Video Attempt

Ring-around-the-rosey

I'm working on getting the video, but here are a few pictures. Unfortunately the best ones are out of focus (but I'm posting them anyway). So this is Ben and his cousin Havyn who is 2 months younger than him.










And one of Jack playing in his swing...

Tiger!!

I started showing the word cards to Ben and asking him "What's this word". Well, out of about 25 that I showed him yesterday he got "tiger", "wave" and "hi". Also when I showed him "smiling" he pointed to his teeth ("teeth" is not one of his words). Then today while he was swinging I showed him the word cards again, and again he got "tiger" right away. Soooo... after only 3 weeks of showing the DVD's and the word cards as much as possible he IS learning to read! Very cool!

I keep trying to get Jack to watch the DVD, but he is not much interested yet. I'll keep at it though. If I can get both kids reading by age 3 I will be very pleased.

Today was Eric's birthday party at the clubhouse at his apartment complex. Ben had a fantastic time playing chase and hide-and-seek with Aunt Aimee and Havyn. Rob took lots of pictures and I got some video of Ben and Havyn playing ring-around-the-rosey (a new one for Ben - he just learned it today).

Ben also slept until 8 am this morning!!! =-O Normally he is up without fail at 5:50 am no matter what time he goes to bed. I was very pleasantly surprised! He also did not take a nap at all today and was still very good - no whining or fussing.

Jack has been sleeping pretty consistently from 5:30pm to 4am - only waking occasionally for paci retreival or re-swaddle. He is still a very happy baby!

I'll try to get Rob to get the video of Ben into some format where I can post it.

For Poppy

I was supposed to do this the other day after getting "tagged", but just now was able to get the pictures off of the camera. Candid shot of the boys:



Okay, now I'm supposed to go to my 4th picture folder and post the 4th picture and explain it.



Ugh! I think this was a 9th month belly shot of Jack.

Okay, onto some more interesting pics of the boys...


Ben likes to play *on* Jack more than *with* him.



But he's a good brother 'cause he gives Jack his sleepy bear and paci pretty often:





Chillin' with Daddy:

Reading & Songs

I think it was yesterday that I was reading a book to Ben (Big Smile, Baby) - the one where you lift the flaps. Anyway, we finished the book and then he wanted to turn back through the pages. So, he stopped on a page and since 'baby' is one of the words in his reading DVDs I pointed to the word and said "What word is that?" to which he immediately answered "Baby!". =-O Coincidence? I donno.

Tonight we were reading one of the books that comes with the whole system. We again read through all the words, lifting them up to look at each picture that represents the word. Got done with that one and again, he wanted to flip back through. He stopped on a page and I said "What's that word?" and I could almost swear he said "Zip!" (and it WAS). I guess the reading thing is working (even though he doesn't pay attention to the DVDs all the time) so I'll of course keep doing what we're doing.

Lately I've been singing with Ben a lot. We do Itsy Bitsy Spider, London Bridge, Old MacDonald, BINGO, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (or as Benjamin calls it "Winkle Tar"). He now requests them and if I start to sing the wrong one he says "STOP Mommy, STOP!"

I also try to get him to participate. When I sing Old MacDonald I stop at "and on his farm he had some ______" at which point Benjamin always enthusiastically says "PIGS!" with a big smile. He's also learning "If You're Happy and You Know It" from the DVDs, and tonight while I was making dinner I peeked in the living room and saw that he was doing the "Hot Dog Dance" from Mickey Mouse.

They just get cuter and cuter every day!

Saturday Doings

Ben had a great time at the birthday party today. The weather was nice, so everyone played outside for a bit. Max had lots of toy tractors to ride on, his dad Mike had built a "house" out of hay and they had a swingset with slide as well. Unfortunately we were in such a rush to get out the door that I forgot the camera. Sorry! Rob says Ben climbed up on top of the hay house and did great playing with the other kids.

Ben has still been waking up before 6am every morning even though he is going to bed no earlier than 7pm. I am beginning to think it's because of all these marathon 2 1/2 to 3 hour naps he is taking every day. We had to wake him up after only about an hour today so we'll see if that helps him sleep longer at night. I think tomorrow if it looks like he is going to sleep longer than 1 1/2 hours I will wake him up again. Maybe that will help him sleep in a bit. Sure would be nice!

He is also still taking off his pants and diaper in the evening and sitting on the potty by the fireplace for a few minutes (sometimes he will do this in the mornings too). Then he says "all done" (even though he hasn't done anything) and gets up and goes to get a new diaper out of the drawer and then hands it to me. Tonight he got 2 diapers out of the drawer and brought them in and said "This one or this one?" I pointed to one (they were identical) and he handed it to me and then went and put the other one back in the drawer. Funny! Hopefully this will lead to him actually USING the potty. I think it's cool that he is potty training himself.

Jack went to bed at 5pm last night and didn't wake up until 3:30am. Starting tonight he will be on all formula. I fed him last night at 3:30 but I'm not sure he actually got anything so he got a bottle at 4am as well. I also gave him some oatmeal today because he seemed to be having constipation issues and the oatmeal I gave him on the other days seemed to help. It helped today too - within a couple of hours. As long as it doesn't seem to be bothering him I guess I'll continue with the oatmeal for a week and then try something new after that.

Jack's eyes are still very blue. He is also in 9 month clothes now! It will be interesting to see how much he weighs at the next pediatrician visit which is next month.

Friday Updates

Today Emily was pushing Ben in his swing and counting as she pushed him. She said she made it to 8 and then had to cough, but Ben counted in her place "9.....10! Yaaaaay!" and started clapping.
Yesterday he pointed to 3 magnetic letters on the fridge in rapid succession and said "J, K, O" (all correct). Emily and I decided he has learned quite a bit, but doesn't perform on demand.

