Love the White Stuff!

It snowed most of the night and this morning so Benjamin and I enjoyed some time outside this afternoon. My first priority was to shovel the driveway, but as soon as I got out there, our neighbor, Barb, rushed out and said she'd do it for me. Ever since I told her I was pregnant, she has been so hyper-vigilant about any strenuous activity she sees me doing. So, I managed to get 1/4 of my driveway done while she did the remaining 3/4, and the entire sidewalk. Very sweet lady. So thereafter, Benjamin and I headed to the back where we played soccer, threw snowballs, and mostly played in his swimming pool which he still feels is the most fun outdoor toy he has, summer or winter. In winter it's great for filling with snow or for standing on and jumping off. Here's a few pics of our adventures. The funniest thing about Benjamin in the snow is that his snow outfit is so bulky that when he falls, he can't get up, so he spends almost as much time face down as he does running around.

Independent Play

Benjamin is someone that really doesn't play well alone. It's something I've been working on with him for a while, but he didn't make a lot of progress until we got our piano recently and he's been forced to entertain himself for at least 30 minutes every day while I practice. At first he threw a fit anytime I even walked over to it because he knew he was about to be ignored, but I really want to finally get better and not waste the 12 years of lessons I took, so I stuck with it. Now he whines right at first, and then quickly finds things to do. Most of the time, they're harmless. However, not always. The problem is that when I'm playing, I kind of zone out everything else and as I finished my last song and turned around, this is what I discovered today! Maybe this independent play thing isn't such a great idea! :) Fortunately, he helped me clean it all up again.


This evening Benjamin's friend Maya came over to play. They did really well together and did a lot of running around and chasing each other. I also loved having Maya around at dinner time because Benjamin wouldn't eat any of the food until he saw that Maya liked it and then he decided he'd try it too. It's the best he's eaten at dinner in a long time. Gotta love peer pressure. Thanks Maya! Here's a couple of pictures of our musical virtuosos. The pianos seemed to be their favorites all night.

Toddlers are exhausting

I try to keep this blog positive and optimistic as much as possible. Because we all know that there's plenty to complain about and stress about and feel guilty about when you're the mother of a toddler - a slightly obsessive compulsive, perfectionist mother, no less. However, I just have to be blatantly honest today and say that I'm exhausted! This kid rearing gig is hard work! The older he gets, the stronger he gets and the more willful he gets! Don't do things the way he wants and he lets you know it! The earpiercing screams, the tantrums, the toys flying at your head, etc. all make for a very challenging day. So, a couple days ago when he suddenly fell asleep (hours from nap time) in the hallway from the shear effort of it all, I said a little prayer of thanks. Did I try to move him into his bed? And risk waking him - no way! I tucked him in and went about my business as quietly as possible. It was a glorious, much needed moment of peace. My consolation is that I know all mothers of toddlers go through these same things. It only feels like I'm the only one in the world, but I know I'm not. There's lots of well mannered 5 and 6 year olds out there, so obviously their mothers survived and despite zero prior experience, managed to pull it off. I'm just glad God made Benjamin so cute, because sometimes that's the only thing that saves his little hide.

The Dalton Infirmary

Today was a great, relaxing Saturday. Both Kelly and Benjamin are little sickies, so we stayed home today and hung out. Benjamin is on antibiotics for an ear infection and Kelly is coughing and blowing his nose so often that I had to go to buy tissues at Costco to ensure we wouldn't run out!

However, we made the most of our sick day and as Benjamin is, you'd never know he was sick from the way he behaves. He's still a ball of laughter and energy and never shows any signs of slowing. I actually took him in to the doctor because he was coughing and she told me he had a "nasty" ear infection - technical term, apparently. I would never have known. Today, though, he seemed to be getting bored of his toys and started making mischief by tearing everything off shelves and climbing on things he shouldn't, so I decided to start making toys out of anything I could find. We built towers out of full paper towel rolls, forts out of couch cushions, hats out of tupperware and horns out of empty paper towel rolls, and finally looked through my old yearbooks finding pictures of me. He'd get so excited when he'd find one! He'd point to the picture and then to me and back and forth and then he'd rest his face against the picture and try to hug it. So cute. It was a lot of fun, even for me. The reason my yearbooks were out was because we also watched President Hinckley's funeral today and I recognized the man playing the bagpipes at the grave site as my old pre-calc teacher from high school! Here's a couple pictures I managed to get of Benjamin enjoying his make believe time.




