Minnesota Children's Museum

Another fun place to take the little ones in the Twin Cities area is the Children's Museum. They have a couple of nice areas where kids Benjamin's age could really have fun exploring. He had a great time crawling around the sloping terrains, steps, and bridges of the Habitot room and then splashing around in the water area in the World Works exhibit. However, I think his favorite part was watching all the other children! There were many times where he would watch one walk by him and then he would go crawling off after them. We took Benjamin's cousin, Lucy, with us too.


Playing with bubbles


I love this apron on him!


Saying 'ohhh' in amazement


Later in the day, Lucy and Benjamin had fun at the water table at the Grandparents' house.

New Friends

About a week ago, we had a chance to meet two new little friends, Amelia and Miles. Amelia is my friend Melissa's new little girl and Miles is Melissa's nephew. They are so cute! We had lots of fun watching Benjamin interact with Miles, Amelia, and Melissa's son Graham. This involved a lot of pointing and smiling on Benjamin's part, however he became a little jealous whenever I held Amelia or Miles. I am so used to Benjamin being my baby, that it was such a different feeling to watch Benjamin react so much to me holding a 5 month old. He even started tugging on Miles' shirt (although, thankfully, not that aggressively) in an attempt to say that he should not be there!


Benjamin with Graham and Amelia


Benjamin eyeing Miles

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to a fantastic Dad! Lucky Steve got to go to another baseball game to celebrate his first Father's Day - this time at the Metrodome to see the Twins. This is the last season that they will be at the Metrodome, so Benjamin got to be a part of history as the Twins move from the Metrodome to the Target Field, an outdoor stadium. Unfortunately, the Twins lost to the Astros, but we will have to go to a game next year to check out the new stadium! The pictures make it look like no one is there, but we arrived quite early to try to catch batting practice (which they did not have, however).


Daddy and son - I can't wait until Benjamin is old enough to play baseball with his Daddy!


The whole Twins outing crew


Steve, Trever, and Benjamin


Happy Father's Day to a wonderful Grandpa!

Minnesota Zoo

I have many fond memories of the Minnesota Zoo, so I was excited to take Benjamin as soon as the weather permitted us! It was a hot day, but we decided to take a trip down to see all the animals. The animals that were off in the distance did not seem to keep Benjamin's attention, but he did seem to get excited about the aquariams, the giraffe (Sweta, which means sweater), the prairie dogs, and a few of the other animals that were much closer to us. We even had a chance to feed Sweta, the giraffe! Check out the video of this below.


Ready for the MN Zoo in his safari gear!


Sharks!


With Grandma


Grandma kisses!


Steve feeding the giraffe and Benjamin clearly enjoying it!

An update...

We are about to head up to Minnesota soon, so I thought I would update before we go! Though I suspect I will be able to blog up there. Benjamin is almost done with his second week of Water Babies class and we think he is doing better! He doesn't really swim, but he doesn't mind hanging out in the deep end while holding on to me, he loves to jump into the water on the count of three, he loves crawling around the shoreline, and he enjoys the 'ring around the rosy' and 'pop goes the weasel' portions. Other things he has been doing lately include wiggling in your arms to try to get you to go somewhere or give him something. For example, he loves the magnets on the refrigerator so he will point at it and if that doesn't work, he will start wiggling towards it. He points at everything now and it is often accompanied by saying 'off'. He is more social around strangers, too, which is nice to see. He gives many people smiles, while he points at them. Putting the Bumbo to good use Loves playing around at his water table Enjoying his pool on a warm day We went to a first birthday party for three of Benjamin's playdate buddies this past Monday. There were around 10 babies there! I got a picture of four of them hanging out near the screen door. Included in this picture are two of the birthday boys - Anders and Ben (not ours!) - and Reese. $1.99 shades at Children's Place? Can't beat that! Visiting Target and, coincidentally, wearing the appropriate red and khaki! We bought this truck for one of his birthday presents - don't tell him, though! Having a great time in his bath - he found splashing around absolutely hilarious. He laughed for like ten minutes. Enough time for Steve to grab the camera from downstairs and still have plenty of time to get him laughing! See video below. Looking out at the world

There are three videos from the last couple days that are cute. In the first one, Benjamin is showing off what Steve taught him this past week. Steve sings 'row row row' (from 'row your boat') and tries to get Benjamin to say 'row row row'. Well, listen carefully during the video! Right before I started recording him, he did say 'row row row', but for the video he shortened it to 'row row'. In the second video, you can see how hard Benjamin was laughing during his bath. Lastly, there is a video of Benjamin figuring out how to climb down our patio step in our backyard.

11 Month Pictures!

We took Benjamin in for his 11 month pictures today. He was in a fantasic mood and we got tons of absolutely adorable pictures. It was so hard to choose our favorites, so I included almost all of them in this blog. The only difficulty of our shoot was getting Benjamin to stay still and not crawl around!

Early Father's Day at Wrigley Field

Benjamin and I took Steve to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field this past Saturday as an early Father's Day gift. Steve is a big fan of the Cubs and of Wrigley Field, so he was very excited to go! We drove in for the day and got to spend some time pre-game at Auntie Shell's, as she lives literally two blocks away from the stadium. It was so nice to see her and Benjamin showed off his crawling and climbing ability for her.

Since the Cubs were playing the Twins, we received a phone call just this past Thursday night from my brother Rob that he was interested in going - not even knowing that we already had tickets! What a coincidence! So he bought tickets for himself and our Mom and they drove down for the game. We met them in the stadium before the game started and since we sat on exact opposite sides of the stadium, we could even wave to each other. It was fun to have them come in for the game, too.

Benjamin did very well at the game, especially for not being able to take a nap! Though he did watch the game at times, he seemed very interested in the people around us. He kept smiling at the people behind us, who were Twins fans from St. Cloud. There were so many Twins fans there! It was sometimes hard to tell which team had a great play, as the cheering for both sides was so loud! The Twins ended up winning, but as always, it was fun just to be there! After the game, all of us (including my Mom and brother) hung out at Shelley's place while Benjamin took a quick nap and then we walked around Wrigleyville and stopped to get pizza. At around 7 pm, Steve and I took Benjamin home while my family made their drive back to MN.







Abe Lincoln throwing the first pitch

Water Babies Class

We have had one week of Water Babies Class at a local pool - the class meets for a total of four times a week for two weeks so we have one more week left. Benjamin is not quite yet a water baby, but we are working on it! He is a little unsure about the deeper water- he doesn't seem to put his head up when we are trying to get him to float on his tummy and he tends to cry sometimes. However, he doesn't seem to mind crawling around in the shallow part of the water and playing in the little kiddie pool. Hopefully by the end of the class, he will become more comfortable in the water.


During class


The water babies and our instructor


Playing in the kiddie pool with Steve after class

11 months

Wow - one month until our baby is a one year old! Crazy!

Here are some of the things he is doing now at 11 months:



He loves this lion that we got him for Easter. He is always so happy to see him and gives him a big hug. Then he often drags him around while he moves from room to room.


This no-spill snack cup is handy as he loves to dump his cheerios or puffs all over the ground!


We received his new car seat last week and he already seems to like it! He looks like such a big boy in it. He will be facing back for at least another month, but it won't be long until we can see his cute face in the rear view mirrow!

The following pictures are of Benjamin trying out real fruit (i.e. not the pureed kind). He really loved them all.







He loves to shred things - especially kleenix and toilet paper!


Climbing the stairs at Auntie Shell's - he has no fear!