Thanksgiving and Beyond

This next post in what will likely be a marathon of posting covers from Thanksgiving day up until Secret Faux Christmas (explanation to follow in the next post). Anyway, Jon's dad came for Thanksgiving, which was great. Everything turned out really well. The food was really delicious if I do say so myself. I do have to say that cooking a Thanksgiving meal by myself in our kitchen with very limited counter space was a bit stressful. Still, I think it was worth it. We had salad, homemade rolls, a very delicious and moist turkey, homemade stuffing, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, and apple pie. Pretty much all of the recipes I used were new to me, so I was pleased that they all ended up being good recipes. I do think some of the credit on that front has to go to allrecipes.com. That website is pretty great. We lived off the leftovers of our meal for a full week. Anyway, Ben was generally a very good sport about me basically ignoring him all day while I cooked. Of course, Richard and Jon were happy to entertain him. Here's a video of Ben getting a big kick out of watching his dad and grandpa play the boxing game on the wii.

Also, here are some pictures of the little guy in his Thanksgiving outfit that my mom gave him. The adorable dog hat was one of the many gifts that Richard brought with him. We were so glad to have Richard with us, we were so surprised by the diapers and high chair and clothes and toys he brought with him. We are blessed to have a lot of generous family members that make sure that Ben always has everything he needs. Ben has already made good use of all of his gifts (pictures to follow)

(The shirt says Baby's 1st Thanksgiving, I'm sure there's no way you could have figured that out on your own)

Another thing we've recently learned about Ben is that when he misses a nap he goes through a grumpy phase and then enters a crazy baby phase. It's pretty entertaining but makes it almost impossible to get the kid to make up some of the missed sleep. Here he is getting super excited every time Jon says "hi" to him.

This next video is actually about one of my accomplishments. I guess it's a combination of breastfeeding, lugging around a very heavy and squirmy baby, walking to the grocery store, and not having time to snack as often as I used to, but I've lost quite a bit of weight since we moved to Rockford. I'm about the same size I was Freshman year of college before I went to Spain. This has made a lot of my wardrobe pretty saggy, as evidenced by the following:

We've also had some requests of a video of Ben getting a big boy bath. I would have done one of these sooner as Ben has been getting bathed in the tub for a while now, but Jon is opposed to bathtime videos. I'm not sure if this means there's a bath video of him somewhere of which he is embarassed. Still, his mom finally talked him into taking one. I'll put together a highlight reel of the bath and post it here when it's done. It's a pretty long video, so it might take a bit for me to trim it down. In the meantime, here are a couple of freezframes from the video. I picked the ones that are G-rated.

This is a picture of Ben in the adorable Sunday outfit that Geri sent with Richard. It's a great outfit, but of course Ben added his own personal touch by drooling on it.

Oh the joys of taking a baby outside in wintertime. Here Ben and I are ready to run a quick errand. Ben is not a big fan of having his coat in his face, but he got used to it.

Here's the highchair that Jon's parents gave us. It was very welcome by both Benjamin and by me. Ben was getting way too big for the Bumbo chair and way too messy. Plus, I feel better because the highchair is a more secure place. I can turn my head and not worry about it tipping over.

Ben loves his juice. He also loves to backwash. Trust me, do not share a drink with this kid.

Last, but certainly not least, here is a video of one of Ben's newer tricks. He goes from the sitting position to the crawling position to reach things in front of him. He's not crawling yet, but I think he's getting close.