Merry Christmas from Team Cartwright!

Also, a happy 16 months to my sweetest baby boy, Benjamin!

Here's my little man, rocking his Christmas jammies.



We're blessed to have wonderful friends and family, both near and far.  Christmas wishes of health and happiness to you all!

-Kim

Here is Ben! (Made by Google+)  We had a great year!

-Kim

Tomorrow we set out on our journey to visit Pat's side of the family for the holidays.  I am always so thankful we get to visit family, and I have a ton of fun while we are there.  But like most people, I do not look forward to the actual journey.  Having a child just ups the worries about how everything will go.

We have taken Ben on two long car trips so far.  The first was to visit Gramma and Grampa when Ben was just three months old.  That trip was pretty good.  Ben really slept most of the trip.  We stopped every three hours so I could nurse him, but otherwise it was pretty easy.  Ben didn't need a lot of stuff.  He needed clothing and diapers really.  We brought a couple of bottles to feed him, but since we were still exclusively nursing we didn't need to worry about food.  He didn't play with a lot of toys, so nothing to pack there.  He couldn't move much yet, so sitting in the car seat wasn't a huge deal to him.  Gramma and Grampa were able to get a pack and play for us to use while we were there, so the only big thing we brought was the bouncer.  We debated even bringing that, but we ended up being so thankful to have it.  We decided to leave when Ben woke up for his middle of the night feeding, so around 4am.  The plan for this was to drive as much as possible while Ben was normally in sleep mode to help him sleep in the car.  This was a good theory, and one that has worked for many parents.  It did not work for us.  Ben was awesome in the car.  But that night after we got there he took an hour to settle into sleep.  And this wasn't an hour of up and down, or light fussing.  This was a needing to be walked around the kitchen the whole time crying hour.  I know, that isn't so bad for some kids, but for Ben it was pretty awful.  Along with that Pat and I were exhausted from not sleeping much the night before.  We were three unhappy Cartwrights.  Once Ben settled into his bouncer and fell asleep there we left him there for the night.  Seriously, Pat and I camped out on the living room floor with Ben.  Anything for some sleep, right?  Luckily the rest of the trip was awesome, and Ben was great on the way home.  We have no idea what set him off that first night, but we don't try to leave in the middle of the night anymore.  If Ben is going to be fussy, we would much rather not be super tired to make it easier to deal with.

Our second long was in June to see Ben's cousins.  Ben was 9 months old then.  Once again he did pretty well.  He cried and fussed the first hour of the trip, but then he settled in and was fine.  For that I had to pack some toys (yay for having cousins similar in age- they have toys at our destination!), and now some food.  Ben was still a pretty new eater, so I packed up a lot of food to handle his narrow diet.  I also had to pump in the car.  It was nice Ben took a bottle pretty well, but pumping in the car, while not hard, is a unique experience I don't mind not having to do again.  This was a summer trip, which meant less worry about warm clothing and bring too cold or hot in the car.  It also meant less to pack, no coats, boots, etc.  Ben also wasn't crawling yet, so just sitting in the car wasn't so bad for him.  Luckily Ben didn't have any major meltdowns when we got to our destination as well.

This trip Ben is almost 16 months old.  Once again, I don't have to worry about packing too many toys for when we get there.  He is starting to need more entertainment in the car, but we have things for him to do.  We limit game time on our phones, but if he wants to play in the car he is more than welcome.  I don't have to pump this time-yay!  And Ben can eat more diverse foods, so I only packed a few things I know he likes and are healthy for him.  The pluses here- he's easier to feed and will be happy with the toys his cousins have.  The downsides- it's winter so of course I am worried about him being dressed okay in the car and when we get in and out of the car.  The big downside- he's mobile now.  I'm not sure how he is going to like 9 hours in the car when he just started walking a few days ago.  We are hoping he will still sleep a lot, but like I said, we are prepared to entertain him.  I am actually looking forward a bit to down the road when he likes tv shows and movies.  Right now he will watch the tv for a few minutes, but over all doesn't care that much about it.  While we plan to have limits on screen time, those rules go out the window when it comes to long car trips.  We'll see how our busy busy boy does in his seat for this long stretch of time.

I hope to have a peaceful trip to see the family, but regardless of how it goes I know it will be worth it.  Until then, I like to imagine the crazy ways I could fill in a Travel mad libs...

"The trip was                     !  Ben was an absolute                     .  I would/wouldn't change a thing.  Ben was a                      champ.  I thought for sure other cars could sense our                    .  We only had to stop every                         hours, which was               .   Next time I would change                                     .   We were so happy to get to Gramma and Grampa's house and                           them.  We will visit again in                          !"

Hopefully it won't be full of words like "nightmare" or "pain and suffering."  I bet the last part won't end with "We will visit again in NEVER!"

