hi!

we had a great weekend this weekend. joe was out of town from friday morning to saturday night, but bennett and i managed to stay busy. the biggest weekend "event" was that bennett said his first official word! he has been saying "hi" constantly for days now. it is so cute! and he waves with it so we know he knows what he's saying. what a big boy :)

on friday we went to the splash pad with my friend katie and her 3 boys. bennett wasn't so sure about it, honestly- the water was pretty cold! but it was fun to be outside and he liked just hanging out and, of course, eating snacks.

love that big belly

my good friend missy had her baby on friday morning, so later friday afternoon after ben's nap, we went to visit her and baby jack. he's so sweet and TINY! he's just 2 ounces smaller than bennett was when he was born. how is it possible my little guy now weighs over 23 pounds?

jack david, born 8/16/13

on saturday bennett and i went to the minneapolis farmers market with my friend nicole. naturally, she bought lots of fresh veggies to cook with, while i simply bought snacks to eat on the spot (pulled pork sandwich, fresh-squeezed lemonade, and roasted corn on the cob). it was fun though and nice to be outside. i hadn't seen nicole in a while, so it was fun to catch up with her and see her new apartment.

that night, we had landon's 2nd birthday party! bennett was quite a ham at the party and had everyone talking :) like at his own birthday party, bennett loved popping all the balloons. i can't believe that balloons loudly popping in his face doesn't scare him, but he loves it! and landon kept saying "ben! pop!" so i think that meant landon liked it too. also, ben enjoyed getting snacks wherever he could find them (meghan's plate, off the ground where another kid spilled his goldfish, etc.). i swear this kid would eat all day if he could.

"ben!" "pop?"
it seems landon comes up with the ideas and ben carries them out.
could be interesting as these boys get older!

speaking of that, he has continued to wake up crying in the night. actually, lately it's been more like 5:30am. for sure too early to get up for the day, and i can tell he's still sleepy. the only thing that's seemed to help has been giving him some milk. ughhh i am hoping it's just a phase but it is getting EXHAUSTING not getting full nights of sleep. especially when he wakes up at 5:30 on a weekday because i don't think we really get back to sleep fully after that, knowing our alarms are going off shortly. a few nights in a row we gave him an extra sippy before bed which seemed to help, so we need to make sure we're doing that consistently to see if we can kick this early wake-up call thing. cuz it's not my fave. any other ideas? i don't think it's an ear infection. he had one not too long ago and he was crabby all. the. time. this is just crying around 5:30am, he drinks his milk, goes back to sleep and then when he actually gets up for the day he's his happy self...

anyway... joe got home saturday night. on sunday we lounged around, had lunch out, and then went to a bbq last night at a friend's house. they were hosting this barbeque for some young shoreview families. i knew a lot of the families there, but it was fun to meet some new people too. as we drove home, joe and i talked about how it made us even more excited about where we're living. having so many nice families with kids around the same age as bennett is a major part of what made us decide to move to shoreview in the first place. hopefully we'll have many more gatherings like this in the future.

moms and kiddos at the shoreview family bbq