On a side note, I'm going to miss President Hinckley so much. I've never met him personally, but it's amazing how you can feel so close and connected to someone you don't know. I loved him dearly and have sobbed bitterly many times since I learned of his passing. What an amazing man. I know he was a prophet of God and I thank him for the countless ways he taught me and enriched my life.

Finally, here are some pictures of Benjamin I took a while ago on a rare warm winter day at the park. I don't know why I never posted them. I think they're really cute.

Imagination Taking Shape

That's the slogan for Play-Doh. I'm not sure that's really applicable to Benjamin's interaction with play-doh, but he sure loves squishing it! :) I have always loved play-doh and have been wanting to buy it/make it for a while now but I worried that he would just try to eat it. Then I heard they'd played with it in nursery last Sunday and he hadn't tried to put it in his mouth at all, so I figured he was ready. At first I thought I'd make it, but that's so not me. Why spend all that time when I can just spend $3 and buy it?? So we took a trip to the toy store and after two hours of playing around, came home with some play-doh and some cute little shape makers. We have played with it every day since. He loves pushing the shapes into the doh, loves squishing his fingers in the doh and especially loves when I make little balls of doh that he can roll around and put in various containers. The best part is that this is finally one game of his with which I have just as much fun playing. And not to toot my own horn, but I can make a pretty amazing snake and my spirals aren't shabby either. I've also discovered that Kelly makes amazing carrots and coral formations. :) Seriously, though, Kelly actually has quite a hidden talent for play-doh. Still learning new things about him, even after all these years!


These past weeks in addition to our play-doh adventures, the biggest hit around here has been anything involving water. The dehumidifier, the dishwasher, the wash machine, and the shower are endless sources of entertainment. In addition, every day Benjamin wants to fill the kitchen sink with water, throw in a bunch of cups, bowls, pots, etc. and splash around. If there's already dirty dishes and standing rinse water available - all the better! Bits of food floating around too?? Jackpot!! It's gotten really quite disgusting a couple times before I learned to never leave anything sitting in water in the sink. Also, anytime a new container suitable for holding water is found, it must be tested. Such as the little play-doh cup! His first choice of water source, though, is always the fridge. That handy little water dispenser is so useful! Even when it's locked up, Benjamin doesn't let it dissuade him, that's when imagination truly takes shape.

Camera Hog

Benjamin's new favorite pastime is to take pictures and then look at them. His favorite subject? Himself, of course. He'll now ham it up anytime I want. He won't continue doing what I was trying to photograph, but he will come squat or stand or flop around in front of me for as long as I'm willing to keep going. I'll take what I can get, I guess. :) So here are a few of the cute little poses he strikes as I flash away. (Sorry, the hideous color in some of them is an artifact of my hideous camera.) Other than that, there hasn't been much to report here. We've been going to lots of playgroups and trying to stay warm. Isabella continues to grow and kick ferociously. My hopes for a mellow little girl are fading.




Kelly took this one of us. It's a rare occasion when we're both looking at the camera and smiling. I had to post it.

Marketing is Everything

Benjamin and I have a long history of food conflicts. Mostly they stem from his complete unwillingness to wear a bib. Because of his refusal (and downright violent reaction to them at times), I've been hesitant to let him feed himself too much besides sandwiches and other dry, clean foods. Certainly nothing requiring a spoon or containing liquid! The clothing disasters waiting to happen! My clean freakyness just couldn't handle it. However, I've also started to hate having to sit and feed him everything, thus constantly postponing my own meals. I've watched mothers of children younger than Benjamin plunk a bowl and a spoon in front of their kid and walk away. Each time I thought 'why can't I do that?' I've also noticed Benjamin's increasing desire to wield his own utensils. More than once I've snatched a spoon from his grasp as he threatens to smear it into his hair. The last straw was when the pediatrician at his 18 month check-up asked, "Is he using utensils? Is he eating with a spoon?" I could only look at the floor and murmur,"Hmmmm....Kind of....He's just so messy!" "Are you giving him the chance to be messy?" he retorted. Grrrr. So, I lamented to Kelly about this issue and what did my darling ingenious husband come up with? He looked at the bib, and it's unique upturned bottom portion and declared, "It's not a bib, it's a pocket! A really cool pocket that catches all sorts of cool things that fall off spoons!"