Yesterday when Rob and I got home from our "date", Ben was swinging and had a ball in his hand and very clearly said "Mom, look at this". I was impressed! I had never heard him use that phrase before. He is getting better with his speech every day.

I started him on Volume 1 of "Your Baby Can Read" because he seems to have lost interest in the starter video after not quite 1 week. I emailed the company to ask them if this is common in his age group and if it was okay to go ahead and start Volume 1 early, but I haven't heard anything back yet, so I decided if he watched any of the DVDs it would be better than him getting up off of the couch and turning the TV off as he has been with the starter DVD.

I also started Benjamin on Xocai healthy chocolate today. I'm hoping that after about a week of it I can take him off of the Miralax and start introducing the milk and other formerly "no no" foods very slowly and hopefully he will be okay with them. (Incidentally, I started myself on it today as well and gave some to Emily to try hoping it will help her knee).

I didn't give Jack any oatmeal this morning. It didn't seem to be making any difference except I felt like he was spitting up more. I'll wait another few weeks and try again. We switched from giving him 7 oz. of formula every 3 - 3 1/2 hours to giving him 6 oz. every 2-3 hours. Emily said he didn't do as many spit-ups today, so that's good. He is getting cuter and growing so much every day. Pretty soon he'll be sitting up on his own, then crawling! I can't believe he'll be 6 months old (already) on February 11th, and by this summer he will be walking!

Tomorrow we are going to a birthday party for an old friend of mine's son (Max) who is turning 4. I'll bet Ben has a great time - he loves other kids, especially older ones. I'll try to take pictures and post as soon as possible.

Cuteness

Emily just came in and told me that Ben put his bear to bed. He put him down and then moved the stool beside the bed and put his water on it (like I do for him at night) then kissed him and whispered "Night!" and closed the door. Then a few minutes later he opened the door and said "Get up bear!". How cute is that?

Jack's first solids

Jack had some oatmeal this morning. The first bite he made a face like "What on EARTH did you just put in my mouth? Gross!" But then he got the hang of it and did really well. I'll try again tomorrow too.








Also got a good picture of Jack and Ben together this morning:



And Ben's after his haircut yesterday:

Day 2: Intro to potty training

Today I came out of the bathroom to find Benjamin sitting on his potty with his pants and diaper on the floor in front of him. Emily was in the back rocking Jack to sleep and I couldn't imagine her setting Ben on the potty and then leaving (which she didn't) so he is doing it on his own. He didn't actually go. Later on when I said it was time to get PJs on, he kept saying 'diaper off?' and wanted to sit on the potty again. He didn't have to go, but he did do a toot and then giggled. I said 'Good job!' to encourage him. Yay!

Benjamin also got a haircut today. He cried a little at first. I think Jaime was a little rough with the comb. He acts like it hurts him when we comb or brush his hair anyway. It's cute of course. I'll try to post a picture soon.

Jack is cute as ever. He has been drinking tons of formula so I thought it might be time to try solids. I will give baby oat cereal a try in the morning and see how it goes. I think I also need to buy him some 9 - 12 month sleepers too. With Ben I graduated to 2 piece outfits with a onesie underneath, but now that we have the new windows it's a lot warmer in the house and Jack gets too hot. Thank goodness for Uncle Kevin and the Target gift card he sent the boys for Christmas!

Monday Things

A couple of cute pics from this past week:


(after Ben's bath & sleepy Jack)

I think Ben may be ready for potty training. He is showing more interest in actually using it now. Today I came in the room and he was trying to get his pants down and standing by the potty so I asked him if he needed to go and managed to get his pants down and diaper off. He sat there for awhile and didn't do anything so I took him in his room and put a new diaper on him. 2 seconds later he pooped. If only I had left him sitting there for a minute more. I'm sure Emily is going to be thrilled with the new challenge. he he. Sure would be nice to have 1 less kid to diaper change all the time.

Your Baby Can Read

I received the "Your Baby Can Read" materials in the mail yesterday (thanks Gigi!) which I unfortunately didn't check until 4:30. I immediately opened the box and started looking through everything. Ben climbed up on a chair and started pulling the DVDs out. He found Volume 2 which had a small 2 in a circle and said "Twooo!" I asked him to put the DVDs back and found a sliding word book and gave that to him to play with (it has words that slide to one side to show a picture of the word and to the other side to show a question about the word).

While I was getting Jack to sleep and Ben was in his highchair eating I put in the starter DVD. We're supposed to show that one twice a day (to both Ben and Jack) for a month until Ben can do the word games at the end. Ben is already following what they say in the DVD ("arms up": he puts his arms up, "where is your tongue?": he points to his tongue).

Later on when it was time to read a book before bed I asked Ben if he wanted to read "Hop on Pop". He said "Nooooo. New book!" So we read through all the words in the sliding word book. =-)

I'm really looking forward to seeing how quickly he is able to start identifying the first set of words. Hopefully by the time Jack is 18 months he will be able to read them too.

I got out Ben's magnetic letters (the kind you stick on the fridge) yesterday. Last night he started pulling them out of the bag one at a time and naming them before he set them on the table. I was amazed that he was getting most of them right and not skipping any (and going really fast). He is still a little confused when letters and numbers are mixed together. He said 3 was "letter E" and also V stumps him when it's upside down because he thinks it is A, etc. Still, he is doing really well - partly thanks to our Nanny Emily who has been working with him a lot every day.

I'm looking forward to seeing how well both kids do with this reading system.

New Shertzer Boys Blog

I've decided to start a blog that's just all about our 2 little guys: Benjamin and Jack. I'll try to post as much as possible about their daily activities, funny things they do or say and pictures.

I'm enjoying my friend's kid blogs so much I had to start one myself!