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Christmas Tree Costume
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Lynn turned Ben into a Christmas tree for Halloween, and he loved it! He greeted trick-or-treaters at the door at the Warner household in West Hartford, Connecticut. We missed a kids' parade on Saturday due to TWO INCHES of rain.

Ben pulled a fast one during his nap today. He managed to get out of a zip-up sleep sack, remove  his pants, socks, and diaper, and escape his pack-and-play. We are still not sure how. And he managed to not make a mess of the diaper. (The other day he removed all his clothes and a poopy diaper without making a mess.) In fact, when I heard him banging around in the room he's sleeping in, it looked like he was trying to put on a new diaper. That would be a neat

Ben's versions of non sequitors. In the bath the other night, Ben stops playing with toys and says, unusually clearly, to Lynn and I, "Most people have trains."

Lynn recounts: He noticed that the yogurt container he was eating from had maple leaves on it - we usually call it maple syrup yogurt. I asked "where do we get maple syrup?" Ben said "on waffles."

More to come as I recall them.

Ben is now feeding me pinches of fake food. We were reading Eating the Alphabet, a book written and illustrated by Lois Ehlert--who has a way with drawing and cutting fruit and vegetables--and he would reach down to a cucumber or such, pinch his fingers and then lift it to my mouth. I'd say, "um, yum, yum," and he appeared satisfied.

I was just emailing unsolicited baby advice to a colleague with a kid due in a few days and realized I could distill my advice in a very few number of steps now.

1. Sleep whenever you can in the first two months. Just give up the notion that you're going to get anything done. Pay bills, but don't try to be productive outside of work if you have to work during that period. I gave up way too much sleep thinking that it would be better to be awake while Ben slept. Big mistake.

2. Get a Miracle Blanket and swaddle the kid.

3. If the baby is "colicky," talk to your doctor about reflux. Ben has reflux and a very simple, safe prescription stopped his discomfort. I expect a good portion of colicky babies have acid reflux. It's very common but not always treated.

4. Create a CD

The latest Ben news? He can say rose, ribbon, and popsicle...at least recognizable to us, but distinct words. He has something like 100 to 150 words now, although I don't think anyone but Lynn and I could pick them out. I'd heard this from other parents before, and now I see how "pee!" and "puh!" and "pee-ee-uh!" are definitely not the same thing. He's teaching us his language as much as we're teaching him ours.

The more remarkable thing is how many objects he knows the names of. I can point to practically anything on the page in his books, including ones with hundreds of objects alphabetically organized or sorted by color, and he will almost immediately point to oranges, owls, or olivetti typewriters. I'm making the last one up.

He got a trike for Christmas. He'll take your hand and walk now. Tonight I asked him after his

Lynn and Ben are off to visit her parents for 10 days starting tomorrow. Let the waterworks begin on both ends. I may slip out on a frequent flyer ticket to see them, but my list of house repairs while they're gone is quite long. We'll see if I (and they) can hold out. Ten days in the life of a nearly 14 month old is a long, long time. He went from standing to walking well within 10 days. I'll miss them.

I hear from my loyal blog readers that you want more Ben news. Of course. I have to restrain myself.

He's not walking, but he's very adept at pulling himself up and balancing. He is very good about carefully lowering himself down. Very few thuds. We can tell when it's nap time, because his coordination fails. Walking is not far off, we're told by parents of older children.

He eats a lot of solid food. Four times a day. Not petite quantities. Entire half-pint (joke intended) glasses of organic millet and broccoli, for instance. Yes, we change a lot of diapers.

He's still very happy. The teething gets him (and us) down, and he has two enormous molars that still haven't broken through after what we think is about two months. But he has seven teeth that are pretty glorious. He's generally charming.

He figured out how to put smaller

Ben has been sleeping on a wedge since he was a few weeks old due to acid reflux--what's fortunately a pretty easily treatable condition for infants these days. We go to a compounding pharmacy which mixes up tutti-frutti flavor with unpalatable Zantac syrup under prescription and he has been very happily taking it for some time. It doesn't stop spit up, don't get me wrong. But it reduces acid production, so he could eat without a sour tummy and it stopped a lot of complaining from the acid in his stomach and throat.

He hit some milestone a few weeks ago as we see virtually no spitup beyond a curd or two on an average day. If you're not a parent, you have no idea what a milestone that is. The burp clothes you've been carrying around with you like religious vestments for months stop being so important (until he

Every minute that goes by is the longest time that I've been away from my boychikeleh since he was born. I'm at a conference (SXSWi), and keep thinking about the boy!

For all of my regular reader (sorry, old joke) the big news for February and Ben's six-month birthday is that he now sleeps unswaddled. Let angels sing and cherubim frolic. A big transition for us, and apparently of little significance to him; he's busy sleeping. I'll post more updates on Ben's beaming face, his ability to sit unsupported, and his one (so far) unassisted roll from stomach soon.

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This is a recent photo of Benjamin in which he is smiling. He smiles all the time. Seriously. But he's incredibly camera savvy. The lens comes out and he goes all neutral like. But we fooled him. We're getting savvier, too.

(This was a test of posting an image to my blog via Flickr, too, a very interesting photo service that's got a remarkably cool interface for uploading.)

Ben is now sleeping through the night. Sorta. He's now eight days into sleeping in his own room, which didn't cause him to miss a beat, and the last two nights, he has slept 12 hours with a 30-minute feeding in the wee hours. These last two nights, he's complained briefly ("wahh!...wahhh!...longer pause...wah!" and silence) a couple hours before he actually wanted to be fed. It's breathtaking. It means we can put him down at 8 am, go to bed at 11, get a full night's sleep, and he wakes up after us.

We'd better not get too used to this.