I will be playing both handbells and oboe at this concert.  Come on out, enjoy an hour of Christmas music, and then join us for cookies!  The concert is free and open to the public, though donations will be accepted.  I’m happy to give directions to St. Mark, if you need.  I’d love to see you there!

Pretty soon I could hear him running around and playing. Good!

Then I heard him counting. “One two! One two!” Great! I love it when he counts. It’s adorable, and I love that he’s recognizing multiples of things and using words to describe them.

That’s when my mom-instincts kicked in. What on earth could he have more than one of? He’s already wearing his shoes, and he almost never counts his crayons. It could be my socks, but…where exactly was his voice coming from?

“Hey Ben! What are you counting?”

“This!” He proudly held up three sticks of butter.

Yep. I’d forgotten to close the kitchen gate, and he’d gone looking through the fridge.

At least he was too busy counting the butter to try to get any of it open.

On Thursday, he was sent home, put under the care of hospice nurses, and told that he had three to six weeks.

On Saturday afternoon, he died.

He was at home, with both of his daughters, as well as one of his brothers (though not my dad – he was on his way home from vacation at the time).

I can’t even begin to explain the shock I’m feeling. The first I heard of this was on Thursday. Even though I knew he had been sick, no one, including his doctors, had any idea how serious it was. In fact, a CAT scan from 13 months ago was entirely clear.

I’d been so disappointed that he wasn’t feeling well enough to come to his granddaughter’s first birthday party two week ago, but knew that he was recovering from pneumonia, so understood why he might avoid a crowd.

He gave me my first job, back in high school, at his restaurant. He always told the funniest jokes. He often hosted family parties, especially at Christmas. His daughters are the older girls I always looked up to as a child.

He was my godfather.

I’m in shock, and I’m desperately sad.

I didn’t even have time to go visit him. It all happened so, so fast.

I hope he knows how much I’ve always loved him.

But I really want to share some photos with those of you who are too far away to watch Ben play, or go to the park with us, or take a tour of Anderson Gardens with me.

My temporary solution: a couple of photo dump posts. Very little commentary, just a whole lot of pictures. I hope no one finds it too annoying. It’s all I can really manage at this point, until we can somehow solve the iPhoto problems that I’m having.

First up, Ben’s birthday trip to Discovery Center. Enjoy!

He looks so little!

- Create a more peaceful, more joyful home.  I’ll be referring to Christine Carter’s book and blog, among other things, to help me with this one.

- To help me reach the previous goal, I will be finding at least 30 minutes every day for myself, either to knit, read, play a game, or maybe even just go to bed earlier.  And I’m going to encourage Dan to do the same, even if that means we have to take turns caring for Ben to accomplish it (though hopefully we can work it in when Ben is asleep).

- Be more social.  Now that Ben is bigger, he can handle day trips and the like much better.  We’ve been kind of isolated this past year, and I want to change that.  So, if you want to visit us or have us come visit you, let me know!  And, don’t be surprised if we start to contact you more often as well.

That’s where I’m going to leave it for now.  It’s not a long list, but I think it’s an important one.  My working on these goals should actually be good for all of us.

I’ve learned by now that if I plan on eating yogurt while Ben is around, I’d better be prepared to share. This afternoon, while I was poking around in the fridge trying to decide on lunches for the two of us, he took that a step further and just pulled the yogurt out himself. Decision made, for him at least.

It soon became clear that sharing with me was not exactly what he had in mind. He didn’t want me to eat any of the yogurt, it was his, he’d gotten it out himself, and it was his! And not only that, but he wanted to do it himself. My assistance with the spoon was not needed.

I have to admit, I hesitated. But, we just bought a tarp to protect the floor from exactly this kind of thing. If the mess is no longer such an issue, what reason do I really have to say no? So, I put down the tarp and handed over the spoon.

The first thing he did was shove his free hand into the yogurt container. Instant smiles.

Then he smooshed the yogurt around a bit with his hand, and banged at it with his spoon. Also fun!

Just as I was starting to wonder if he’d forgotten that this was food, he finally stuck his spoon into his mouth.

Then his hand.

Yum!

Cleanup took a little while, but he had so much fun, and even managed to actually eat some of the yogurt. Totally worth it.

(Hmm. It seems that, since I’m posting this from my iPod, all of the photos will be at the bottom if the post. I’ll try to fix that when I have a few minutes in front of the computer. Sorry about that!)

(Wow, and they’re in reverse order, too. Awesome.)

One of his bibs.

My water bottle.

His sippy cup.

His jingly monkey.

The top of his shape sorting box.

His pinwheel.

A picture of a clownfish.

Are they gifts? Is he starting a collection? Is it installation art? I tried asking, but his only answer was “Bah bah buh boo! Wuh.” I suppose we’ll have to wait until he learns to speak before we can know the answer.

Of course, his very favorite thing to put into the basket is himself, whether or not it’s already occupied.

Benjamin is nine months old now, which is just astonishing to me. He weighs 17 lbs 7 oz, and is 27 in tall. So little! Who ever would have thought that I would have a little baby? I should find out how big my cousin’s son H was when he was born – he’s the only other small baby to ever be born into my dad’s family, that I’m aware of, and his mother is very petite. I hope Ben sprouts up when he gets older!

Let’s talk milestones! In the last three months, Benjamin has learned to crawl, pull himself to standing, climb up the stairs, walk with only one hand’s assistance, and cruise pretty much wherever he wants to go. He even took two unassisted steps on the 19th, four days into his tenth month!

He’s got four teeth now, too. His first two came in almost simultaneously. This is the first photo I got of his brand new teeth!

They’ve gotten quite tall since then.

I don’t have any photos of the top teeth yet, because he’s such a ham and always poses when I take his picture. I have trouble getting candid photos, too, because as soon as he sees the camera, he crawls right up to it!

Here’s a self-portrait we did together.

So, there you go! And since I have been doing a little bit of knitting and a little bit of oboeing, I’ll try to get back to this space a little more often. Because really, what good is a journal if it’s mostly empty?