pretty athletic. He's a fast runner, I'm telling you.
  
• He has a six pack. No lie.

Imagination

My son officially has an imagination now. This evening, he opened up my closed hand, pretended to pick something out of it, then pretended to eat it. So funny!

Boring? Sorry.

Hey peeps.

Sorry if the blog has been boring lately. This week, Nathan is out of town in Canada, and his sister, Deb, is here to keep Noah and me company. So we've been having fun with her this week and haven't had much time for posting. And if I did post about our week, I have to say it'd be pretty uninteresting, since we're having a nice but LAZY time. Which has been quite lovely.

Anyway, give me a couple of weeks, and I promise the blog will get more interesting.

Until later....

4th of July

On the 4th of July, we headed over to our Aussie friends Jason and Jeanette's apartment. We were all in the same Bible study for several years, but J&J moved home to Adelaide a few years back, yet somehow ended up back in the States in Seattle for a while. They are here in Boston for a couple of months this summer, and we are enjoying hanging out with them, as well as getting to know their little girl, Hannah! Jason, Jeanette, and Hannah are the three on the bottom right of the picture.

Anyway, the apartment they're subletting for the summer is on the 22nd floor, overlooking the Charles River, where the city of Boston fires off tons of fireworks from a barge in the river. So they invited everyone over to play together and enjoy the fireworks at their place. It was a great time!

I feel that I should also mention that the people in this picture are some of our closest friends in Boston, yet somehow their pictures never end up on the blog. I think we just don't take pictures of each other when we're together. Thankfully, though, Jason is a very gifted photographer and had his fancy dancy camera out for the evening. Anyway, considering that these are our good friends, you should know who they are. From left to right on the top row, there's Carey, Bethany, Bonnie, David, little Nathan, Bryan, Noah, Nathan, and me. Left to right on the bottom row is Sara and Abigail (they belong with little Nathan and Bryan), Jeanette, Hannah, and Jason.

Noah's New Stats

Noah had his 18-month well baby appointment yesterday. Here are his new stats:

Length: 34-1/4 inches (95th percentile)
Weight: 27 lbs. (65th percentile)

Lookin' good!

Noah's favorite activity:

Free Arbonne Discount for a Year

Hey peeps,

So Arbonne is running a pretty awesome special this month, and I thought that I'd let you all know about it, in case you want to jump on it before it expires.

Basically, you can sign up as a Preferred Client and get a 20% discount for a year. There is usually a $29 fee associated with this, but they are waiving it for the month of July. I've been with Arbonne since 2005, and they've never waived that fee.

On top of that, you can get a free product with your first order, up to a $79 value. (!) In order to get it, your order must be at least $150. So a possible order might look something like this: Anti-aging Wash, Toner, Eye Creme, and Serum. Then you'd get the Night Creme for free. Plus, you'll get 20% off of that $150. Not a bad deal at all!

If you're interested in signing up, just email me at laurenbenesh@gmail.com, and I will send you the link you need to get set up for a year's worth of Arbonne savings for free.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me. And if you'd like to take a look at the products, you can find them all at www.arbonne.com.

Remember that this offer expires on July 31.

How Did He Do It?

Often, I rock Noah to sleep for his nap while listening to the classical station on the radio.

Today, he went to sleep while listening to the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (the one that sounds like "Ode to Joy"). I don't know how anyone can go to sleep while listening to that! It's too exciting. But he did. It just made me laugh.

Random Stuff and Prayer Requests

• This week, some friends and I took our kids to the New England Aquarium . . . via the T. Bad idea. Three train transfers and about eight elevators later, we were there. Then, we had to head home afterwards with three tired toddlers and an infant and four strollers and do it all again. We agreed that we're driving next time, no matter how expensive the parking is!
• Favorite summer food right now: plums. So tasty and sweet!
• Has anyone seen "My Life in Ruins"? The preview looked cute.
• I am getting really tired of my shabby living room. Specifically, my shabby slipcovers. They are three years old, the cats have "loved" on them, and they are just ready to go in the trash. I can't wait to throw them away. Nathan thinks that they are hideous, but I think showing our plaid + striped mismatched furniture would be more hideous. The first thing we will do in a place of our own is buy matching living room furniture.
• I will also be so glad to have a dishwasher. I will happily throw our dish rack away when we move.

