Nothing Like a Good Book

Ben has recently become really interested in books. It's adorable how intense he is when he is looking at the pictures. We have always read to him but now it's more fun because he so serious about it!

No More Sweet Potatoes...

Shortly after the mini party (or "half" party if you will..) Ben broke out in a rash around his mouth and the parts on his torso that weren't already red turned red... I was certain it was the sweet potatoes and we gave him some bendryl to stop the reaction. Now I wonder if it wasn't the balloons he was playing with and putting his mouth to. Latex is a pretty common allergy so I will wait until his poor rash clears up and then try the sweet potatoe again. I hope it was the balloons since I don't have a freezer full of them!

Happy Half Birthday Ben

Ben is 6 months old today!

We celebrated this half milestone with a half a cake... Balloons... and his first real food experiance, in his birthday suit of course! We gave him sweet potatoes to try today. I have been making him fresh organic baby food and freezing it for awhile now and would have been sad if he spit it back in my face. He LOVED it however and ate it all. He also managed to grab a hunk of birthday cake and got a little in his mouth before I could grab his hand (if you click on the picture to enlarge it you can see the cake in his hand...he doesn't look too impressed with me when I took it away)! I can't honestly call this his FIRST food though. His first was a chocolate he licked at christmas time. I thought he was just bent over looking at something when I realized he had been licking a chocolate in a box on the counter. He also had a few licks of my pure juice mango popcicle the other day and I let him suck on my apple yesturday... I think that was just accidental practice though and I don't plan on giving him chocolate, popciscles and whole apples for real any time soon.
I am really looking forward to his first year birthday party. He has grown up so much in this short time I can't wait to see who he becomes in the next half of the year!!!

Daytona 500

Anyone who knows Jon knows about his love of Nascar. I know when we found out we were having a boy (if we had a girl she would just be wearing a pink number 88) that Jon had visions of his son beside him sharing in his love of racing. Today that dream came true for him as Ben sat on his lap enthralled with the cars going around and around (I on the other hand am bored enough to write this...). Ben does look awfully cute in his Jr. outfit though!

New Floors

Ben had allergy testing done last week...here is the verdict-
NO:
Eggs, rice (rice! I know) dairy, rye, spelt, oats, citrus, berries, and dust mites among others.

Jon spent yesturday then taking the dust catching carpet out of Ben's room. We have enough flooring for the whole house so fortunatly yesturdays attempt went well. It also became obvious that doing ANYTHING with a 6 month old is virtually impossible. So our little almost crawling baby got to spend a significant amount of yesturday afternoon (of course he wouldn't nap yesturday!) in a laundry basket with toys. With the daycare of course I have at least 4 extra playpens kicking around but Ben kept toppling over in it so the laundry basket helped keep him upright...

I am thrilled with how his room turned out but next weekend for the mater bedroom and hallway a babysitter may be in his future!

Happy Valentine's Day

Ben had a nice first valentine's day. He got lots of Valentines from his friends at my daycare (they really do love him!) and got spoiled (as usual) by his grandparents. He really wanted the chocolate covered strawberry flowers J's mom made us. She also made heart cookies for him but his dad ate them all. She will make him some dairy, sugar and corn free ones next year with banana icing mmmmmm mmmmm.... J and I went out for dinner. There was a magician there with a rabbit (I wonder if the food services health board knew about this?) and balloon flowers. We both had ribs and Seeing as I had been on a very bland diet the last few weeks could not really handle it ( I also had fries and pop which may have also contributed to the problem) and spent the second half of our meal in the bathroom trying to keep it down (it was an eighteen dollar entree, I didn't want to waste it!!) Otherwise I think we all felt very loved and so the day was a success.

Hi From Ben

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Whenever I am blogging Ben usually sits on my lap. He is showing a lot of interest in typing himself and you can see by the expression on his face he takes blogging very seriously!