Ben Bites!

We know that many of you - our anonymous viewers from all around - have been eagerly awaiting the latest Ben news. He's recently had his 6-month check-up of which we are happy to report he is 18 lbs 3 ozs. and 27 inches in length! Not bad!

Since he is doing so well (and is so desperately interested he's developed food envy), we have finally started Ben on rice cereal. This is a big step, but necessary as Ben's already figured out how to drink from a straw (more than a few close-catches) and this week he got ahold of an open bag of cookies while Kirsten was grocery shopping and put his face right in, wide-mouthed looking for food.

We are finding that rice cereal isn't as exciting as the possiblity of getting some of Mae's cookies or Rich's milkshake, but he seems happy to be eating something new.

We don't have a lot of other health news, except to say that all his doctors say he looks healthy and is growing right on track! He is a happy baby, and that'i important. We still haven't seen a tooth yet despite the gallons of drool, but we see a solid bump so it's almost here!

Making Valentine's Special

Mae and Ben (and Kirsten) have been busy working on some special Valentine's for the family. While we can't show them to you just yet - don't want to give anything away before they arrive in the mail - we were eager to show our newest little cook hard at work on a Valentine's masterpeice! (And our newest Pony Express Rider!)

Ride 'em, Buckeroo!

After yesterday's successful swing event, Ben has been interested in movement! He lets us know by making a repeated and strong swinging motion regularly. So today we brought out Mae's rocking horse and thought we'd let him have a go.

As you can see, the horse was a big hit with both babes! Mae even wanted to ride tandem with our little cowboy. Now he just needs a little hat, and he'll look like his Pop-pop (wish I could find that picture to share!)

Play Day

Today we had a WONDERFUL time with our friends Logan and Connor (and their parents) at Pullen Park. Our friend Miss Sherri joined us and took lots of great pictures! We were sad to find the train and carousel not working, but we made our own fun! Connor's mom brought a soccer ball and all the kids had a great time passing it around, while the dads tried to coach them in their kicking skills (Guys, they're less than 3 years old!)

While we were at the park, Ben got a chance to try-out the swings... and he LOVED it! He didn't want to stop! Our babies are growing up so fast!

We are only putting up a few photos because we want to check with everyone first, but we hope to post a few additional cute pictures in the future.

Mae Mix!

Today was Mae's day in the kitchen - making a toddler-style trail mix! Mae got to decide what went in the mix, how much, and then how to mix it up! She put on a lovely apron (from Miss Sherri's collection) and dug right in to mixing, as you can see!

Kirsten read about this toddler activity here: Blissfully Domestic - Cooking with Toddlers: Snowy Trail Mix. We mostly stuck to the recipe but modified it by what we had on hand and enjoyed eating. It was a lot of fun for everyone and Mae seemed genuinely proud of her creation. I definately think we will try this again in the future. But we will be sure to limit some of the total amounts (rather than letting the toddler handle the whole jar of toasted sunflower seeds, which all ended up in the mix). We also had a little trouble getting her to put the ingredients into the bown instead of her mouth, but it made for great pictures

Baby Love

For Christmas, Mae got her first real baby dolls (Sandy S and Tabbi gave Mae her first doll, which she loves and recently named Darby), and from time to time she shows a real interest in them. But, most of the time she would rather help take care of her real baby brother.

Today was one of those times where Mae insisted we include Baby Julie in all of our activities. First, we put on Baby Julie in a new outfit and Mae held her in her highchair while she tried to eat. Then Mae disciplined Baby Julie for eating rocks (a problem we've been having with Mae lately). Then Mae tried to feed Baby Julie an empty bottle of Ben's (not successful). Then Mae decided she was kind of done taking care of Baby Julie, so she put her in Ben's swing and covered her with a dishtowel to keep her warm.

So, we thought Baby Julie was done for the day until Mae insisted Baby Julie was crying and needed to be "cawwied" gesturing to Ben's Bjorn baby carrier. Quick thinking and Mae had her own baby carrier, which she wore all afternoon playing and doing her thing.