Within one meal-time, we'd gone from violent thrashing at the sight of a bib, to avid checking of the "pocket" and excited high-fives after every successful scoop into the mouth. We treated each successful spoon loading as if he'd achieved world peace. In a way, to us it was just as monumental. The first meal was admittedly a little messy, but by the next day he'd had soup, cereal, and yogurt all by himself, with hardly any spill at all! An amazing transformation. I love it! Benjamin couldn't be happier, either. Now if I try to scoop something for him, he'll grab the spoon, dump it out into the bowl, and do it himself. I can take a hint! Now to find the marketing twist on potty training!

18 Months Old

Benjamin is now a whole year and a half old! How amazing. The best part about this milestone - nursery!!! (Sunday School for kids 18 months-3years). I was so excited about Sunday that I was practically counting down the minutes. In my opinion, the time between which a child declares their independence (starts walking, no longer allows you to pay the slightest bit of attention to a lesson) until that glorious day when you can drop them off and get two hours of no cost, worry-free babysitting during church, is the longest period of time in all of toddler life. Since Benjamin started crawling at 6 months and walking at 10, this period has been especially long for me. Luckily I have the best calling in the world - primary presidency, so I have been able to deal with him better than I could have in any other situation, but oh nursery - how I love you! My only concern was that he would get sad and need me to stay with him. All my worries were unfounded, however. I walked him down the hall towards the nursery and he knew exactly what was coming - toys! He just let go of my hand, walked into the room, breezed past the teacher as she tried to greet him, and started to play. He never even looked back. I peeked in 2 or 3 times during the next couple hours to make sure he was okay, but he did great. He sat at the table and ate his snack, made his little paper crown to signify he's a Child of God and seemed to play well with all the kids. It was amazing. I was so happy. He seemed to have a great time because he was soooo hyper the whole rest of the afternoon! I've never seen him so wound up. It was hysterical. So now maybe I'll actually be able to do my calling instead of spending my time in the hallways keeping Benjamin from going into the other ward's bishop's office and playing on his computer! Yeah!


His new favorite thing to do is jump on my back whenever I'm bent down. Often I tickle him and put him down, but this time he clung on for dear life, so I agreed to play horsie and even in my fat, pregnant state, we trotted around the house for what felt like FOREVER. Still he threw a fit when I stopped, but this horse just wasn't going one more step.


It used to always be Baby Einstein, now he puts in Veggie Tales every time. And don't even try to turn it off until it's over! I just love looking at how cute he looks in his little seat (from which I removed the tag saying "not intended for children" because it's actually a dog bed.)

Happy 2008!

Happy New Year everyone! We just got back yesterday from our vacation. We had a ton of fun and are sad to be away from everyone again, but being home is nice too. We look forward to a new year. This coming year Benjamin will turn 2 and little Isabella will turn 0. :)

As for our trip, we loved seeing friends and family again. You forget sometimes how much you miss them until you see them again and then you can't bear to leave. Here are a few pictures of the cuteness that is Benjamin at Christmas time. (These were all taken with my mom's camera, in case you're wondering. Ours is currently being fixed. May it come back safe and sound or there won't be another blog entry for a while.) Besides the adjustment to Utah time and several different sleeping locations, he did very well. How could he not, considering he was constantly the center of attention?

It snowed a ton while we were there so we had to make use of Benjamin's new winter jacket. Unlike in Michigan, he couldn't get enough of the snow. We were out there for over an hour and finally had to drag him back inside when we couldn't stand it anymore.



He also discovered the old-school Nintendo system in my mom's basement. Any chance he got, he was down there begging to play it. I have to say, it wasn't such a sacrifice to oblige. :)


The air hockey table at Jill and Zerin's was quite a hit as well.


On Christmas Eve we were with my family playing our favorite game - the candy bar game. Basically an all-out sugar extravaganza built on ruthless competition and a dog-eat-dog mentality that's great for building family unity. :) It was hours past Benjamin's bedtime and still he couldn't get enough of the excitement. It was so fun to watch him with his older cousins. He'd flop down with them and laugh when they'd laugh and try to wrestle with them. I've never seen him so happy around other kids. He was one of the big boys.


He also loved his little cousin Colton (11 months). I tried and tried to get a picture of them playing together, but they were like tasmanian devils darting around the place. I'm still shocked as can be that my cousin managed to get the two of them seated for a split second to get this adorable picture.


