Ben Update

So we are about two weeks post tongue tie snipping and Ben is doing great! He sits with us at dinner and eats bits and pieces of this and that. Here is with smooshed carrots all over his face.

We tried giving him a little monkey plate we had for him but he was so excited that the plate had a face that he just kept dumping the food off of it and laughing at the monkey.

Below are just some random pictures of Ben over the last week or so. He was just too cute all bundled up to play outside while daddy painted the porch.

And here is one of the sweaters featured here. I can't believe they are starting to fit! Gosh he is cute isn't he?!

Ben Has Become a Rogue Nation Developing Weapons of Mass Destruction!

This is what Benjamin just learned to do. Our lives as we knew them are now over.

And check out these quick mommy reflexes!!!

Tongue Tied?

Many of you know about the eating problems Ben has had literally since the day he was born. He was unable to suck (a basic baby reflex) and never once able to latch on at all to breastfeed (not even a bad latch). We were basically sent home from the hospital not knowing how we would feed our baby. He even struggled with bottle nipples and today he is 8 months old and still can only use a slow flow nipple. Once he started on baby food a few months ago he seemed to be having trouble swallowing and would end up gagging and vomiting.

My friend Katherine's little boy had had somewhat similar problems and helped me to do a little research into tongue ties. After much research and consideration we decided to take Ben to a doctor on Long Island who is a specialist in tongue tie's and correcting them to see if this is what was causing Ben's problems.

And indeed it was! His tongue was between a level 3 and 4 tie and his upper lip was also tied. She corrected both and we are praying that will be the answer and Ben will be able to start eating a more varied diet without the problems he had before. And maybe for mommy's sake we can switch to a faster nipple and it won't take him 45 minutes to finish a bottle!

He is recovering well for his snips. The doctor said to keep his hands out of his mouth for three days. When Claudio and I looked at her as if she was out of her mind she recommended putting socks on his hands. Well as you all know we never pass up an opportunity to put Ben's clothing on the wrong part of his body so we were all for it! ;) In actuality he has not been putting his hands in his mouth for whatever reason so we haven't had to worry about it, but we still tried this out for fun last night LOL....yeah we are evil parents ;)

Interestingly it didn't hinder his superior piano playing skills one bit!

Funky Bed Head

We are not sure where Ben got his hair from (and we are asked on a regular basis!). He has two parents with wavy unruly hair in various shades of brown. But Ben has bright red hair that is as straight and limp as could be. It always lies perfectly on his head. So you can imagine my surprise when he woke from his nap looking like this:





good shot of his teeth grandpa Bob and grandma Judi!

Ben is getting increasingly more difficult to photograph because once he sees the camera all he wants is to grab it from me (I swear I should have been born a jungle gym!) So here is a little video of a typical photo taking session.

The Mouse, The Bird and the Sausage by Rackham