*** Love is in the Air!! ***

Last week, April and I had a BALL taking our babes to have their Valentines Day portraits made. Afterall, they ARE Sweethearts!! It was a task requiring monumental effort to get these two rested, fed, dressed and clean and to the mall at the same time of day. Whew! But it was so worth it...the pictures are adorable!

Ben and Sophia's First Valentine's Day

Ben only napped for one hour that morning (of course, on photo shoot day!), so he wasn't big into smiling. And, poor Sophia was sleepy and kept yawning...hee, hee!! They were troopers, though, and we got a few good shots, and had LOTS of good laughs :) Immediately after the shot above, Ben started bucking around on his hands and knees (since he's trying so hard to crawl lately), and there went little Sophia and her cute hat, flopping onto the floor while Ben tried to take off!

So, those are the "keepers". Here are the outtakes:

"Hey, Little Mama...come here, I gotta tell you something!"

"I love you, Sophia!" says Ben. "Hmph. I don't kiss on the first Valentine's Day!!" says Sophia.


And last, but not least....my cutie-pie giving us that precious grin!!!

Time Flies!

Wow! Time has really flown....my baby's half of one year old! He has had an action-filled fifth month with lots of new experiences. He had his first "babysitter"....Grandmama and Grandaddy came over while we went to a Christmas party. He had a bottle and went to bed for someone else for the first time, and Mama was so relieved that it went very well!!!

Ben also stopped nursing in his fifth month and went to formula full-time. He's a very flexible baby in this area, so it went just fine. I had a "ticker" on the blog to keep track of how long I'd been nursing, encouraging me to keep going, so on the last day, I took a snip of it "for the record". I'm sad not to be providing Ben with the perfect food anymore, but it was time for us to move on and I am very proud for making it 5 months!!!

Ben also experienced his first snow...several of them, in fact. It snowed so much, our power even went out! Daddy was stuck on the highway in traffic for seven hours while Ben and I got colder and colder in the house with no heat. Mama was getting pretty nervous! Luckily, the power came on about 30 minutes after Mark finally made it home, as we were getting ready to brave the snowy roads and take Ben to a hotel to get warm.

As for his other "stats", Ben's growing like a weed - his 6 month appointment isn't until next week, but I bet he's at least 15 or 16 pounds. He's out of a lot of his 6 months clothes and moving on to 9 months, and just last week I bought his first box of Size 3 diapers.

Ben can also sit up now! It's SUPER cute ~ I'll be sure to post a picture of his newest skill soon. I'm so glad he finally got the hang of it because he was really fussy for about 2 or 3 weeks and I truly believe it was frustration from not being able to sit yet. As soon as he was able to with consistency, he was a much happier baby!

Blessings Abound

My baby is six months old ~ wow! This has absolutely been the best six months of my whole life :) I am so blessed to be able to stay at home with him for the time being, and not a day has passed that I haven't thanked God for overflowing my life and heart with such JOY! Most days, my eyes are filled with tears of happiness at some point in the day because I just can't believe how lucky I am to be Ben's mama.

Before he arrived, I imagined the thing I would tire of doing (and even dread sometimes) was putting him down for naps and bedtimes...I pictured lots of resistance and struggle, "crying it out", etc. Fortunately, it hasn't involved much of that at all. So in his lifetime, I've probably put him down to sleep at least 800 times (!!) including naps and bedtimes, and I find myself loving every single minute of it!! Last night as I rocked him "sleepy" and held that sweet baby in my arms, I actually teared up because I didn't want to put him in his crib yet....just wanted to keep on rocking my little boy all night. I love, love, love being a mommy!!

Here's our little miracle six months ago on his birth day...he's about 5 minutes old in this video. God is so GOOD!