Good luck to all our traveling friends and family, we hope everyone has a fun and safe trip.  We also hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday.  I am thankful for the chance to see family that lives far away, but we will miss those we won't be with.  Despite that I know we will have a memorable Christmas, and hopefully a great time traveling!

Time to go!!!

-Kim

Ben is walking!  He has been cruising while holding on to stuff for months now.  He could stand on his own, but really only when he didn't notice he was doing it.  As soon as he realized he wasn't holding on to anything, he would grab back on.  We knew he could walk, but he just wasn't ready yet.  This past week he has been taking a few steps on his own.  At first it was just 2 or 3 steps between places to hold on.  Then it was a few more when he didn't seem to realize he wasn't holding on to anything anymore.

Today, he finally went for it.  He took about 10 steps on his own without an immediate end object to grab onto.  Meo and I saw it, and were super excited.  But with Ben's history of reaching a milestone and then waiting a month to do it again, I was kind of thinking that would be it for awhile.  An hour or so later, however, he did it again!  I was able to grab my camera and get the third big set of steps on tape.  He is still cautious about walking, but he is full on doing it.  It is super cute to watch.  I love the stage where kids will be walking somewhere, stumble a bit, and just continue on their way crawling without thinking twice.  I think it is so cute!

I hope Ben doesn't give up crawling too quickly, because it is so fun to watch.  But we are so proud of him.  We knew we could do it, he just had to wait until he was really ready.  We are loving this new stage, and can't wait to see Ben running around with his cousins at Christmas!

My little toddler!

-Kim

All the way up front? Sure thing, Boss.

Delivered!

Dance break

Back for more!

Cutest little worker ever!  We couldn't do it without him.

-Kim

-Kim

Ben is growing up way too fast.  I think the kid is ready for college sometimes.

Going to town on the pizza

Delicious!

Santa!  I know him! Okay, I don't really know him, but I do know where he hung out last night.  He was at our local library to visit with the kids.  We took Ben to see him and get the obligatory picture.  I love taking Ben to see Santa at the library.  They do a really great job of making it a nice experience.  First of all, it is inside.  This winter hasn't been too cold yet, but being indoors is always a plus.  Second, they hand out numbers so you don't have to stay in line the whole time.  Sure, the wait to get a number is a little tense, but after that you can let your child wander around.  Ben isn't big on staying in line, so it was nice to not have to do so for too long.  Finally, there is a lot to do at the library!  While you are waiting for Santa, they have a bunch of crafts and activities set up.  Ben is still too young for the crafts, but I know he will enjoy them in future years.  The kids section at our library has a bunch of toys for kids of all ages, and Ben enjoyed playing with some of those.  If you get bored at the library, there are always plenty of books to read.  Plus, it is a pretty safe place to let kids explore (while keeping an eye on them).

Ben enjoyed playing with the toys while we waited for Santa, but he really liked crawling around.  The library is a big place for a little guy!  We let him crawl around and explore.  We stayed by him of course, but let him decide where he wanted to go.  He was so good about it!  He just crawled around and looked at things, earning a lot of smiles from other library patrons.  He had a blast, until we ruined it by making him see Santa that is.

Ben was one of the first kids to lay eyes on Santa.  He happened to be nearby where Santa made his entrance. At first, Ben went towards where Santa was coming from.  There were bells jingling which got his attention.  But as soon as he saw Santa, he slowly backed away.  At that point though, he was just kind of looked like he wanted to avoid Santa, but he wasn't really bothered by his presence.  Ben just went on his merry way crawling around.  Eventually we had to line up, and I was again so glad we didn't have to wait in line for too long.  Ben wasn't super into staying in one place, but he was pretty good about it.

Then, the time came.  We went into the room. The family ahead of us was finishing up, and the little one in that group wasn't into Santa at all.  Ben was thoroughly freaked out by Olaf at Christmas Walk, but Santa is didn't have a mask on or anything.  Pretty much all the main guys in Ben's life (Pat, Omi, Grampa, Uncle Chris, Uncle Jared) sport some sort of facial hair.  I was hopeful the beard wouldn't throw him off.  But I did know that Ben is in the stranger danger time of life, so I crossed my fingers and we strode up to Santa.

Well, it didn't go so well. Ben burst into tears and pretty much cried the whole time.  Poor Ben.  Poor Santa!  I have to assume that those kind people that play Santa are used to this kind of reaction.  Santa rolled with it like the pro he is and let us take some quick pictures with him.  We thanked Santa and headed out.

Once we were out of the room, Ben recovered pretty quickly.  He had the sad single tear going on, but overall he was fine.  Pat, Ben, and I grabbed some dinner afterwards, and Ben really enjoyed that.  So we ended the evening on a high note.

Despite the tears we will return next year to see Santa again.  And now we have the "Crying with Santa" picture every child needs.

Excited to be at the library!

Seeing Daddy at the end of the day is always fun.