On Christmas Day and thereafter, we were with Kelly's family and my favorite part of that time was seeing Benjamin with his cousin Katelyn (1 month younger). They really seemed to have fun together playing with the toy phone, opening presents, and watching movies. I really wish they could spend more time together.




Benjamin's favorite presents were his musical book and his doll. I have really been surprised how interested he's been in babies lately. Real ones, especially, but also dolls. He doesn't carry them around or take care of them like I've seen little girls do, but he no longer throws them across the room or sits on them as often and I think that's a good sign! :) Maybe he's ready for a little sister after all.



So that was our Christmas. Hope everyone else had a great holiday too.

Camera Woes

I'm not the bad blogger that I appear to be. Really. It's not my fault that the last post was so long ago. I have wanted to put up new things. In fact, I've made several attempts to take cute, endearing, and entertaining photos of Benjamin that I could post. However, my camera has heard the awful things I've been saying about it and grown tired of the constant beatings it sustains at the hands of my 1 year old and decided to go on strike until working conditions improve. I have not been able to take a single picture since Thanksgiving. In fact, I can't even see anything in the screen anymore. It looks like satellite reception in a bad snowstorm. I've been very depressed about it. I check in on it every few days, promise to speak kindly and to protect it from being thrown across the room in the future, but it continues to glare at me with its fuzzy screen and staunchly refuses to capture any of my special moments. Alas. So, today in desperation, I called in a strike breaker - the PDA. It has a marginally decent camera that served to record at least a few cute moments of Benjamin's first real experience with snow. It was so much fun. We bundled him up in his snowsuit and took him outside in the back yard. The snow was up to his knees and at first he was hesitant. But being the adventurer that he is, with a little help from dad, he was more than willing to play...until his gloves fell off and the cold snow touched his warm wrists. Then the party was over.

With gloves...




Without gloves...

Even after they were back on, he wanted nothing more to do with the snow. It was okay though because the PDA battery was dead by then. :)

Other than furious snowstorms that shut down church, school, and everything but shopping at Target, there's not much going on around here (what a crazy crowd there was today - never shop on a snowday before Christmas!!). We're heading to Utah for Christmas in two days and are very excited about it.

Oh! And it's been confirmed - the next baby Dalton is a girl. I had my 20 week ultrasound today and a different tech agreed with the first that this baby was indeed a girl. So, now the second half of my pregnancy begins and we anxiously await little Isabella Katherine Dalton's arrival. We'll see if that'll still be her name when she gets here. It's all still negotiable. We're up for suggestions.

In closing, here's a little video of what keeps Benjamin entertained every morning. He's discovered that the bottom dishwasher rack can be removed and serves as a very fun bumper car. (I took this a while ago, before the camera strike, but never remembered to post it.)

Water and Dumptrucks - the Perfect Vacation

We spent the last few days in Toronto and Niagara Falls. We really wanted to spend some time away from everything and just be together and being the city girl that I am, I wanted to see Toronto. I'd never been there and I had heard lots of good things. So we loaded up the car and off we went. We had a wonderful time. We went all over the city - downtown, China Town, University of Toronto, Indian Town, rich neighborhoods, and poor neighborhoods. It was great. I loved all the active city life. It felt good to be there. We also found our new favorite Indian restaurant - the Sidhartha on Gerrard Street. Fabulous! My mouth waters as I think about it. We've been to 6 or 7 different places around here and none compares. We'll definitely be making more trips to Toronto, even if just for that food. On the way home we went through Niagara Falls - the highlight for Benjamin. There he got to see his favorite things - water and dumptrucks. He was mezmerized by all the water rushing. For some reason this kid loves playing with water! Then as we were leaving the falls, we passed a construction site which he watched in rapt attention for nearly 15 minutes as they shoveled huge mounds of dirt and dumped them elsewhere. He just couldn't get enough. Had it not been pouring rain we probably would have let him stay longer, but we were all getting soaked.



It was a great vacation and we had a wonderful time just being together and we still made it back in time for a fun Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Halloween...a little late

So, everyone else I know posted their Halloween pics long ago, but I was too busy with the birthday aspect of Halloween until now. Here's a few cute ones of General Benjamin of the US Army with his plastic jack-o-lantern and moon boots. :)






Halloween and my birthday were great. Benjamin got a ton of candy (for us) and did quite well walking from house to house by himself until suffering from complete bone-melt and flopping down on the sidewalk. No amount of coercing got him walking again, so we carried him to a couple more houses for my sake and then called it a night.

