It’s all about the Benjamin’s…

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
-Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

On Friday, October 25 at approximately 4:21pm, little Benjamin Early came into the world weighing 8.5 lbs. and measuring 21.6 inches.  Most people would say the first days of life for a baby should be perfect, and because Benjamin’s first days were spent under observation in the NICU, some would say that his weren’t.  And if are you one of those people, I think you’re wrong.  Benjamin was born into a room with a mother and father who loved him even before meeting him.  And today he went home, ready for a full and happy life.  It doesn’t get much better than that.  Welcome to the world little Benjamin, you’re a lucky kid.

Our own baby has been afflicted with his first cold this past week.  Here are some pictures of him being sick.

Seriously, the kid is the most smiley baby I’ve ever seen when looking at people.  Even when he’s coughing at all hours, he still finds time to laugh and smile when looking at us.  As I’m typing this, he’s pretty much asleep in mom’s arms on the couch, but his eyes are slightly open.  When she looks at him he smiles, but doesn’t open his eyes.  It almost makes us forget the hourly wakings and the night-time walks around the house.  Almost.

As Halloween approaches it was time for our yearly carving of the pumpkin.  You may have seen this year’s pumpkin in the last blog entry, so you can imagine the effort involved in cleaning and carving it.  Luckily for us, we had a willing helper in the endeavor.  Even James did his part by, you guessed it, smiling at us while we worked.

After the pumpkin was cleaned out, mom thought it would be a great idea to stuff the baby inside it for some pictures.  I suppose I have to admit that the pictures are a little funny.  Not shown are the pictures of James not happy about the experience outside.

And for the curious, here’s the pumpkin face that Ashlyn picked out.  It’s a cross between scary and happy.

Birthdays and pumpkins…

According to BabyCenter.com, James should be able to hold his head up while laying on his stomach when he’s four months old.  He’ll also be able to sit momentarily without assistance when he’s five months old.  It appears that James does not care much for the opinions of BabyCenter.com, so he responded to their estimates with this:

Yep, not only was he holding his head up before he was two and a half months old, he’s starting to sit before he hits the four month mark.  Go James, go.

Let’s pause here to say a big Happy Birthday to Grandma Wolfe!  The Wofle clan came over to the house on Saturday for some steaks, wine, and good company.  Ashlyn started out the evening in a dress, which she showed off to everyone.

She felt a mid-birthday wardrobe change was required however, so here’s a sneak preview of what you’ll see in the Halloween blog post. 

Thanks everyone for a great time, and a big Happy Birthday to Grandma!

On Sunday we took the annual trip to the pumpkin patch.  This year Ashlyn was able to pick out her own pumpkin.  Well, two actually.  She found a rather ugly little thing that she liked for some reason, and then she found a tiny one at the checkout area that she liked.

She also found a large bag of kettle corn, but to be fair most of the corn was for mom.

By Parenting Law we were required to stop and take pictures with the kids.  Luckily, they did just fine and we even got some smiles out of both of them.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get them smiling at the same time.  Maybe next year.

Rain boots and rolling over…

“A three year old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm.”
-Bill Vaughan

Last weekend was a busy one with Ashlyn’s birthday, so we were looking forward to a catching up on rest this weekend.  Thanks to the Aggies pulling out a win over Louisiana Tech at 1:00am on Sunday morning (yes, 1:00AM), our hopes did not come true.  But that’s not to say it was a bad weekend.  Ashlyn went to gymnastics in rain boots even though it wasn’t raining, we were visited by multiple  grandparents, and Ashlyn had fun with a recently fixed Elmo.

We also went riding around the lake several times.  I’m not going to post another video of Ashlyn squealing down hills, but I’ll use the picture below as a way to characterize how the ride went.  This particular picture is Ashlyn impatiently waiting at the bottom of a hill while daddy carried the tricycle back up to the top.

James continues to grow at quick pace.  He’s easily holding his head up and looking around at the world.  He’s already more than half Ashlyn’s height, and he even appears to be growing his first two teeth.  Thankfully, he continues to be a very smiley baby and he has a great big sister to help show him the ropes of growing up.

If you remember back to one of our first blogs featuring James, he rolled over at 4 days old.  Once accomplishing this feat, he felt he didn’t need to show off the skill again.  But now he must have changed his mine because he’s rolling over consistently.  Here’s the three part process:

That last picture looks like he’s sleeping, which is reminding me that it’s time to go to bed.  See ya next week.

Birthdays and miracles…

A parable:  A man stood at the bottom of a mountain and looked up to the top where a hermit lived.  For six days the man climbed over rocks, trudged through valleys, and leaped across fissures.  On the end of the sixth day he reached the top.  The man asked the hermit, “What is the meaning of life?”.  The hermit, wise and ancient, thought on this for a moment and replied, “When you learn why you are here on this mountain, you will have your answer”.  “I don’t understand, what do you mean?” questioned the man, annoyed that he had traveled so far for such a simple answer.  In response the old hermit said, “You’ll have to figure it out on your own.  Next time, just text me, it would be much easier for you.”.

If you’re like Nina, at this point you can skip to the end of the post to read what I meant by that parable before continuing on.  Back?  Great.  This is the annual birthday post for our dear Ashlyn, and it was a fun weekend with many more picture than I can post here.  It started on Friday, which was her actual birthday.  We started by opening a few birthday presents.  Our shy little daughter actually opened some gifts and had fun since it was just us.  That was not to be repeated at her actual party of course.

As has become tradition at the Flinn house, it was off to the zoo on Ashlyn’s birthday to go see the animals.  We realized after the trip that we didn’t take near as many pictures as we had in the past, I guess that happens after you’ve been there each year for three years.  This marked the first time we went as a family of four, and the last time that Ashlyn will be able to go to the zoo for free.

After we got back from the zoo it was time to get busy making the cakes.  Ashlyn enjoyed working with mom to make the cupcakes, and Grandma came over after Ashlyn went to bed to help.  It was good that she did, they were up until almost 11 getting the icing on everything.

The result of all the work were some awesome looking cupcakes, a funny vegetable tray, and something we affectionately named “Special Elmo”. 

The party was the next day, and Ashlyn was so excited she couldn’t nap.  We were afraid that it would make her grumpy, but we didn’t have anything to worry about.  She had a great time with the family and our house the next day looked like a herd of pre-schoolers had tore through the house based on all the toys everywhere.  From hungry hungry hippos, to card games, to cupcake making kits, to funny wearable animals, it was everywhere.  Thank you so much to everyone who came by and celebrated with us, Ashlyn loved it.

It’s amazing when you think about how unlikely we all are to be where we are today. As Bill Bryson said, “Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest to find the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result, eventually, astoundingly, in you.”.

The next result of those 3.8 billion years, plus 3 more, is Ashlyn.  All the choices that we, our parents, and their relatives back through time made have led to her being here.  If we had any doubts about the decisions we made, it takes one look at her for us to realize they were all good.

So Happy Birthday little one, for showing us what the meaning of life really is.   We love you.