"Uh-Oh"

This is a great Benjamin story:

The other day Benjamin brought me his book containing pictures of various family members. In preparation for our upcoming trip to California, I decided to try to begin to teach him to say names. We started with the grandparents.

"Can you say 'Mima'?"
"Meh-MA!"

"Can you say 'Grandpa'?"
"Pa-PA!"

"Can you say 'Papo'?"
"P-PO!"

"Can you say 'Mamacita'?"
Blank look.... "Uh-oh."

Hysterical!

Today I was sitting on the couch feeding the little guy I babysit a bottle. I was talking to the baby and not paying much attention to what was going on across the room. Talia was sitting in her bouncy seat and Benjamin was crouched in front of her. Assuming he was turning the vibrating feature on and off, I was surprised to hear the kitchen trashcan lid banging shut. I looked up and Benjamin was walking dutifully away from the trashcan. (Strictly speaking, Benjamin is not allowed to touch the kitchen trashcan, but occassionally he will find something on the floor and want to throw it away, which I allow.) Curious what he was throwing away, I watched him return to his position in front of the bouncy seat. Except this time he was slightly off-center which allowed me to see that he was removing the lint from between Talia's toes.

Best Friends

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that Benjamin adores Talia! He loves to entertain her, manipulating all the dangling baby toys she doesn’t yet know how to play with. When she gets up from a nap he is delighted; “TA-ya,” he yells. He turns the music on her swing on and off for her and starts the vibrator for her bouncy seat. He retrieves diapers for her on command and tries, mostly in vain, to put her paci in her mouth whenever he finds it laying around (regardless of whether she wants it or not!)

He loves to pay visits to her bed while she is sleeping. He has several methods of peeking in, although “peeking” implies quiet, which he usually is not. First, he drags his plastic stool and drops it some- where in the vacinity, usually 1-2 feet away. Then he totters up on top of it, toes balancing on the stool, hands grasping for the edge of the crib, body diagonal somewhere between. If the stool is not handy or he just wants a quick look he will tolerate looking through the mesh side of the pack-n-play, although this is not preferable because usually all he can see is blankets. These visits usually occur when Talia is either crying or making little squeeky baby sounds in her sleep. His solution used to be to shake the bed. Our family now has a “no bed shaking” rule. Now he typically tries either to drop a paci over the edge or exclaims, “UH-oh…UH-oh…UH-oh” until someone comes to drag him away.

We much prefer all this childish affection to the hostility of the first couple of weeks. Who would have thought he would grow to adore her so!

Cute Grumpy Baby

We're back!

If anyone happens to still be checking our blog, we're back! The last couple of months have been a bit crazy, but life seems to be finding equili- brium here in the Rodriquez household. Seth and I are constantly amazed at the blessing two beautiful children are in our lives. Benjamin has grown to love his baby sister and bestows an abundance of kisses on her daily, both spontaneously and on-demand. Talia is responsive, smiling and "goo"-ing at the nearest friendly face...most of the time. Alas, if only a little more sleeping were occuring on a regular basis, life would be perfect!

To summarize the last two months...
-Kiersten's mom was with us for a month after Talia's birth. My recovery from the c-section was quite a bit more difficult this time around so her assistance was vital to the operation of our household! Benjamin became quite attached to his "Mima." In fact, she definitely ranked a close second to Dada in his esteem. We were sad to see her go, but treasure the memories of that first month.

-We were able to get almost completely settled into the new house within the first couple of weeks, thanks to Mom and Seth.

-Talia has been a pretty easy baby. She has her issues now and then, but overall she eats well, sleeps well (even through toddler noise and crying!), and is pretty mild in temperament. Now if we could just get this sleeping through the night thing down pat....


























-Benjamin is growing up in all senses of the word. He has changed so much in the past two months I think it might be useless to try to summarize. He is no longer a baby, but is "all toddler" and most definitely "ALL boy." Among my favorite developments have been: finally consistently identifying me verbally as "Mama," allowing books to be read (front cover to back cover) to him, giving hugs and kisses with less coersion, and learning to run cars on the ground (as opposed to holding them mid-air and spinning their wheels).





















-Seth recently completed his VERY- LAST- EVER research paper (excepting, of course, the upcoming dissertation). It was (appropriately--if you know Seth--, I might add) on the techniques and tools of ancient warfare. (The picture was taken the evening after the presentation of this paper.) He is also excelling in his new job and just received, for his efforts, a nice raise!
-I have been adjusting to life with two--actually three--kiddos. The third is a 4 1/2 month old baby whom I keep 3-4 days per week. This will last until the end of May when his Mama finishes teaching. The great thing about having three little ones most of the week is the days when I don't babysit I feel like it's so easy to "only" have two!

This is just a quick overview and doesn't nearly capture the heart and soul of the adventure of these past weeks, but hopefully this will allow me to start fresh in my own mind and be able to share the more interesting aspects of life with these wonderful kids!

