The birthday boy

The birthday boy!

The eyelashes (from daddy)

The sweetheart

The teeth

The eyes

The smile

The bribe

The clapper

The crawler

The cute boy

The boogie

The end.

Benson's First

 cake inspiration here

We threw a little shindig this evening...

for this cute boy and his grandma.  You see, her birthday is kind of today and tomorrow, and Benson's is on Monday.  His grandma found out just a couple of years ago that her birth date was wrong.  She'd always celebrated it on the 23rd, but apparently she was actually born on the 24th.  What a crazy thing to find out in your 70th decade.

This is one of the reasons we like to live here.  We love having family near to celebrate special occasions with.  We usually party at Scott's parent's home, but tonight the party was at ours.  I had a lot of fun getting ready for it, and we're so grateful we have a home and a yard so we can do things like this.

Benson wasn't too sure about this whole party thing.  He liked having other people around to hold him (he'll go to pretty much anyone), but he was very quiet and calm.  This was a stark difference to his sister who was infinitely more exited about this party than anyone else.    He especially didn't know what to do with all of the presents. He just sat and watched all of the commotion.

But this...

he was very, very sure about.

The dad of our home

What a dad this man has turned out to be.

I can't imagine not having a partner in parenting, especially this partner.  I have someone to let me nap when I haven't had any decent sleep for a week.  He helps me play whack-a-mole in the evenings when I feel like I'm all done being a mom for the day.  He assures me I'm doing the right thing when I have to discipline a naughty child.  He has a nearly endless reserve of patience that makes up for my limited supply.  He has always taught our children to be patient, although for a while I thought he just wasn't listening to them.  He's always been more wise.  He lightens the mood in our home.  He says "yes" when I've said "no" to something I really could have said "yes" to.  He plays.  He is our peacemaker.

I would be crazy without him.

Laundry

We put up a clothes line today.  It's my first.  I've found it oddly relaxing to put up and take the clothes down from the line today.  Like I'm getting back to my roots or something?  I don't know, but any sort of positive spin on laundry is a plus for me.

This laundry-doing gig is not my strong point in life.  It causes me way too much anxiety.  Is the stain going to come out?  I forgot to pre-treat!  Am I going to accidentally dry the stained item, thus setting in the stain and ruining it forever?  Am I going to accidentally dry my long-sleeved shirt or pair of pants, rendering them too short for my monkey-ish extremities?  Seriously stressful.  Am I alone in this?  Maybe this new method will save my mind because no accidental drying will happen.  Maybe, just maybe I won't hate laundry anymore.

I have high hopes for this little line.

Furniture Assembly Week

I now dub this Furniture Assembly Week at the Serr house.  Benson's new skills made it necessary to update some furniture pieces, so a trip to Ikea was planned.  Ikea always comes through for me.  We really needed a TV stand with doors to lock up all things electronic and something to set my sewing machine on rather than a highly unstable tv tray.  The other reason for the trip is the above picture of my bedroom.  I've stared at these boxes of books for 10 months and I couldn't have them sit there for another.  Our bookcase we used to have was knocked over by the wind as we were moving out of our apartment in Dallas.  It must have been divine intervention, or something, because it absolutely wouldn't have fit in our storage unit.  I've been hoping to stumble across a gem that I could refinish from the DI, but weekly scouting trips were unfruitful.  I wasn't sure that we'd be able to find one at Ikea that would fit in my parent's car with 5 people, but we sure did.  And it was $25!!!  I'm still exited about that.  I'm most exited about this:

Much, much better.

I think assembling furniture is a microcosm of our marriage.  I research, read, and give out directions, and Scott is the muscle behind the work as well as being my mistake-fixer and our safety guru.  It works well for us, and for the most part we have a very peaceful marriage and furniture assembly partnership.

Brothers

Benson and my brother, Alan

Benson has learned months worth of new tricks in just the last couple of weeks.  We've got crawling, pulling up to furniture, getting into just about everything, patty-cake, saying "hi" & "bye", and high-fiving.

Madeline's not impressed.  He's become more bothersome to her lately.  She especially doesn't appreciate being climbed on and having her hair pulled out.  One thing she said in the car a few days ago keeps replaying in my mind, and I laugh to myself every time I remember it.  "Mooooooom, I don't want Benson to touch me with his cold, wet hand".

I sympathize with her.  I had three younger brothers and I remember them being obnoxious and a little bit gross (they aren't either one anymore).  Benson's going to get worse on both counts until he gets better.  And then she'll realize he's a pretty cool guy like my brothers are now.