Virtual Visitors, Welcome!

It's amazing for us to realize that we've been online maintaining this blog for more than a year. While it's been fun, we often wonder who if anyone is reading our posts, looking at our pictures, tuning into our adventures. Most of the time, the only way we can judge if our posts are being read is by reading comments -- which we have two friends that are wonderful with leaving us notes. We also hear from time to time verbally from folks that they saw this picture of Ben, or thought this at story about Mae was funny giving us a rough idea that maybe a few people check our blog from time to time (by the way, we would love to see comments from more people this year).



Imagine our surprise when we recently learned that in the past year we've had 503 different visitors from 44 different countries (Hello family and friends in the UK, Germany & Spain as well as Canada, Australia, Romania and elsewhere)! At first, we were a little concerned with all the international traffic, but we learned that the majority of people are visiting because we "invited" them to look.



Here are some more statistics on our blog: the average visitor spends a little over two minutes looking at a page and a half per visit. The majority of our visitors are using Internet Explorer and cable modems. The blog was looked at more than 2,830 times in the past 12 months. We aren't sure how this compares to other bloggers, but for a little family diary we are pretty excited about our numbers!



Thanks to everyone who is checking in on us! We hope you'll keep checking back with us, and we hope that this year you'll even leave us a little note in the comments sections so we know who you are! Thanks for a fun year; let's hope next year finds us as healthy and happy!

Happy Birthday, Alex!

We hope you have an awesome day! We are thinking of you!

Week of milestones!

We've had a big week here in the Collins house! On Wednesday, Ben finally rolled over on his own (back to front). He had been rolling over for almost two weeks, but only when he is crying in a major fit or asleep. It wasn't until Wednesday, when he decided he wanted to look for Kirsten in the kitchen (not that he could crawl into the kitchen, but he doesn't seem to know that). Not back to front action yet, but he does get on his belly and spin and inch around.

The big day, though, was Friday! It began when everyone woke up to learn that Mae can open doors. Over Christmas, Mae moved into a big girl bed because she showed us that she could put her leg over the side of her crib. It only took a day or two (and a few days since then), but she goes down for her nap and for the night no problem. At night, we keep our door open so when she gets up we know she is up but we keep Ben's door shut to keep her out unsupervised. But on Friday, Kirsten heard an odd noise over the monitor and went in to find the little girl playing on the futon with the television on (frustrated because she can't figure out how to change the channel to Playhouse Disney). Not sure how she got in there, Kirsten asked Mae to open the door and sure enough, she has figured it out. On went all the door guards that morning!

Then at lunchtime, Mae and Ben were playing on the floor, both on the their bellies, and Mae decided to show Ben how to crawl. First she crawls a few inches, then sits down and looks at Ben. Then she crawls back next to him and tries again. One of these times, Kirsten put her hands behind Ben's feet so he could push off, and he actually scooted the few inches to Mae. It was really exciting, despite this poor narrative.

But THEN the big moment came -- after Mae went down for his nap, Ben said "Da-da!" He had been talking all day long; they both had (inspired we think by the awesome Hurricanes' hockey game we took them to the night before)! And he had been making all kinds of new sounds, but he got it all together and blurted out "Da-da" and kept saying it until bedtime. (For those keeping score, Mae's first word was "Ma-ma" and we *think* Robyn's was "cat").

What an amazing week!

Little Mommy

Mae has been very interested in Ben's care for sometime now. When he cries, she tries to give him (sometimes a little forcefully) a pacifier or brings over a new toy for him to play with. When he is in his swing, she will often go over and push him (sometimes a little forcefully). When he is on the floor for tummy time, she will often go over and show him how to roll and crawl.

Now that Ben is also being fed with a bottle, she has been asking to feed him, "Momma, bottle Ben. Mae help." So, today we let her and she did a great job!

They are so cute, it almost makes us cry!