Prayer Requests:

1. My grandfather just had two surgeries, one for a tooth and one for his eye. They were quite dangerous for a person in his condition, but he came through them okay. However, the recovery is going to be very rough for the next two weeks. He'll have to lie on his right side with his face downward for two solid weeks for his eye to heal correctly. Sounds like fun, huh? Especially when you're 84 years old and generally uncomfortable on a good day, anyway. So please pray for his healing, but also for his patience and kindness to those tending to him. And while you're at it, you can pray for my grandmother, my mom, and my aunt, all of whom will be helping to take care of him. They will need patience, too. :)
   
2. My brother and his wife are going to be moving to the Atlanta area later this month, because Ken will be starting an MBA program there. There are a couple of major prayer requests connected with this: first, that Meredith would find a job ASAP; and second, that Ken would be able to get everything he needs to do completed before they leave. He has a full plate, between finishing up some things for his job (including travel) and doing some coursework before they move.

18 Months Old!

My mom took that picture of The Boy, surrounded by his beloved trucks.

He is 18 months old today! What a big kid. I can't believe he's got a year and a half under his belt. Of course, being his parents, we think he is crazy cute and smart and athletic. He has gotten a little more loving lately and will give me a kiss sometimes (!), rather than just allowing me to give him one. Right now, the activity that thrills him the most is to be literally thrown across the room by his daddy (don't worry, he lands on the very soft couch). He generally loves roughhousing. His love for trucks is unabated at this time--nothing quite comes close, except for Dada. He does love that Dada.

The teething is definitely a struggle, and we are just now entering the phase in life when he is starting to need to learn to share. But other than that, he is a pretty easy toddler at this point.

He's our boy! Happy one-and-a-half year birthday, kiddo!

Pennsylvania Vacation, Installment 4: The Way Home

On our trip back, we stopped at my parents' friends house outside of Scranton. (No, we didn't see the Dunder Mifflin branch, but we did drive through nearby Dunderville--or something like that--which cracked us up.)

The Terhunes were awesome hosts. They have two sons who have lots of fun toys: four-wheelers, a trampoline, lots of yard space for games, and more. So Noah had a great time playing.

He played baseball . . .

. . . and got to ride a four-wheeler . . .

. . . and he ate some watermelon. (Which, as you know, is a divine treat for him.)

Mom's friend, Fay, even had a toy for Noah, which involved a truck. You know that was a hit. And they fed us an awesome steak dinner, which was a wonderful change from the road food we'd been eating. They boys showed us their fun stuff and asked us questions about Texas ("Is it all sand, or are there any trees?" "What kind of snakes are in Texas?"), which prompted me to give them a copy of Old Yeller, which I had picked up on the trip just to have something to read in the car. I hadn't realized before that Old Yeller takes place in the Hill Country, so I passed it along, since it has lots of animals in it and is just about right for the boys' age.

They were great hosts, and we enjoyed visiting with them!

After that, we headed home. All in all, we drove about 12 hours or so that day, and boy were we glad to be back.

The next day, Noah was like a new kid. He was so glad to be home, and for the first time in days, he was very happy and playful and jovial and not incredibly whiny. I was really glad that my parents had at least one day with him that was just pure fun and not filled with a lot of "no." My dad played and rolled on the floor with Noah a lot, and my mom taught him how to say he has five trucks.

So that's the account of our trip! We had a good time, but it is also nice to be home.

Pennsylvania Vacation, Installment 3: The Wedding

On the Sunday of our road trip, we attended Jeremy and Krista's wedding. It was lovely. It was held at a nature conservancy, and the setting was quite nice--a pond and pretty flowers and trees. The happy couple was very obviously thrilled to finally be married (yay!), and that, frankly, was the most fun thing to watch.

They had something at the reception that I'd never heard of before: a cookie table. Much of Krista's family and some family friends had spent weeks baking a ton of special, beautiful cookies. There were a ridiculous number of them. Jeremy said there were basically three dozen cookies for every guest. I'm not sure whether this is a tradition in the local area or if this is just something Krista's family does, but it was something to behold. I guess it sort of stands in place of the southern groom's cake, except every guest doesn't go home with a bagful of groom's cake; we, however, departed with lots of cookies for the road.

