Jami

Benjamin is a funny kid. I guess most 3-year-olds are, but he's mine and he's incredibly stubborn so I really need to believe that he is also cute and hilarious. He does this thing, where he can't make up his mind and, in essence, has an argument with himself. I.E. He needs make a choice between two flavors of yogurt. "I want strawberry!" So, I start to hand him the strawberry, "No! I want strawberry banana!" I put the strawberry back and start to hand him a strawberry banana when he changes his mind again. This can go on for a while, Gollum-style, so I usually end up having to issue an ultimatum so that our day can move forward. No matter which flavor I choose for him, it usually ends in tears and time-out because he inevitably attacks me once I've made a final decision for him. Here is a picture of one of those times. We were away from home, so time-out was in his carseat.

No, that is not faded lipstick and smudged mascara. It is the fateful combination of him having eaten a red popsicle and drawn with a black marker which left smudge marks by his eye when he rubbed it with his bemarkered hand. I felt bad because he was so upset but it was really hard not to laugh.

One evening at scripture time we were discussing the story of Adam and Eve. We got to the part about the serpent and the boys were all fascinated by the idea of a talking snake. Benjamin then declared, "Yeah! The snake's name was Roger." Now we know. All this time I thought that snake was a representation of Beelzebub or something. Nope, just Roger.

On our recent road trip Benjamin was definitely the terror of the trip. We put his carseat in the front row of passenger seats so that Marc and I could easily reach him if he started causing trouble and also so we could pick up the approximately 2 billion items he would drop during said road trip. Anyway, short of strapping his carseat to the roof, there was no where we could put him where he couldn't reach at least one of his brothers so we had some pretty major poking, hitting and swiping things issues on our drive. Benjamin does NOT keep his hands to himself. This means that Marc or I would have to periodically intervene by holding Benjamin's hands in ours. Of course, Benjamin did not appreciate the incarceration of his extremities so he would start screaming as if we had cut off his hands instead of just immobilized them. Every few minutes we would ask if he was ready to keep his hands to himself. He would pause, mid-scream, consider the question, furrow his brows and sulkily answer, "No." Well, at least he is honest.

We got to go swimming with Uncle Matt and Aunt Gina while we were in Arkansas. Benjamin loved to go off the diving board and have them catch him. He would climb out of the pool and declare in his little elfin voice, "I want to jump off the cardboard!"

One final thing about Benjamin, he makes his own sound effects. I am still waiting for him to start singing his own theme music, but when he is running around and jumping and climbing he utters an unconcious stream of "Hup! Ha! Vrrrrrrrooom! Whoosh! Hup! Hup! Hi-ya!" All day. As far as I can tell, he's not even pretending to be a superhero most of the time. It's just Jami's jam.