Kuklish Reunion '09

Nana's family getting together for another summer cookout. Aunt Becki was helping little Jordan who just turned one...he is getting ready to walk any day now.

Attacking cousin Natalie's cell phone.

Hanging out for a snack with Aunt Jeanie and Jordan.

Cory and Jordan.

Benzilla attacks!!

Sometime during the cookout he found a nice little hidden spot at the corner of the house. Sometimes ya just gotta get away from it all.

Aunt Becki making daquiris. Yummy.

Jason and Chris, grilling what looked like 82 pounds of sausage.

Sisters and cousins. And Dan.

Catching Uncle Jim by surprise.

Pap pretending to make a phone call.

Aunt Janie styling the hat that's kept on my parents' couch in memory of Pap-Pap.

E-town Park

Finally catching up on more photos...we went to the Elizabethtown park a couple weeks ago, the same park I used to go to as a kid.

First Words!

And his first word was...(drumroll)...Elmo! This photo was taken right after Mike & I heard Ben say it. But it wasn't the first time he said it. Earlier this week, my folks babysat while Mike & I went out to dinner in Lancaster. They got him ready for bed and popped in his Elmo movie on DVD, just like we do every night (he watches the first ten or fifteen minutes over and over). When we got home, my parents insisted that Ben had said "Elmo." I did not believe them. Then a couple nights later, Mike was going through the same before-bed routine. And we heard it. He definitely said "Elmo" when Elmo first appeared on the TV screen. I finally believed Nana & Pap!

Since then, Ben has said "Elmo" several more times, sometimes just getting out "Elm." But we know he's talking, and it's not just random sounds anymore. Plus he's said some other words: mama, dada, and up. My folks insist he said "Hi Mom" but I'm not convinced that was intentional (though Mike has been persuaded that he really said it). Ben is also trying to say words like cat, car, and banana. He repeats the first sounds over and over. He has had a couple of speech therapy sessions, and we have several more scheduled before we move. I am so excited to go to his next session and report on his progress! Oh, and he's finally signing things I've been trying to teach him for months.

First Real Haircut

I've snipped some bits of Ben's hair over the last few months to keep him from getting a mullet, but it was time to take him to a pro. Here is the "before" picture.

We took our chances by taking him to a random salon and hoping we got a decent stylist. She was so awesome! She was super nice and patient, and since he squirmed a lot right before she finished, she said if we found any spots she missed we could bring him in another day and she'd fix it.

Mike tried to distract him with his cell phone. It kind of worked...but he still cried. Nana and I stood on the sidelines.

And here is his "after" photo. He was happy to be done with the haircut, but he wouldn't give up the cell phone.

Trip to PA

Finally getting to post some pics of our trip this week. Can't remember why Ben was so grumpy here; he actually had a really good car trip.

At a rest stop somewhere in Virginia toward the end of the drive. There was much running and hollering by both boys. We thought Ben might fall asleep when he got back in the car, but he stayed awake until 45 minutes before we got to my folks' house.

Hanging out with Nana the night we arrived. He definitely remembered his grandparents and looked thrilled to see them.

Playing on the computer with Grandpap. This seemed like a good idea to Pappy until Ben crashed the computer. Again. Now the computer stays off while Ben is awake.

The first of two inflatable pools we blew up for him. This one was brand new but kept deflating.

Nana & Pap found oodles of toys for Ben to play with while he's here. He really likes this 3-car racetrack.

If you haven't noticed, Ben is obsessed with electronics. He saw the cordless phone in its base and moved this chair out of the way to get to it.

Here's the second pool. Apparently the inflatable rings are more delicious in this pool.

Nana found a cute frog sprinkler that Ben seemed a bit scared of. But he likes playing with the frog when it's not hooked up to the hose.

He is fascinated by this picture frame with photos of my dad's parents.

Well, Ben just woke up from his nap, which means I have to turn the computer off or suffer the consequences. More pics to come.

Rental House

This was the first of many moving days we will be having this summer. Here is the house we're renting until we can move into temporary lodging on base shortly before we fly to Germany. Right now we're visiting family up north, but as soon as we get back to Georgia we will start shipping our stuff overseas. Some of it will hopefully be there by the time we get there, and the rest of it might arrive as late as October.

One of Mike's coworkers, who has four kids of her own, offered to babysit Ben the morning we moved. He had a blast. Then he had a great time rummaging through the new house and all the boxes lying around. He really liked the little Scrabble pieces, and I was scared to death that he would choke on one.

Loving some orange juice. He does great with drinking through a straw, but he's actually starting to prefer drinking straight from a cup. Which is going to be super messy during our travels.

I made sure to have his CD player out so that he had something familiar from the old house. He parks himself in front of this mirror so much that I didn't have the heart to put it away.

Playing peekaboo in our new bedroom.

One of his new activities: jumping and rolling around on our bed.

Tuckered out on Momma's lap.

Not having cable, or any TV signal for that matter, has been good for us. Ben doesn't run to the TV as much because we rarely have it on. We can only watch DVDs, and we moved the DVD player above the TV so that Ben can't reach it. The house is significantly larger than our old house, and once I got some of the moving clutter put away, Ben had plenty of room to run. Plus the floor kind of creaks, and he loves stomping around the house.

Hiatus

Yeah, I know, it's been a long time since the last update and people might riot if I don't post some photos soon but we've had a lot of chaos going on the last couple of weeks. Here's the rundown of what's been going on:
- We moved all our stuff from our house into a rental house, with the help of some very competent and awesome friends. Words can't express how grateful I am for their help.
- We closed on our house. It was very emotional for me, which I didn't anticipate.
- I packed boxes at one house, unpacked them at another house, and scrubbed our old place from top to bottom over the course of two days with the help of another totally awesome friend.
- Mike played his last concert with the band at Robins, the annual Independence Day concert.
- We hit the road to visit family in the northeast...I'm thinking of it as our "farewell tour" before moving overseas.

We are so fortunate that one of Mike's coworkers offered to rent us one of his houses for 6 weeks. But it's also hard to get used to. Mike and I had lived in places for one or two years, then moved on. But then we bought our house and lived in it for almost five years. It's the only home Ben has known so far. So it's a bit of an adjustment to move somewhere else for a little bit, and then stay in temporary base housing. The biggest challenge for Mike and me has been not having internet access at home. We didn't think it would be worth it to have it setup just for a few weeks, and while Mike has a laptop now, none of our neighbors were kind enough to have an unsecured connection. So we have to rely on free Wi-Fi places, which isn't very convenient, especially with Ben. So while we're at my folks' house I will try to post as many photos as I can. The next couple of months are going to be quite a roller coaster ride.