Go check out our new blog!

Here's the link...updates will now be posted here:
www.littlemanleasure.blogspot.com

There are already 3 updates that I have done in the past week!! :-)

Hello to all you Ben blog readers out there. I'm just going to stop apologizing for updating this blog so infrequently, and just accept the fact that I just don't do it very often!! So that means you all have to accept that fact too. :-)
So, here's what's new in the Leasure household: Ben is so so so close to walking. He can walk if he just holds one of my hands, and he's walking around furniture and even uses our dog as a walking prop...a moving walking prop. It has been really fun to play with him over the past month or so because he is really starting to understand us. He knows a lot of words and phrases, and we can communicate with him pretty effectively. He loves giving kisses and hugs, and he'll randomly kiss me or Steve or Mo or any of his toys throughout the day. Oh and he's taken up snorting recently too. Neat trick.
He's still as happy as ever, and just the most easygoing kid on the planet. Lucky us!! Oh, speaking of easygoing, nighttimes have gotten a lot more easy for us in the past 6 weeks or so. We have a bed time routine now that he knows. I ask him if he wants to read "Goodnight Moon", and he crawls over to our big chair and we sit in it and read through the book. He points out the kitties on each page, and kisses the little mouse wherever he shows up in the book. Sometimes he's in no mood to linger and flips through the book really fast and is delighted when we reach the last page. Whatever, as long as he likes it!! :-) Then we go back into his room and he has a bottle of warm whole milk. Mmm, talk about sleep potion. He's usually pretty groggy within a few minutes so I give him a kiss and tell him "Mommy loves you, Daddy loves you, Grandma loves you, Grandpa loves you, Just Grandma loves you (Steve's mom), and Just Grandpa loves you (Steve's dad), Uncle Jimmy loves you, Auntie Hilary loves you, Uncle Tommy loves you, Auntie Connie loves you, Uncle TJ loves you, Uncle David loves you, and Auntie Bonnie loves you" Yup, I tell him that every day. :-) Then I put him down in the crib. He rolls over, looks around for his little tiny blanket that his grandma gave him, grabs it and balls it up underneath himself and then assumes the buns-in-the-air sleep position. He does this at nap times too. He's learning when it is time to go to sleep, and it's great!! Hopefully this will last for awhile, although I hear that sleep patterns can get all messed up when they start walking, and he's pretty close to that. Also, we are moving down to Oregon in two months, for those of you that didn't know, and I'm sure that will upset his sleep habits too. Oh well, we'll get back into a rythmn I'm sure.
Other than all that, he's talking up a storm, although we still can't understand him. :-) He's copying a lot of what we say and do, so he's learning new sounds. Shouldn't be too long before he's talking, but just like walking, I'm in no hurry. He'll learn when he's ready!
I decided to be bold and daring and take a trip out to Chicago a few weeks ago to visit my brother and his wife. Steve didn't come, so it was just Ben and me. Boy, it is tiring traveling with a kid!! I think what made it hard was that Ben was just thrown all off schedule and wasn't eating, wasn't sleeping very well because we were sharing a fouton (that just does not work for us!!), not to mention that he just hated Chicago with a firey passion!! It was pretty cold and windy there, and we just determined that he was miserable. He got back to his normal self as soon as we arrived back in the balmy northwest!! It was a fun trip, but tiring. And Ben is a relatively good traveller too. I can't imagine doing it with a really fussy kid. My hats off to all those people out there that are traveling alone with kids. Whew.
Oh yes, Ben had his first birthday last month. We had a great time and so many generous people gave money for Hannah's Hope in honor of Ben's first year of life. We are so thankful, and I inquired about where the money could go, and it is going to help with the start-up of another Hannah's Hope in Northern Ethiopia!! Pretty cool. I'm excited to tell Ben when he's older and can understand.
Well, we are all anxiously awaiting to move down to Oregon at the end of May. It will be SO good to be near family. So fun! And we will be arriving just at the beginning of summertime - perfect. With this I will sign off until next time (no promises as to when that will be). Hope you all are well and enjoy the few pictures of Ben here. He's not so much a baby anymore....:-( He's looking more like a little man now!!
Love to you all,
Heather Having fun on the lazy-susan at "Just Grandma" and "Just Grandpa's" house.

