A day in the life of Bentley

Bentley didn't know how he felt about dad's mustache.
He kept grabbing Dad by the shoulder so he could get a better look at it.

Bentley is still teething. I pray that those two teeth will come in soon, if not he will have four teeth coming in at once! So anyway, he wakes me up all night long because I don't have the heart to make him sleep in his own bed when he is in so much pain. Finally at 6 AM he decides I can't sleep anymore.
I get up to go get ready for the morning, Bentley gives Daddy kisses and pats his face so he'll wake up. Bentley walks around our room, eats toilet paper, tries to unravel the toilet paper and then he starts to dance. (He caught me dancing to a song the other day and was fascinated by the motion I was making with my knees. Apparently, if you squat down, your knees bend.) So there Bentley is, standing up and squatting just so he can bend his knees. He says "No," a few times and chillaxes in the bedroom while Dad showers. Mom  goes to make him breakfast.
Bentley has about two oz of Formula (not my fault, he doesn't like the sippy cups very much) and spends about ten minutes spitting out his oatmeal and the fruit that I painstakingly defrosted for him. He mashes the pancakes and he throws them on the ground and starts shrieking because he wants to get out of his chair. The conversation goes like this.
"Oh, Bentley, is that yummy oatmeal?"
"Ya ya, ya ya, da da" Bentley makes quite a show of how disgusting he thinks it is and spits it out.
"Bentley, mmm... this pancake is so yummy... Om nom nom..."
"No," He says.
"Do you want some pancake?"
"No."
"Do you want some oatmeal?"
Bentley blows raspberries at me.
"Would you like your cup?"
"Ya ya ya" Bentley proceeds to drink formula and then let it drain from his mouth down his chin and onto his shirt. He then puts his head back, grabs onto his chair's straps and starts yelling.
Dad leaves, Bentley gets to take a nap--right when we fall asleep, Dad calls. :) "No." Bentley says as I email Jacob his homework. "No," We finally lay back down and he sleep for ...maybe an hour.

He gets up and wants to eat. We try Chicken in a Biscuit. We try mac n cheese. We try his sippy cup with milk again. One to two oz of formula again. Thankfully I have bought my very last container of Formula yesterday. It's all whole milk from here on out!

Throughout the day I worry that Bentley is not getting enough to eat, but when I put him to bed he only took 4 oz of Formula so I must be doing something right.

The rest of the day goes like this.

Mommy is cooking, Bentley wants to see. Mommy is baking. Bentley wants to see. Bentley plays with toys. Mommy is still in the kitchen. Bentley wants to be held. Mommy's bread didn't turn out very well. Bentley Dances. Bentley is hungry. Mommy is baking again. Bentley wants to watch. Mommy's food is smoking because it overflowed. Bentley wants to be held. Bentley has a bath. Bentley dances. Bentley and Mommy go outside and play in the snow! Bentley can't walk very well because he is wearing shoes. Bentley is cold and wants to go back inside. Mommy's food didn't turn out right. Bentley wants to be held. Bentley takes a nap. Bentley wakes up with a sad face because Mommy made him sleep in his crib and she wasn't there when he woke up! Bentley wakes up and dances. Bentley watches Mommy bake one more time and wants to touch the mixer as it's mixing. Bentley eats corn bread. Daddy comes home. Bentley Dances. :) The house is full of "da da!" and "no!" Bentley gets ready for bed. Daddy reads good night moon. Bentley drinks half a bottle. Mommy rocks him for 20 minutes. He whines and cries until he finally falls asleep.
Mommy dances. :)

My sleepy boy had a low grade fever,  he fell asleep watching Psych with Daddy.

As exhausting as it is some days, I just can't help but smile when I look down into his sleepy eyes. He just wants to snuggle his mom. Is that so much to ask? I do wonder what will happen when his little sister comes home from the hospital with mom. Poor kid is going to have the shock of his life. He is growing so quickly and he understands so much, though, so maybe he won't have too hard of a time.

For the time being we are working on getting Bentley back into his own room. If that means I have to rock him to sleep every night, so be it. :) He's just such a cute kid. I can't help it.

9 Months

10 months

10 months- Banana hair!

11 Months! :D

Round Two!

During a game of would you rather, Jacob had the winning challenge. I think I may request that we buy him a monocle and encourage him to grow a beard so we can see this look all the time. He was a good sport and even posed for pictures--unfortunately we colored his face with eyeliner so any time he kissed Bentley or I we ended up a little blacker.

