Haircut!

Let's just say Benjamin's first haircut was well-documented in the photo sense. (And this isn't even all of them!)

Before. (Please note the bangs in the eyes and the shaggy-dog look around the ears.)







We decided the best way to accomplish this difficult (and dangerous!) feat was to set up Seth's laptop on the kitchen table and let Benjamin watch Baby Mozart. This is just about the only thing that will hold his attention well enough to make him sit completely still.

As you can see, he is mesmorized. Perfect!


After much combing, debating, and chickening out, Mama finally decides where to make the first cut. I think the look on my face says it all....
















"Here it is, the first snip of hair!" (I was seriously thinking about how the clip will look in the baby book. Am I pathetic or what?)
















Then we took care of the shaggy stuff around the ears. Good thing he is still completely engrossed in his video. This part is hard enough on a grown-up!






After. The result of our labor was a clean-cut, yet strangely older looking little boy. Yet another reminder that he is growing up so fast! Yet, I am enjoying my "big boy." He learns something new everyday and each time I think I couldn't be more proud of his little accomplishments he stretches the limits of my heart with some new and amazing feat. Children are such a joy!

Crawling and other milestones

I guess I mentioned on my post about Seth's return that Benjamin started crawling a week and a half ago. But there have been many more changes over the past couple of weeks....

July 12-Gave Mama 1st "kisses." He's still sparing with them, but will occassionally lean over and plant a big wet open-mouthed "o" on your arm or chest. :)

July 13-2 new signs: "milk" and "eat." I've only seen him do "milk" once or twice, but he regularly tells us he wants to eat by patting the back of his hand over his open mouth and making an "ah" sound. The effect is something like the stereo-typical "indian whoop." The real sign is bringing your fingers, grouped together like you are operating a puppet, toward your mouth, but whatever!

We also had Benjamin's 9 month check-up this day. The doc was really pleased with how great his skin looks. It was the best he has ever seen him. That was really encouraging. On the other hand, he thought there may be more to the cough (resulting from the cold he caught in CA) Benjamin still had and put him on a nebulizer with Albuterol for 3 days and Pulmicort for an unspecified amount of time. He's not calling it asthma (it's too early for that--he said it is "reactive airway disease"), but we may be headed down the asthma road. Who knows. The first nebulizer treatment was awful. Benjamin screamed bloody murder the entire 10 minutes. I think the combination of the noise of the machine, the mask on his face, the smoke he was breathing, and being confined probably scared him. The treatments since then have been better. We've been letting him watch Baby Einstein during the treatments and he has been very compliant.

July 17-A tooth, that had been threatening to surface since a couple of days before we left CA finally errupted.

This same day Benjamin also said his first official word. We were watching the video Seth made for Benjamin. He was laying on his back, facing away from the TV so that he had to arch his back and tip his head in order to see. He kept looking back and saying "Da Da!" It was pretty clear to me that he knew exactly what he was saying! Actually, even a few days earlier than that he was "talking" to Seth on the phone and we both swore we heard him say "Hi Da Da!"

July 19-This was the day Seth returned home and Benjamin started crawling. But I don't think I've said yet that he also started pulling himself up to sit on his knees this same day. By the end of the day he could sit on his knees "free-standing" (not holding on to anything.) It's amazing to see him so mobile all of a sudden! He's a new baby.

July 21-A semi-sad milestone.... We finally took away the "paci." We had originally planned to do it at 6 months, but because of his eczema issues and some other difficulties we postponed the fateful day. By the time we felt it was time, our summer parting was immenent. Again, we decided to let him keep that little scrap of security for that time. But when he started to crawl and his sleep was disturbed anyway, we decided, "this is it!" He's still re-learning how to put himself to sleep, but he's adjusting fairly well. Sigh. He really loved that paci.

On a happier note, Benjamin also got his first haircut! This deserves it's own post complete with pictures....

July 22-The twin to the previously cut top tooth came through. These were tough ones!

July 26-Another semi-sad milestone: Benjamin is officially weaned. He started this process himself, partly as a result of being sick for 2-weeks and having a diminished appetite and partly due to the changes imposed by my pregnancy. It became clear that he was not getting enough to eat and was not interested enough anymore to work hard enough to make my body produce what he needed. Fortunately we had recently found a formula he could tolerate (which was a process). A happy result, though, has been much-needed weight gain. Another "plus" is that I don't have to strictly follow his allergy diet anymore! I was advised by our allergist not to over-do these foods during my pregnancy, though, as some, especially peanuts, have been suspected to pass through the placenta and could be one cause of peanut allergies in children.