Gettin all dressed up to go out to dinner is serious business.
Ben gave crawling lessons to Uncle Jimmy.
Pretty talented there, Jimmy.
Aaaaah, just another day in Paradise. I just love a clean house. ;-)
As you can see, Ben thoroughly enjoyed his first hair cut.

Always plenty of this to go around. He could keep our house plants watered with all his drool.
Reading birthday books with Dad.
He's pretty stoked that he's 1 now!! And he has a mini -fro to boot! What could possibly be better?
Ugh, kisses from mom. This is getting old now.
How could you not want to kiss that face!!???!!

Hey everyone, hope you are all doing well this fine February day. I have a whole slew of new pictures of the Ben-ster for you all, plus it's been a long time since I have updated this blog. Not like that's anything new.... Steve and Ben and I have been doing pretty well over all. Ben has continued to explode in the gross motor skill department. He is pulling himself up on everything (I also discovered that he can pull over our heavy dining room chairs onto himself....ouch). He is talking up a storm, although it's still in his own little language. However, he is fascinated with my teeth, and he looks at them every day and I say "teeth" over and over and he says "tith" so I'm pretty sure he's really starting to say a word and associate it with what it is! Pretty nifty. He makes us laugh with stuff he does every single day. Right now he's really into beating our dog with a rubber spatula. I can't feel too sorry for Mo because he could get up and walk away if he wanted. Ben just takes pot shots at his face when he's nearby. ha!! He makes Steve feel very special when he comes home from work. He squeals with delight and can't get to Steve fast enough when he walks through the door. I'm pretty sure he has no concept of time though, because if I go downstairs to get a load of laundry and I come up two minutes later, I get the same reaction from him! :-) He slept through the night last night which I must say I'm pretty stoked about, since the last time he did that was pre-Christmas. Wahoo. Hooray for good sleeping. I am pretty sure that this was an anomaly for now, but I'll just think positively and say that this is the new Ben: an I-sleep-through-the-night-every-night-Ben. He is definitely attached to me now. When I'm in the room and there are others holding him, most of the time he'll whine and lean towards me. However, he does pretty well if I leave and he's with others. Steve took me out to dinner last night for my birthday and we left him with our friends here at our house and he did really well. Of course, our babysitters have raised 4 boys of their own so I think they have just a little experience. They had the magic touch cuz it sounded like Ben was a good little boy and plus he slept through the night!
So now I'll take time to be honest and make known to you how much I'm a cubic zirconia-in-the-rough kind of mom. God is certainly using Ben to magnify my outstanding level of impatience. I have always known that I'm not going to win any patience awards, but now with Ben, I realize just how ridiculous my impatience can be at times. What other parents have to deal with far surpasses Ben's level of difficulty, yet I find myself embarrassingly short-fused. Mostly it is with regards to my sleep. I have always been protective of it since I don't sleep well anyway, and interruptions have always been a little upsetting, to say it conservatively.... Funny thing is, I am feeling ok for the most part during the day, even when Ben wakes up multiple times at night. I think my "sleep protectiveness" is a habit now more than anything. And that habit is not pretty. I had lunch with a friend today, who told me that kids are a blessing in that they help us see the areas in ourselves that need improvement, and that will be something that is lifelong, because kids are lifelong. I am grateful for that positive twist on it, and I see that as being so true already. I look forward to how God will re-shape me and make me into a more Godly woman, using our kids as His tools. Thank goodness God is starting out easy on me!!!


Ben liked our old 80's hatchback..
So much in fact, that he wanted to drive it and had a blast!! This is a shot of him speeding down the freeway. :-)

Havin a good time with Uncle Jimmy!!
Ben loves his Grandma!
The 1-2-3's of crawling down a sidewalk....1
....2.....
....3.... and drool to boot.