Good morning, everyone. I am writing this post at 331 AM, so, please bear with me if it has no rhyme or reason. Bentley was whining and crying all night long, and finally around 3 he finally threw up. Whether it is something he ate or the flu we are not sure yet. I am praying whichever it is that it will not go around the family. Poor kid. I hope this clears up soon. His schedule has been a bit skiwampus, so that may also be to blame.
Other than his throwing up, Bentley has actually been in a pretty good mood today. He was showing off some new words today as we drove down to meet my friend Camille for lunch. Basically on demand he said, "mama, dada" nothing new but followed by, "Mo" and "No" for More, and, well, obviously, "No". He is getting quite good at telling me when he wants more, but even better when he does not. Tonight after he woke up I kept saying, a little frustrated, because I had no idea what was wrong,. "Bentley, it is nighttime! You need to go to sleep!" To which he responded, "No....No....No..No...No.." Any time I said hush or be quiet, or it's time for bed. Finally we put in Hercules and he and I fell asleep for about 30 minutes. :) It's a good thing he is so cute and I love him so much. Someone else might be more than a little perturbed.

Ah. 99.9 Axillary temp. It's official. :( my little guy is sick. Why is it always at night??

No big loss though, I suppose. Lately I have been having dreams and waking up in the middle of the night, mind spinning about preparing my family, getting food storage, being ready for an emergency, having some form of self defense in my house. It's really rather frightening. I guess you could call them Pregnancy dreams, but I don't think so. Whether something is happening soon or it's just a reminder that we need to be preparing, I will take it for what it's worth and continue trying to prepare my home for whatever it may be.  :) But today we're just going to make it through Bentley's flu.

He is currently laying in my lap, pale as a ghost, watching Hercules through tired eyes.  Only 4 more hours until Jacob wakes up to do homework.

Life is pretty good though, I discovered Winco the other day and I was really excited. It's a pretty neat store--and the sample lady will soon know me by name. Bonuses all around. We finally got our bills from Huntsville Hospital and have sent them to our insurance. Our real bill is pending. But..zinga! It was expensive!
Let's see... Our stake's theme for the year is Keeping my own Conversion--and the relief society theme for my ward is Where is your Heart? So, we will be working very hard on our conversion this year.
We bought Bentley some church pictures and church books for Bentley (for his birthday). I showed them to him early to see if he would be interested in them and now he's always asking me to read them with him. :) One day I would still like to get him the Simon Dewey Board books but they didn't have them in-store when I went.

Okay, I have to go. Bentley is awake and wants to play with the computer. "no!" he says. ha ha


love ,


Courtney and babies

Aaallmooost 11 Months

  Bentley is almost 11 months and the growth we have seen is extraordinary!
He practically runs everywhere, he climbs those stairs like they are nothing and now he can get off the couch all by himself! Where did my baby go!!?

Bentley continues to be a happy boy, especially when we give him a bottle before he asks. We discovered that he wants bigger bottles, so now he takes 6-8 oz of formula depending on how long it's been since his last bottle. He has had one 3 hour nap and the other night he slept from 7 to 5 in the morning. I tried to feed him at 10:30 but he wouldn't hear of it.  It was a miracle!

The last couple of nights, however he has woken up with a terrifying fit. The first time he had gas, the second time I really think it was a bad dream or...he woke up and it was pitch black. I try to keep a night light in his room, but he has developed a curiosity for unplugging anything in the wall, and a plug-in flashlight is just too much to resist. He is back on schedule after our trip and he sleeps with his dog, Scout and a beautiful blue knit blanket his Aunt Blythe made for him. It has been so nice because he doesn't even scream at me, he just looks at his dog(his dog plays bedtime music) and lays on the blanket. :) we are also down to two naps a day! We get up at either 5 or six, we (Bentley and I) go back to sleep  two hours later and sleep for two hours(we take the first nap together in my bed). He takes a nap after lunch and goes to bed at seven. Ah bliss.

We had a visitor this last weekend, Uncle Braun came to stay with us while he was between apartments! Bentley LOVED it! He played with Braun's computer, and a keyboard, he got to play with the computer mouse and Uncle Braun was very sweet with him. :) we will miss him in our home. While he was here he helped me clean out my computer and showed Jacob all the components he will want in a desktop computer. It was a pretty sweet computer that they built online. Two monitors, i5 processing speed, lots of ram...in other words, it made our current computers look ancient. :) Hopefully one day soon we will have a computer like that, but it may not be for awhile. We'll see.