Meo and Omi!

Meo and I are pumped for Santa!

Always more hugs

Looking at books

Play time!

Time to explore...

Hide and seek with Meo

Found her!

Meeting Santa

Family picture with Santa and a crying Ben

Fully recovered at dinner

Meeting Santa in 2013

-Kim

-Kim

This past weekend we went to Christmas Walk!  We got lucky and it wasn't too chilly out.  It was a lot of fun!  We started the evening at the church chili supper.  Well, Pat had the chili.  I stuck with a hot dog, and brought Ben's usual food.  We gave him little bits of bun and hot dog to try, but with all the people around I think he was happier sticking to his regular food.  We fueled up to face the chilly night, but not too much.  We had to save room for any snacks we stumbled upon.

Upstairs in the church they do a display of all sorts of Nativity Scenes.  I love looking at it.  They are all brought in by different members of the church, and they are all so different!  This year we added Ben's Nativity to the display!  It looked so cute to see the toy set out there with all the adult (read: breakable) versions.  Ben loves playing with his Nativity.  I was wondering how he would react to seeing it sitting out, but he was too busy dancing to the music playing to care.  After checking out the church stuff, we headed to the street.

Most of what we did at Christmas Walk was walk around and look at things.  The library usually has music, but that was closed this year for the renovations they are doing.  We watched kids play games and go down the giant slide.  We walked down and watched the carriage rides.  Ben enjoyed looking at the horses.  He looked right at them and said, "woof woof."  Right now every four legged creature says woof woof.  It's pretty cute.  We watched kids ice skate, and we watched the ice sculptor create a Kristoff out of a block of ice. Yes, at Ben's current age it is a lot of watching.  He seemed pretty happy with it though.  There was always music going and Ben was dancing non-stop.  We did get ourselves a little treat, a caramel and chocolate covered pretzel.  It was so good!  We let Ben nibble on it a bit too.  I am all for eating healthy, but sometimes we you need to have a little fun food.  While we munched on our treat, we watched the silent parade.  The silent parade consists of a bunch of fire trucks and ambulances that go through town with just their lights on.  They are all decorated for the holiday.  It might sound a little strange, but it is really very pretty.  I love Christmas lights, and I hope Ben likes them as well.

After the parade we saw Olaf and Elsa!  (Yes, Frozen was heavily featured at Christmas Walk.)  I enjoy the movie, and I know Ben's cousins ADORE it.  I thought it would be fun to get a picture of Ben with Olaf and Elsa to show his cousins.  Ben was fine with looking at them, but as soon as we got a couple feet away to get ready for the picture he let out a scream of pure terror.  Elsa didn't seem to bother him, but some guy in a snowman costume?  No way.  I did not get the picture taken and quickly got Ben out of there.  (Elsa looked quite relieved by this.)  The rest of the evening Ben kept a close eye on Olaf.  I am curious to see how meeting Santa goes this year after seeing Ben react to Olaf.

After all that we had pretty much seen everything, and it was almost Ben's bedtime.  We headed home, where I promptly dropped the other pretzel we had gotten on the ground.  Boo for me.  But that was the worst part of the evening.  We had a great time.

I took a few pictures, but it was pretty dark (being night and all;) )

Dinner!

Laughing with Daddy

Dancing with Mommy

Loving his treat

Christmas Walk means we are prepping for Christmas hard core.  Only a few more weeks til the holiday!

-Kim

We've started giving Ben some utensils while we eat.  He seems to enjoy playing with them, and everything I've read says kids will want to emulate their parents and use silverware.  He's played with them a few times, but it hasn't been something we've worked on until recently.  He seems pleased to have his own spoon at dinner, but getting it to actually work is a bit of a challenge.  If you think about it, scooping something onto a spoon and getting it to your mouth does take some skill, so I think he does pretty well with his explorations.  He has a pretty good system going.  He dips the spoon into the food container and pulls it out.  Then he shoves his other hand into the container, grabs a handful of food, and shoves it into his mouth.  Very effective.

Step 1: Dip the spoon.

Step 2: Grab food with the other hand.

Step 3: Shove it in your face.

Before Ben was born I read that there are two types of babies- those that like bouncers and those that like swings.  We were fortunate to be gifted with both.  Ben had preferences though.  Ben was a bouncer baby.  He eventually came around to the swing a bit, but the bouncer was a no-fail soother.  It was so good I bought one to have at the office too.  There were times when I worried he was in the bouncer too often, but he just loved it so much.  Of course now I know my worries were for naught, as he is just fine.

As he got bigger, the bouncer got closer and closer to the ground.We had been able to pull the bouncer out in times of emergency (extreme fussiness and refusal to sleep!), but  now he is just too big.  The office bouncer is still here because we haven't had a a chance to pack it up.  The other day Ben was looking at it, so I pulled it out for one last bounce.  He had fun, but sadly it is time to pack up the bouncer.

