2 1/4

I've been blogging a lot more lately. You're welcome. You should know, though, that it is at the expense of more important things, like reading my Bible and showering. I kind of don't care. It seems to be rare for me to feel the impetus to write these days, so I'm just going to do it when the desire arises. You never know when another slump will occur. I can cleanse my mind and body then.

So I know that 2 1/4 years of age is not really a "milestone" age to write about, but Ben is just so rad right now that you need to know about it.

Things that Ben does that make my life infinitely better and more interesting:

1. He plays pretend. All day long. And it's hysterical. He'll grab his dump trucks, they will say hi to each other (they all have names, and they have families). Then they will greet a family of something else, like blocks or Toy Story toys, or Manny's tools, or whatever. Then they will cart around the other toys, usually on some kind of mission. They talk all along the way, saying things like, "come on! go faster! follow me! I got you! What you name? here you go!" and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. This kills me. He will play like this for a solid hour, and I just sit and watch the magic unfold. Sometimes he grabs one, hands it to me, and says, "play this one!" I try, but I can't keep up. Usually the conversation between the toys goes like this:

Ben's lion: Hi! I'm Lion. What you name?
My elephant: I'm Elephant. What's you're name?
Lion: Lion. Roooooar! This my tail!

And then he roars again and knocks over my elephant and we keep replaying the same scene over and over again. It is awesome.



Sometimes he puts a toy on time-out, saying "time out! two minutes!"

Another favorite game is Baby Bear. I will let this video speak for itself.



2. He talks non-stop. And quite well. He often uses proper syntax, with subject-predicate-complement. He also uses all of the parts of speech, often correctly. He often mixes up word orders, but all the words are there and the sentences can get pretty long. He loves to tell stories. If you ask him what he did during the day, he will tell you EVERYTHING, complete with gestures, facial expressions, and sound effects, and the descriptions often involve tattling on someone. I love to hear him talk; he's very expressive. When he's eating something he likes, he says, "Yum yum yum yum. This is delicious!" When he's eating something he doesn't like he says, "I don't like it. No thanks."

3. He loves to count. To eleven. Sometimes he gets all the numbers in there, sometimes he doesn't, particularly when he's really excited, which is a lot. He also knows a lot of his colors, although the only ones he always hits correctly are orange and purple (random--you'd think he'd pick the more common primaries). The others are sometimes correct, sometimes blue, which is his default. He knows a few letters, like O and Y.

4. He loves to read, and he's super cute when he does it. He'll go to his bookcase, pull out a favorite (right now that's The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Wall-E), and "read" it. He knows a lot of it because we read them all the time. So he'll "read" the whole thing, complete with voices. Sometimes he'll hand it to me to read to him, sometimes he'll pick a different one for me to read. Unfortunately (for me) he leans toward the longer books, ones that are not at all age appropriate, but he loves them, will sit through the whole thing, and memorizes them after a couple of readings. Sometimes I cheat and turn five pages together and skip whole parts. He doesn't notice on newer books, but he does with familiar ones. Lame. One of his other favorite books is his Bible. Sometimes he calls it the Bible, sometimes "God Book".

5. He loves to sing and dance. He can sing "New York" from Madagascar, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," "Jesus Loves Me," "Good Night Sweetheart," the intro song from Cars, and several songs by Ingrid Michaelson, Otis Redding, and The Killers. Sometimes he sings them like a dinosaur. And of course the dancing. Oh the dancing.



6. He has favorite destinations that he constantly asks for and recognizes when we're halfway there: mainly the mall, the park, and the bookstore.

7. He says please, thank you, bless you, I'm sorry, and I love you.

8. He loves to cuddle and watch TV and movies, though we limit his daily screen time. With only 30-60 minutes a day, he still manages to memorize them. Favorites shows are Dinosaur Train, Thomas, Chuggington, Handy Manny, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and Bob the Builder. Favorite movies are Toy Story 1 and 2, Madagascar, Horton, Cars, and Finding Nemo.

9. His latest obsessions are animals, dinosaurs, and baseballs. We don't own any of the latter two; he considers our couple of tennis balls his baseballs, and the dinosaurs he plays with at stores.

Okay, I've now wasted most of my morning with this. I really need to get ready for work for reals.