The Middle Child

While I was pregnant with Amelia I realized that when she was born Benjy would become a middle child. Stereotypically speaking, this is not a good thing. Both of my parents are middle children, as is my husband, but I'm the oldest and so I think it's a pretty good place to be. So I was feeling sorry for Benjy that day. I wanted to write about him, but I was pretty miserable while pregnant. Blogging was so far down on my to-do list that it never happened.
Benjy was a champion the last couple of months of my pregnancy. Every morning after we got Sam and Ryan out the door he would crawl into bed with me and snuggle while he watched Netflix on the iPad. He never complained about being bored, he just kept me company until I felt well enough to get up.

This is the "cave" where he likes to watch iPad.

As I posted a while back, Ben did not like potty training. We haven't made a concerted effort again to get him back on the toilet. He's very stubborn. In fact, one of his talents is his ability to ignore people. He's amazing at it. If he is being tickled and doesn't want to laugh, he just doesn't. I can't even do that as an adult (not that I get tickled very often). It might sound like I'm being ironic in my praise of his stubbornness, but I really do admire his self-control. I think it will serve him well as he gets older.

I got into the shower late today. When I got out, Ben met me in the hallway brandishing the kitchen broom. I told him to go put it away, which he promptly did. I checked on Amelia, and picked out my clothes for the day. Then I heard "Yook! Yoooook!" from upstairs.

For those of you who don't have your Ben-to-English dictionary handy, that means "Look! Loooook!"

I wrapped my bathrobe back around me and hurried up to see what he wanted. This time he he proudly held up a baseboard, which until this morning was cracked but still attached to the wall. He swung it around a few times until I snatched it away. I was able to get it almost back in to place. By then he had moved to the kitchen and was demanding "Cheewos an melk*!"

*Cheerios and milk, as opposed to eating dry cereal like a peasant.

I felt bad that I hadn't gotten him a snack earlier, so I promptly gave him a bowl of Cheerios and milk and went back downstairs to get dressed. While in my underwear I heard him yelling "Moh cheewos!" I dashed upstairs, not caring that the blinds were open, because I knew if I didn't do it, Ben would get the Cheerios himself and possibly destroy the whole world in the process. I went back downstairs. By the time I was completely dressed he was demanding his third bowl of cereal, which he got. After he finished and cleaned up his hands, he ran to the couch to get his blanket. I knew the iPad was under his blanket, so I followed him to confiscate it. Not only did I find the iPad, I found a photo from our wall of family photos and a destroyed picture frame. Why he hid it under his blanket, I have no idea.

By this point I was tired of the destruction and frustrated that I would have to replace the picture frame, so Ben got scolded pretty sternly. He interrupted me as I was telling him off.

"Mommy, you happy?"

I was not happy, and I told him so. He began to cry, and I sent him to his room while I took care of the picture frame mess. Then I went downstairs to talk to him about how it is not okay to break things and hide them. I didn't get very far in my lecture before he told me he was sorry and crawled onto my lap for a hug.

I love this little guy. Even though he is a tiny tornado.