5 month review

I've only posted four times in 2010. That's horrible. I'm a little let down with myself but I've been pretty busy. Allison has gone back to work part time, so our income is down. I started doing some freelance writing to make some extra money. I've gotten a lot of work and it's been keeping me busy. While I enjoy writing this blog, I enjoy eating and having a roof over our heads more. So unfortunately the writing that doesn't make me any money got pushed to the back burner.

The bad thing about that is I'm missing out on lots of documentation of Ben's life. We have plenty of pictures, but 5 - 10 - 15 years from now when I'm looking at the pictures will I remember the sounds I made that made Ben smile and laugh like that? I need to get back into it and here is my first attempt. I've cut out A LOT of television to free up some time and I just decided that I have to give up some internet time on my lunch break to do some writing either freelance or blog.

When Ben was first born it was easy to find time to write. He slept most of the time. When he wasn't sleeping, he was eating. Since he was breastfed, there wasn't much I could do for him. So I might as well go watch TV or write a blog post. Well now that Ben is older, he's more active. He jumps around in his jumper. He plays with his toys, we play peek-a-boo, flying baby and baby in the mirror and he smiles when he sees me. Sorry blog readers, I'm just not able to walk away from that to write a blog post.

He can sit up for minutes at a time now and he's showing lots of personality. He's gonna be a funny kid. It seems like he has our sense of humor and he has a great laugh. I could listen to it all day. He's starting to try to communicate with us. I have no idea what he's saying, but I think he tries to tell us when he's hungry and he tries to say hello. My goal is still to get him to say "awesome" but I'm not sure that it will be his first word.
No teeth yet, but he's drooling like a faucet. His shirts look like hyper color t-shirts or like he just had a really hard workout. Sometimes his shirt gets wet from his collar almost down to his belly button.

I thought for sure before he was born I'd call him Benjamin. Well in the 5+ months he's been with us, I've probably called him Benjamin 5-10 times. I've been calling him Ben or Buddy mostly. There have been some other variations thrown in there like Benny, Benerooskie, Beneroni and cheese, Bennyhana, Benedryl, little buddy, muffin man, guy smiley and smiley mcgee. I'm sure there have been others but I cant remember them at the moment.
Allison discovered last weekend that sending me out alone with Ben is very dangerous...for our bank account. It was my first time out alone with him. I took him to Target to get an air foot pump and then to the super market. I told Allison that guys day our either starts or finishes with ice cream. Since Ben can't have ice cream yet and it was really cold this weekend, we skipped it, but while we were in Target I decided it couldn't hurt to walk around the toy department. Well I spotted a pinwheel. I picked it up and started blowing on it to make it spin. Ben loved it. He followed it from left to right, up and down. Every time I blew on it, he laughed. So I walked around the store with it for the next 5-10 minutes and ended up buying it for him.

Let's review here. One trip to the store. One item purchased. The scary part about it, I talked myself into buying it for him. He can't even talk yet. He can't take something off the shelf and beg me to get it for him yet and I'm already buying him stuff. I better toughen up, but ice cream is still on the table.

Let me finish up by saying I love being a dad. I knew I would, but now that it's here and I'm in it, I'm really enjoying it. The best part of my day is coming home from work and having him smile at me and make his screeching happy sound. It's nice to see you too Allison. ;)