Batchu

Batchu means "feed me" - Ben will announce it after he's woken up, he'll announce it when he enters the kitchen and tries to climb into his high chair, he'll add "Juice" or "Apple" to it if you don't respond right away. He's also clapping and saying "yay" and now asks for "baths" and gets excited about having his teeth "brush"ed.

Rachel plans to live near us. And she intends for us to buy a house for her and her daughter. No husband? Not right away, she's going to adopt a daughter and get married later. (Wonder how this coincides with her other plans to not go to college because she's going to marry a husband who has a job so she can stay home with the children - and why should you go to college if you're not going to have a job of your own?) Why won't she buy the house with her own money? That's all being saved for candy and cookies and toys for her and her daughter.

When we began to talk of power bills and car insurance and phone and water and sewer and garbage and car payments and food and clothing and pet food, she swooned, exclaimed in an unhappy manner that "everything takes money" and that it made her so tired to think about that she was "going to die" as she laid down on the chairs in the lunchroom while visiting me for lunch.

Updates

Ben just said "Ooouuuut" to get out of his highchair, and he sounded like E.T. saying "Oooouuuch."

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He's doing really well so far with the Christmas tree. He's removed some ornaments but has mostly been leaving it alone. I think having the Little People Nativity Set has been a big help there. He's very interested in playing with those. Plus I haven't made it taboo for him to touch the tree or the ornaments, purposely putting not-easily-broken ones on the lower branches and handing a few to him to touch and carry around. The tree has been up for about a week now. So far, so good!

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Rachel's reading comprehension has gone through the roof in the last few months! When she started Kindergarten, the teacher tested her on the Critical Words they'll need to know by the end of first grade. There are 126 of them, and Kindergarteners need to be able to sight-read at least 26 of them by the end of the school year. When they tested Rachel in October, she knew 62! Her teacher re-tested her a few weeks ago, and she knew 92. She's able to pick up children's books like Berenstain Bears and can read almost all of the words without help. She sounded out the word "Individually" from a package of Life Savers that were individually wrapped. She knew "wrapped," too. It's just crazy how quickly she's learning words. I've read with her since she was pretty young and she watches things like Sesame Street and Between the Lions where they talk about words and letters, but it's still just amazing to me how rapidly the comprehension is building.

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Ben is learning to communicate with more words. Besides the words I talked about before, he's saying up, out, "wha da" for what's that?, "get it" (like "I'll get it!"), kitty, book, Bible and juice. There are probably a few more that I'm forgetting, too. And he's modified his fake sneezing so that he'll actually say "Ah-choo!" when he does it. He's a total ham, and he'll laugh quite heartily when someone else fake-sneezes, too.

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Rachel had the opportunity to sing with the children's choir at our church on Christmas Eve and has been practicing the last few weeks. Besides practices during the Sunday school time, she's also listening to a CD they were given and has been looking at the word sheet as well. She already knows one of the songs really well. They're singing 3 along with our adult choir. She's probably going to know her part better than I'll know mine!

Indiana Jones Apparently Lives at My House

Ben is truly a fearless little boy. He walks right off the edge of a step into our step-down living room, sometimes remaining upright, sometimes not. He careens up and down a flight of stairs with surprising speed for a boy that young. He runs after his sister, sometimes running right into her and purposely colliding heads. He'll throw himself into and out of the bathtub, step off of a bed just figuring that the person in front of him is going to catch him, and in general shows a surprisingly small sense of self-preservation at this stage.

He's also an adventure-seeker. We recently had to relocate our end table to the other end of the loveseat because he would use the height of the entry area to climb onto said end table and play with the lamp that was there, pulling it over a couple of times (and almost pulling it over a few more times, were it not for my lightning-like reflexes).

My plan for our Christmas tree was to put it in a corner and surround it with our couch and our coffee table on its two open sides. The coffee table is lower than the end tables, and even without the height advantage of the entry area, it clearly is a plan that is not going to work. That boy is not going to let a little ol' coffee table stand between him and a big tall tree with shiny things and flashy lights on it. I'm truly puzzled about what to do, since I'm not willing to pay for a fence to put around it and would rather not have to put it downstairs in the family room. I'll figure something out, though, I'm sure.

Today Rachel and I were reading on the couch when he started clamoring for my attention. I figured he felt left out and wanted to be up with us, so I picked him up. He immediately turned to the back of the couch and started to scramble over the couch cushions so that he could grab the string of orange lights that we've had up for Halloween and Thanksgiving. I thought "Well, we'll just remove that temptation and I'll sit on the floor to read." A minute passes, then I feel his hand on my shoulder and realize he's used his jack-in-the-box to step up and my shoulder as leverage so that he can throw himself onto the couch and have another go at the string of lights.

I'm pretty sure he will be the child that bungee-jumps, goes rock climbing, parachutes, and does many other things that will generally cause his mother to have heart palpitations one day. Also, and not coincidentally, I'm sure he's the child most likely to break bones.

The Nightly Scam

For reasons we don't understand, the aquarium in Ben's crib can be turned up to insane levels. Bright. Boy that he is, he's figured out how to pick which sound he wants he hear and how to turn up the volume really loud.

Many nights, I will go in there and turn the volume down. Often when I go to do that, he's standing right up against it staring at the fish and the bubbles. When I open the door and walk in, he dives (literally) to the bed, as if he was asleep. When I first discovered this, I had to show Lori Ben's cleverness. But, no, he won't, instead crying to be lifted out of his crib.

Every time.