Blueberries

One of the great things about late summer is picking fruit. In this case, blueberries!  Ben really didn't do much in the way of picking or eating the blueberries, but we had fun anyway.

Ben is smiling and cooing so much more now! We love all of this new attention and I'm sure he does too.

So I have lots of time these days (go figure) and spend a lot of it reading. I just finished reading Bringing up Bebe  and I. loved. it. She is such an engaging writer and the book was over way too soon (how many parenting books can you say that about? hmm?). 

PS the family is back home from their vacation and Ben and I are so glad to have perpetual company once again :). Gotta love the grandparents.

Gardening!

Hey so wow, our garden is producing!! And by 'our' I mean my mom's which I'm tending for her while she's away... I didn't really help that much in planting, but it's still so rewarding to harvest the vegetables and herbs (and then EAT them!), and see the flowers bloom.

What a cute little eggplant!

In the picture below you'll see how great of a gardener I am - it's obvious that I don't know how to weed or prune lol... I basically just water and hope things turn out okay. Well, it's good enough for us!  You can see parsley, sage, several types of basil, and even dill (the teeny weensy yellow flowers in the upper right of the picture is the dill plant). And I think that's a squash? How that got in the herb section I have no idea...

I don't have pictures of them, but we're also growing cabbage, green beans, cucumber (which looks really weird, btw), three types of tomatoes, and more herbs than I know what do with.

This zucchini is practically a foot long!

Yeah, our garden is kind of getting out of control

Even though I'm not the best at it, gardening is really cool! I'm definitely inspired to do this when we have a house. Correction: when we have a backyard.

A month of fun!

We are having so much fun being a family of three. And even more fun spending our summer here with our families too.

Ben has been all over the capital region and seen the sights.
He's been to the mall, twice - what a trooper!
The movies (Brave) and slept through the whole thing.
Gio's, duh; five guys, carrabbas, gio's.
Around the block.
In the sink.
On the porch. Yeah, we're pretty adventurous.
Schoharie. Like I said, adventurous :)
The lakehouse (not the lake yet...).
To a sketchy urgent care center (yay for strep!) where the receptionist wanted to hold him. Um no, but thanks anyway, how about you do your job and stay away from my baby!


Anyway... Doug is happy at work, I LOVE being at home, and Ben is the best baby. What could be better?
It has been soo fun getting to know Benjamin. He is so serious all the time. Here's a picture of Ben with his favorite 2nd cousin (okay, he hasn't met any other 2nd cousins...) and a classic serious face:

We think he must be a pretty contemplative dude.

We get a lot of these faces too!

Ben loves his pacifier, this penguin mirror thing Sarah got for him (he stares at it like nobody's business), car rides, being outside, tummy time, being held and carried, being sung to (too bad I don't have the best voice) and being read to (especially by his dad); he doesn't seem to mind baths, diaper changes, kids holding him, or loud noises. I love this phase - I want him to stay little forever!

 He's an excellent sleeper but this last week he has had a hard time napping. So, for example, he'll sleep for 2  or 3 four hour stretches at night (awesome!) but during the day he'll go down for a nap and wake up several times in one hour. We'll figure it out, I'm not worried.

Benjamin is so great at telling us he needs something. I say that because he doesn't cry unless he needs something. So it's really quite simple to provide and care for him. Thank you, Ben!

Who is sleeping with Benjamin?

Hello, world!

Today is Benjamin's seventh day of life and he is loving it! How could he not?

He was born on June 15th (00:28) weighing in at 6 lbs 13 oz. At his doctor's appointment yesterday he weighed 7 lbs. What a good little eater!

He already blesses our lives so much. The first blessing he gave us (me) was only taking 6 hours to be born, thank you!

We love to just look at him.

We came home from the hospital Saturday afternoon. Benjamin was so excited to be home he soiled 3 outfits in 15 minutes! I seriously don't know how he can soak his whole outfit while keeping his diaper dry. He's obviously quite talented.

And we can't get enough of him. 

Welcome to the world, little guy!

Janet Markham took these perfect pictures.

11,111

As of today there have been 11,111 views of my blog - pretty cool, huh? 1 more or 1 less wouldn't have been nearly as exciting.

Evidently, this baby hasn't decided to make his appearance yet so we're still chugging along doing fun things here and there.

Still goofy

Still happy

Daniel loves lacrosse!

 Wanna see him score??
He's #25

We went to Proctors to see Beauty and the Beast!

It was super fun :)

Belly shot in my lime green, childhood bathroom
38 weeks

Look at my mom's cute shoes!
And face of course. :)

We seriously do hang out with Doug's family, for some reason I've just forgotten to take pictures whenever we do! This weekend we went to Schoharie and had dinner with grandparents, cousins and aunts and uncles. I love living so close to so much family - there is always so much going on that's it's easy to keep busy. 

Memorial Day Weekend

I have to say, holidays are way more fun when spent with family, and when stretched over several days! For Memorial Day (weekend) Doug and I went up to the lakehouse with the Standage clan.

We played a lot of Bang! ate a lot of food (probably too much?) and played in the sun.

Some badminton

Some water skiing

I didn't ski, in case you were wondering.

And what would Memorial Day be without basketball??

Some Father/Son-in-law tension? haha...

Oh and I apologize for the poor-ish quality of the pictures, I had to zoom in quite a bit on account that I didn't want to get out of my chair, lol.

The weather was superb! Doug and Daniel got sunburned because they were too lazy to put on sunscreen. Poor babies.

No pictures of me because I'm the one holding the camera - too bad...