Talia Ruth Rodriquez

Talia Ruth Rodriquez made her way into our lives and hearts on Tuesday, February 13. She was 7 lbs. 3 oz. and 19 inches long. Mama's first words were, "she looks like Benjamin" and Daddy said "she's beautiful" (those may not have been his first words--I was pretty drugged at the time :) ) "Talia" is a Hebrew name meaning "morning dew" (appropriate as she was born early on a rainy morning). "Ruth" is after my mother's middle name (also my grandmother's middle name) and after the biblical character. It means "beautiful and compassionate" and her life verse, coordinating with this meaning, is I Peter 3:3-4.

For those of you keeping track, Talia did arrive one week earlier than planned. Our adventure began Monday night. We had moved just 2 days earlier (Saturday the 10th) and had worked hard Saturday and Monday getting things settled. We were exhausted by Monday evening and fell into bed between 10:30 and 11:00. As I was between sleep and awake, around 11:30, suddenly I had the strange realization that my water had broken! It took me a few seconds to even identify that that's what had happened. (I'll spare you the details.) I sat up and told Seth, "I think my water just broke!", to which he responded, "Are you serious?" We sat there stunned, for a couple of minutes before it hit us that we needed to get into gear. We called our neighbors/landlords to come stay the night with Benjamin and grabbed the bags we had carefully placed all together on a closet shelf so they would be easily located during the chaos of the move. We handed over Benjamin's "24 hour bag" and the "Benjamin Care Journal" I had prepared over the last several weeks to Sarah, who was knocking on our door in less than 10 minutes, and were on our way to the hospital just 20 minutes after this all began!

We got to the hospital a little after midnight and checked into Labor & Delivery. We expected to go into surgery shortly after we arrived, knowing that the c-section would probably prevent me from laboring for very long. My doctor was contacted and, to everyone's surprise, decided to wait to operate until 5:00 am. (She had been on-call 4 nights in a row and had done 9 c-sections over the weekend. I suppose I'm glad that she opted for a little more rest before cutting me open!) So Seth and I spent a fairly sleepless 4 1/2 hours waiting for the appointed time.

Having a planned c-section was a bit different from the "emergency" section I had with Benjamin. They had to prep me for surgery, including the anesthesia, before Seth was able to come in and be with me. It was a bit scary, partly because they did a "spinal" rather than the epidural I had the first time around. I didn't know anything about the procedure at all, which just made me nervous. Everything was fine, however, and Seth joined me in the O.R. a few minutes later. Almost immediately things were under way. My body did not react well to the surgery, for some reason, and I was sick throughout much of the procedure. Thankfully, I was feeling temporary relief at the moment of the birth and remember hearing her first cries and seeing a brief glimpse of her beautiful face before the neonatologist and medical team began their procedures.

We are so grateful for the safe arrival of a beautiful, healthy little girl. She is a joy to us in so many ways already. She is very content and happy, so far, and very rarely cries. She has piercing dark blue eyes which inspect anyone in her range of vision with great seriousness. She has a full head of dark brown hair, not as much or quite as dark as Benjamin's at birth. She has a petite little nose and rosebud lips. Altogether she is just beautiful!

Big Brother Benjamin is handling the transition with increasing dignity. At first he was not interested in any way in this new little bundle invading his world and taking away his Mama and Daddy, but over the past week his interest has increased daily. We are praying that his little world will stop rocking soon and allow him to become secure in the "new normal."

We do apologize for the lateness of this post. The complications juggling Benjamin's schedule and coordinating hospital runs between Benjamin's primary caretakers (Seth and my mom) kept all of us very busy for the first week. Not to mention, our phone and internet were not working in our new house, a fact which we had not had time to deal with when these unexpected events began. Such is life. We are all doing better now and, thanks to Seth and my mom, living in considerably less chaos.

...from yesterday...

5 days...(from yesterday)...we are moving
10 days...my mom comes
15 days...we will have another baby (if not sooner)

For those of you keeping track and thinking "does not compute," yes our moving day was changed. We were planning on last Saturday, but due to the continuing surprises the landlords find everytime they go to work on the house, it has been postponed to this Saturday. I do have to insert here how thankful we are for our landlords. They have been so conscientious with every detail of preparing this house for our family to live there. I actually feel very good about things even though the timing is a bit scary.

Baby update: nothing is happening, which is a good thing right now. I am still having lots of contractions, sometimes even very painful ones, but they are not the kind that "do anything" apparently. I go back to the doctor tomorrow for my weekly check-up, but as of last Friday nothing was happening. I must be the only pregnant woman in the world who does NOT want to go into labor early!

And a couple of cute little Benjamin anticdotes. He has a new two-syllable word: "doctor." Last Friday I told him where we were going (to the doctor) and he said it right back to me just like he'd always been saying it. Also he has suddenly "kicked it up a notch" with the sign language. Suddenly everything has a sign, mostly "please". He wanders around the house, bringing me items and signing "please." (Mostly when he wants me to play with him.) The other day he brought me 3 Baby Einstein videos, one at a time, signing "please" with an imploring look, before I realized he was asking if he could watch a movie. How could I say no to that? (Although I did have to say no to the second and third movie he wanted to watch!)

Well, I probably won't be back before we live at a different address. If you got a Christmas card from us you will receive an address update, probably in conjunction with a baby announcement. If not, email me with your address so I can add you to our list.