Jake and Bentley are so cute! Bentley sometimes just follows him around, he wants to look at all of Dad's school books and whenever Jake comes home from school Bentley is SO EXCITED. He does this little barbarian yell (that is the only way to describe it. Truly.) This morning Bentley was drinking his bottle and walking around and he followed Dad wherever he went.

Bentley is mouthing more and more words but he doesn't stray from the usual Mama, dada, baba. He can mouth "Hi" and he is trying really hard to figure out how to mouth the word "moo", which is really cute, but he just doesn't get it. I know one of these days he is going to surprise us by saying it loud and clear.

Bentley loves yogurt and Bananas, he tolerates crackers and won't eat mashed potatoes--unless Dad is feeding him, I don't know what is up with that, but to each their own, I suppose.

Baby sister is doing well, as far as I can tell. We have another ultrasound in 3 weeks and then we will be halfway to delivery. It's kind of crazy.

Bentley has a funny prickly rash all over his body. I can't tell if he picked it up in Alabama, or if it is a heat rash or if it's something else entirely but it covers his whole torso and sometimes it's on his shoulders and his legs, it comes and goes, I think it's getting better but he's had it for days, a cough too. Nasty things.We love how beautiful the snow is but I do look forward o the summer when there is less sickness and more time to play outside.


well, that's all for today.

Hasta la vista, baby.

The year is dying in the night; ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

2012

The second year of our marriage took place in the year 2012. It's been a wonderful year. We started it off with adding a son to our family. Bentley was born in February, I quit my job and we moved back to Utah, much to the chagrin of his Grandmother. Jacob learned he wants to finish his schooling and would prefer not to be employed in the retail business for the rest of his life. We got a playstation and experienced the world of Skyrim. We learned how to care for an infant, how to buy groceries for a month and where not to put your cinnamon rolls while trying to cook other dishes on the stove. We played munchkin with family, enjoyed a familiy reunion, ate many delicious meals over the holidays and finished up our year with the announcement of Bentley's new sibling, due in June. We flew to Alabama to  experience our second Christmas together.

Bentley has grown from infant to almost a toddler in just a year, at ten months old he can roll over, crawl, stand and walk--with great speed. He climbs up stairs, unrolls toilet paper, says Mama, Dada, Baba, Jesus (sounds more like jeeze), No and sometimes Hi. He also waves hello and good bye. He is skilled at pointing and loves to laugh. He has learned that mom and dad don't really mean it when they say no, unless they actually stand up, and then it's game over. He he plays peek a boo, "where's mommy" and other things.

I have learned that keeping your house clean is a pain and takes constant attention, patience and self motivation. 

It's hard to be alone in your house with your kid all day, but you gotta bring the bacon in some way, and Jacob does a fine job. 

God is everywhere and His hand is in all things. He protects us daily and showers blessings down upon us. He is at the helm of this ship we call life. Everything will work out in the end, and for our own good.

I've learned that if you don't use it you lose it, whether that is knowledge, your strength, body shape or testimony.

And that marriage takes work and some times mounds of patience--although, usually Jake and I are practicing patience with just me.

I have also learned a few things about the world around me. Looking around I have noticed that the kind of media that we watch is shockingly violent and sometimes explicitly sexual. It makes me so sad that we give in to such degrading "entertainment" or so we call it. I fear for the children of the next generation with such horrid images and content in their heads and in their ears, it's no wonder the morals of society are slipping.

As I looked around during our time of celebration I noticed that everyone was on some kind of electronic device, whether it was the TV, a cellphone, an Ipad or any other kind of toy. Now I'm not saying I'm not guilty of it, but what are we teaching the children? There is less interpersonal interaction, less talking. People cease socializing when those distractions come out--I find that sometimes it's even hard to find something to do that doesn't involve tv, the media or an electronic device. When did the world become so addicted to these toys?  

This year, I do have some resolutions. I don't normally have any or I don't keep them, but these I intend to keep.

1. I will find fun, productive ways to interact on a personal level with my friends and family

2. I am going to make God the center of my life, put Him first, strengthen my home and family

3. I am going to establish some kind of routine in my life at home in regards to cleaning the house, finding uplifting, wholesome activities for Bentley, play time and teaching.

I have other things I want to work on, such as my diet and exercise, but I figure these three is where I can start. The others will follow. Sorry this post was a bit of a downer at some parts, but I won't be party to that anymore. I don't want that filth in my head, let alone my child's head. 

I am optimistic that this year will be a great one. Jacob will do well in school, Bentley turns 1 in february, we will celebrate our 2 year anniversary in March and the newest addition to the family will be born in June. :) 

Happy New Year, everyone. May God bless you!