News Flash!

You are currently viewing Baby Rodriquez #2, in utero, at 8 weeks and 5 days.

Yes, we are pleased to announce that we are again expecting! The anticipated event is scheduled to occur on or around February 19th, 2007. We learned the happy news exactly one week before Seth left for his trip. We were shocked (along with many of our friends and family), but excited. Benjamin will be a not-so-big brother of 16 months when he welcomes baby into the world.

FAQ:
-How are you feeling? The sickness comes in waves. I felt fairly sick while we were in California. (No, it wasn't all a cold!) Once we returned home I felt a little bit better. (Perhaps it was the distraction of preparing for Seth's return.) The past two days I've felt down-right awful.
-How far along are you? By the "normal" method of counting I should be 11 weeks and 2 days, but according to the above ultrasound the baby is measuring 8 days behind "normal." This means they are counting me at 10 weeks and 1 day.
-Are you planning on moving? No. We think we can make it work (somehow) to squeeze at least a bassinet into Benjamin's room.
-Are you okay with this? We are very happy! We know that it was God's timing to bless us with another little one this soon. It was even our preference to have children closer together in age.

Thanks for sharing this adventure of life with us! It should get even more interesting from here on out!

Seth returns!

Hello dear friends and family! I do hope the last 20 days have been less hectic for you than they have for us! I apologize for the lack of updated information this month. I should be posting several entries shortly, so put on your reading glasses!

The most important news to report is that Seth arrived home safely. He flew in the morning of Wednesday, July 19th. Benjamin and I were waiting as close to the mouth of the security zone as we were allowed. I was scanning the hallway beyond incessantly, while Benjamin took in the TSA agents, the shoe-shiners, and the pattern on the carpet. Despite my dilligent watch it was Seth who saw us first. He waved. I held Benjamin up first, then the sign we had made him. "Welcome Home Daddy!" (Benjamin "signed" it with paint hand-prints.) By the time Seth reached us Benjamin had become interested in something behind us again. I kept trying to turn him around, pointing and saying, "Look, here comes Daddy!" But when Seth said, "Hi Buddy!", he turned around in a hurry! He just looked for a few seconds and then, gradually, a grin spread across his face. He definitely recognized him. It took a few minutes for Benjamin to want to go to Seth. On first attempt he clung tightly to me. But a few minutes later, as we gathered ourselves to leave, Seth was rocketing him up in the air, and they were playing and laughing like no time had passed.

I am overwhelmed with relief to have my husband home again. My relief has less to do with his safety from the danger of war in Israel than with the restoration of the structure of our home. Although I am (obviously) thankful that he returned home unharmed, I was not overwhelmed by worry for his safety while he was there. Perhaps it is that I have been to Israel before and know first-hand some of the dynamics of violence in that country. I know my peace was due, in large part, to the prayers for our family from across the nation. (Thank You!) I felt relatively calm and very confident in the wise decisions Seth was making regarding his own safety. I was immensely relieved from a largely unfelt burden, however, the moment I first glimpsed Seth. This was evidenced by the immediate flow of tears upon first sight. I say "unfelt" because I did not realize the weight of being in-charge, temporary head of our household, until the weight was no longer mine to carry. I am overwhelmed by the beauty of God's design for men to be in charge and women to follow their lead. I am not made to be the one with the ultimate authority. God equipped me to do Seth's job (in part) while I had to and I didn't even really notice that it was "hard on me" until it was over. But my complete and utter relief at the return of our family to its proper working order is evidence of God's wisdom in designing the family to function in one specific way, playing to Seth's strengths as a man and my (very different) strengths as a woman.

On a lighter note, Benjamin dutifully waited until Daddy returned to start crawling, but he was up and going within an hour of our return home from the airport! It is so much fun to watch him wiggle and giggle his way across the floor. It's obvious he is immensely pleased with himself at having conquered such an important milestone. As a result of his new-found freedom he has adopted an "all play, no sleep" policy and is enforcing it with dilligence. It has taken him between 45 minutes and 2 hours to fall asleep each nap and night since that first taste of independence. Sigh.