A cute thing happened just as we were leaving. Noah had been playing with this little redheaded girl off and on while we were there, and at the end, he just absolutely went nuts with affection for her. They sat down, and he just hugged her and pressed his forehead to hers over and over again. Meanwhile, a group of adults gathered around them, saying "Aw, how cute," but the audience didn't deter him one bit. Here they are:

And, finally, after leaving the reception, as if we hadn't had enough sweets already after all those cookies, we stopped at Dairy Queen. One of the girls in Nathan's research group lives very close to where the wedding was held, and she said that one of the old, original Dairy Queens was about a mile away. So we paid a visit, and Nathan got a Butterfinger blizzard (something he loves but rarely gets to have up here in New England).


Happy 9-day anniversary, Jeremy and Krista!

On the Road

We stopped fairly frequently to let Noah run around a bit. Here are a few pictures from our roadside adventures.

Noah looks like he feels guilty for picking the flowers.

Having fun running around with GG

This sign cracked me up. Did they used to have the worst apple pie?

Pictures from the Kutztown Folk Festival

Noah and Grandpa dancing to the live music
(Dad's wearing a shirt Ken brought him from El Salvador)

Funny!

Black Forest Cuckoo Clocks.
Check out those prices.

The winning quilt at the festival

Pennsylvania Vacation, Installment 2

Picking up where I left off, on Friday night. . . .

Noah had really traveled pretty well the whole day, except for the hour and a half that he chanted "no" constantly. Other than that, he was a pretty good traveler and enjoyed his books, toys, and the new fire truck that Gigi and Grandpa brought him. That evening, however, Noah didn't go to sleep until after 10pm. He is usually asleep by 7:30, so this is a big deal. And when you consider that he also got up at 5am and didn't take much of a nap that day, all of this added up to about a net loss of six or seven hours of sleep, as I mentioned earlier. That is pretty darn significant for anyone, but for a toddler, it's disastrous. So the next day was quite a trial for all of us.

On Saturday, we went to the Kutztown Folk Festival. Now, after all the fun Noah, Nathan, and I had at the Sheepshearing Festival, we were all about going to a festival. However, the combination of lots of activity and a sleep-deprived toddler is not a good one. Noah was an absolute pill. Nothing made him happy. He would scream and reach for something, and as soon as you'd give it to him, he'd throw it on the ground and act like you committed a felony by giving it to him. He cried and whined all day. He said "no" about 1,497 times. He wanted to be in the stroller, then he wanted to run. If he was out of the stroller, he didn't want to hold your hand. His mouth hurt because of the molars coming in. He didn't want to eat. When we took him to the bathroom to change a giant--GIANT--dirty diaper, his screams reverberated in the small bathroom for all the patrons to enjoy. Nathan and my dad actually heard him screaming from outside the building. He scraped up both knees and legs and one arm because he fell on a ramp he was running down, then screamed when Nathan picked him up to comfort him because he wanted to go run down it again. In fact, now that I think of it, he fell down quite a lot, probably because he was so tired. And one lady had the nerve to tell me she was saving a bench for her family to sit on when we arrived at the same moment as her, and when I pretty much begged her to let us sit there and feed Noah, she gave me a very rude look. I am still mad about it. Luckily, a nice elderly couple offered to share their bench with us, instead.

I also got chocolate milk on me and sat on a pickle. I walked around with a pickle on my butt for I don't know how long.

So, Kutztown Folk Festival, I am sure you were completely charming and that you had lots of things for me to look at, but I only got to see about half because of my petulant boy. Please understand. Thank you.

Actually, there really were some fun things to see, and whenever I get my pictures loaded onto my computer (oh please hurry, Mac geniuses), I will post some. The Black Forest Cuckoo clocks were something to see, as was the soap making, the glass making, and so on. And they had a whole "quilt barn," full of locally made quilts. I will definitely post pics of those, because some of them were amazing, particularly the winning quilt.

One of the things we didn't get to try at the festival was the shoo-fly pie. Julia had mentioned this to me in particular as one of her favorites, but at some point we just had to get out of there with that kid of mine, so we didn't get the chance to try it.

The rest of the day was spent driving to our hotel outside of Pittsburgh, and that was just peachy, let me tell you. We again endured about an hour and a half of a bi-secondly "no" from Noah, along with just general irritability and unwillingness either to be comforted or to sleep. Saturday was just not a great day.

However, Saturday was followed by Sunday, the day of the wedding. . . .