Check out his Uncle Eddy hat (courtesy of cousin Garrett)
Both he and Mo are equally in awe of the snowfall
Puttin out the vibe
Captain B. Leasure surfing the jet stream down to Cali
Uncle Jimmy is so way cool!!

The Hannah's Hope gang at an AGCI gathering a few weeks ago. Aleah and Briel are the twins on the right, Steve is holding Grace and Ruby (is it obvious that Steve wants a girl next??), and I have the Man!
One big happy family.
Ben 'twixt Ruby and Grace

I don't know how this synchronized pose happened but it's pretty hilarious.
Watch out ladies....I'm single and lookin for love.

Ben vs. Dad arm wrestling
A rough fight...they need a break.
Wow, Ben has hops. He jumps so high, I have to make sure I'm there to catch him!
He's always happy when I actually do catch him.
Mo's always extremely interested in Ben's bathtime.

...so, why doesn't Mo just join Ben?

Happy dog....confused kid.

Ben, Grace, and the twins, Aleah and Briel. All from Hannah's Hope, and we live 15 min from each other!!
Little Man Ben and his pal Grace! He loves to pull himself up at the sliding glass door...
I decided to go outside of the sliding glass door this time...
I was laughing pretty hard at this, and he was clueless as to why.
Ya, need I say more?

We discovered Ben sleeps like an ostrich...buries his head and sticks his bum in the air...

Handsome man in his flannel shirt!!

Happy 2008!

Surprise! We're back....Steve and Ben and I just spent an awesome Christmas break down in Oregon with our families. Twas so fun to take the little man around and show him off! We were quite busy, but I extended my stay down there after Steve left to come back up to Washington for work, so I got to get a few more visits in with the grandparents and some family friends. Ben is growing SO MUCH!! I keep wishing he could stay this size forever, but I'm already sorting through some of his clothes and putting away the ones that are too small. So many things changed with him over the Christmas break. First of all, he gained two pounds. He's totally into solid foods now, and sometimes he gets mad that I can't feed him fast enough. Like I need to use two hands and two spoons or something...sheesh!! He started to fully crawl two weeks ago, and he'd much rather be vertical than anything else. He wants us to help him walk everywhere, and he's pulling himself up on things to stand. He wants to walk! He scoots right along now, and naturally his three main goals in life right now are to pull over the fire place screen (which Steve has now zip-tied to the wall), pull out electrical cords and/0r closely examine the outlets, and sit at the top of our stairs and shake the gate that is blocking his way down. He's a real go-getter I tell ya. :-) Oh and he's a frequent flyer now in the plane....we flew him down to my great aunt and uncles house in California and he wore a headset and everything!! You'll see it in a couple of the picks, it's hilarious!! He's fascinated with the plane. Fits right in the family, for sure. He has also started to really belly laugh at things. We can play chase, keep-away, and tickle him and he laughs the most rubust little baby laugh ever. We have lots of fun with him. He's our personal entertainer! Oh and he has learned to give kisses and it is SO sweet!! You ask him to give you a kiss, and he grabs your face with both hands and opens his mouth and pushes it on your face. So cute!!! It was so awesome to be able to spend so much time with all of his aunts and uncles. We are blessed to have a whole army of great ones!!! My brothers in particular turn themselves into 6'5" 10-month olds and crawl around the house with Ben, grunting and stuff....HA!!! Ben is such a little charmer and he has a personality that out-sizes him by leaps and bounds. He has so much expression, and I don't think I've ever seen a 10 month old with a sense of humor until Ben!! I hope every one of you had a good Christmas with your family and friends. And Happy New Year!! This will be a very different year for us, but it has begun with such blessing. Ben has already totally enriched all of our lives and we don't know what we did without him. My parents sat around and moped when he was napping...my dad always wanted to go wake him up to play. :-) Haha. I'll post some pics now, since that is really what you all care about. ;-)