Sick :(

Yes, Benjamin and I are both sick. This has been going on for about a week now. Ironically, (because we are in California and it's the summer--not exactly cold season) Benjamin caught his first official cold last Thursday. It started with coughing and congestion when he woke up Thursday morning and has pretty much continued on that course for an entire week now. He's not really showing big signs of improvement, unfortunately. Today Mom and I were convinced he had an ear infection as he woke up from 2 naps crying inconsolably (which is unusual for him. He usually wakes up very happy.) The second time I just knew something was wrong with him. We took him to a walk-in clinic where we saw a very nice doctor. She had to clean his ears out thoroughly in order to even see in them but pronounced them clear in the end. She did say he may have some pressure in his inner-ear, actually in the tube between the inner-ear and the throat, I believe, but that's not something she can see. For now I am to give him Tylenol or Motrin on a regular basis and see what happens over the next few days. Meanwhile, he has given me this lovely cold so I am coughing spectacularly as well. So much for our carefree vacation! Not that I'm complaining about a little extra rest. It's kind of nice. But someone forgot to give me the "mommies and babies can't be sick at the same time" memo. That part is not very fun.

4th of July

We had a great 4th of July. My childhood friend Erin, her husband Ian, and their daughter Ella came to my parent's house for the afternoon. Our long-time mutual friend and pseudo-mother, Carolyn also joined us. They came around lunchtime for which my dad grilled hamburgers and Mom put together all the picnic fixin's. Benjamin had a melt-down about 5 minutes into his lunch and earned himself an early nap, which he was eager to take so he must have needed it.

After both babies woke up from their naps we took them to the pool. It was a gorgeous afternoon, not as hot as it had the few days preceding and the pool was just the right temperature. It was Ella's first time in a pool so Benjamin showed her how it is done. :) In reality, they were both in their own little world for the most part! They both had a great time in the water and it was so entertaining to watch them enjoy it.

Later on, we did take Benjamin to the fireworks on the golf course near my parent's house. I put him down for a "nap" at 7:00 (should have been 6:30) so he could get a little extra rest on the front end and I guess he thought he was down for the night, even though he still had another feeding to go, I hadn't changed his diaper, etc. So I had to wake him up around 8:15 to go.

We took Benjamin in the stroller and Mom in the wheelchair (for those of you who don't know, my Mom is battling with sciatica right now so she has limited mobility.) I think Benjamin really liked it that Mom was "on wheels" just like him. We walked down a little ways from their house and ended up right across from the place where they shoot up the fireworks. A man came over before the show started and gave Benjamin two glowing bracelets so he had a lot of fun chewing on those before and after the show.

It was a good show. Benjamin whimpered a tiny bit when they shot off the first couple, but I covered his ears with my hand and my cheek and after that he was totally excited/mesmerized. He watched them all very attentively. Sometimes he would kick his legs, especially when they were shooting off a "shower" with a lot of noise, sometimes he was very quiet and wide-eyed, and when then huge one's, way up high would burst he would tip his little head back and look straight up. He didn't miss a thing.

I think my favorite part was that he seemed to know he was getting a privilege. He was just so excited, and seemed to be on his best behavior. It was so sweet to see him enjoy it so much.

New pics!

Our Visit to Papo and Mamacita's House

Benjamin and "Mamacita" (Seth's Mom).








We have a new trick. Mamacita makes all the little guys pop up and Benjamin pushes them all back down!







We had a great time playing in the pool in the backyard. It was as warm as a bath since it had been sitting out in the sun for several hours.






Benjamin checks out Uncle Ben (Seth's brother for whom he was named).

Greetings from Israel!

Greetings from Israel! The archaeological dig here at Hazor is in full swing. There are about 50 people involved in dig from several different countries. There are a few different languages being spoken on the site! An average day goes something like this:

4:15am Wake up knock at your door. I've been having a harder time this week getting up than I did last week. After you get yourself ready and throw on the dirty clothes you wore yesterday (you're just going to get them dirty again anyway!) then you grab a quick bite to eat of bread and jam or bread and chocolate spread (my personal favorite). You can also grab some coffee or tea.

5:00am Bus leaves for the site. It's only a 5 minute drive. The tel is within sight of the hotel. It's just getting light enough to see, but the sun doesn't come up for a while. Once you arrive, you grab your tools (pick ax, hoe, hand-held pick ax, trowel, brush, dust pan) and report to your area. I'm working in a certain room within area A5. Our assignment is to excavate the floor to bedrock, slowly but surely, picking out every pottery sherd and animal bone. We started at the Middle Bronze period (time of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.) and are trying to determine if the walls of this room were built during this period or the previous period (Early Bronze). It's slow work, involving a lot of buckets of dirt and rocks. Every now and then you have to organize a "bucket chain": a line of people stretching from your area to the wheelbarrows, passing buckets from one person to the next. It's also hard work. I knew that my arms and legs would be sore, but I didn't know that my thumbs could get sore! I told Kiersten that when I got home, she would have the buffest husband she ever had!