He used to fit in this!

Not as roomy as I remember...

Oh the memories though

We had some good times, didn't we?

Stop growing up so fast, Ben!!

-Kim

Like most children, Ben quickly decided that vegetables are undesirable.  I try to add vegetables to almost everything we eat, so most of his foods have some hidden within.  However, I still like him to see some vegetables and see Pat and I eating them to promote good eating habits.  Well, every so often Ben decides he is amenable to eating the vegetables as is, without them being hidden in another food.  This is a rare event, so we try to be very supportive of Ben when he eats his veges.

This is called a Code Green.  What this means is that whatever vegetable Ben has decided to eat becomes his.  It doesn't matter who's plate it is on.  I have told Pat to stop eating broccoli and hand it over to feed to Ben on an occasion when Ben started eating broccoli.  Tonight, it was peas and green beans.  The green beans were particularly surprising, as this was his original hate food.  He started eating the peas I pulled out of our soup.  So I gave him all the peas from my serving.  He finished all those.  Pat didn't have any more at this point, or he would have lost them to Ben.  I dug through the leftover soup and pulled out all the green beans and peas I could find.  He ate them all!

Pat and I fall back on sports superstitions during these times.  You don't talk about Ben eating vegetables while he is eating them, because somehow that will spook him into stopping.  We are calm on the outside, but inside it is "Code Green! Code Green!  All the veggies to the kid now! Go! Go! Go!"

Be warned, if a Code Green takes place while you are eating with us, I will take whatever vegetable Ben has deemed acceptable from you to feed to him.  I'm only half joking ;)

Code Green!!

Ben gets all the peas!!

-Kim

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  We had a really nice one.  We spent this Thanksgiving here in town, with my side of the family.  Happily for us, several family members were able to come into town to spend the holiday with us!  Uncle Jared came with his girlfriend Peng.  That was wonderful, because it was the first time Pat and I got to meet her!  She was really nice and a lot of fun to spend time with.  Uncle Wayne and Aunt Chris came into town, and Cousin Kyle made it too!!  He had the longest drive, so it was extra special that me made the trip.  It was Ben's first time meeting him in person, and Ben really enjoyed spending some time with his cousin.

The actual day of Thanksgiving was a fun day of cooking and of course, eating.  Well, the adults ate a lot.  Being a toddler Ben decided he didn't really like any of the foods we were having, despite eating several of them on a regular basis.  His Thanksgiving dinner consisted mainly of fruit and some cheerios I gave to him after giving up on the rest of dinner.  He has been enjoying the leftovers the past few days though.  I think having a big meal at what is normally snack time threw him off a little.  He was happy to be with the group, just not that into eating.  He was also having too much fun to sit still at the table!  Ben loves crawling around Meo and Omi's house, so he had a blast.  This year he got his first chocolate advent calendar from Meo.  He got one last year, but obviously couldn't eat the chocolate.  Oh let's be real, this year it is Mommy's chocolate advent again.  He won't notice.  ;)  He also got his first Nativity Scene!  We found a great toy one so he can play with it and start to learn the reason for the season.  It's an early Christmas present as we wanted to maximize the time he could play with it.  Aunt Chris and Uncle Wayne also got Ben a little gift, a great book of Bible stories for boys!  I am super happy to be teaching Ben about the meaning of Christmas.

As I said, most of the day was spent cooking and eating and just enjoying each other's company.  Uncle Wayne, Aunt Chris, and Kyle had to head back home, but we got Jared and Peng for the next couple of days!  Friday Meo, Peng, and I did a little Black Friday shopping.  Peng hasn't gotten a chance to do that before, so it was fun to show her the craziness.  We didn't go out super early or anything, but we were still able to score a few deals.

Saturday I ended up having to run into work, and we had to get a few things done around the house.  (Why can't laundry stop over holidays?)  But Sunday morning we got to do one last breakfast with Peng and Jared before they headed home.  That is where the lemon tasting took place.

I kind of slacked off on getting good pictures, so I don't have a ton to post.  I was more focused on cooking, eating, and hanging with family.  And watching Ben be cute, which he always is.  Overall, though, it was a great holiday.  We are so thankful for all the blessings in our lives, especially over the past year.  We are fortunate to have a roof over our heads and plenty of food to eat.  We are fortunate to have wonderful friends and family to love.  And Pat and I are specially blessed to have Benjamin in our lives.

Ben's second Thanksgiving was wonderful, and we are looking forward to all the Thanksgivings to come.

Opening the Advent Calendar

Why is Mommy saying 'dibs?'

Getting into mischief

Almost time to eat!!

Relaxing after the meal

Hanging out with Mommy

Horsing around with Daddy

Uncle Jared and Peng!

Ben loves his Uncle Jared!

-Kim