As for my party, I had a great time with all my friends and had so much food left-over that I didn't have to cook dinner for 3 nights. That was the best present of all. I meant to take pictures of my party, but as is always my way, I didn't remember to take a single one. C'mon, I'm too busy living it to photograph it! If I were rich, I'd hire a cook and a photographer. So now I'm 30 and feeling great. Can't wait to see what the next decade brings.

It's a girl???

I got another ultrasound today and it was for diagnostic purposes (down syndrome check, etc.) but I was so curious if we could tell what the baby is. So I asked and she said she could tell with 70% certainty. That was good enough for me, so we checked. Within seconds she had that perfect angle - legs strait out, bottom facing us. She and I both said at the same time, "That's a girl!" I will spare you the anatomical details of the image, but it was pretty obvious, baring radial future growth. I am a bit torn emotionally about it. It sure explains the many differences between this pregnancy and my first. Also, the strange feeling that I was making a mistake each time I referred to her as 'he' or 'your little brother' (to Benjamin). However, I really wanted a boy. Mostly because that's what I already have and what I'm used to and what comes naturally now. I'm not a prissy girly kind of person. That stuff really turns me off. But I also really hate dirt, so maybe a girl is really what I need. :) In any case, time will tell if it's correct, but in the mean time, I'll be looking for non-prissy girl clothes and imagining my little blonde-haired cutie - Maya/Isabella/? - suddenly I'm not so sure about names either.

Also, Happy Halloween everyone and a happy birthday to me tomorrow!!!! 30 years old! I'm excited. My party is on Friday and I've invited a lot of people so I think it will be tons of fun. I'll post pics of cutie Benjamin in his costume tomorrow, but in the mean time, here's a couple cute photos from a week or two ago.

Benjamin, Laura (from Utah), and I went to a cider mill to give Laura a Michigan experience (in addition to getting lost in Detroit) and Benjamin entertained himself on the train.


I let Benjamin put the rice and water into the rice cooker for dinner, but once that was done, he decided there was much more fun to be had. I'm still finding stray rice kernals every so often.

First Trimester Blues

Life with an active toddler can be stressful. Add to that raging hormones, fatigue, and frequent nausea and you've got a disaster waiting to happen. These last few weeks have been...interesting. I've had to put myself in time-out a few times in order to regain composure before I attempted to control whatever he was doing. I'm not regretting the decision to have another child, but certainly adding a nanny to the mix these last few weeks wouldn't have hurt. Alas, we're surviving and Benjamin still seems happy and fairly well adjusted. :)

It seems with this pregnancy (in addition to mood swings and bone crushing fatigue) I'm overly sensitive to smells. I've heard this from women before but it wasn't a problem with Benjamin. This time I can't stand the smell of garlic, dirty diapers (more so than usual), and my fridge. I have to hold my breath each time I open my fridge and leave the room afterwards until the residual smell clears. I've cleaned it out and washed it twice already and no one else smells anything in it, but it makes me so sick that anything I get out of it can be put right back because I can no longer eat it. Luckily I can tell these symptoms are fading each week, so hopefully I'll be better in a little while.

To lighten some of the load, I've been taking advantage of Benjamin's curiosity by allowing him to help me in the kitchen. He stands next to me on a chair at the counter and watches me every night as I prepare dinner. He used to stand/lay at my feet whining because I wouldn't play with him. Now that he's old enough that I'm not worried he'll fall or grab the knife out of my hand, I've found the current situation much more appealing. Luckily he loves it too. He'll watch me mix, chop, fry, etc. for as long as it takes. It's been such a relief. However, there have been a couple times when his attention waned and I turned around to find he'd moved his chair and found new sources of entertainment.

The first was our medicine cabinet. (It's now locked.) I thought he was moving the chair to look at the radio (another favorite diversion). I never even saw him climb onto the counter, just suddenly he was there.


He also found the rice cooker, with it's various lights, fascinating. That night nothing I did compared.


And nothing beats emptying out all the pans and climbing in a drawer. Especially if you've stashed Mom's cell phone there earlier. (I have found my phone in the strangest of places, including the fridge - probably knew I wouldn't be looking there anytime soon. I'm so glad I can always call it and follow the ring.)