7:00am Take a break for "tea time." Enjoy some tea or coffee and some cookies and crackers.

9:30am Stop for breakfast. For you "Lord of the Rings" fans, you could truly call this "second breakfast". It's more substantial than what you scarfed down before you caught the bus, but is Mediteranean in style, meaning there's a lot of vegetables, yogurt, olives, eggs, and small loafs of bread. Not too bad. It hits the spot after a hard morning of work.

10:00am Get back to work. Somewhere in that half hour when you were eating breakfast, the weather got hot. So the rest of the time you're working is in the heat. Fortunately there are large canopies that have been erected over the areas where people are working to keep the sun off. As they say here, the sun is the worst enemy of an archaeological dig.

1:00pm Stop work and go wash pottery. This involves taking the pottery in buckets, filling the buckets with water, and scrubbing them down with a brush to get the dirt off.

2:00pm Take the bus back to the hotel for lunch.

2:30pm Naptime!

6:00pm Read pottery. I.e. look at and determine what period it dates to. I'm learning how to do this while I'm here.

7:30pm Dinner.

9:00pm Get a call from your pretty wife back home!

10:00pm Go to bed!

Our camping experience

Maybe you have been wondering how Benjamin's first camping trip went? He did amazingly well throughout the weekend! It all started with a 13 hour car-ride: 7 hours to Redding, CA (from Santa Clarita) and then another 6 to wind our way over to the coast! On the way up we opted for the drive-all-night option, which proved to be a smart move. Benjamin slept for about 8 hours, which is 3 hours less than he normally sleeps at night, but 8 hours more than I envisioning! During the entire trip up he cried a total of maybe 15 minutes. We were all amazed!

The campout itself was just the same as it's always been--we all sit around the campfire (or other, more shady, part of the common area) and reminisce. Every few hours the person responsible for the next meal gets up and starts working on preparation. Then we eat and talk some more. OK, we did have a little excitement, like going to the beach and to the river near the campground. At the beach the tide was super low so the water was very shallow for a good margin. I put Benjamin's feet in it and he seemed to like it. It was hard to tell because I was just trying to hang onto him and keep him from eating sand. I didn't really get much of a chance to enjoy him experiencing the ocean. That was actually the hardest part of the campout for me...missing things the group was doing and not even really experiencing much of what Benjamin was doing sometimes, just because I was solely responsible for him. I don't know if that makes sense. Like I said, my whole beach experience was trying to keep the sand out of Benjamin's eyes and mouth. (I didn't succeed entirely in the second endeavor.) Finally I announced that Benjamin and I were going on a walk, if anyone would like to join us. Becky took me up on it and she, Jay, Jonathan (her 3 and 5 year old) and I walked hand-in-hand in a big long line with Benjamin in the Snuggli on my front, up and down the beach. Those boys are so sweet. :)

The river was a story. We went once the first day we were there, without incident. Mostly to cool Benjamin off, who was so sweaty his whole head was wet and stinky! The second (and last!) time I went I was there with Becky, the boys, and Greg. I carefully waded a little way into the water (the bottom of which was covered with smooth, somewhat slippery stones) with Benjamin. I had been there a total of maybe 15 seconds when Greg, who is upstream from me, points downstream in my general direction and calmly says, "There's a snake in the water." For those of you who may not know how severely that announcement affected me, I am TERRIFIED of snakes of any variety! I'm not sure how I got out of the water without dropping Benjamin or slipping and falling flat on my face. I did see him, once I was safely out of the water, and he was pretty small, judging by the size of his head which was periscoping out of the water several feet from where I had been. Still. [Shudder shudder] He eventually swam away and I tried to sit on the bank for awhile, but just wasn't very comfortable and wasn't really having a good time anymore, being so jumpy and all. Then I saw a scorpion and it was all over. Buh bye. Benjamin and I had to go back to the campground.

And unfortunately I didn't take a single picture of the whole experience. Mostly because it was a full-time job just getting Benjamin from point A to point B. There was no room for a camera in the scenario. Looking back, I should have appointed someone else the keeper of my camera and had them take the pictures. Oh well. We have some great memories :)